Monthly Archives: November 2014

Taxpayers’ money is being used to publish a social services guide, which publicises the Paedophile Information Exchange.
And civil servants have co-operated in compiling the directory, Guide to the Social Services.
In it, PIE is described as “a self-help organisation.” Such groups are described in the book as “making a major contribution to the provision of social services.”
The directory has been published for nearly 100 years by the old-established Family Welfare Association of London, who acknowledge that they receive public funds to carry out their work.
The Association’s director, R. R. Morley, said: “Obviously we shall have to look at this.
“We have been including this organisation in our handbook in good faith as an association to which people with a particular problem could be sent for help and advice.
“I know there was an outcry about PIE. But then you can find people who will object to almost anything.
“They might also object to homosexual organisations being included, or organisations dealing with prisoners’ rights, or people such as Release, the drugs advice service.”
Mr. Morley added: “We have not been able to consider the business of PIE’s listing – after all, it only blew up last week, didn’t it?”

Was there an investigation into the 9 years that a child sex offender worked at a Brighton children’s hospital?

By murunbuch

November 20, 2014

Brighton, NHS / Department of Health

Graeme Gordon, aged 36, was a senior children’s nurse working for 9 years, at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton in the Emergency Department. He lived in Brighton but his home town was Reading. He worked with the most vulnerable children, some of whom would have been seriously ill and even unconscious. In October he was convicted of three offences relating to sexual activity with a child under 16, grooming of a child for the purposes of sexual activity and possession of indecent images relating to children. He was sentenced at Reading Crown Court to 38 months imprisonment and 6 months for possession of abusive images of children.

He was sacked by the Hospital Trust and the professional body (NMC) struck him off their register so that he is very unlikely to be able to work with children or vulnerable adults again.

The police found absolutely no evidence that his offending behaviour included his place of work or that the safety of children in the care of the Brighton hospital had been placed at risk.

I have not been able to locate the police investigation report. I am sure that all relevant agencies would have contributed to a Section 47 enquiry (Children Act 1989) which requires enquiries to be made when there is reasonable cause to suspect actual or likely significant harm to a child or children in the locality. The outcome of this investigation would then be considered at the Local Safeguarding Children Board because of possible risk to numbers of children who had been nursed by Gordon in a 9 year period. This review, or a publically available version in an executive summary, would usually be available on the Local Safeguarding Children Board website but I could not find reference to it. It is good practice for such a process to be conducted independently and local agencies commonly select an independent chair and panel to conduct such a review in order to ensure a rigorous and transparent process.

Of course, it is not acceptable for the statutory authorities to go trawling for evidence where it is not thought to exist and no-one would want to cause any unnecessary distress to the parents and families of the children who were patients of the hospital during that time. However, the crimes Gordon committed in Reading were serious and Gordon’s access to particularly vulnerable children in Brighton had been substantial over 9 years. It is possible for a sensitive multi-agency investigation process to inform parents and also hospital staff of the known facts, to provide a helpline number and to have a multi-agency team to respond to concerns and to any suspicion or knowledge of criminal activity or breach of professional codes of practice.

I would be interested to know more about how the authorities and relevant agencies in Brighton responded to this case.

Dr Liz Davies

Reader in Child Protection

London Metropolitan University

l.davies@londonmet.ac.uk

Nurse struck off after being jailed for grooming girl (The Argus, 18 July 2014)

Brighton children’s hospital nurse jailed and struck off for having under-age sex (Brighton & Hove News, 21 July 2014)

Nurse at top children’s hospital jailed for three years for abusing 14-year-old girl he met on the internet (Daily Mail, 21 July 2014)

Graeme Gordon

More join hunt for lost boy (10.08.81)

By murunbuch

November 19, 2014

Missing Children / Murders

The Times, 10th August 1981

Last walk by vanished boy retraced to help search (04.08.81)

By murunbuch

November 19, 2014

Missing Children / Murders

The Times, 4th August 1981

Police intensify search for missing boy (11.08.81)

By murunbuch

November 19, 2014

Missing Children / Murders

1 Comment

The Guardian, 11th August 1981

Missing boy’s mother flies 4,000 miles to pray at a Hindu temple (20.09.81)

