Now Telford politicians unmasked as sex abusers
Ex-social service chief admitted indecent assault on teenage boy
THE FORMER head of social services in a town at the centre of a child abuse scandal is a convicted sex offender.
Two other local politicians with links to Telford have also been found guilty of child sex charges.
The disclosures have angered the families of victims and will fuel fears of a cover-up. As many as 1,000 children are said to have been the victims of sexual exploitation in the Shropshire town dating back to the early 1980s.
In 2013, several men were jailed for organised abuse offences.
But new victims have since come forward saying their cases were not properly looked into. And whistleblowers have claimed that authorities have failed to pursue 20 suspects because it was ‘too much trouble’.
It has now emerged that Graham Bould, who was head of Shropshire’s social services, was given a community order in 2001 after he admitted indecently assaulting a teenage boy in the early 1980s.
The 61-year-old was chairman of Shropshire county council’s social services department, which then covered Telford, from 1993 to 1998 – the time when the child grooming epidemic spiralled.
Reverend Michael Keen, 78, who sat on West Mercia Police Authority board, assaulted the same boy as Bould. He was jailed for 15 months in 2001. The Anglican clergyman, who was ordained in 1973, was found guilty of two indecent assaults following a trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
He had been a Labour member of Shropshire council and Wrekin district council. He left the Telford area in 1982.
A third politician, parish councillor Graham White, took indecent images of a 14year-old girl, the Sunday Mirror reported.
In 2004, he pleaded guilty to four counts of taking indecent photographs of a minor and was given a three-year rehabilitation order by Shropshire magistrates.
White, 75, had been a councillor in Madeley near Telford but had resigned the previous month. It is not known if Shropshire council or the police ever investigated the men’s convictions.
One of the sex abuse scandal victims, Lucy Lowe, was killed in a fire in 2000 when Bould was in charge of social services. At the time child sexual exploitation in the town was rife.
Lucy, 16, died alongside her sister and mother in a blaze started by the sex abuser who made her pregnant when she was 14. Her uncle Ed Lowe, 50, said of the latest disclosures: ‘It’s mindblowing. It’s disgraceful. We always wanted to know why social services didn’t get involved in dealing with Lucy’s abuse. Now we have even more questions.’
Telford MP Lucy Allan said she hoped an independent inquiry would now examine the culture of the council.
‘We have seen in other towns, where child sexual exploitation has been prevalent, that the culture of the council led to inaction and silence over many years,’ she said.
Bould was arrested in October 2000, when he stood down after 18 years as a councillor.
He was handed a 12-month community rehabilitation order at Shrewsbury Crown Court in 2001 for two indecent assaults on the boy, who he had met at a church group.
He admitted that he knew the boy was only 15 but said he had become attracted to him when they shared a sauna following a game of squash. The victim said: ‘I believed Bould was a friend, probably my best friend at the time, but he did not care about me. I was just an object of lust to him.’
He said Keen, also a county councillor, was ‘aggressive and a manipulator’.
Bould continues to play an active part in community life and was, until recently, clerk of Sheriffhales parish council in Shropshire. He declined to comment.
White and Keen could not be reached last night.
The revelations come just a week after authorities in the town were forced into a U-turn and voted to commission an independent inquiry into child grooming.
A West Mercia police spokesman said that questions around the conduct of council members were a matter for the relevant council.
Shropshire council could not be reached for comment.
‘Aggressive manipulator’