Harvey Proctor: Morning

Watch on the Good Morning Britain website.

Operation Midland: Well I Never!

A Met Police inquiry into claims a VIP Westminster paedophile ring abused children in the 1970s and 1980s has closed without charges being brought, Scotland Yard has announced.

The controversial Operation Midland ended as ex-MP Harvey Proctor was told he faces no further action over claims against him of child abuse and murder.

He called on four Met chiefs to resign, but the force said it had been right to look into the single source claims.

The inquiry has cost over £1.8 million.

Mr Proctor, 69, who was MP from 1979 to 1987 for the Essex constituencies of Basildon and then Billericay, was interviewed under caution last August as part of the Operation Midland. He had always vehemently denied the allegations.

The investigation, which began in November 2014, was triggered by allegations made by a man in his 40s known as "Nick", who claimed he was abused for nine years from 1975, when he was seven, to 1984...

BBC News. 

And on that bombshell...

The Story Behind The Met's Controversial Paedophile Ring Investigation, a handy explainer from the Telegraph.

The Accused Deserve Far Better Protection, an open letter by Harvey Proctor.

The case for the prosecution.

PS Botched Operation, Monday's Times editorial. 

'After the scandalous failures that allowed Jimmy Savile to evade justice, Operation Midland saw the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction. The starting point was that a witness had to be believed, yet the role of the police is neither to believe nor disbelieve. It is to listen, investigate and assess. The presumption of innocent until proven guilty was turned on its head, and the decision to deploy 20 police officers to raid the home of the 92-year-old Lord Bramall was grossly disproportionate. He was finally cleared of all involvement in January, in a grudging concession by the police that there was insufficient evidence. In fact, there was none. Mr Proctor was absolved yesterday

'The Met complains that it is judged on the basis of partial information. It is therefore unfortunate that the inquiry by Sir Richard Henriques is to be conducted in secret and only its “key” findings made public. In addition, there may be a case for prosecuting Nick for wasting police time..' 

See also, Wild and lurid tales of VIP sex abuse ring had officers hooked, an excellent piece on the Met's delusional fantasies by Sean O'Neill. 
 

VIP Paedophile Ring: A Serial Liar

THE stepbrother of VIP paedophile accuser “Nick” yesterday described his allegations as “bizarre” and “absolute nonsense”.

The man, in his 50s, who cannot be named for legal reasons, rubbished all of Nick’s claims against powerful public figures.

He slammed allegations that his Army officer dad, Nick’s stepfather, was part of an elite child abuse ring that allegedly included late Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath.

He said: “The closest he ever got to Edward Heath was seeing him on the telly.”

Nick has claimed he was regularly taken from the family home in Wiltshire to be abused at weekend sex parties in London.

But his stepbrother says they only went to London once — and that was a family outing to a museum...

The Met’s crumbling Operation Midland has investigated claims of child abuse against VIPs including Heath, the late Home Secretary Leon Brittan, war hero Lord Bramall and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

Police found no case to answer against Mr Brittan but did not tell him before he died last January,

The case against Lord Bramall, 92, was dropped after police found not a shred of evidence. Mr Proctor, 69, is still waiting to hear back.

All the allegations stem from Nick, a former NHS middle-manager in his 40s who lost his job and wife shortly before going to cops in 2014.

The stepbrother said: “I think he has jumped on the historic sexual abuse bandwagon, maybe hoping to make some money." ...

Friday's Sun.

Ho hum...

Harvey Proctor: Gay Witch-Hunt

THE Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, will face renewed pressure over the handling of the Operation Midland VIP paedophile inquiry with the publication of a book by former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

The book, entitled Credible and True, and due to be published in April, will detail how Proctor’s home was raided by the police and he was questioned over claims made by a witness known only as “Nick”.

Among the allegations made against Proctor was that he had strangled a boy to death, had been involved in a second murder and had tried to castrate “Nick” with a penknife.

Proctor has described the claims as “false and untrue and . . . a heinous calumny”.

Speaking about the book, he said: “I have written these words to help me untangle, in my own mind, the Kafka-esque situation in which I find myself. I have been accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable — serial child murder and the sexual abuse of children. I am innocent, but find I have to take on the Metropolitan police service to prove I am not guilty.

“I hope to demonstrate in my book why the police and certain politicians have got it so wrong, and why Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe should and will go.” 

 The Sunday Times.

