Chelsea keep mum on football sex abuse payout
LONDON • Chelsea have become the first club to issue a payout to an alleged victim since the full extent of English football's sex abuse scandal was exposed, but they risk drawing criticism for not making the compensation deal public.
The club have reached an out-of-court settlement with a junior player who was allegedly abused by Chelsea's former chief scout Eddie Heath but declined to comment on the specifics of the deal.
The Blues have previously been condemned for paying £50,000 (S$90,790) to another former player, Gary Johnson, in effect to buy his silence.
Chelsea would not disclose how much money was paid to the alleged victim, who claimed Heath sexually abused him at the club's old training ground in Mitcham, south London.
The payment was made by the club's insurers rather than directly by Chelsea. Heath died in the mid-1980s but former Chelsea players have since come forward to allege he abused them in the showers after training sessions and games.
He was said to have cynically targeted boys with single mothers, and regularly offered to give them a lift to and from the training ground to allow himself the opportunity to carry out the abuse.
Chelsea will be keen to avoid appearing like they are attempting to conceal any compensation payments after they were widely denounced for making Johnson sign a confidentiality clause.
Johnson, who went on to play for the club's first team, said he was abused by Heath hundreds of times in the 1970s. He approached Chelsea in 2015 looking for compensation and alleged the club attempted to sweep the incident under the carpet.
Legal experts have predicted the final cost of compensation for abuse victims across English football could reach more than £100 million.
Yeah, good luck with that! Look at what Nassar cost Michigan State U. - half a billion dollars! $100 million is not going to touch your responsibilities.
As of Dec 31, 2017, the number of football sex abuse victims was 839 with 294 alleged suspects and 334 clubs impacted. Those figures are according to Operation Hydrant, the police investigation into allegations of non-recent child sex abuse.
In February, former football coach Barry Bennell was jailed for 30 years after being found guilty of subjecting junior players from Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra to hundreds of sexual offences.
The Football Association is conducting its own internal review to find out what officials and clubs knew about potential abuse and when.
The country's governing body for the sport is also reviewing 6,000 files flagged as relevant during an initial review of more than 3,000 boxes from the FA's archive.
The FA has also taken the accounts of more than 100 survivors of sex abuse. Chelsea declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian.
Chelsea, London
Convicted N.Z. killer and sex abuser's sister convinced there could be more victims
ANDY JACKSON/STUFF
Trish Roigard feels free from her past after speaking up about abuse.
One of the strongest memories Trish Roigard has of her half-brother are his dark, empty eyes. "It was like they were soulless. There was nothing behind the eyes," she said.
The South Taranaki woman is talking about David Noel Roigard - a man convicted of murdering his son in cold blood in June 2014, and more recently of historical child sexual abuse.
At the age of 51, David Roigard was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of 19 years, for murdering his 27-year-old son Aaron, a violent crime motivated by a desire to cover up the fact he had stolen more than $66,000 from him.
Despite extensive searches, the father-of-two's body has never been found.
Last month, David Roigard was handed down a three-and-a-half year jail sentence after being found guilty of five charges of indecent assault on a girl under 12, offending committed in the early 1980s in Taranaki when he was in his late teens.
He was acquitted of one indecent assault charge following the jury trial in the Whanganui District Court. The case involved two female complainants.
At the sentencing hearing, Trish Roigard took a rare step and successfully applied to the court to have the automatic name suppression gifted to her as one of the sex abuse complainants lifted so she could speak out about her experiences, with the hope it will encourage others to do so as well.
Aaron Roigard and his partner Julie Thoms. The couple had two children together before he was killed. Picasa
At previous court hearings, David Roigard's offending had been described as calculating, cruel and callous. Trish Roigard added another two other adjectives to describe her sibling, "narcissistic psychopath", and said she believed there could be other victims of his out there.
The half-siblings share the same mother and David was formally adopted and given the Roigard surname by Trish's father.
She believed things started to go wrong when David Roigard found out he had been adopted. She said he constantly ran away from home and begun to steal and commit burglaries.
