Now Danczuk faces police inquiry over rape claim
MP denies ‘malicious’ allegation and insists he will be cleared
First wife: Sonia Rossington DETECTIVES launched a rape investigation into campaigning MP Simon Danczuk last night.
A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: ‘We can confirm that we have received a report of a historic rape dating back to 2006.
‘We are in the very early stages of an investigation and inquiries are on-going. The complaint relates to a 49-year-old man.’
Responding to the allegations of rape, the Labour MP for Rochdale said: ‘These claims are malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting.
‘The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared.’
Mr Danczuk, who has campaigned against child sex abuse, was suspended from the Labour Party last week after being caught sending explicit texts to a 17-year-old girl.
And the MP’s first wife Sonia Rossington claimed in an interview on Sunday that he had ‘bullied’ her into sex during their eight-year marriage. Mr Danczuk, 49, dismissed those claims, accusing her of ‘telling lies’ and being ‘consumed by bitterness’.
Yesterday the twice-married father of four, who has admitted to a long-term drink prob- lem, remained bullish about his future in politics and vowed to carry on as an MP.
Despite a protest in his own constituency, he said he was ‘quietly confident’ he would not be expelled from Labour because his ‘one or two foolish’ mistakes didn’t warrant it.
The embattled MP compared his supposedly harsh treatment in the media as a workingclass politician to that of the ‘upper-class’ Boris Johnson. He said there was ‘still very much an establishment class issue’ shown by the fact he was ‘lambasted’ whereas the London Mayor, who was ‘playing it out with debutantes’, was not.
Mr Danczuk’s resolute defence came as yet more revelations emerged about his private life, with Mrs Rossington exposed for advertising herself as an escort following their divorce in 2010.
Around 20 protesters gathered outside Mr Danczuk’s constituency office in Rochdale yesterday morning calling for him to resign.
The group of former Lib Dem and Labour councillors received a mixed response as they marched to the town hall – and were branded a ‘rag tag bunch of political opponents’ by the MP.
One of the protesters was Michael Burke, brother of Mr Danczuk’s second wife Karen, from whom the MP is now divorced. Mr Burke and another man followed the MP, shouting ‘resign, you scumbag’ and calling him a ‘paedophile’.
Last year Mr Burke, 37, was charged with historical sex attacks on three alleged victims in the early 1990s. He denies the charges.
The ringleader of the protest group was former Rochdale Council finance chief Farooq Ahmed, who was suspended and subsequently resigned from the Labour Party after making a homophobic insult about a colleague.
After walking around Rochdale for two hours speaking to constituents, Mr Danczuk said the campaign group did not reflect the views of most constituents and he was ‘ humbled’ by the positive response from locals.
He said: ‘I don’t think I will be expelled from the Labour Party. I think when they carry out the internal investigation – which I will cooperate fully with – they will conclude that, while I made one or two foolish mistakes, it doesn’t warrant me being expelled from the party.
‘So I’m quietly confident that they will conclude I’ll remain a Labour Member of Parliament.’
He added: ‘A working class lad like me in Rochdale, who writes for some of the national newspapers and has a working class colourful personal life, I get lambasted, while Boris [Johnson], playing it out with debutantes and all the rest of it in this upper- class world, doesn’t get lambasted.
‘And I think there is still very much an establishment, class issue going on in terms of ... how some of this stuff plays out.’
Mr Danczuk left school at 16 and worked at a factory making gas fires, before making his move into politics through the GMB union and becoming a local councillor.
By contrast, Old Etonian Mr Johnson studied classics at Oxford University and became a national newspaper journalist, before being selected to stand for the Tories.