Prosecutors Mull Criminal Charges Against Cliff Richard Over Sex Abuse Claims

Prosecutors in the UK may pursue criminal charges against singer Cliff Richard over alleged sex abuse. The 75-year-old has claimed his innocence for several years, but the net seems to be tightening.



The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) - the state prosecutor - said in a statement Tuesday it will "carefully consider" evidence of historic sex abuse handed to it by South Yorkshire Police, in the north of England.

The case appeared to have been dropped in 2015, after its reportedly prejudicial coverage by the national broadcaster, the BBC, followed by claims in parliament that any case against Richard would also therefore be compromised.

The pop star - who has had 14 No 1 hits in Britain, including "Living Doll" and "Congratulations" - denies any wrongdoing and would not comment on the most recent developments.

A national icon for over 50 years, Richard is the only singer to have topped the UK singles chart in five consecutive decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995.

Systemic abuse

There are several ongoing investigations and inquiries - criminal and non-criminal - into historical sex abuse allegations at institutions across the UK.

After the death of the feted and politically-connected BBC television star Jimmy Savile in 2011, it emerged - although not without resistance from within the BBC - that he had been a serial pedophile for many years. The BBC was accused of covering up the allegations, as were the police and various high-profile politicians.

There has been speculation that several such high-profile UK politicians, some of whom are now dead, and members of royalty, were also involved in systemic and systematic child abuse and the subsequent cover-up.

The backlash against the apparent impunity with which they operated, involving systemic abuse of boys taken from children's homes and orphanages, has infused the public's desire to see child abusers punished before they are unable to face justice in the post-Savile era.

It has been rumored, for example, that Richard was long associated with the Elm Guest House in south-west London, where celebrities reportedly met for sex parties in the 1970s and 1980s often involving underage boys.


 Jimmy Savile


Sufficient evidence?

The CPS will now determine if there is "sufficient evidence" to provide a reasonable chance of conviction and whether a prosecution is in the public interest.

Richard's country home has been raided twice in recent years and Richard has twice voluntarily met officers from South Yorkshire Police after it launched an inquiry in 2014 into allegations against him that date back to the 1980s. He wasn't arrested or charged.

Reports have suggested in recent years that Richard had been accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old at a Christian rally led by the US evangelist Billy Graham in Sheffield, northern England, in 1985.

The allegations emerged in public in August 2014 when the BBC showed police officers raiding Richard's Berkshire home near London.


BBC stumbles

A report for the county's former police and crime commissioner found that the BBC's move "certainly interfered with his privacy and may well have caused unnecessary distress."

That raid led to criticism from members of parliament (MPs) who described co-operation between the police and BBC as "inept" and causing "irreparable damage" to the singer's reputation.

Last year the star's representatives attacked a parliamentary select committee for publishing a letter from Chief Constable David Crompton revealing that the police investigation had increased "significantly" in size and involved more than one allegation.

The CPS said Tuesday it will now go back and look at the evidence compiled by the police. “We have received a full file of evidence from South Yorkshire police," a CPS spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Richard said: "It would be inappropriate to comment while the matter is under review."

jbh/kms (Reuters, AP)

Kincora Paedophile Victim Links It With Dolphin Square & Elm House

Belfast Telegraph

Kincora child sex abuse victim Richard Kerr said
he was abused by 'powerful people' at locations in London.

Kincora child sex abuse victim Richard Kerr has claimed he was molested by "very powerful people" at several key locations connected to an alleged VIP paedophile ring.

Mr Kerr, who was a victim of abuse at Kincora Boys' Home in Belfast, has claimed he was also attacked at the Dolphin Square luxury apartment complex and Elm Guest House, both in London.

It is thought to be the first time that the three places have been linked in relation to claims of historic sex abuse by influential Westminster figures.

Elm Guest House

Good. The inquiry will not be able to avoid investigating Kincora now.