A man with such obnoxious far right-wing views he was disowned by his fellow Tory MPs during the Thatcher years, but... good for you.

Ann Widdecombe: What Happened?

WHEN Paul Gambaccini issued his account of being falsely accused of child abuse, he noted several instances of the police or CPS releasing news about dropped inquiries or rebailing to coincide with more successful or more sensational news of Operation Yewtree.
 
I shuddered when I read that because if either the police or CPS should be adopting “a good day to bury bad news” mentality or “guilt by association” news management then another precious cornerstone of our justice system is crumbling.

Justice agencies in this country should be concerned with justice and nothing else.
 
News manipulation should never be attempted and statements about the course of an investigation should be determined by facts not convenience...

Yet I suspended judgment because I had the fairness to accept that it could all be coincidence, even if the regularity suggested otherwise.

Now it looks as if that fairness was misplaced as I cannot have been the only person to notice that the long overdue apology to Lady Brittan for the police’s failure to tell her dying husband that he was no longer under any investigation (and had not been for quite some time) coincided with the news that a bishop had been convicted of sex offences.

Is that what they were waiting for?...

Ann 'Not Anne' Widdecombe, Daily Express.

Sad that this has divided people on party lines, and many Labour Party supporters knee-jerk that this is all a Conservative Party conspiracy to cover up some secret Tory paedophile ring.

Whilst much of it is partly just an excuse to bash Labour via its new deputy leader, it is obvious that Tom Watson is a power-crazed delusional thug who has behaved appallingly.

PS And not forgetting... Zac Goldsmith urged to withdraw paedophile ring allegations: Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor says Goldsmith should rethink mayoral bid unless he retracts claims of VIP abuse at Richmond guest house, The Guardian.

While The Telegraph's rottweiler, Dan Hodges, urges - hilariously - Put down your pitchforks and stop the Tom Watson witchunt. LOL!

CJ De Mooi: PS I Am Mad

Mirror.

What next for this publicity-seeking loon?

Did he see Ted Heath kill Harvey Proctor???

Daily Mail: Oops! Sorry Bout Dat

Scotland Yard is under pressure to shelve its VIP paedophile murder inquiry after it emerged detectives had ‘grave doubts’ about the testimony of the key witness.

Officers have not found a ‘shred of credible evidence’ to back up claims that a string of senior Establishment figures were responsible for murdering three boys in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many detectives believe the inquiry – which has already cost the taxpayer more than £1million – is doomed and should be wound up.

Senior figures in the separate judge-led public inquiry into historic child sex abuse and in the Crown Prosecution Service have been told informally that there appears to be no substance to the allegations made by a witness known only as ‘Nick’.

Nick is an alleged abuse victim who was described by a senior Met Police detective last year as being ‘credible and true’.

Amid claims that Yard chiefs are ‘too scared’ to pull the plug on the inquiry, 30 officers in the cash-strapped force are probing the astonishing triple-murder allegation, linked to Dolphin Square in Central London.

It can also be revealed that police initially took Nick’s account seriously because he has a respectable managerial job and does ‘not fit the stereotype of a child abuse fantasist’.

But there are now fears he is a ‘Walter Mitty’ who has made up the murder allegations

Police have not been able to identify any of the alleged victims, discover any bodies or find any credible independent witnesses.

Sources say a number of officers have ‘grave doubts’ about Nick’s account but fear that saying this in public could put child-sex victims off contacting police.

Details of the Met’s fears over the allegations have emerged after former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor accused police of a ‘gay witch-hunt’ when he disclosed that he had been questioned over the alleged murders.

Nick says he was abused at depraved sex ‘parties’ from the age of seven, and claims to have witnessed horrific acts at the luxury Dolphin Square estate between 1975 and 1984.

He has described being driven by a chauffeur, along with a terrified 12-year-old boy, to a luxury townhouse where he watched as a Tory MP strangled the other child.

Nick said he saw a second boy being murdered in front of a Tory Cabinet minister in 1981. A third boy died in 1979 after being run over by a member of the gang, he alleges.

In November last year, Nick told the BBC that his abusers ‘created fear that penetrated every part of me, day in day out’.

But the Mail has been told that when Nick is challenged on his version of events, he ‘becomes emotional and the interview is stopped’.

A source said: ‘When he contacted police, he had a well-rehearsed script and initially appeared believable. But when you scratch under the surface of his claims, there is nothing there.

