Green Party star quits over hiring of rapist dad
A TRANSGENDER politician campaigning to be deputy leader of the Green Party hired her father as her election agent – despite knowing he was facing trial for the rape and torture of a child.
Aimee Challenor, 20, named her father, David, as her agent when she ran for Parliament in last year’s General Election and in council elections in May.
By then she knew the 50-year-old had been charged with abusing a ten-year-old girl held captive and forced to perform sex acts in the attic of the family home he shared with the aspiring politician.
Last week, Challenor – a former member of the Green Party – was jailed for 22 years after a jury at Warwick Crown Court found him guilty of the ‘depraved’ crimes, which included dressing up as a baby and tying the girl to a beam, before whipping her and administering electric shocks. The judge told him the harm caused to his victim could not be ‘over-estimated’.
Yesterday Miss Challenor, who transitioned at 16, condemned her married father’s ‘ abhorrent’ crimes. She said she was stepping aside from the deputy leadership race and taking a ‘break’ from her roles in the party.
Miss Challenor stood as the Green Party candidate for Coventry South at the General Election last year but polled just 604 votes. She stood unsuccessfully in St Michael’s ward, Coventry, at the local elections.
On both occasions she appointed her father as her election agent, legally responsible for running her campaign, even though by then he had been either accused of or charged with the crimes, which were reported to police in late 2015.
According to The Sunday Times, Miss Challenor’s campaign leaf-
‘Shocked and horrified’
lets, which are required by law to include the name of the agent or promoter, did not show her father’s proper name and instead referred to ‘Baloo Challenor’.
Baloo, the bear character in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, is a nickname regularly adopted by Scout leaders and is understood to have been used by Miss Challenor’s father in his work as an assistant Scout leader and volunteer with children’s gymnastics.
Miss Challenor said: ‘In light of the revelations about my father’s despicable behaviour, and because of the impact my role has on my family and the survivors of my father’s criminal behaviour, I have decided to step aside in the Green Party deputy leadership race. I did not know about the full details of the crimes my father has been found guilty of until very recently.’
A party spokesman said Challenor’s membership was ‘removed’ once his crimes came to light, adding: ‘We are shocked and horrified by these offences and condemn them in the strongest terms.’