The paedophile witch hunt trawls for Masons from Dunblane to Wales
FREEMASONS! Channel 4 has alluded to the spectre of freemasonry at the paedo feeding frenzy. Is the BBC debacle linked to the Freemasons? The BBC, Tom Watson MP, Channel 4 News and Phillip Schofield have spoken about peadophiles operating in the ruling Conservative Party of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. None have offered a shred of proof nor taken their concerns to the police. The BBC and the Guardian went further, alluding to and naming to Lord McAlpine, linking the former Tory Party treasurer to child abused in North Wales care homes. Lord McAlpine is entirely innocent. The broadcasters’ whispers were based on the claims of one Steven Messham, who had been abused by others. Mr Messham has apologised, blaming the police for facilitating his error.
George Monbiot of The Guardian told his 55,000 Twitter followers: “I looked up Lord McAlpine on t’internet. It says the strangest things.”
The Speakers’ wife Sally Bercow told her 56,000 Twitter followers: “Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*”
How does that help the victims?
The ball is rolling. The vain, idiotic, biased and agenda-driven are on the hoof. Prime Minister David Cameron warned against a witch hunt. No small irony that Cameron made his warning after he announced a review of the Waterhouse Inquiry into that sexual abuse of minors at North Wales care homes.
The focus will now fall on the Masons.
Thomas Hamilton was the suspected paedophile who murdered 16 children and their teacher in 1996. He had links to the Masons. Hamilton killed himself after he had murdered so many in Dunblane Primary School’s gymnasium.
In The Honourable Lord Cullan’s report into The Public Inquiry into the Shootings at Dunblane Primary School on 13 March 1996, we learnt that Hamilton had been investigated by police following complaints about his behaviour around young boys.
The report said:
A number of complaints were made about his leadership, the most serious of which were concerned with two occasions when the boys who were in his charge were forced to sleep overnight in his company in a van during very cold weather at Aviemore. His excuse on the first occasion was that the intended accommodation had been double-booked and he was warned of the need to double-check such arrangements. On the latter occasion it was found that no booking had been made by him on either of these occasions.
Having been booted out of the scouts, Hamilton set up 15 clubs for boys aged 7 to 11. “The club activities consisted of games, such as football, along with an element of gymnastics.”
Also:
He took photographs of boys without their parents’ knowledge or consent…
At the camps there was a general lack of adequate supervision; the boys were found to have insufficient clothing for the prevailing weather; he insisted on making a videofilm when the boys were cold and wet; and he insisted that the boys should be denied contact with their parents. It was not surprising that they became homesick and upset…
He also took photographs of boys in their swimming trunks.
Was he a Mason? Lord Cullen considered it:
Thomas Hamilton harboured a long-standing grievance against the Scouts and the police. In the large volume of correspondence which he generated a recurring theme is his assertion that the police were biased in favour of the “brotherhood of masons” and that there was a “brotherhood” link between the Scouts and the police. In passing it may be noted that this together with evidence given by Mr Deuchars indicated that Thomas Hamilton had never been a freemason. I am satisfied that he was not a member of the masons.
If we are looking for secrets and a conspiracy, this leads to the obvious question: was Lord Cullen a Mason?
Cranmer writes:
Hamilton’s MP, George Robertson, now Lord Robertson, was a Mason. who allegedly supported Hamilton’s gun licence. Investigating senior police officers were Masons. Is Lord Cullen, who conducted the inquiry into the tragedy, also a Mason? He is said to have ‘Masonic connections’ (which High Court judge doesn’t?), and (mysteriously) all his findings are subject to a 100-year embargo.
In the case of the Bryn Estyn Children’s Home and the inquiry presided over by retired High Court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, Channel 4 pointed out that a number of the accused were Masons, as were investigating North Wales police officers, as was the tribunal’s leading counsel, as was the Judge… and we now learn that Waterhouse forbade the victims and the media to name any senior politicians or police officers in their witness testimonies…
Ought someone to leap to the defence of Freemasons?
Do we know the full facts? No. The BBC wrote in 2006:
Under the 100-year Closure Act, the findings of the enquiry were originally to be held secret for 100 years, due to the deaths including those of children. However, the Freedom of Information Act superseded the previous act and made the enquiry available to the public.
In 2005, the BBC wrote:
The Lord Advocate has lifted a 100-year restriction on documents relating to the Dunblane massacre inquiry. Colin Boyd’s decision to release information from the 1996 inquiry follows demands from victims’ families.
Edited material will be made available from Monday but Mr Boyd said some documents would not be published as they could distress relatives… Lord Advocate Colin Boyd The Scottish Office, the Crown Office and Lord Cullen, who led the inquiry into the Dunblane shootings, agreed that some information should be kept for 100 years to avoid it causing distress to the child victims or their siblings.
