Ex-council leader suspended after report says he lied
FORMER Rochdale council leader Richard Farnell has been suspended by Labour after the national child abuse inquiry found he lied under oath.
Just half an hour after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) reported its conclusions on Thursday, the party confirmed action had been taken against Coun Farnell.
IICSA found he had ‘lied’ in his evidence about the Knowl View sexual abuse scandal in hearings last year, during which he claimed to have been unaware of ongoing abuse allegations when he was last leader of the council between 1986 and 1992.
It also branded him ‘shameful’ for failing to take personal responsibility for the abuse at the council-run school.
Shortly after the inquiry reported back, Labour confirmed Coun Farnell, who stood down from his second term as leader at the end of last year, had been suspended.
The party said it had ‘fully cooperated’ with the inquiry and had also passed on any allegations that it had itself received in relation to it.
In a statement, it said: “The Labour Party condemns the abuse of children and any attempts to cover up these heinous acts.
“Any allegations and information the Party received in relation to what the council may have known were passed straight to the police to be fully investigated.
“We have fully cooperated with the police and the Inquiry to support their work in investigating historic sexual abuse.”
The report’s publication on Thursday afternoon looked at decades of abuse in Rochdale, including at Knowl View, a scandal that was ongoing while Coun Farnell was first leader of the town hall.
During the inquiry hearings he claimed to have been unaware of the allegations surrounding the school at the time, despite the then chair of education Mary Moffatt and director of social services Diana Cavanagh having known about them and commissioning reports into the situation.
Coun Farnell claimed not to have heard about the concerns until the last ‘two or three years’ and to have had ‘no recollection’ of being informed at the time.
However fellow councillor Peter Joinson contradicted that, telling the hearing that Coun Farnell had admitted to having known about it in 2014.
Coun Joinson also told the hearing that he had reported those concerns to the Labour Party at the time, but that they had been bounced from regional office to headquarters and back to region again, where they were not acted upon because a police investigation had by that point been launched.
The inquiry chose to accept Coun Joinson’s evidence over that of Coun Farnell, whom it found to be ‘bullying, self-opinionated and unyielding.’
Coun Farnell only stood down from his latest stint as council leader several weeks after the hearings last autumn, following pressure from party members and four separate votes of no-confidence within individual ward branches.