Abuse Claims Met With Wall Of Silence
Thur 15th January 2015, Yellow Advertiser

ESSEX County Council has refused to answer further questions about alleged sexual abuse on its premises.

The YA reported last week that campaigners had accused the authority of a ‘cover-up’ after it refused to answer basic questions about pay-outs for historic abuse allegations.

The pay-outs – including £90,000 for two instances of alleged abuse in 1993 – were made public in December, on a list of 600 council compensation claims paid out in the preceding year.

The publicly available list included the date of the alleged abuse, the council department each claim was linked to, the payment date and the amount paid.

But the council – which is required by law to make all of its accounts public – has now refused to provide some of the same basic details for previous years.

Officials have rejected a Freedom of Information request to provide the same details for ‘alleged abuse’ payments between 2009 and 2013.

Civil servants said the information about its spending of taxpayers’ money was ‘personal data’ and claimed providing the answers could identify alleged victims.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance slammed the ‘inconsistent’ rulings.
Roger Hirst, the Tory politician in charge of the Freedom of Information department, declined to answer questions about his staff’s ‘inconsistent’ decisions.

He also declined to respond to criticism from child abuse victims’ advocates.

The council press office said Cllr Hirst would not answer questions until an investigation into a YA complain about the alleged ‘cover-up’ had concluded, which was expected to be later this week.

Andy Silvester, campaign manager for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said Cllr Hirst had serious questions to answer.

He said: “The council’s inconsistent approach is bound to raise questions. The sooner they are open about what occurred and the lessons learnt, the sooner we can move on from this episode.”

The Taxpayers’ Alliance also joined the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) last week in backing a YA campaign to uncover details of alleged historic abuse on council property.

Data released in December showed ten payments in the previous year for ‘alleged abuse’ in the 1970s and 1990s.

Despite charging taxpayers almost £100,000 for the compensation payments, the council refused to tell the public anything about the cases.

The YA asked for basic details, such as the age and gender of each claimant at the time of the alleged abuse, the nature of the alleged abuse, whether police were called and whether anybody had been convicted.

The council claimed answering the questions could identify victims.

Abuse survivor Peter Saunders, founder of NAPAC, said the basic details could not identify victims.

He said: “We are talking about public money here, so people have a right to know what they are paying for. This is not the same as asking for details of victims, who have been rightly compensated for a terrible ordeal, which you are not doing.

“The behaviour of Essex County Council and other councils explains how this crime perpetuates itself. We have to be open and transparent. If we don’t do that, kids in the future have no chance.”

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