Mr Kerr was abused at Kincora in the 1970s and claims he and two other boys were hand-picked to be trafficked to London in 1977 and sexually abused by men.

Both of the other men have since taken their own lives, Mr Kerr told Channel 4 News.

Insisting that the VIP paedophile ring did exist, he claims to have been abused in London by "men who had control and power over others", some of whom he believes were politicians.

His most violent experience allegedly took place at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south London, where he claims to have been tied up with his hands behind his back while men took photographs.

When the guest house was raided by police in 1981 it was reported that officers had found whips, chains and ropes.

Mr Kerr also claimed to have been taken to Dolphin Square, a block of apartments near Parliament which is now at the centre of claims of alleged child abuse and murders being investigated by Scotland Yard.

He said: "I could have been 16, 15, 17 ... I remember going in with this guy. He told me to sit down and relax and explained about his glasses.

Kincora home, Belfast, Northern Ireland - house of horrors

"He had Waterford Crystal and he wanted me to have a brandy and we had a small one. And then we had a sexual encounter in here."

Asked if he would name his abusers, he said: "I'm still in some fear. Even though I'm willing to take the courage.

"I need to know that I can have faith in our government but right now, when they're not willing to bring Kincora into Westminster, the message that sends to me is that there's some kind of cover-up and there has been."

Last month Richard Kerr also told Channel 4 News that  police had tried to stop him testifying at a trial where three staff were jailed.

In 1981, three senior staff at Kincora - Joseph Mains, Raymond Semple and William McGrath - were jailed for abusing 11 boys. Mr Kerr told Channel 4 News " two plainclothes policemen" visited him before the trial.

He said: "They came to my home and they removed stuff from my drawers, and they put me in a car and they took me to the police station and they interrogated me, put me in a cell for seven hours and as they removed me from my cell, they made it clear to me that I'm not to talk about this and that I'm lying and not to tell lies, and I felt they were giving me a warning. The case was coming up... and they didn't want me to come to the trial".

He added: "First of all, they intimidated me by bringing me to a station and putting me in a cell. They wanted to make it clear that I'm not to say anything. They also said to me that if you tell any lies, if you talk about this, that we can put you away. So at that moment I stopped wanting to volunteer what my experience was in Kincora."

Dolphin Square, London

Last July Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced a major public panel inquiry into whether paedophiles were sheltered in government, the NHS, police, the courts and the BBC.

It has since been rocked by the resignations of two people selected to be its chair - Baroness Butler-Sloss and Fiona Woolf - following accusations that they were too close to the establishment to be independent.

In February it was announced that the inquiry would be chaired by Justice Dame Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand High Court judge.

Earlier this month, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it is looking at 17 allegations of a police cover-up in relation to a VIP child sex abuse ring ranging from the 1970s to 2000s.

There have been allegations that abuse at Kincora, which closed in 1980, was covered up, with the collusion of the intelligence agencies.

The Kincora scandal is currently being investigated by Northern Ireland's historical institutional abuse inquiry.

There has been pressure for it to be considered by the wider judge-led inquiry set up by Theresa May. But despite pressure from MPs and victims of the paedophile ring that operated there, she refused to add Kincora to the inquiry's remit.

For decades there have been claims that the intelligence services allowed the sex abuse of children at Kincora to continue in order to blackmail senior politicians and members of the Establishment as the Troubles raged in the 1970s. Northern Ireland's Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry chaired by Sir Anthony Hart is investigating the allegations, but does not have the same powers as the Goddard inquiry.

Amnesty International's Northern Ireland programme director Patrick Corrigan said not including Kincora in the wider judge-led inquiry was a "missed opportunity".

"By excluding Kincora from the only inquiry which has the power to establish the truth about the role the intelligence services may have played in the paedophile ring, the Home Secretary risks looking like she is now playing her part in a decades-long cover-up," he said.

