Senior Lib Dem ‘ordered destruction of document on Cyril Smith abuse claims

via The Guardian:

A senior Liberal Democrat has been accused of ordering a personal assistant to destroy a document containing allegations of abuse and mismanagement against the late paedophile MP Cyril Smith. Liz Lynne, who is standing to become the party’s president, is alleged to have told her constituency aide to get rid of a document detailing a cover-up at the Knowl View children’s home in Rochdale, which closed in the mid-1990s. A manager at the home has also accused her of avoiding a meeting to discuss claims that Smith knew about the child abuse taking place at the home and had taken control of it...Deborah Doyle, who worked for Lynne between September 1995 and May 1997, said she took three or four pages of notes from a long telephone conversation with Digan in 1996. Digan had contacted Lynne’s office in Rochdale as claims of widespread abuse had begun to emerge at the Knowl View home, where boys as young as 10 had been raped. The first questions were also being raised publicly about Smith’s role in the school.

Doyles says Digan told her over the telephone that Smith knew of abuse at the school and gave details of a cover-up at the institution and the local authority. She says she told Lynne, who had been on holiday when Digan called, about the allegation, but that Lynne said she did not want to meet Digan. “I was surprised when Lynne said to me: ‘Don’t put the notes in the bin. Destroy them’,” Doyle said...Doyle said she came to work for Lynne in 1995 on the recommendation of Chris Davies, the former Liberal Democrat MP and MEP. Doyle had become involved in Lib Dem politics in the north-west, and had friends in the party. When she was first offered a job in Lynne’s office, she had to be personally approved by Smith in an interview, she said.

“It was like the 1950s. Everything had to go through Cyril, but he wasn’t even a councillor,” Doyle said.
There were tensions between Lynne and Smith, she said, but Lynne was careful not to anger him. “He would have very happily told someone to their face that he didn’t like them. That is the way he was,” she said. But Smith still wielded power, especially regarding fundraising, she added. “For the 1997 election, he just went off and got £40,000, just like that. I didn’t know where it came from,” she said. It was only when she saw a Dispatches documentary about Smith in 2013 that Doyle again considered her conversations with Digan and Lynne, she said.

She found her 1997 Filofax, and in her notes were Digan’s name and telephone number. She called Greater Manchester police’s helpline to tell them about her encounter with Digan and her subsequent conversation with Lynne. “I told them about it. I don’t know if they have followed it up,” she said. Doyle, 53, a book-keeper, says that she has nothing against Lynne, but has decided to speak out because victims have gone through much more and been brave enough to go on the record. “Liz is essentially a good person. I am sure that if she had been forced to look into these allegations, she would have been horrified … but at the end of the day she ia politician and may not have felt comfortable taking on Smith,” she said.

Digan, a social worker, was responsible for passing a dossier of evidence to the police which eventually saw the school closed in the 1990s. He said last week that he had approached Lynne’s office hoping to discuss suspicions at the way Smith and others had wished to take the school out of local authority control. He also had concerns that Smith had his own set of keys to the school and wanted to seek help for the boys who had been abused. A constituent of Lynne’s at the time, Digan said he called her office and had a long conversation with her personal assistant about Smith. “I had a good rapport with the PA. We spoke, she took down what I said. Then I heard nothing,” he said. He said he called Lynne’s office again some weeks later, on the off-chance of finding out if he could talk to someone else about the school. This time, Lynne answered the telephone. “I arranged to go and meet her in an office, but someone from her office cancelled it the day before it was due to take place,” he said. “She never got back to me. The shame is that many abuse victims could have been helped if Lynne and many others had taken the abuse at Knowl View seriously at that point.”

Member of Parliament Cyril Smith connected to ritual abuse ring: edited

via The Mirror:

Paedophile MP Cyril Smith was in league with another appalling child sex abuser who set up satanic rituals and raped children as young as TWO, the Sunday People has discovered. Victim Michael Roberts, 40, today bravely puts aside his right to ­anonymity to tell for the first time how he was only six when he was sexually abused by 29-stone politician Smith. And shockingly he has revealed his devil-worshipping stepdad Michael Horgan organised the horrendous ordeal. Horgan made a deal with the man who went on to be knighted after years as a ­respected Member of Parliament. Michael claims Smith, who was also a close pal of Jimmy Savile, told him he had been “a naughty boy” before forcing him to take part in a perverted spanking and groping ritual.

Now studying for a counselling ­qualification, Michael fought back tears as he recalled: “I was frightened of him because of his size. But by then I was getting abused by so many people I’d just got used to it.” Horgan, who has also used the name Shaun O’Donnell, became known as the High Priest of Satan. He was jailed for 10 years and placed on the sex offenders’ register after he was found guilty of six sex abuse ­charges in 1992. Smith died in 2010 aged 82...Horgan organised a series of satanic-themed orgies for like-minded paedos. In one of them he raped little Michael and an even younger female child before watching on as others did the same.
The monster, whose youngest victim was only two, also hung up his stepson and the girl on hooks. In further horrendous episodes he stripped the children naked, blindfolded them and tied them to a cross next to a black magic altar so that his “disciples” could use them for sex.

The abuses were often filmed to be gloated over later. Horgan also forced the children to carry out disgusting sex acts on other kids, including their friends and each other. He organised outdoor “parties” for these activities on Saddleworth Moor, where child killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had buried their victims. Youngsters from two to 13 were drugged, tortured and sexually abused during the satanic “ceremonies”. The shock revelation over the satanist and MP’s friendship raises questions over any role Smith and Jimmy Savile may have played in Horgan’s paedo ring. Horgan was also pals with Raymond Hewlett, the child rapist questioned in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Michael added: “Michael Horgan used to take me out to ‘visit’ people ­regularly. It didn’t seem that far away. It didn’t take us long to get there. We went there in a taxi. Just me and Michael Horgan. “I can’t remember where it was, just that it was a long row of houses and that it wasn’t far from where we lived in Rochdale.” Michael says the visit had obviously been set up beforehand as local MP Smith ­greeted him by his first name when he walked in the room.

He added: “We went into the house. He was a big fat guy. They (Horgan and Cyril) were talking between themselves. It looked like it had been pre-planned because he (Cyril) said, ‘Hello, Michael.’ Then he said I had been ‘naughty’ and that he had to spank me three times. “He spanked my bum three times and then he touched me up. He touched my private parts. He lived with her in her small terraced house in the Lancashire town until her death in 1994.

Never married, Smith’s later years were dogged by rumours about his sexuality and allegations of child abuse. According to police records, prosecutors were given evidence about him in 1970, 1998 and 1999 but charges were never brought. He was finally exposed as a ­paedophile in November last year. The Crown Prosecution Service admitted he should have been charged. One of his victims claimed he was sexually abused in a room in the Houses Parliament as MPs walked past.

Michael said: “I nearly fell off my chair when I saw it come on the news. I went into shock when I saw him. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, it has finally come out. At the time he abused me I didn’t know who he was....Smith, elected to Parliament in 1972, first rose to national prominence when he awarded his mother Eva the title of First Lady of Rochdale after he became the town’s mayor in 1966.