Witness: Met fed my evidence of VIP abuse ring to other ‘victims’
POLICE are investigating claims that witness accounts in the botched VIP paedophile ring inquiry became ‘crosscontaminated’ because ‘victims’ borrowed elements from each other’s accounts.
The allegation comes from a crucial witness known as Darren, who has told The Mail on Sunday that striking details in his own statement were recycled in those of other witnesses. The police, he said, failed to stop this happening.
The result, he said, is that police had no means of knowing whether two similar statements corroborated each other – or were merely the product of an ‘echo chamber’, in which witnesses only appeared to be saying the same things because their stories had a common source.
The disastrous VIP inquiry, Operation Midland, was axed in March, after failing to charge anyone. In the meantime, names of numerous innocent supposed abusers had been publicised, including the late Lord Janner; the late Prime Minister Ted Heath; former Tory MP Harvey Proctor; and Field Marshall Lord Bramall. A report into the fiasco by Sir Richard Henriques is due on Thursday and is expected to be critical of the Metropolitan Police.
Last night, the Met confirmed that allegations by Darren of police incompetence and misconduct are being investigated by the force’s internal affairs division, the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS). ‘I can confirm the DPS has received a complaint alleging investigative failings by officers,’ a Met spokeswoman said. Darren’s revelations will add to the pressure on the beleaguered £100million Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
It was claims that VIP paedophiles had operated with impunity around Westminster – aired in the Commons by Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson – that prompted Mrs May to set the inquiry up.
Darren, whose own credibility has been questioned, is a married father in his early-40s. His most serious recent allegations to police involve Esther Baker, an alleged abuse victim who has waived her right to anonymity by giving TV interviews. The CPS has still to make a decision on her case which centres on claims against a former Midlands MP.
In the spring of 2013, Darren contacted child abuse ‘survivor’ groups and told of quasi-Satanic abuse he said he suffered at Rendlesham Forest, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He told of being ‘trafficked’ to Dolphin Square. Over the months, he said, he shared details of these ordeals with various specialists and experts, including The Lantern Project, run by Graham Wilmer in Liverpool. In April 2014, Darren even gave an interview to a local paper and a series of interviews to reporters from the now-defunct website, Exaro News. More than a year later, in May 2015, Esther Baker appeared on TV saying she too had been part of a group of children who had been sexually abused in a forest, with police officers present. But she was talking about a different place altogether in Staffordshire.
There were marked similarities between Darren’s story and hers. Both spoke of ‘symbols’ being drawn on their bodies. Both also said they had been ‘trafficked’ to Dolphin Square. Meanwhile, Ms Baker had contact with at least two of the institutions to whom Darren had given his story – Exaro News and The Lantern Project.
Darren said that Exaro put him in touch with Ms Baker. In Twitter conversations, seen by this newspaper, she admits she has a ‘hell of a lot of missing time’ in her memory. Ms Baker dismissed Darren’s claims, saying: ‘The officers I dealt with never once shared information with me from other victims.’
My details were recycled in other statements – and the police failed to stop it happening