"The Home Secretary says that child protection is a devolved matter. She is neatly ignoring the fact that the Northern Ireland Assembly unanimously supports the inclusion of Kincora in the Westminster inquiry, because it knows that the local inquiry has no powers to compel evidence from MI5 and the Ministry of Defence and that it does not have the confidence of victims or potentially crucial witnesses. Kincora should be investigated alongside claims of establishment involvement in child abuse rings in other parts of the UK. With new allegations emerging of links between Kincora and paedophile rings elsewhere in the UK, the case for inclusion has never been stronger."

Alliance MP Naomi Long said it looked increasingly likely the Government was unwilling to deal with the child abuse cases in any meaningful way, and described the Home Secretary's statement as "extremely disappointing".

Child Abuse Inquiry: 3 MPs and 3 Peers Named in Paedophile Dossier Handed to Scotland Yard

Dolphin Square, Pimlico, London

Three MPs and three members of the House of Lords have been named in a dossier handed to police concerning investigations into the alleged Westminster paedophile ring.

The dossier, which has been compiled by Labour MP John Mann, contains a total list of 22 high-profile figures deemed “worthy of investigation,” following the detailed examination of hundreds of pieces of evidence presented to him by members of the public, The Sunday Times reports.

Mr Mann told the newspaper the dossier names 12 former ministers, several of whom he believes were “definitely child abusers” and at least two of which are alleged to have assaulted boys at the Dolphin Square “abuse parties”.

He believes that the evidence presented against half of those on the list is “very compelling” and that some could “definitely be prosecuted”.

Dolphin Square estate in Pimlico, London

The MP said he had investigated claims made against many other names but did not believe the evidence was “sufficiently strong enough” to pass onto police. He revealed he had also been told of allegations that an organised crime ring and one celebrity had been involved in the trafficking of young boys across London to the abuse parties in Dolphin Square.

It has been revealed that Home Secretary Theresa May has written to the current panel of the Westminster sex abuse inquiry to inform member that the panel is to be disbanded, and is instead considering turning it into at statutory inquiry, Exaro news revealed.

The development follows Thursday’s news that the Metropolitan police are investigating allegations that three young boys, who are believed to have been physically and sexually abused at the hands of Westminster MPs in the 1970s and 80s, were murdered by the VIP paedophile ring following the evidence of a “credible” witness.

Police have made a dramatic appeal for witnesses and victims of abuse to come forward after their witness, known only as Nick, claimed that during his years of abuse at the hands of Conservative politicians, he saw a Conservative MP strangle a boy to death during a sex attack.

He claims a second boy was killed in a brutal physical attack and that a third was deliberately run down by a car driven by one of the perpetrators, which he took to be a warning not to speak of the abuse to anyone.

Nick, who claimed to have been abused from the age of seven to 16 at several abuse parties held at Dolphin Square in London, and other properties including military bases, came forward to police after detailing his story to investigative journalism news site Exaro.

The alleged paedophile ring contained sitting MPs from the 1970s and 1980s 

The Labour MP’s dossier is set to be followed by a second document concerning an alleged cover-up of the investigation into VIP paedophile rings in the 1980s, compiled by former police officers, Exaro has revealed.

The second dossier is borne out of claims made on a private online forum that that police operations against VIP paedophiles had been shut down just as they had begun to uncover child sex abuse by prominent people.

It will be delivered to Met police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

The site of former Elm Guest House in Barnes

Two men have been arrested in connection with child abuse allegations relating to a guest house in south London during the 1980s, the former Elm Guest House in Barnes

In further developments, The Observer reported that police have now interviewed a former local newspaper executive who claims he was issued with an official warning when he attempted to report on a powerful paedophile ring at Elm Guest House in south west London.

The claims of Hilton Tims, 81, further fuel the suggestions of a major cover up of evidence of VIP paedophile rings at the time, after his newspaper the Surrey Comet was issued with a D-notice around 1984.

