Cyril Smith: The damning truth

Ex-council leader lied to inquiry into disgraced MP and sex abuse at boys’ home

A FORMER Labour council leader was last night facing the threat of perjury after lying to an inquiry into depraved sexual abuse involving Cyril Smith.

Richard Farnell, who spent almost two decades as head of Rochdale Council, was slammed for his ‘shameful’ attempt to evade responsibility for the failure to protect generations of youngsters.

The 59-year-old councillor was branded ‘unfit to be in public life’ and suspended from the Labour Party.

He is facing a police probe after an official report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said his testimony that no one had told him about the abuse ‘defies belief ’.

He is one of a string of ex-MPs, councillors and senior officers named and shamed in the devastating report for failing to protect boys or turning a blind eye to reports of abuse.

They also included his successor, Paul Rowen, later a Lib Dem MP, who was branded ‘insufficiently inquisitive’, and senior managers who commissioned ‘flawed’ reports and matters were left to ‘drift’.

The inquiry laid bare the horrific abuse to which 40 or more boys were subjected as a result of the ‘indefensible’ failures of those charged with protecting them.

The hard-hitting report, only the second published by the troubled inquiry, was set up after revelations emerged about how the town’s notorious former Liberal MP Smith, who died in 2010, had preyed on boys in hostels and residential schools.

They were detailed when the Daily Mail serialised former Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk’s book Smile For The Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith.

The report is just one strand of a wider inquiry into historic abuse at public and private institutions in England and Wales.

The report concluded that Mr Farnell had lied in his affirmed public evidence to the inquiry that he had not known about abuse at Knowl View residential school while he was leader from 1986-1992.

It went on to brand his attempt to blame council officers ‘shameful’.

Mr Rowen barely fared better, told he had at best been ‘insufficiently inquisitive’ and at worst ‘turned a blind eye’.

It also slammed a string of highly paid council managers for their flawed decision-making and failure to properly treat the boys – many of them from deeply troubled upbringings – as victims.

The report concluded that from 1989 onwards the police, council departments and staff at Knowl View knew youngsters were being sexually exploited by men from as far away as Sheffield.

The panel said: ‘The records of individual children convey a total lack of urgency on the part of the relevant authorities to address the problem and treat the matters involved for what they were – serious sexual assaults.

‘This remained the case even in the face of clear evidence of the risks to children’s health.

‘The file of one young boy at Knowl View recorded that he had contracted hepatitis through “rent boy” activities.

‘We concluded that no one in authority viewed child sexual exploitation as an urgent child protection issue.

‘Rather, boys as young as 11 were not seen as victims but as authors of their own abuse.’

It ruled there was no ‘deliberate cover-up’ by the authorities involved but instead a ‘careless and wholly inadequate response’.

One former resident of Knowl View who was abused there by Smith told the Daily Mail: ‘I was betrayed by the system that was meant to protect me, and so were a generation of boys.

This has ruined people’s lives – several of the former residents have killed themselves. That place was hell for us.’

Another of Smith’s victims rejected the conclusion that there had been no cover-up, accusing Mr Farnell of ‘desperately trying to save his own skin with absolutely no respect for those who were abused’.

‘It’s disgusting and it is a coverup in my eyes,’ he added. ‘Those behind it are as guilty as Smith himself.

‘All of this could have been stopped and the lives that were destroyed by this could have been saved.

‘That’s unforgivable and those responsible should hang their heads in shame.’

Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer from Slater & Gordon, which represents eight victims of the abuse, said: Richard Farnell lied to the inquiry and it is now very clear that the Labour Party should have acted much more quickly to remove him as leader. He is unfit to be in public life.’

Professor Alexis Jay, chairman of the inquiry, said: ‘I am deeply disturbed at the evidence of extensive abuse and the institutional responses to that abuse.’

Mr Farnell – who resigned as council leader after a bruising cross-examination at the inquiry hearings – last night insisted he was ‘shocked’ by the findings. ‘I told the truth,’ he said.

Mr Farnell, who is still a councillor, added: ‘There is not one single letter, memo, report, council minute or briefing note addressed to me informing me about the events at Knowl View.’

Continuing to refuse to accept any personal responsibility, he said he was ‘deeply sorry’ for those who had suffered because of ‘unacceptable failings of the council’.

But he was immediately suspended by the Labour Party, which said in a statement that it ‘condemns the abuse of children and any attempts to cover up these heinous acts’. As the hearings were part of a statutory inquiry, Mr Farnell could potentially face perjury charges.

Greater Manchester Police said it would ‘look to consult with the Inquiry in relation to any possible offences’.

It carried out its own £750,000 inquiry which last year found no evidence to support claims of a cover-up.

Last night, Rochdale Council chief executive Steve Rumbelow said: ‘While the inquiry found no evidence of cover-ups or political pacts, it is clear from its report that council officers and school staff failed in their most basic duty of care towards children.’

‘A total lack of urgency’

‘As guilty as Smith himself’