Operation Midland: Harvey Proctor spanks the self-serving police
Harvey Proctor was a Member of Parliament for Basildon and for Billericay between 1979 and 1987. He’s written on the allegations of a VIP peado cover-up. Mr Proctor is not shy of media, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today in March that he was keen to be interviewed by police as soon as possible to clear his name.
You can read about Harvey Proctor here. In 1987, Mr Proctor admitted “spanking sessions” with male prostitites.
The Press feasted off the story:
Today he writes:
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.
It’s a sorry state of affairs when innocence has to be stated. In a just society innocence must be the default position. It’s guilt that must be proven.
The Government’s big inquiry into an alleged cover-up is rooted in the files of Geoffrey Dickens MP. He’s dead. And no-one can find his dossier of alleged abusers. In 1983, Dickens showed his dossier to the then home secretary, Leon Brittan QC. We don’t know its contents. But so controversial and explosive was it that the far from shy and retiring Dickens doesn’t seem to have kept a copy, shown the papers to the Press or done anything with them other than entrust their safe keeping to the Home Office.
This is Dickens who told the Commons:
“Adults in every walk of life are to be found involving themselves in paedophilia. They range from some of the highest in the land to misfits.”
The only name read aloud was that of the depraved Sir Peter Hayman, a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange, a group that campaigned for adults to have legalised sex with children as young as four.
[Dickens] championed other causes, apart from the protection of children. He was a keen advocate of hanging. In 1982, he tackled the Transport Secretary David Howell – George Osborne’s future father in law – demanding greater security on the railways, because the Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, had had his trousers stolen on a sleeper train.
That same year, his home was burgled. Dickens suggested in the Commons, without any supporting evidence, that the crime was the work of MI5. In 1990, he called for a debate on the Commons on “the spread of satanism and devil worship in the United Kingdom”.
Mr Dickens saw sexual deviancy is many forms. The adulterer was no fans of homosexual. He wanted anyone with AIDS to have ‘AIDS’ tattooed on their genitals.
This is not to say Mr Dickens was wrong in seeking to expose VIPS who had sex with children. Far from it. It’s to say that we’d like to see his evidence and to have it tested in court. There are gaps. Big ones.
The Guardian August 25th, 1983 (via)
Daily Express, August 25th, 1983
So much for the background to Mr Proctor’s open letter in the Indy. He continues.
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.
The police love shows of force. They nicked Jim Davidson (innocent) at the airport as she flew INTO the country. They raided Sir Cliff Richard’s home in a live BBC hunt. They trawl for victims of the past in mass appeals.
It’s pervese that in this moden post-Savile, post-Rochdale world, when justice denied to many victims of sex crimes is being made right, people can be humilated in public on the pretext of justice by the very institutions who betrayed so many.
So, Mr Proctor, what say you?
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.
Is he suggesting the police tipped off the Press?
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.
My solicitors – Messrs Sakhi and Gatrad of Sakhi Solicitors, Leicester – arranged for me to be interviewed on Monday 23 March 2015. The police initially confirmed that it was convenient and then cancelled the interview at short notice, due to “circumstances beyond [the officer’s] control”. The appointment was rearranged for Tuesday 14 April 2015. It was through no fault of my own that on Thursday 9 April 2015 the police again cancelled the interview, scheduled for 14 April 2015.
They have not contacted my solicitors since then.
In an email to my solicitors, they referred to themselves as the “organisation”.
It could be aruged that Mr Proctor is right now not the police’s biggest fan.
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.
That job was not the gentleman’s outfitters, he once ran. That job was private secretary to Duke and Duchess of Rutland.
In a statement released by Belvoir Castle announcing his retirement, Mr Proctor said:
“I have had an enjoyable 14 years working at Belvoir Castle and I thank the Duke and Duchess and all with whom I have worked for their kindness and assistance over these years. I have decided to retire from my post as private secretary and this is with the blessing of the Duke and Duchess.”
Mr Proctor has been living on the estate.
So much for that. He continues:
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.
If so, they should be wiped from his record, then.
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.
He then says something worthy of dicsussion:
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.
What if the target is, say, an adulterer has been voted or making money on a ticket of sound family values, or is a vociferous opponent to gay rights having having homosexual relations? Reasons for exposing a person’s legal, private sex life are many. And let’s not overlook the obvious: people love reading about other people’s sex lives.
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.
Only the dead get judged guilty and buried. The rest need a trial.
The higher up the police command chain, however, the less I see to admire. For example, I find it incredible that a senior police officer has said on the media that a “victim’s” evidence is “credible” before an investigation has been completed or a prosecution launched.
He then delivers the delicious invitation:
* If you have evidence against me, bring it on!
Such are the facts…
Posted: 3rd, May 2015 | In: Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
