Chance ‘missed’ to prosecute MP
INQUIRY: A “valuable opportunity” was missed to prosecute Rochdale’s former Liberal MP Cyril Smith in the late 1990s, a child sexual abuse inquiry has found. The inquiry said authorities in the town showed a “total lack of urgency” to address the sexual exploitation of boys at councilrun Knowl View School.
A “VALUABLE opportunity” was missed to prosecute Rochdale’s former Liberal MP Cyril Smith during his lifetime in the late 1990s, a child sexual abuse inquiry has found.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) yesterday concluded that authorities in the town showed a “total lack of urgency” to address the sexual exploitation of boys at council-run Knowl View School over a 20-year period from 1969 and victims had been regarded as the “authors of their own abuse”.
Smith, a prominent councillor who then served as the town’s MP from 1972 to 1992, acted as a governor for several Rochdale schools, including Knowl View.
He was the subject of sex abuse accusations and investigations before he died aged 82 in 2010, but never faced trial and had received a knighthood in 1988.
The inquiry also concluded that Labour councillor Richard Farnell lied in the course of his affirmed evidence, raising the prospect that he could now face a police investigation.
Mr Farnell told a panel last year that he was unaware of issues of abuse involving Knowl View while he was Rochdale Council’s leader between 1986 and 1992. But IICSA concluded he must have known at least about the generality of the allegations surrounding councilrun Knowl View School.
Mr Farnell issued a statement in which he denied lying to the inquiry, adding he was “shocked at the findings”.
A Lancashire Police investigation into Smith concluded in 1970 – the year he first ran for public office – that he was hiding behind a “veneer of respectability” and had used his “unique position” to target eight boys at Cambridge House Boys’ Hostel in Rochdale during the 1960s.
But the then-Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Norman Skelhorn chose not to charge him.
From 1997 onwards Greater Manchester Police investigated allegations of physical and sexual abuse in residential homes, with the Lancashire Police file concerning Smith and a further A valuable opportunity was lost to prosecute Smith. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. witness statement submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service in 1998.
Two additional statements were then submitted in 1999.
The IICSA panel said the CPS branch crown prosecutor advised Smith – the hostel’s honorary secretary – should not be charged despite coming to the view there was a “realistic prospect of conviction”.
The panel said: “His review of that advice in 1999 did not consider that those new complaints were capable of lending further support to the case. A valuable opportunity was, therefore, lost to prosecute Smith during his lifetime, and for the complainants to seek justice.”