The child abuse inquiries

8 July 2016

David Scott joined Brian Gerrish and Mike Robinson via Skype link on UK Column news where a number of issues about children were discussed.

Child Abuse inquiries

The first inquiry to be mentioned was the one centred on Kincora Boys` home in Ireland where it is alleged that MI5 blackmailed a paedophile ring working there in the 1970s. "Now, how an inquiry is digging into the intelligence services, I really don`t know," says Brian Gerrish. "I think that would take Special Branch at least but apparently it`s an inquiry."

"England and Wales - we`ve got a child abuse inquiry where there has been delay... but that`s apparently running. They couldn`t really get an independent chair and so far there has been little or no progress but they have managed to lose some records, as you do.... And  then, of course, Scotland is worse, if anything, because the inquiry`s been collapsed - [two] members resigned and the cause of that is government interference. And we`ve recently been reporting on the Brian and Janice Docherty case and, of course, we`ve got Hollie Greig and hundreds of others."

For those who doubt that Westminster could be involved in blackmailing paedophiles, Gerrish refers to the BBC film of Tory whip Tim Fortescue.

"He says quite calmly on camera: `the MPs came to us with troubles concerning little boys and we fixed it for them so that they would do as we asked`. So there it is on BBC film: blackmail in Westminster."

The Brian and Janice Docherty case

David Scott believes that this case has much wider implications for everybody in the country. Certainly, if this is happening right under our noses the authorities are out of control.

The Dochertys have made a video recording and are hoping to launch it next week that will summarise the case. "It covers the main points," says Scott, "and allows people to get a quick overview. Referring to the ten audio tapes already uploaded on the site, "We should thank a Scottish lady who has been busy transcribing those audio files. The transcribed files will be up shortly on the UK Column website... It has hyperlinks to all the organisations mentioned. This makes it much easier to contact people and to ask questions and to demand answers. ... I encourage everyone to seek that out."

Members of the public have responded to the appeal from the UK Column to get involved... "It`s very difficult because obviously people in authority do not want to be talking about this but information is coming forward."

Up on screen appears a slide which shows where the Dochertys were staying in an area not far from Fraserburgh and Peterhead.

Gerrish says: "I think we`ll just emphasise that that is a relatively remote location so when events took place around the family: for example, they`re talking about men being around the family late at night. They`re talking about criminal damage with intent to harm, glass being loosened in the greenhouse. This was a very frightening environment to be in, particularly when they discovered that Police Scotland were not going to give them any help."

"Quite... There are a few scattered houses but it is very rural; it`s very quiet. At night it`s almost totally black. ...There`s no street lights in the surrounding area..."

Gerrish goes on: "Now we have got a number of members of the public who`ve started to be motivated and to take action, including writing well constructed and measured letters to authorities. We`ve just chosen one to give an example."

"This is written to the Chief Constable of Police Scotland, Phil Gormley," says Scott. "and the person writes a whole series of questions."

How can Police Scotland justify not investigating the man who offered Brian Docherty £25,000 for `access` to his autistic son, when the man in question has admitted that he did, in fact, do so ?

Why, less than twenty-four hours after Brian Docherty reported that Alan Low, the occupant of a neighbouring property on Viscount Petersham`s Crimonmogate estate, had offered him £25,000 for `access` to his autistic six-year-old son, did Sergeant Buchan of Police Scotland, Fraserburgh, arrive on his doorstep and attempt to persuade Mr Docherty, with considerable persistence, that there was nothing to be concerned about ?

Why did PC Lamont, the female officer who allegedly wrote a concern report to social services attacking Mr and Mrs Docherty and their children, have no knowledge of the content of her own report?

"That`s a very good question," Scott adds. "It is a police concern report that mobilised social services child protection paraphernalia ... and directed it against the Docherty family...That report would appear to be fraudulent. We need to know about that...."

For those who are not familiar with the case, Gerrish encourages people to go to the UK Column website to have a listen to the audio. "Hear the testimony of the parents themselves."

"But you look at the massive state effort in Scotland, via the police, via the courts, via social services, via local authorities to hound, harass and silence this family and then, of course, when they move over the water to Ireland, it`s just the same state resources that are put in to silencing them. And of course our prospective prime minister candidate Theresa May and her office, who know full well about this case; they do the opposite; they do absolutely nothing. There`s something very very strange going on here where the state mobilised this amount - this number of assets - in order to persecute a family who have not even been accused of any crime whatsoever. But when we see our government taking our country to war based on lies and falsification of intelligence reports, there`s apparently nobody who can do anything about it. The contrast is becoming a little bit too clear I think."