'The notion of an organised paedophile gang of a former prime minister, MPs and Establishment figures is just nonsense.

‘Police have not been able to identify any victims. There is not one shred of credible evidence to support his allegations. The police investigation has been exhaustive but they have drawn a blank.’ ...

Daily Mail.

Quick summary for busy readers: The Mail here is kinda admitting it's been publishing a load of utter errant nonsense about Operation Midland and a supposed 'VIP paedophile ring' for years.

A six year-old could have seen this was all as laughable as an alien abduction story.

And shame on the Sunday People and Tom Watson MP for being such prime colluders in this lunatic - and yes, homophobic - episode.

Brendan O'Neill Watch: Paedophile Panic

Brendan O'Neill, The Spectator.

Fagburn would like to have quoted something from this, but it's difficult as, like so much that O'Neill writes, it's just a series of non sequiturs.

I can confirm though, that the statement made in the title is correct.

PS There's a more coherent piece by Luke Gittos on Spiked, Harvey Proctor Has Got A Point - It is time to end this witch-hunting of old, often homosexual, men.

Harvey Proctor: Nick 'Nick'

Those of us who have been criticising the ever more lurid accusations of child abuse against a cavalcade of politicians (mostly Tory and usually dead) have become used to being described as “defenders of paedophiles” on the wilder fringes of the internet, where the idea of sex with children exerts a peculiar fascination.

So I wonder what this thriving branch of the conspiracy-theory business will make of the article in today’s edition of The Sunday Times by Mark Williams-Thomas [Savile was a fair cop, this is a witcvh hunt], which denounces the way some people have “determined to be at the forefront of trying to set out that a significant number of well-organised paedophile rings existed involving politicians past and present” and lamenting that “these individuals are not evidence-focused, preferring to pass off rumour as fact”.

For Williams-Thomas is the man whose 2012 ITV film The Other Side of Jimmy Savile was the spur to belated criminal investigations of the sexual activities of the late BBC presenter; and in his earlier career as a police officer he was involved in a number of successful cases against men who had abused children for sexual gratification...

A former rent boy, known to us only as “Nick”, [has] claimed Proctor was one of a number of Tory bigwigs, army generals, spy chiefs (the entire so-called Establishment, in effect) who had “raped and tortured” him and other children as far back as 1975. 

Proctor took the extraordinary step of reading out the police disclosure document. It contains the claim that, in the presence of “Nick”, he had murdered one child by strangulation, having stabbed him with a penknife “over a period of 40 minutes”. It also alleges Proctor was prevented from taking his penknife to “Nick’s” genitals only by the intervention of “the other male present”. This, according to “Nick”, was Ted Heath...

The law as it stands grants anonymity to those who make charges of sexual abuse, and there are good reasons for this. But here’s the thing: who is being abused now? Due process is the victim. And that puts all of us at risk. 

Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times.

There was also a good piece on this orgy of cruelty and stupidity in the Telegraph this week, Harvey Proctor's accusers are making sure he will never get a fair trial. 

And in the Independent, Harvey Proctor and a worrying case of trial by lynch mob.

And LBC interview with Iain Dale. 

Harvey Proctor: Stop The Insanity!

'You were old enough to be their father!'

Disgusting (gay) sex-shaming by Channel 4 News.

The abuse of Harvey Proctor, Conservativehome (Not something Fagburn usually recommends).

The media and the police are in collusion, backing this clear fantasist 'Nick'.

I hope they do him for wasting police time.

A Witch-Hunt: Of Our Own Creation

SENIOR cops are hauling VIPs into a “Middle Ages witch-hunt” on sex crime claims to make themselves famous, a furious Tory MP has claimed.

Former party vice-chairman Michael Fabricant also likened the Operation Midland probe into establishment sex rings to US Senator Joe McCarthy’s hunt for Communists in the 1950s.

Mr Fabricant spoke out after gay former Tory MP Harvey Proctor attacked the investigation into claims he tortured and murdered young boys.

Mr Fabricant said: “It seems a few police officers in some forces seek fame and promotion rather than justice for those they investigate.

“They connect individuals through the most tenuous of links and leak information to the Press.

“To link someone for being gay with being a murdering paedophile is objectionable and stupid.”

The Met, which is running Operation Midland, refused to comment.

The Sun.

.To equate someone with murder and paedophilia just because they're gay is wrong and plain pig ignorant.

— Michael Fabricant (@Mike_Fabricant) August 26, 2015

Harvey Proctor: HP Sauce

The Independent.