We do not know it all. We are not allowed to. Children are murdered and the elite keep things from us. Why? They say it’s to protect children. If you are looking to foment a conspiracy, this is pretty much how you’d go about it.
In 1996, the Independent reported:
A Labour MP is calling for an inquiry into allegations that Thomas Hamilton, the killer at Dunblane, had links with the Freemasons. Frank Cook, member for Stockton North, said he had tabled a Commons motion claiming that Hamilton may have been allowed to build up an arsenal of high-powered weapons because of links with the ultra-secret society.
Mr Cook claims Hamilton was granted a firearms certificate in 1979, two years after joining Lodge number 1417 of the Masonic Order at Garrow Hill, Glasgow. Mr Cook says his information is from a senior police source.
The Masons deny Hamilton was a member. In 2003, the Scotsman reported:
THEY are thick brown ledgers that wouldn’t look out of place in a Harry Potter film. The huge tomes – each containing around 500 yellowing pages crammed with densely-packed, handwritten information – are so heavy some staff are banned from attempting to lift them.
The huge works are the membership registers of the 600 Freemason’s lodges of Scotland, the “secret” order reputed to wield legendary influence in the corridors of power.
And last week, in a historic and unprecedented move, six volumes were thrown open to Scotland on Sunday as part of Freemasonry’s attempts to dispel its secretive image and counter a damaging association with Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton. It is the first time that an outside organisation has had such open access to masonic files.
The registration books, and the equally-voluminous attendance books for two individual lodges, cover the period during which Hamilton could have been a member or a visitor. Exhaustive searches by senior staff of the Grand Lodge of Scotland – effectively head office – has failed to find any record of Hamilton ever being a mason or even stepping over the threshold of the masonic lodges in Glasgow and Stirling to which he has been most closely linked.
The Grand Lodge is now even considering publishing the relevant membership records on the internet in a further move to reassure the wider public that it has nothing to hide.
Robert Cooper, the museum and library curator of the Grand Lodge in Edinburgh’s George Street, said: “We are going to ask for members’ permission from two lodges that Thomas Hamilton has been linked with to print the membership book on the internet to put an end to speculation over whether he was a Freemason or not. We know he wasn’t but we want everyone else to be sure as well.”…
Cooper is more familiar than most with how the theory goes. It sprang, he says, from the clearly-recorded membership of Hamilton’s grandfather, James, a welder who joined the Garrowhill Lodge in the working class district of Baillieston in December 1957 and, after moving home, was a regular attendee at the Royal Arch Lodge in Stirling until his death in 2000.
As the grandfather was a member, then so was the grandson, so the theory progresses. As a mason, Thomas Hamilton would mix socially with other masons, many of them local police officers, the theory dictates. “Thomas Hamilton was unstable but was allowed to keep guns in his house by the police because they were all masons together,” Cooper said. “None of this is true.”
Membership records were scrutinised for the years in which Hamilton, who was born in 1952, could have been a member. They were from 1973, after he was 21 (you can only join at 18 if your father has been a member), to 1996 when he died. Another two Thomas Hamiltons were unearthed in Scotland but they were both the wrong ages.
“We spent months scouring the relevant documentation and no trace was found of him. Of course people will say you would say that wouldn’t you, which is why we are prepared to open the relevant parts of the register and attendance books up to scrutiny.”
Thomas Hamilton was born Thomas Watt, Jr. 10 May 1952. He was adopted and raised by his grandparents. His grandfather raised him. Might be an idea to check the ledgers for “Watt”.
Now to the Waterhouse Inquiry into abuse at North Wales care homes.
Wales Online reports:
THE tribunal which investigated child abuse at care homes in North Wales threatened TV journalists with legal action if they screened allegations that the abuse was more extensive than believed at the time, it has been revealed.
HTV – now known as ITV Wales – was planning to run a programme at the time of the Waterhouse Tribunal in 1997 that included an interview with a care home’s deputy manager who raised concerns about his boss, John Allen, and said that many years before he had reported rumours about Allen to the police.
Allen was eventually jailed in 1995 for six years after being convicted of six sex offences against young boys resident at the Bryn Alyn Community homes he owned in North Wales.
Allen’s deputy Des Frost was interviewed for HTV’s Wales This Week programme, during which he referred to contemporary rumours that had circulated about Allen’s sexual activity with some of the residents in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
…
Mr Frost told HTV he had gone to see a local magistrate about the concerns, who turned out to have suspicions of his own. He then decided to go to the police.
Worried that Allen would find out if he went to the local police station in Wrexham, he said he reported the matter to Chester CID. He claimed two detectives came to see him at his home and that he reported the rumours about Allen to them.