He was enlisted in the army as a means to straighten him out, but this failed. "I think that anger over the years has just built up. It's almost like he wants to punish the world."
With David Roigard's history of dishonesty, the sexual abuse offending committed at 19 and then his murder conviction in his early 50s, Trish Roigard believed there were other people he had hurt along the way.
"I don't believe he went for 30 years being a good boy before he killed his son."
It wasn't until she attended David Roigard's four-week murder trial in the High Court at New Plymouth in late 2015 that she decided to speak up about her own abuse experiences.
"I went for years and years not talking about it," she said. Her story is what drives her newly established role as a survivor advocate. She wants to walk alongside people who are looking for the same justice and peace she has now managed to find herself.
While she wanted to hear from any other victims of David Roigard, she was happy to help people who might have suffered at another's hand too. "I know it can be a very lonely road sometimes. You doubt yourself and how you're feeling," she said.
David Roigard, who is due to appeal his murder conviction and sentence in July, has refused two interview requests made by Stuff since he was jailed for his son's murder.
Trish Roigard believed it would be a "waste of her breath" to talk to her half-brother about what he had done but she felt she had taken back the control he once held over her.
"He's locked up and I'm free."
Anyone interested in getting in touch with Trish Roigard can email trish.survivor.advocate@gmail.com or send a private message through the Survivors Voyage United Facebook page.
Taranaki, NZ
93% of migrant sex crimes in Finland are committed by migrants from Islamic countries
By VOICE OF EUROPE
File foto from Belgium
An investigation into Finland’s police data by the country’s police academy, shows that 131 Finnish citizens became victims of sex crimes committed by asylum seekers in the year 2016.
A total of 1052 asylum seekers were suspected of crimes in 2016 and virtually all were men, who together represented 29 nations. Two thirds were Iraqis and the age of the suspects was evenly distributed.
Finnish women were victims in 8 out of 10 cases committed by mostly Muslim asylum seekers: 108 out of 116 suspects of sexual offenses came from Islamic countries like Iraq (83), Afghanistan (14) or Morocco (6).
Almost half of sexual offenses were committed against Finnish girls under the age of 18 of which some were seeking men to access tobacco and drugs, the study says.
Among the sexual offenses that asylum seekers were suspected of rape is the most common, with 32% of the reports. Almost one in 7 cases, or 16%, were about was gang rape and another 16% of the reports were for sexual harassment.
3 out of 5 sexual assault with asylum seekers as suspected offenders occurred in public places, 1 in 5 in private homes, 1 in 10 at refugee centres and 1 in 4 in unknown places.
The police academy’s investigation of migrant crime is the first of its kind in Finland. Only serious crimes and not violations of Finland’s asylum rules were incorporated into the study.
Child Sex Inquiry Asked to Call Son of Black Rod to Testify on VIP/Dolphin Square CSA Scandal
By Glen Owen and Paul Cahalan for The Mail on Sunday
A Tory MP has called for Roddam Twiss (pictured) to appear before Alexis Jay's inquiry
The head of the investigation into historic child sexual abuse is under pressure to summon the son of a former Black Rod as part of its inquiry into a suspected Westminster paedophile ring.
A Tory MP has called for Roddam Twiss to appear before Alexis Jay's inquiry following The Mail on Sunday's disclosures last week about his links to VIPs and rent boys. The call came after two retired policemen told this newspaper that they had been banned from investigating Mr Twiss in the 1970s, at a time when his father, Sir Frank Twiss, was Black Rod, the Queen's envoy in the Lords.
The police were acting on reports that Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith, a prolific child-sex abuser, had been seen taking a rent boy to Mr Twiss's London home. Their inquiries were halted when they told superiors that Mr Twiss could be involved in a wider racket supplying rent boys to VIPs.
In an interview with the MoS last week, Mr Twiss, who was jailed in 1967 for assaulting boys, bragged of his access at the time to Parliament. He was also a frequent visitor to Dolphin Square, a nearby residential estate used by politicians, which he called 'a den of iniquity'.