God, the world is stupid.

Metro: Yes, Thank You

 

Good job the media didn't get hysterical about this...

'News': Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space

'News': Mrs Proctor Steals The Show

Homosexual: Witch Hunt

Has this madness knoweth no end?

Proctor is a far right racist scum-egg, people who rightly hate him should not join in this silly new McCarthyite Salem.

It all comes from this junk website Exaro News.

Matthew Parris: On Public Prosecutions

Last weekend my former parliamentary colleague Harvey Proctor published in a Sunday newspaper a moving statement. You may remember that two months ago the police raided his home in Leicestershire, spending 15 hours there and taking away his mobile phone, his laptop and all his personal records. They told him (and still tell him) he is not a suspect in their Operation Midland inquiry into historical child abuse; but they tipped off the media anyway, and a storm broke over Harvey’s head.

Declaring his complete innocence, and ignorance of anything about the fabled “Westminster gay paedophile sex ring” and anxious to put this on the record he has begged for an early interview, but the police keep postponing it. Now he has lost his home and his job. Desperate to resume his life, he challenges the police to “put up or shut up”.

I know Harvey. We talked on Monday. I’m convinced he had nothing to do with any MPs’ paedophile ring and doubt it existed. My guess is that the police have realised this too but won’t climb down and admit that by turning a routine search into a nationally publicised raid they have shattered a life and impugned a reputation. So they leave an innocent man to rot, until the interest they stirred up has faded.

From Matthew Parris' Times Diary.

Mr Parris does not mention this, but in a sympathetic profile in Friday's Independent, Proctor says that a supportive phone call and dinner invitation from Matthew stopped Harvey from killing himself.

Last week, Parris had this to say about Lord Janner...

I have no brief for (Lord) Greville Janner. I found him ingratiating and a bit of a bully. And I haven’t the least idea of the truth of allegations against him, nor any view on whether today he’s fit to plead.

But in attacking the judgment of Alison Saunders as director of public prosecutions, the behaviour of senior politicians, from the PM and home secretary downwards, was disgraceful. As for (Lord) Ken Macdonald, in post as DPP when it was decided not to prosecute Janner — to criticise his successor in print was offside.

DPPs are independent, they make decisions on the information they have, and the whole idea of their office is that they should accept no interference from politicians, peers or newspaper editorials. They must stand outside what some prattling MP has called — in that sinister phrase — “the court of public opinion”. This general election is corroding the judgments of people who ought to (and, worse, do) know better.

How strange so many journalists have remained silent on these two very different, but equally rum cases.

And how sad so many politicians have spoken out for the posturing populism of overturning the DPP's Janner decision.

Harvey Proctor: I Don't Believe It!

In the context of recent speculation and allegations on the internet, I write this to say that I am innocent of the allegations against me and I will maintain this stance until my dying breath.

On Wednesday 4 March 2015, the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Midland Team raided my home and, under a warrant investigating historical child sexual abuse, searched my house for 15 hours. I was told at 11pm that no statement would be issued to the press and my identity would not come out. That was not the case.

If not before, then within eight hours of the police leaving my home, details of the raid were leaked to the national media. ExaroNews – an odd internet news agency – was tipped off before the police left my home. Mark Conrad, a journalist for the agency, was phoning and emailing my office at 9.34pm – at least 90 minutes before the police left my house.

During and immediately after the search, I volunteered to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police concerning Operation Midland’s investigations relating to allegations from the 1970s and Eighties...

So the “organisation” – strange term for the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Squad – has raided my house, searched it for 15 hours, removed my communications and computer equipment and many boxes of historic documents and other irrelevant material from the 1970s and Eighties, prompted me to retire from my job of 13 years and to leave my home. They have ruined 28 years of my life’s rehabilitation after 1987 and they are not prepared to meet me and interview me. They have said to my solicitors, but not to the media, that I am not a suspect and they merely wish for me to assist the police with their inquiries.

In 1987, Detective Chief Superintendent Drummond Marvin of Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Squad was the officer in charge of my prosecution. I pleaded guilty to four charges of gross indecency. Offences which, because of the changes in the law regarding the homosexual age of consent, are no longer offences.

The People.