"Indeed," Scott agrees. "I would also say that anybody contacting organisations like Police Scotland - what he will get by way of return is a claim that data protection legislation prevents any discussion with anybody not involved in the case ... I would point out that the Data Protection Act has an overriding public interest exemption . It does not give Police Scotland the right to cover up their own criminal wrong doing. There is a public interest test here..."

Scottish child abuse inquiry

"This first headline here: this is possibly the worst headline - the most deceptive and misleading headline I can remember seeing in many a long year."

"Child Abuse inquiry in disarray after chairwoman quits over row over offensive comment to survivors."

"There`s many things wrong with this headline. One is that she did not make any offensive comments. That would suggest she made some sort of offensive comments to survivors. She did nothing of the sort. So the comment that this refers to are not comments to survivors. They`re comments to a third party that might be offensive to survivors. They`re in fact a comment quoting something that a survivor had said. So it`s a highly misleading headline in the Daily Record . Why would the Daily Record be trying to cover up government`s position on this?... I don`t know but it seems very strange."

"What actually happened was that first Professor Lamb and then Susan O`Brien QC, the head of the inquiry, resigned and both cited Scottish government interference, in an allegedly independent inquiry, as the reason."

"What came out in the O`Brien resignation letter, however, was much more.  The interference... comprised pressure on her personally going back for months and there was an attempt to remove her by the Scottish government from the inquiry because she had not been sufficiently cooperative to the way they wanted to run her independent inquiry. Now this pressure came from reported comments which were viewed as being beyond the pale; and these were blown up into a major issue and used to call her chairmanship of the inquiry into question. The person who reported these comments was Dr Claire Fyvie."

 

"Now this is her giving evidence to the Scottish parliament, one of the committees in the Scottish parliament. Now, Dr Claire Fyvie runs a specialist clinic for people suffering from traumatic stress. This can be ex-military or people from the general public, even jurors who have had to go through a very traumatic trial and hear harrowing evidence.  So it covers the full range of people who might have some sort of problem with traumatic stress. It receives a very generous grant from the Scottish government. But Dr Fyvie herself was actually a former SNP candidate in central Scotland. So she is hardly independent of the Scottish government. It seems very strange. The clinic she runs is called the River Centre. So she gets government money; she`s an SNP candidate... an SNP member. She`s the only person who took exception to something that the head of this inquiry said. This was reported and blown up into an enormous crises and used to threaten the position of the head of the inquiry. It seems something out of nothing. It seems an obvious attack on the head of the inquiry by the Scottish government. And where does the inquiry in Scotland go from here? Because any inquiry set up by this government must be tarnished with the same suggestion of control, of direction, of lack of independence."

"This next slide here: the survivors want a judge to head the inquiry. The survivors also want an extension to the Terms of Reference because the Terms of Reference were far too narrow. The Terms of Reference for this inquiry will only be for residential accommodation run by the state or certain churches. Therefore, if you were a day pupil in these same institutions and you were sexually abused, you are not within the Terms of Reference of the inquiry; obvious nonsense and failure to tackle the real problem; a way of excluding the vast majority of victims and survivors."

"And helping to protect the state," interjects Gerrish. "So where the state is caring for the child there`s abuse - well that isn`t really abuse. You`ve got another headline ...Child sex abuse victims being bullied. by state to drop redress claims This fits the picture with England and Wales. The same thing has gone on there."

"Yes this is in the Republic of Ireland. The same thing`s happening. Abuse survivors are told `well if you want to pursue this you`re going to be crippled with court costs` and by this means being induced to abandon claims ... "

"Well Police Scotland can`t investigate child abuse but they can do what they like with ANPR records ... What`s been happening here?"

Scott explains: "It transpires that Police Scotland have license plate records taken automatically by licence plate recognition machines all across Scotland. They hold all of these all the way back to 2012; some 200 million records a year they currently hold. Earlier records are only vehicles of interest....80,000 or so, but if you`ve been to Scotland in your car since 2012, be assured that Police Scotland will know about it."

Early intervention

"David, you wanted to point out that Andrea Leadsom has been lobbying... for more support for parents and children. So that must be good news..."

 

"Well you might think so but you`d be wrong. The lobbying here is to increase the early intervention agenda of the state. So the state has to intervene - basically before a child is two; three`s too late. So it`s all about early intervention. This is the same set of ideas and junk science that underpins Named Person in Scotland and all other attacks by state on the family all round the world. And she seems to be whole heartedly supporting that. That rather flies in the face of the traditional old school conservative family values agenda that she is claiming to stand upon."

"So is she nailing her colours to the mast for the Named Person for the whole of the United Kingdom do you think?" asks Mike Robinson.

Well that would be the implication.  She`s certainly buying whole heartedly into ... the agenda that underpins the Named Person. How far she`ll go, only time will tell."　

http://www.ukcolumn.org/

See Police Scotland to dump millions of ANPR records over privacy fears