By murunbuch

November 19, 2014

Missing Children / Murders

2 Comments

Sunday Express, 20th September 1981

Transcript:
MISSING BOY’S MOTHER FLIES 4,000 MILES TO PRAY AT A HINDU TEMPLE (Sunday Express, 20th September 1981)

On Wednesday morning, 31-year-old Mrs Aruna Mehrotra will leave her home in England on a long journey of sadness and faith. She will fly more than 4,000 miles to New Delhi. Relatives and friends will meet her and comfort her, and then Mrs Mehrotra will prepare for a solemn ritual a few days later.
For next Sunday morning, at 4 o’clock, well before the sun rises, Mrs Mehrotra will put on a specially-made saffron-coloured sari and travel 20 miles by car north along a bumpy road to an ancient stone Hindu temple.
Inside the temple, she will light the wicks of candles which she will have prepared the night before, in containers of dried mud filled with a wax of clarified Indian buffalo milk.
Then she will kneel at an altar which has a gold statue of the mother goddess Durga, and she will pray to her gods for just one thing—the safe return of her son, Vishal.
It was on July 29 that eight-year-old Vishal vanished near his home in Holmbush Road, Putney, south-west London after returning from St. Paul’s where, with his father, he had watched the Royal procession for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
A massive police search which is still going on has revealed nothing, and for Vishal’s parents there has been only the torment and agony, the wondering and the worry of waiting.
Mrs Mehrotra’s trip has been carefully planned. Next Sunday is Vishal’s ninth birthday.
And the temple of Durga is the family temple—and the same one which Vishal visited in 1979 on his birthday, during a holiday to India.
To Hindus, the mother goddess Durga protects against all violence and it is to her that Mrs Mehrotra will be praying that nothing violent has happened to Vishal.
Despite fading chances that her son is safe, Mrs Mehrotra maintains a mother’s hope that Vishal is well and will return one day soon.
Last Tuesday morning, Mrs Mehrotra went to St James’ School in Queen’s Gate, London—just in case Vishal had turned up for the resumption of his classes after the school holidays.
It was a forlorn hope, unfulfilled.
But she said: “I am keeping his bed ready, waiting for him. His clothes, his schoolbooks and a few toys are just as he left them.
“This trip to the temple is a journey I feel I must make. I must pray to our gods, in our temple, for Vishal’s safe return.
“It should be done on our son’s birthday—and it is on that day I will visit the temple.”
The boy’s father, 36-year-old solicitor Mr Vishambar Mehrotra, said: “I am quite certain that Vishal did not run away.
“There was no reason for him to do that. He was happy at home.
“And he is very clever. If he did want to run away, he would have planned it carefully. He would have taken extra clothes and his important possessions.
“But there was nothing missing, not even his folder of letters and birthday cards which he treasured so much. He would not have left those behind.
“Sometimes we take out the folder and we look at the birthday cards he received last year. We feel so sad and we pray for one thing—that Vishal will be back with us soon.”
A huge police team is still operating full-time on the search and at the special investigation headquarters, Detective Chief Superintendent Donald Bremner said: “We are faced with these main possibilities:
“That Vishal has had a serious accident, that he has been murdered, that he has run away, that he has been abducted or that he has been kidnapped.”
It has also been learned that police are looking into three other, more bizarre possibilities.
It is emphasised that NO evidence has been found to support any of these possibilities—but it is known that all are being examined by senior detectives. The three questions on their mind are:
* Could Vishal be back in India? The police have caused inquiries to be made in India.
* Could Vishal have been abducted by an individual or a gang with racial prejudices? There have been isolated attacks in the area on Asians.
* Could there be a link between Vishal’s disappearance and that of Martin Allen, who was 15 when he vanished on Guy Fawkes day, 1979, probably near Gloucester Road Tube station, London?
Det Chief Inspector James Begg, engaged on the Mehrotra case, has closely studied the files on Martin Allen. He and fellow officers have had a series of meetings with Det Chief Inspector David Venness, in charge of the Allen case and his senior officers.
Police have received and believe reports that Martin was seen with a man, at Gloucester Road. And, true or not, six of the 50 “sightings” of Vishal Mehrotra say he was with a man.
But Mrs Mehrotra said: “We just do not know the truth. The worrying thing is that there has been no note, no message, no telephone call.
“If only somebody would tell us what has happened….”

