False reports in a post-truth world

On Friday`s UK Column News: "Tusla is a child agency in Ireland," says David Scott. "It looks after child protection; it looks after families and family law... We came across this organisation when we started to look at the Docherty case because the Dochertys had their children seized twice and they`re still in the care of the state of Ireland and both episodes were vile. The second one, there was I think thirteen people, five policemen and eight social workers or something like this, descended upon this family and violently seized their children. The agencies doing this - there were two agencies Garda Síochána and Tusla. So we started to look at the links between these two. We started to look at how they were managed and who`s managing them and lo and behold all those roads led back to Scotland, led back to Aberdeenshire."

"So we highlighted some of these issues. and we started to get other stories that Tusla and Garda Síochána were very profoundly corrupt. Now what`s happened in the last couple of weeks is that this corruption has become obvious to the people of Ireland. In a way... sadly the corruption that surrounds this case is like the Docherty case. It`s not obvious to people in Scotland. In Scotland itself, it`s completely suppressed; there`s no news coming out; there`s no political questions being asked. But in Ireland people are now standing up in ... parliament and asking very serious questions and the case is horrendous."

 

"It concerns a Garda officer called McCabe who eight years ago discovered serious criminal wrongdoing by a colleague within the police force.... and took the appropriate lawful action and brought that to the authority`s attention... and ensured that the criminal activities were stopped and the man saw justice. And as a result Mr McCabe and his family have gone through eight years of hell. Now there was an early accusation made against this man that he`d been involved in some sort of inappropriate contact with a child. Now this accusation came from the daughter of the Garda officer who he brought to justice and it concerns an alleged incident some decades in the past. This woman was in her twenties and was claiming something happened when she was six or seven. It was investigated . The conclusion was there was no evidence not only that the incident occurred but there was considerable doubt that the incident described by the complainant was even a crime. It described this girl being at this officer`s house playing hide and seek and an allegation that there was something a bit off about that. It was extremely minor. The decision was there was nothing to investigate. No prosecution. Case closed."

"But the case was not closed because later it came back and it transpired that very very serious allegations of child rape had been levelled against this officer and were in the Tusla files and were then circulated throughout the Gardai so his colleagues were told about this. He wasn`t told about it; he didn`t know any of this was being discussed. And he found out about it only very recently, years after these rumours had been circulated. And the official explanation as to why he had been accused of being a child rapist in the official files of Tusla was an administrative error. It was an unfortunate cut and paste exercise that went sadly wrong."

"So there you go. Tusla can unfortunately cut and paste allegations of child rape into your files and then start to investigate your entire family because they had files on all of his children and what`s unique about this situation?  Only that he was a Garda whistleblower. It`s a horrendous situation ..."

 

Comparing this situation to the Docherty case, David Scott goes on: "It`s the same sort of approach; it`s the same sort of manipulation of the files but the difference here is it`s coming out into the open. In the case of Scotland... we know that a Police Scotland officer misrepresented himself to the Dochertys and gave the wrong name and we believe his name was in fact Sergeant Gilbert Buchan."

 

 "And we know that a report written on the Dochertys ... highlighted concerns over another Police Scotland officer called Alan Low, was then modified by Gilbert Buchan and sent off to Child Protection Services. When the modified report got there it was no longer alleging concerns about Alan Low the police officer. No, now the area of concern was the Docherty family and how they were raising their children; and were the children safe? They set the Child Protection Services on the Dochertys with a lie. This is exactly what happened to this whistleblower ... Are we saying it was an unfortunate cut and paste exercise ? No, we`re not saying that because in Scotland we don`t get to say any of these things. There`s no investigation; there`s no questions being asked in parliament because we don`t have anyone with the spine to do it."


