Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse, Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims

- Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters

- Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.

- Jimmy Savile treated school like 'paedophile sweetshop'
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls

- Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.


Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters
By NIGEL DUARA 10/18/12

PORTLAND, Ore. — An array of local authorities – police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and town Boy Scout leaders among them – quietly shielded scoutmasters and others who allegedly molested children, according to a newly opened trove of confidential files compiled from 1959 to 1985.

At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting. But as detailed in 14,500 pages of secret "perversion files" released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers protected suspected sexual predators while victims suffered in silence.

The files document sex abuse allegations across the country, from a small town in the Adirondacks to downtown Los Angeles.

At a news conference Thursday, Portland attorney Kelly Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.

"You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children," said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

The files were shown to a jury in a 2010 Oregon civil suit that the Scouts lost, and the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the files should be made public. After months of objections and redactions, the Scouts and Clark released them....

The 1959-85 files show that on many occasions the files succeeded in keeping pedophiles out of Scouting leadership positions – the reason they were collected in the first place.

But the files document some troubling patterns.

In many instances – more than a third, according to the Scouts' own count – police weren't told about the alleged abuse.

And there is little mention in the files of concern for the welfare of Scouts who were allegedly abused by their leaders. But there are numerous documents showing compassion for suspected abusers, who were often times sent to psychiatrists or pastors to get help.

In 1972, a Pennsylvania Scouting executive wrote a memo recommending a case against a suspected abuser be dropped with the words: "If it don't stink, don't stir it."

In numerous instances, alleged abusers are kicked out of Scouting but show up in jobs where they are once again in authority positions dealing with youths.

One of the most startling revelations to come from the files is the frequency with which attempts to protect Scouts from alleged molesters collapsed at the local level, at times in collusion with community leaders.

On the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1965, a distraught Louisiana mother walked into the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office. A 31-year-old scoutmaster, she told the chief criminal deputy, had raped one of her sons and molested two others.

Six days later, the scoutmaster sat down in the same station and confessed.

"I don't know an explanation, why we done it or I done it or wanted to do it or anything else it just – an impulse I guess or something," the man told a sheriff's deputy.

The decision was made not to pursue charges. "This subject and Scouts were not prosecuted," a Louisiana Scouts executive wrote to national headquarters, "to save the name of Scouting."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/boy-scouts-perversion-files-locals-cover-up-child-sex-abuse_n_1981596.html 





Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.

By Martin Beckford, Home Affairs Editor
17 Oct 2012

Harriet Harman, the Opposition deputy leader, said the allegations that the late TV and radio presenter abused dozens of young boys and girls had “cast a stain” on the BBC and other trusted institutions.

But at the time Savile was at the height of his fame, Miss Harman was calling for the relaxation of the law on child pornography.

She was a leading light in the pressure group now known as Liberty, which advocated the lowering of the age of consent to 14.

The organisation, then run by the Health Secretary under Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, even counted among its affiliates a number of extreme pro-paedophilia groups whose leaders were later jailed.

It means that any independent public inquiry into the culture that allowed Savile to abuse children for so long with impunity, could end up looking into the radical left-wing demands for the liberalisation of child sex laws that were made in the 1970s....

As The Daily Telegraph first disclosed in 2009, in the 1970s the extreme end of the sexual liberation movement included groups who openly campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent. The Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation affiliated themselves to the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty.

NCCL complained to the press watchdog about their treatment by tabloid newspapers and in one article admitted it had “plenty of contact” with PIE, and argued that children are harmed by having to go to police and courts after a “mutual relationship with an adult”.

In 1976 the NCCL submitted a response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws that was dubbed a Lolita’s Charter as it claimed “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult result in no identifiable damage”.

The organisation said that children as young as 14 should be able to consent to sex, to reduce the “harmful effects of the present laws”.

It went on to say it is “logical” for the age of consent to be abolished but “we fear” it would not be “politically possible”.

Miss Harman, then a newly qualified solicitor, joined the group as legal officer two years later.

In April 1978 she wrote the NCCL’s response to the Protection of Children Bill, which was put before Parliament in order to tighten the laws on child pornography by banning indecent images of under-16s.

It claimed that the new law could lead to “damaging and absurd prosecutions” and “increase censorship”.

She suggested that pornographic photographs or films of children should not be considered indecent unless it could be shown that the subject had suffered, and that prosecutors would have to prove harm rather than defendants having to justify themselves....

Miss Harman left NCCL in 1982 when she was elected MP for Camberwell and Peckham, by which time several members of PIE had been jailed for conspiracy to corrupt public morals.

A spokesman for Miss Harman said: “This allegation is an outrageous slur. Harriet has fought for child protection from sexual abuse over the last 30 years – any attempt to suggest otherwise is untrue and malicious.  


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614516/Jimmy-Savile-Labour-faces-embarrassment-over-former-child-sex-claims.html 


Jimmy Savile treated school like 'paedophile sweetshop'
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls.

Richard Alleyne and Rowena Mason
17 Oct 2012

At least five former pupils have told how the DJ abused them during visits to Duncroft Approved School when it was under direct Home Office control.

They claim that the Jim'll Fix star was given his own flat in the building in Staines, Surrey, by the headmistress in what one victim described as a "paedophile sweet shop".

The institution for emotionally disturbed girls was under the direct supervision of the Home Office until April 1973, a report in the Daily Mirror claims.

It was visited regularly by government inspectors.

A former pupil Toni Townsend, one of three girls photographed with the star in 1972, told the newspaper: "Jimmy treated Duncroft like a paedophile sweet shop....

"He used to take his pick of the mix. He would wander around the school in a vest and tracksuit bottoms.

"He stayed in a flat on the top floor. He was the only man allowed to stay overnight. Who knows what horrors happened up there.

"The girls at Duncroft had been sent there by the courts for prostitution, drugs and because they tried to kill themselves. Who would have believed us against Saint Jimmy?"

A fellow pupil Carole Wells, now 52, told how Savile once assaulted her in his Rolls-Royce after the headmistress asked if she wanted to go for a ride with him....

Ms Wells said she reported the incident to the head who allegedly did not believe her....

Meanwhile his former assistant Janet Cope told how Savile had an explosive temper that terrified everyone from hospital staff to fund-raisers....
"He thought he was untouchable because he was hand in glove with the hospitals, royalty and the Prime Minister."   

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614091/Jimmy-Savile-treated-school-like-paedophile-sweetshop.html



Jimmy Savile confessed to reporter that he would be seen as 'crooked' after his death
Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
18 Oct 2012

In a previously unpublished interview given by Savile two months before he died, he admitted he was “not a straight punter”.

The Jewish Chronicle obtained a transcript of the interview, which was ostensibly about Savile’s work with Jewish charities, but which included the Jim’ll Fix It presenter’s enigmatic reference to his murky past.

Asked what he would choose if someone could “fix it” for him, Savile said: “A telephone in heaven.”

When he was asked why, he said: “Just leave it at that. That’s the trouble with you fellas, you always want to delve and go further.”

He then added that he was “not a straight punter. “When I’m gone, they’ll say ‘I always thought he was straight but he wasn’t – he was crooked’.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9618674/Jimmy-Savile-confessed-to-reporter-that-he-would-be-seen-as-crooked-after-his-death.html