Chief Superintendent Marvin subsequently wrote a book and sold his story to The Sun newspaper. He wrote about three of his cases: Lord Lucan, Russell Harty and myself. In the article about me he stated for the first time, as far as I am aware, the felonious notion that there was a rent-boy ring at Westminster. If there was one, I was not aware of it, it was news to me and I was not part of it. Marvin’s article was wrong on this and on other matters.

I have always tried to protect my privacy – not because I thought I was breaking the law, but because I consider sexual matters to be private, except where they are illegal. Not just for me but for everyone. I refuse to comment on these matters now save to say anything and everything I have done has been consensual. But with alarming frequency, when I was visited by the police in 1987, journalists from the Sunday People were outside my flat.

I have not flaunted my sexuality. It is the press and the police who have time and time again invaded my privacy. In 1987, the press wired a witness for sound and was sent into my apartment. The police trawled the gay bars of London, showing my photograph to all and sundry, asking: “Have you slept with this man?” Today the modern-day equivalent is for senior police officers to go on the airways enticing so called “victims” to come out of the woodwork, telling them, without even speaking to them, that they would be believed.

Now, the guide to misinformation and the oracle of disinformation is the internet. It is a totally impossible media with which to engage, as hundreds of thousands of comments appear daily, with no chance of rebuttal.

At the behest of a weird assortment of alleged victims, ex-police officers, bishops, social workers, attention seekers and “nutters”, former, respected politicians have had their reputations trashed without a shred of evidence – Sir Leon Brittan, Sir Keith Joseph, Dr Rhodes Boyson and Enoch Powell to name but a few. They are dead; they cannot defend themselves. I am alive; I can and I will.

Enough is enough. Someone has to stand up and say the Emperor is wearing no clothes...

From an open letter published in The Independent.

Fagburn's said it before and I'll say it again; just cause Harvey Proctor is an odious far right racist shitbag, it doesn't mean he's guilty of any of these fantastical accusations.

Harvey Proctor: Fly Swatting

Needless to say the media had been tipped off. The BBC bulletin that morning said: “Police investigating allegations of an establishment paedophile ring have searched the home of former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor... fined in 1987 for gross indecency.” As it happens that was Alan Turing’s crime in 1952.

Mr Proctor’s comment may not surprise you: “I do not think I’ve been oversensitive in thinking that there is an element of guilt by association in your report.” In fact the police haven’t even suggested Proctor is a suspect, but he has now been cornered into denying what nobody has alleged — triggering a new round of media headlines “Harvey Proctor denies . . .” etc. Kafkaesque is precisely the word.

I watched the BBC’s footage (some of it filmed from a helicopter) when Cliff Richard’s place was raided in his absence and without his knowledge, after an exclusivity deal had been done between the police and the BBC: footage the corporation then had the impertinence to enter for a Royal Television Society award. I’ve never met Cliff Richard — but heaven knows some astonishing unlikelihoods have turned out to be true in other cases — so I said nothing.

I followed the year’s hell the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini went through after his arrest on suspicion of historical sex offences as part of Operation Yewtree (dropping him as my guest on my Great Lives radio series) until, finally, no charges were brought. I do know Mr Gambaccini slightly and seriously doubted there’d be anything in this — but, heaven knows, etc — so I said nothing.

I was a friend of Harvey Proctor during his ordeals; and if Harvey (a very private man who never talked about his homosexuality even to me as a fellow-gay, fellow-Tory MP, but has had, so far as I know, not the remotest interest in children) was ever involved in a “ring of top people”, then I’ll eat my hat. But, heaven knows, etc . . .

Or, rather, no: this time I’ll say something. I think the story’s absolute b****cks. The comment about Mr Proctor from the MP-turned-witchfinder-general John Mann, that “the police have said they will go where the evidence takes them and that’s exactly what they should do” is disgraceful. What evidence? Does Mr Mann know of any here? I very much doubt the police do. This is nothing to do with evidence: it’s the police canteen culture talking: “He’s gay, he’s got a conviction, a loner and he was an MP, hey — let’s check him out. And tell the media. Who knows — maybe someone will ring in.”...

A rightly and righteously impassioned piece by Matthew Parris in The Times.

It was well-known while he was alive that Cyril Smith was guilty of the most heinous crimes against boys,  and he was allowed to get away with it, but the Dolphin Square story sounds like complete fantasy.

Or, as Mr Parris so eloquently puts it, 'absolute bollocks'.

Harvey Proctor: Gay Uncle Tom Lashes Out!

Daily Mail.

I thought he'd be a hero of yours, Andrew...