After recording the interview with Mr Frost, Wales This Week asked Cheshire Police if they had any record of contact with the former care home deputy manager. The force responded that all records would have been destroyed long before, but that Chester Police would have produced a report and passed it to North Wales Police.
In an article on his website, rebeccatelevision.com, journalist Paddy French – a member of the HTV team that investigated the North Wales child abuse scandal – writes that in October 1997 a representative of the Waterhouse Tribunal rang to say there was concern that a number of people, including Mr Frost, had been interviewed by Wales This Week. The following day, the representative rang again and warned the programme’s editor that running the interview could amount to contempt of the Tribunal. Shortly after, says Paddy French, the Tribunal’s lawyers threatened to refer the programme to the Attorney General for contempt if the programme contained any new allegations.
On that basis, says French, HTV decided not to include the interview with Mr Frost.
When the Waterhouse Tribunal published its report it effectively cleared North Wales Police of the charge that it had failed to investigate child abuse properly.
ITV Wales confirmed last night the veracity of the account given by Paddy French.
Says Newport West MP Paul Flynn:
“I believe there was a cover-up and that powerful people were responsible for ensuring that allegations were not aired in public as they should have been. I know journalists who were deeply affected after persuading people to speak about the appalling abuse they were subjected to yet being unable to get the justice they were seeking. They came forward for nothing, and some of them took their own lives.”
Rebecca TV reported:
THE WATERHOUSE Tribunal set the tone for its approach to freemasonry right from day one.
In the very first session the barrister for one of the groups of former residents of care homes made an application about masonry.
The barrister, Nick Booth, asked that “the Tribunal should keep a register of the masonic membership amongst its staff, the members, its representatives and witnesses who appear before it”.
He explained: “The duty of loyalty to a brother mason and his duty of impartiality if he is involved in the administration of justice is not a new one and it’s one that’s very much in the public eye, particularly at the moment.”
“The Tribunal will be aware of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee which is investigating the issue,” he added.
“Sir, I stress, if I have not stressed it before, that I am not making any suggestion of disreputable conduct, merely to put the matter beyond the reach of any possible public comment which might undermine the public confidence in the Inquiry.”
The court adjourned to consider the request.
“It will not surprise you that the application is refused,” said Sir Ronald on their return.
“As far as the staff are concerned,” Sir Ronald said, “in so far as the application carries any reflection upon the integrity of the staff of the Tribunal it’s repudiated, wholly unwarranted; there is no evidence whatsoever to support any suggestion that they have not acted with complete integrity…”
“The members of the Tribunal are in this position: the Tribunal was set up by Parliament and the members of it were appointed by the Secretary of State for Wales and the [criticism of the composition] should be addressed through the proper channels.”
He said that the Tribunal’s own Counsel, Gerard Elias QC, was appointed by the Attorney General…
Gerard Elias is a mason.
In 2004, Mr Mason said he had not been an active freemason for seven years. Gerard Elias was appointed on 17 November 2010 as the National Assembly for Wales Commissioner for Standards.
It this at all murky? There is no suggestion that Mr Elias has done anything wrong. But if Masons are going to be targeted, you need to look for them. Secret organisations for men are fertile ground for a conspiracy theorist.
In the Waterhouse Inquiry – written up in Lost in Care – Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Abuse of Children in Care in the Former County Council Areas of Gwynedd and Clwyd since 1974 – we hear of the Masons. In chapter 2 we meet Gordon Angelsea, a former police officer who pursued a successful libel action against the Independent on Sunday, the Observer, HTV and Private Eye:
In 27 January 1993, Private Eye magazine published an article about the North Wales investigations criticising what it regarded as the apparent reluctance of the North Wales Police to prosecute “no fewer than 12 serving and former colleagues” for sexual offences involving young boys who had been in care over a 20 year period. The article continued:
“The reluctance has nothing to do with the involvement of a number of the local great and good as members of a paedophile ring, which regularly used homes, like the now-closed Bryn Estyn near Wrexham, to supply boys for sex to local celebrities…
The matter went to court:
On 6 December 1994, the jury found in favour of Anglesea by a majority of 10 to 2, after a retirement of about nine hours. The following day it was agreed between the parties that he should receive total damages of £375,000 by way of compensation, together with appropriate undertakings about non-repetition of the libels and payment of his legal costs.
In the trawl for paedos, in which the police and media go looking for victims, Mr Angelsea had been libelled.
