Cyril Smith ‘victim’ tells of meeting at his wedding

A MAN who claims he was abused as a teenager by MP Cyril Smith told yesterday how they met again years later – at his own wedding.

The alleged victim told an inquiry of his horror when the 20st politician was invited to the ceremony as a friend of his bride’s family.

He said he recognised Smith as the man who had subjected him to “a medical” which involved fondling his genitals at a care home in the 1960s.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is examining the Liberal MP’s alleged abuse of boys in care, with claims that he treated one home as his “personal fiefdom”.

Counsel to the London hearing Brian Altman, QC, asked the alleged victim if seeing Smith at his wedding had made him angry. The man, who claims to have been abused at the Cambridge House hostel in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, replied: “Yes, but I couldn’t say anything.”

The man added that in 1970 he agreed to speak to a police probe into Smith, which “didn’t go down well” with his wife’s family.

He then got a visit from Smith and a man called Kevin, asking him to retract his statement and telling him to “be careful” what he said.

The inquiry has also heard Smith, who died of cancer aged 82 in 2010, was a “puppet master” who escaped justice and that it was “difficult to see why” he was never charged.