CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE Gordon Anglesea died yesterday morning of natural causes.
He would have been 80 in four months.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, which administers the Prison Service, this afternoon scotched rumours the retired police superintendent may have tried to take his own life.
He was taken ill a few days ago.
He had served just 42 days of a 12 year sentence for abusing two boys in the 1980s.
He was incarcerated at Rye Hill prison, a Category B training establishment, in the Warwickshire village of Willoughby. It has a capacity of 664 inmates.
A spokeswoman at Rugby’s St Cross Hospital would not confirm that he was a patient there.
In November Anglesea was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on four counts of indecent assault on two boys.
The first victim was abused at the Wrexham Attendance Centre which Anglesea, then a police inspector, ran in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The second boy, a resident of the private Bryn Alyn care home complex run by convicted paedophile John Allen, was passed around a group of men like a “handbag”. One of those who abused him was then uniform inspector Anglesea.
Anglesea’s conviction was a close run thing.
It’s exactly 25 years since he was first named by the Independent on Sunday.
Had he died a few months earlier his trial would never have taken place — he would have joined Jimmy Savile as a lifetime abuser who escaped justice.
Except, you can never really escape justice. You will encounter it either in this world or the next. It's only by the grace of Jesus Christ that anyone has any hope.
Rebecca can now reveal the website is investigating three new allegations against Anglesea:
— a former resident of Bryn Alyn says Anglesea raped him in the 1970s. The victim has always refused to make a statement against the former police inspector
— in the late 1970s a woman police officer reported a serious sexual assault by Anglesea at Wrexham Police Station.
The matter was covered up: the superintendent in charge of the division, Percy Edwards, was a freemason like Anglesea.
— another police woman made a 999 call to Cheshire Police in the 1970s claiming that Anglesea had indecently assaulted her at a party.
She also declined to make a formal complaint.
Anglesea’s death means his appeal will lapse.
However, the fate of his pension remains an issue.
Police & Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones and the North Wales Police will now have to decide if his widow Sandra will benefit from Anglesea’s substantial police pension.
Normally, she would be entitled to half.
The Crown Prosecution Service has applied for a substantial contribution to the cost of the six week criminal trial.
And the National Crime Agency is investigating the possibility of bringing an action under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
In 1994 Anglesea won damages of £375,000 — worth more than half a million pounds today — from the Observer, Private Eye, HTV (now ITV Wales) and the Independent on Sunday.
I would like to say, rest in peace, Mr Anglesea, but I don't think there is any peace where you are now.
(With thanks to Cathy Fox Blog)
No comments:
Post a Comment