‘Spectre of collusion’ raised by MI5 dossier on Cyril Smith child abuse claims

MI5 intelligence on allegations of paedophilia by the late politician Cyril Smith “raises a spectre of collusion” which could explain why he escaped justice, an inquiry has heard.

A dossier of information on the Liberal MP was held by the security services and has been disclosed to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse for examination.

Laura Hoyano, representing seven alleged victims of Smith, asked in her opening statement to the inquiry: “Why was MI5 involved at all?”

It came as the Crown Prosecution Service criticised “some elements” of a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to press sexual abuse charges against Smith in 1970.

Despite allegations and police investigations dogging the career of the 29-stone politician, he was never prosecuted.

The inquiry heard during the first day of evidence regarding child abuse in Rochdale, where Smith was a prominent councillor and later an MP, that journalists had been lied to regarding the collapsed 1970 investigation into Smith.

MI5 was told by Sir Thomas Hetherington, then the DPP, in 1979 that his office falsely told the press that they had no record of a police file of evidence against the politician.

In reality, prosecutors had been given a file in 1970 saying the allegations against Smith, made by eight boys associated with the Cambridge House hostel in Rochdale, “stand up”, but chose not to take him to trial.

Ms Hoyano asked the second day of hearings: “Was political pressure brought to bear upon the DPP from politicians and members of the Liberal Party from 1969 to 1970?”

She added: “Why would Sir Thomas Hetherington decide he should lie to journalists, stating that he had not submitted a prosecution file?

“Why would the DPP contact MI5 about this at all? Why was an apparent South African connection suspected?

“There is also a reference in the covering letter to another child sexual abuse investigation into Cyril Smith by the Metropolitan Police Service in the mid-1970s. Again, why would MI5 hold that information? Why was MI5 involved at all?

“We say this dossier from MI5 raises a spectre of collusion.”

In the MI5 documents shown to the hearing on Monday, the security service’s legal adviser wrote that he suspected Smith was embroiled in a plot orchestrated by South Africa.

He said: “There had been a scandal involving a South African diplomat some years ago in one of the newspapers … in which it had been suggested that the South Africans were trying to obtain compromising information about political figures.

“I thought there was an innuendo at the time that Cyril Smith was involved.

“The Metropolitan Police had investigated this incident.”

The inquiry is holding evidence hearings to examine how Smith was able to carry out his alleged offences at institutions across Rochdale, including Cambridge House hostel and the Knowl View residential school.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it had reviewed three decisions not to prosecute Smith while he was still alive, made in 1970, 1998 and 1999.

An examination of the 1970 decision, made by DPP Sir Norman Skelhorn, took into account the legal landscape of the time, which required any accusation made by a child to be corroborated.

It was alleged by eight boys that during the 1960s Smith had spanked their bare bottoms and carried out intrusive medical examinations despite not being qualified to do so.

Edward Brown, representing the CPS, told the hearing: “The CPS can only comment on the position as it was in law, many years before the CPS came into existence.

“However, we criticise some elements – some elements – of the legal ratio that lay behind the DPP’s decision, although recognising that the true state of the law as it was applied in the criminal courts, even then, was perhaps not straightforward and not closed to debate and legal argument.”

He added: “Had the DPP in 1970 considered the overall evidential picture carefully, including Smith’s arguably unsatisfactory claims of innocent association, and in light of the precise reasoning, as set down by the Court of Appeal, it is perhaps difficult to see how he would have come to any other conclusion but that there was, indeed, corroboration of the complainant’s account, that is, one supporting the other.”

Addressing allegations that the 1970 decision was influenced by political pressures, he said the CPS could not reach any conclusions about what informed the DPP at the time.

Of the later decisions, he said the conclusions of the lawyers “cannot, even in hindsight, be described as unreasonable”.

“The evidence reveals no suggestion that any CPS lawyer considering any allegation of abuse arising out of Cambridge House and/or Knowl View was improperly influenced at all in coming to the judgment he did.”

Earlier in the hearing, Ms Hoyano suggested that repeated failures by both the police and prosecutors to pursue claims against Smith allowed him to offend over decades.

She claimed that if an initial complaint to police in 1965 had been acted on effectively, it could have spared future victims from abuse at his hands.

Instead, Smith went on to become the area’s MP in 1970 and a knight in 1988.

Ms Hoyano said of his influence over public life in Rochdale: “How could Cyril Smith have come to dominate the council, the children’s committee of the council with responsibility for children in care and social workers, such that he could set up and run Cambridge House as his private fiefdom, free from any outside scrutiny and could treat the boys as his chattels for private, perverted amusement, controlling their lives like a puppet master?”

She also questioned why Rochdale Borough Council failed to act.

“Where was the local authority during this extended saga of childhood tragedy?” she said.

Rochdale council, which placed children in the care of Cambridge House and Knowl View School, apologised last month for its “unforgivable” response to the sexual abuse claims.

Cyril Smith appeared at ‘victim’s’ wedding years later, inquiry told

An alleged victim of Cyril Smith has described how he came face-to-face with the politician at his own wedding, years after being abused.

Giving evidence anonymously to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the man said he was subjected to an intrusive medical examination by Smith at Cambridge House hostel in Rochdale.

He had only arrived in the care of Cambridge House two days earlier, having fallen out with his foster family during the early 1960s.

One of the wardens of the establishment led the teenager to a “quiet room” to meet an “important gentleman”, the inquiry heard.

The witness said: “All I knew was I was going to meet a gentleman and I thought I was having a medical.

“All I know is what he did to me.

“He asked me where I came from and I explained to him where I came from, he then said, ‘I just want to check you to see whether you have got any nits or if you have been washing yourself properly’.

“So he said, ‘Take your pants off’, so I took my pants off, my underpants, and my T-shirt and stood there with my clothes off.

“He asked me to face the wall. I outstretched my arms and then he started running his hands through my hair and sort of doing that.

“He then started stroking me down the back of my head and along my arms and then he started coming down my body like that.”

Brian Altman QC responded: “You’re describing the side of your body.”

The witness continued: “It seems ages until he gets there.”

Then Smith allegedly touched the man’s genitals, the hearing was told.

Years passed, with the man not even discussing the ordeal with his bride-to-be.

But when their wedding day arrived, he recognised one of the wedding guests as the man who had abused him, the hearing was told.

Unbeknown to the man, Smith was a family friend of his fiancee.

Mr Altman asked: “Did that make you angry?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t say anything,” the witness replied.

The politician later helped the couple secure a council house in Rochdale, the inquiry was told.

In 1969 to 1970, the police launched an investigation into Smith over sexual abuse claims and the man agreed to give a statement about his experience.

Referring to the reaction of his in-laws, he said: “It didn’t go down too well, they couldn’t believe it because they were obviously supporters of Cyril Smith.”

As detectives continued to carry out inquiries into Smith, Smith allegedly paid the man a visit with an accomplice.

Smith was preparing to run for national office for the first time in 1970 as a candidate for the Liberal Party.

“He didn’t speak to me nicely … he was 6ft 4ins, he is big,” he told the hearing.

“The words that came were, ‘Has anybody been to see you, like the police?’.

“The person he was with, he was called Kevin, he said, ‘No, no, all the things that Cyril’s done, you should be careful what you say’, or something along those lines.

“Cyril then asked would I be prepared to rescind my statement?

“He says it is going to cause him a lot of problems and I said, ‘No, what has happened to me is the truth’.”

His allegations against Smith were never aired in court after the Director of Public Prosecutions took the decision not to press charges.

The national inquiry is conducting three weeks of evidence hearings examining decades of child abuse at Rochdale institutions.

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