Now North West Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen has written to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating organisations that failed to protect children from sexual abuse, to ask for Mr Twiss to be compelled to give evidence to its 'Westminster strand'.
He is the son of Sir Frank Twiss (pictured), who was Black Rod, the Queen's envoy in the Lords, in the 1970s
Mr Bridgen writes: 'One officer allegedly saw Cyril Smith pick up a young boy in Central London in a place known as the 'meat rack' and followed him to a house in Cricklewood, North London. The second officer said the house belonged to a Mr Roddam Twiss, a convicted paedophile who is the son of a former admiral who later went on to hold the position of Black Rod.
'Both officers said they had intelligence that prominent people were attending the flat for liaisons with boys, but that their investigation was halted once high-profile names were known and before they could establish any further evidence.' He adds: 'Can you please confirm if you intend to call the officers and Mr Twiss to give evidence to the inquiry?'
Ms Jay, the head of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, has said she is determined to find out if claims of a Westminster paedophile ring were covered up.
A spokesman for the inquiry said: 'We cannot say at this stage who will be called as witnesses.'
Westminster, London
Secret world of child abuse unravels as pervert trades in old phone at Teesside shop
By Gareth LightfootA sex-obsessed pervert’s dirty secrets unravelled when he traded in his phone.
His sordid hidden world was exposed when he traded in his phone at a Redcar shop in April 2016. Checking the old phone, the shop manager opened it to find a picture of a naked 13-year-old girl with the title “dark web”, and called police.
Another 24 similar child abuse images were found on the phone, said prosecutor Harry Hadfield on Friday. The discovery led to a search of Tivendale’s Redcar home three days later.
Officers found another 1,193 disturbing images on his computer tower and another phone, including 11 hours of videos on the computer.
The worst images showed children as young as nine in distress, Teesside Crown Court heard. Tivendale had been systematically searching for the sickening pictures.
He had also been chatting to underage boys and girls on the internet, officers found. Skype and Facebook Messenger logs revealed he used numerous online identities to make sexual conversations with five teenage boys and girls.
He asked for indecent pictures of victims, sending an explicit video of child abuse. He tried to persuade children to take part in sexual activity, telling one girl: “I’d love to be in bed with you.”
As his words became more obscene, he spoke of putting his hand around her throat.
He talked of taking boys’ and girls’ virginities, and asked a boy: “Do you fancy meeting right now?”
No meetings occurred.
A week after pleading guilty to these offences, and going on the sex offenders’ register, he was caught again on bail in April this year.
A detective visiting his home asked Tivendale for his phone, where 33 more child abuse images were found, this time of children as young as three.
Sin is progressive!
Tivendale, of Crescent Road, Linthorpe, Middlesbrough, admitted 16 charges.
These were five counts of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity, two of attempting to incite child sexual exploitation, six of making and one of distributing indecent images of children, possessing 29 extreme pornographic images, and arranging or facilitating a child sex offence.
His offending spanned years since he was 17 into his early 20s. Duncan McReddie, defending, said Tivendale had been unusually guileless and candid in owning up to his activities.
Tivendale’s offending was rooted in his troubled childhood, having been “cast into the adult world with no support or assistance”. He had difficulty forming relationships with people and kept himself to himself.
This is often a sign of abuse as a child!
He worked until he was dismissed because of the allegations, and had to move home repeatedly as his crimes came to light. Mr McReddie argued Tivendale needed structured intervention to tackle his “compulsion”, and this might not happen in prison.
What could be more structured than prison?
Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, told Tivendale: “There is a more troubling aspect to your personality and character, namely your obsession with sex. Particularly your obsession with sex with young children, whether it be boys or girls.”
He said the “dreadful” images depicted real victims forced into sexual acts to satisfy paedophiles’ prurient interests.
He accepted Tivendale did not intend to meet the youngsters he talked to online.
Tivendale was jailed for three years, given a sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offenders’ register, both for 10 years.
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