Referring to the Dochertys: "They`ve managed to get somewhere where they`re safe and they`re warm and they are in contact with us. We hope to get a lot more information. I think they`ve been through a fairly rough few months. ... There seems to be pretty blatant attempts by Garda Síochána to arrest Brian Docherty and have him sectioned. The only problem is there`s nothing wrong with his mental health. Unless he volunteers to be sectioned there`s actually nothing they can do. He`s also law abiding so arresting him is a bit problematic as well. But the harassment and police involvement seems to be going on. So we have Garda Síochána; we have Tusla; we have all of the same engaged in the McCabe scandal and other assaults on other whistleblowers... These very corrupt organisations are now facing the Dochertys. Now at the moment no-one in the mainstream is reporting the Docherty case. There are no questions being asked in the Irish parliament about the Docherty case. But times they are a-changing. So we`ll see what the next few weeks bring."

 

"We`ll end on this one," says Mike Robinson. "Because the government and Amber Rudd in particular has announced a £40 million package of government measures to protect children and young people from sexual abuse. This has got to be good news, doesn`t it? The home secretary yesterday announced that package. Well where`s it going to go? Well it`s going to create a new centre of expertise on child sexual abuse apparently."

Brian Gerrish adds: "It sounds like the Kingfisher set up in Oxford where they used the police station that had been involved as failing the young girls coming forward to report abuse. That`s where they set up the new headquarters to spearhead leadership in child abuse."

"Well what fascinates me Brian is the centre of expertise on child sexual abuse, it`s not the centre of expertise on child sexual abuse prevention and so what exactly is it going to be? Is it going to be a school for paedophiles? It`s unclear at this point. An extra £20 million for the National Crime Agency ... to tackle online child sexual abuse; £2.2 million for organisations to protect children at risk of trafficking - even though they can`t track down children missing from care in this country - and the launch of... independent child trafficking advocates. What is that going to be?"

"Well that`s to undermine the McKenzie Friends," says Gerrish ... "That will be the government to train the people to work with the desperate parents."

"OK, well here`s what Amber Rudd had to say:"

"`Children should be able to grow up free from the horrors of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking ... This government has done more than any other to tackle these horrific offences`. And she said it with a straight face. ... Now they have in parallel released this: Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation; progress report. And I just want to highlight the things that they`re crowing about here, and David I`ll ask you for comment on this in a second."

 

"`We have tackled the culture of denial in professions about the scale and nature of this crime`. Well that`s what they claim.  But they certainly haven`t tackled the culture of denial within the government itself, within parliament as to the complicity of parliament and the activity of this parliament in this area`. "

"`We have increased accountability`, they say, `by strengthening statutory guidance to reduce the risks of children falling through the gaps between services`. What that means is they have created a much stronger culture of cover-up because with people working in multiagency groups now they get to know each other; there is no independence; there`s no separation of powers. This is a fundamental constitutional issue. And so what they`ve done by strengthening statutory guidance to reduce the risk of children falling through the gaps means bigger cover-up."

"They say, `we`ve increased the support to victims and survivors of sexual abuse by providing local commissioners with the funding they need to support the particular needs of survivors in their area as well as holding a central fund so that organisations working nationally for survivors are supported`. Except when they`re not supported. Except when they`re put in prison instead because what they`re whistleblowing about is involving parliamentarians and others. So that culture of denial that they say they`ve dealt with feeds into certain people ending up in prison. And of course I`m speaking about Melanie Shaw there."

"And finally they say they`ve sharpened law enforcement response and brought more offenders to justice including offenders who`ve been exploiting new methods and technologies to abuse children. `In the year to December 2015  - 5,789 offenders were convicted of child sexual abuse offences. This was over 1,000 more offenders convicted in 2014;  51% of those convicted in 2015 were sentenced to immediate custody`.  None of those people were called Janner. None of those people were called Brittan and none of them were involved in parliament in any way, shape or form; and ... despite the credible evidence from whistleblowers. So this is a pretty staggering thing."

"David, £40 million, you must be impressed."

"Well I was impressed with that analysis. That`s extremely good. We see this in Scotland because we`re a testing ground ... the named person. What does it mean? It means that when the parent tries to go and confront some sort of wrongdoing,  neglect or other failings of the state they`re now facing an even larger, better organised and more tightly coordinated group of state officials who are all opposing the parent, all are opposing the family ... and getting the truth heard is ever harder. "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7TNV4p7Fuw