The report stated:
9.24 Anglesea was questioned also about his connection with freemasonry because of an underlying suggestion that there had been a “cover up” in his case. He disclosed that he had become a full member of Berwyn Lodge in Wrexham, in 1982, after being a probationer in a lodge at Colwyn Bay from about 1976. He had then transferred to a new Wrexham lodge, Pegasus Lodge, in 1984 after a gap from April to September, because it offered an opportunity for swifter advance in freemasonry. He did not know of any police officer member of either lodge and he had joined Berwyn Lodge initially because a particular social friend was a member. He was aware now from records that one member of the staff at Bryn Estyn had become a member of Berwyn Lodge in April 1984 when he himself was leaving it but he had not known that person before inquiries were made on his behalf in connection with the libel action. He had remained a member of the Pegasus Lodge since despite a directive from the Chief Constable of the North Wales Police, David Owen, in September 1984, which ended with the following paragraph:
“We must be seen to be even-handed in the discharge of our office and my policy will be to say that if you have considered joining the Masons, think carefully about how that application might interfere with your primary duty. To those who are Masons I would say that you should consider carefully how right it is to continue such membership. In the open society in which we live that openness must be seen by all and must not be an openness partially crowded by a secrecy where people could question true motivation.”
Indeed.
Waterhouse addressed concerns about trawling for victims:
“If trawling is undertaken it must be done very sensitively and carefully without making suggestion. You need to go and ask `could you tell us about your experience in care’, rather than saying `were you abused by Joe Soap’.”
A group named False Allegations Against Carers and Teachers (Fact) was concerned. Its spokesman said:
“What we are campaigning against is the process of Waterhouse itself where the vast majority of people weren’t convicted.”
The Home Affairs Committee produced: “THE CONDUCT OF INVESTIGATIONS INTO PAST CASES OF ABUSE IN CHILDREN’S HOMES.” It stated:
It has been suggested, and we believe it to be so, that a new genre of miscarriages of justice has arisen from the over-enthusiastic pursuit of these allegations. Those who argue the case, contend that police methods of ‘trawling’ for information, from a wide net of former residents, produces unreliable evidence for the prosecution and, hence, unsafe convictions. There is deep concern over the conduct of police interviews with witnesses and the integrity of witness testimony. In addition, trawling is said to provide fertile conditions for the generation of false allegations. Set in the context of a growing compensation culture and a shift in the law of ‘similar fact’ evidence, the risks of effecting a miscarriage of justice in these cases are said to be unusually high…
At the outset we would stress that child abuse is one of the most dreadful crimes and the suffering of victims, even years after the offence has taken place, is difficult to imagine. We believe that police forces should always seek to investigate allegations of child abuse, even if the alleged offence or offences in question have taken place many years ago. We also recognise that the police face an unenviable task. Investigating events in the distant past is immensely difficult as gathering evidence, aside from witness testimony, can be close to impossible. We believe, however, that the undoubted need to protect children from abuse and for the authorities to investigate allegations is not helped by destroying the careers and reputations of innocent people. Our report, therefore, tries to address the rules that should cover these investigations, to help ensure that miscarriages of justice do not take place in future.
David Cameron was on that Committee:
“This was a difficult inquiry into a very delicate subject. All allegations of child abuse must be investigated, but guidance is needed to make sure that we avoid miscarriages of justice. I believe that we struck the right balance and hope that the Government will respond positively.”
Its Chairman, Chris Mullin MP said:
“No one wishes to minimise the suffering of victims of abuse or the damage that it can do their lives, but the plain fact is that many police trawls are not generating evidence of sufficient quality to satisfy the burden of proof. A point which is graphically illustrated by the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service rejects a staggering 79 per cent of institutional child abuse cases referred by the police compared to an overall rejection rate of just 13 per cent. I am in no doubt that a number of innocent people have been convicted and that many other innocent people, who have not been convicted, have had their lives ruined.”
The BBC reported in 2002:
David Rose, a special investigations reporter for The Observer told the committee: “There were no paedophile rings in care homes in this country. There were individual paedophiles acting sometimes with impunity for many years, but there were no rings.”
And:
Richard Webster, author of The Great Children’s Home Panic, told the committee: “Through history there have always been people who reacted to the suggestion that there is an evil conspiracy in their midst, particularly when it involves preying on children. There have always been people who will drop everything and hunt down the conspirators and that was the case in the great European witch hunt. It’s always a danger and one to which many police forces have succumbed to divert substantial resources into pursuing these paedophile rings which do not exist.”
From the BBC, the search for rings of paedophile rings has moved to the Conservative Party and the Masons.
Writing in the Times, David Aaronovitch wrote:
One fairly persistent modern meme in conspiracy theories is the idea of the paedophile network of powerful men. I say this not because such an accusation must always be false, but just to point out that the idea is somehow attractive. It unties some knots for us. And I know of no case where it has turned out to be true.
So. About those Masons…
How do you investigate historial claims of abuse? You cannot continue to ignore the victims. What to do..?
Photo: HRH The Duke of Kent The Grand Master of the Freemasons(centre) at the opening of the Beamish Masonic Hall at the Beamish Museum in County Durham.
Posted: 12th, November 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (11) | TrackBack | Permalink