Why the Allens remember the fifth of November (03.04.80)

By murunbuch

November 17, 2014

Missing Children / Murders

1 Comment

Daily Mirror, 3rd April 1980

WHY THE ALLENS REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
Hundreds of children, fed up with home or school, or torn by puppy love, run away. Most come home again within forty-eight hours. One who didn’t was Martin Allen a quiet boy who, like thousands of other kids, travelled on his own to and from school …and met danger on the way.
Just five months ago chauffeur Tom Allen and his family were just amazed at their good luck.
Their modernised cottage-style house in the smartest part of London was one of the perks of Tom’s new job as head driver to the Australian High Commissioner.
Their neighbours in Kensington, W. London, were a posh lot of people with titles and tiaras.
But today the Allens’ dreams have crumbled.
Martin, 15, the youngest of their four sons, disappeared on his way home from school last Guy Fawkes’ Day. He has not been seen since.
That morning he picked up his yellow sports bag and set off for school with a cheerful: “Cheerio, Mum. Hope you have a good day.”
They were the last words his mother heard him say.
If you could see the awful sadness in Eileen Allen’s face as she talks about her missing son, you’d never forget it.
You’d go home, look gratefully at your own children, and then thank God that what has happened to Eileen’s family hasn’t happened to yours.
In the terrible months since, she has lost a stone-and-a-half. In the first weeks she couldn’t eat for thinking of Martin lying somewhere, hurt and uncared for, perhaps without any food.
Now Eileen, 51, says: “We are trying to pick up and go on where we left off on November 5.
“It’s as though the world and time have been standing still. Although Christmas has gone, it seems we are still waiting for it.
“In the beginning, I couldn’t talk about Martin without crying. Now I’ve got used to it—until something happens like an incident today.
“I went into the back room to put away a sleeping bag someone had used. I opened the cupboard and there were Martin’s Christmas presents, still all wrapped up.
“It brought everything back, just when I thought I had come to some sort of terms with it.”
In the hunt for Martin, which still goes on, the police conducted London’s biggest ever house-to-house search.
A team of forty detectives questioned 40,000 residents in London’s bedsit land around Earl’s Court underground station where passengers saw a boy believed to be Martin on the afternoon he went missing.
A man was holding a lad by the scruff of the neck, saying: “Don’t try to run”.
Martin was a shy boy, young for his age. He wasn’t a stay-out teenager or an angry adolescent who might rebel by running away.
The police, like his parents, fear the worst—that he was abducted by a man with violent or sexual intentions.
Says Eileen: “Knowing Martin, that would be one of the worst things that could have happened. He was a sensitive, home-loving kid.
“Even if he comes back, what sort of state physically, let alone mentally, is he going to be in?”
“He’ll never be the same Martin who walked out of that door. He wouldn’t even go round to the corner shop on his own to buy a packet of sweets after dark. He’d get Kevin, his older brother, to go with him, or take his dog Lady.
It’s been a very traumatic experience for us, but at least we’ve had each other. He’s had nobody.
“If we hadn’t come to live here, it probably would never have happened.
“But we’ve been through all the ifs. We can’t go on like that and drive ourselves slowly mad. To keep our sanity we have to accept the fact that he has gone, and try to look ahead, not back.”
Except for the fingerprint powder, Martin’s bedroom is as he left it, with his pyjamas tucked neatly under his pillow.
Says Eileen: “I keep saying I must go up there to take off the sheets and clear it out. But how can I, until I really know?”
It took a television programme to bring forward the first witnesses. By then Martin had missing for five weeks.
“Where the public fell down was minding their own business,” says Eileen.
Had somebody asked ‘Are you all right, son?’ when they saw he was frightened, it would have been enough to make the man run away.
“People are so busy, so frightened of doing the wrong thing. But its not being nosey, it’s being careful.”
Warnings every child should heed
The mystery surrounding Martin Allen highlights the daily danger facing thousands of schoolchildren who travel to and from school on their own.
Inquiries stemming from the search for Martin have led to the arrest of four people suspected of molesting children. They have been charged with indecent assault and more serious offences against youngsters.
Det. Chief Insp. David Veness, who has been leading the hunt for Martin, says: “This case has been an eye-opener to the great dangers facing children who use the London Underground.
The Inspector warns:
– never get into a conversation with a stranger.
– always ask to see the identity card of anyone who says he is an official.