Chief in VIP sex scandal f ights to keep job

THE police chief who oversaw Scotland Yard’s disastrous VIP child sex abuse inquiry faces a fight to keep his new job following publication today of a damning report into the fiasco.

Steve Rodhouse, head of operations at the National Crime Agency – the British equivalent of the FBI – is expected to bear the brunt of scathing criticism about Operation Midland.

The Metropolitan Police inquiry destroyed the lives and reputations of a string of high-profile people after the force fell for the far-fetched lies of Carl Beech, aka Nick.

Sources with knowledge of the report by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques say Mr Rodhouse’s £240,000-a-year job is ‘untenable’ and that he must step down or be removed from his post immediately.

But yesterday Mr Rodhouse, pictured, who as a Met deputy assistant commissioner headed Operation Midland for 16 months between 2014 and 2016, did not show any obvious signs of pressure as he paid a visit to a barber near his house in the Home Counties.

Since the Nick scandal erupted over the summer, he has declined to answer a series of questions from the Daily Mail about his role in Operation Midland and a separate Met inquiry into a bogus rape allegation against former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, which he also headed.

Mr Rodhouse’s boss at the NCA, Lynne Owens – a former colleague at the Met – has also refused to answer specific questions about his appointment as one of her deputies last year. Yesterday she refused to say if she had read Sir Richard’s unredacted review of Operation Midland before he was given the top job last year.

A heavily redacted summary of Sir Richard’s report, which identified 43 major blunders in Operation Midland, was released three years ago after the inquiry was closed without any arrests or charges. Today a largely uncensored version is due to be released.

It comes after paedophile Beech was jailed for 18 years in July for his lies about VIP child sex abuse and murder and for other offences.

Yesterday, the Mail revealed that Scotland Yard is facing a new probe by a police watchdog over its catastrophic mishandling of the VIP paedophile investigation.