At the time, Mr Tims was news editor and making attempts to report on a police investigation into Elm Guest House in Barnes, where Liberal Democrat MP Cyril Smith was alleged to have visited alongside former leading Conservative politicians to abuse young boys. The D-notice is an official warning to not publish any intelligence that could affect national security. 

Officials running the D-notice system told The Observer they did not believe the notice would have been issued to the Surrey Comet, but revealed that some records concerning official requests for media blackouts during that time period had been destroyed.

Theresa May Scraps Panel for Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse

Theresa May's 'fire suppression' leadership style has moved this inquiry steadily along in 'reverse' direction. We are now farther from an inquiry than we were 4 months ago. It's back to the drawing board.

May put her decision down to concerns raised about the panel by abuse survivors

Theresa May is to scrap the panel for the independent inquiry into child sex abuse, it has been reported.

The home secretary wrote to each member of the panel to tell them she is considering turning it into a statutory inquiry, or setting up a fresh statutory inquiry or a Royal Commission, according to the Exaro News website.

The letter, which followed a meeting between May and panel members on Monday to discuss the future of the inquiry, added that any statutory inquiry panel would be newly appointed, and that existing panel members can apply for positions on the new panel.

She put this decision down to concerns raised about the panel by abuse survivors. May wrote: “As I said on Monday, I am currently considering these three options and I appreciate this has implications for the members of the panel.

“I should like to make clear that I appointed each and every one of you for your experience, your professionalism and your undoubted commitment.

“I know that it has not been easy, that you are working in an incredibly sensitive and difficult subject area and that some of you have faced significant personal criticism.”

Current panel members have accused May of listening to a vocal minority instead of the majority of abuse survivors, and urged the home secretary to convert the inquiry to statutory status and keep the current panel.

One panel member, Sharon Evans, chief executive of Dot Com Children’s Foundation, which promotes child safeguarding, and herself an abuse survivor, wrote in a response to May that she felt “devastated at the prospect of the independent inquiry being halted”. She said that it had been made clear to the panel “off the record” that the panel will be stood down in the New Year.

Sharon Evans, chief executive of Dot Com Children’s Foundation

“As a person who suffered sexual abuse between the ages of three and seven, it was important that the experiences of victims and survivors were integral to the inquiry,” Evans wrote. “It was agreed by the panel that these experiences would form our line of questioning of institutions and ‘the experiences of victims and survivors would be at the heart of the inquiry’.”

The independent panel inquiry into child sexual abuse was set up to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales.

Previously, the inquiry lost two chairs over accusations of conflicts of interest and survivors told May that they had also lost confidence in the rest of the panel.

Earlier this month it was revealed that two members of the panel had been accused of sending threatening or insulting emails to victims who had criticised the inquiry. Lawyers for one abuse survivor wrote to the home secretary to complain of a string of unsolicited communications, including an allegedly threatening email sent two days before an official meeting in November that both panellists and an abuse survivor were due to attend. The victim, who is on medication for post-traumatic stress disorder, was left too anxious to attend.

Evans noted, however, that the panel met with more than 70 representatives of victims and survivors of abuse, 90% of whom supported the independent panel. “There has been a small number of individuals and survivor groups engaging in personal attacks on panel members though social media and the press,” she wrote. “In the face of hostility by certain individuals, my concern is that the independent panel has been controlled to such a degree that it was unable to rebut or refute allegations.

“My second concern is that halting the inquiry at this point would send a very negative message to so many people we have already met and who have promised they can have confidence in us to do the right thing.”

Also...
It was also reported on Saturday that a former local newspaper executive who claimed that he was issued with an official warning against reporting on an exclusive paedophile ring, was interviewed by an officer working for Operation Fernbridge, the criminal investigation examining claims of sexual abuse and grooming of children by a VIP ring of paedophiles that included MPs, police officers and people with links to the royal family.

Hilton Tims, 81, had claimed that his paper, the Surrey Comet, was issued with a D notice – an official warning not to publish intelligence that might damage national security – when he sought to report on a police investigation into Elm Guest House in 1984.