UK body to probe ‘police failure’ in child abuse claim against ex-PM
The UK police’s monitoring body says it will investigate whether the British law enforcement failed to probe an allegation of child sex abuse against former prime minister Edward Heath in the 1990s.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it had received an allegation "that a criminal prosecution was not pursued, when a person threatened to expose that Sir Edward Heath may have been involved in offenses concerning children."
Heath, a Conservative, was prime minister between 1970 and 1974 and had a home in Wiltshire county. He died in 2005, aged 89.
The IPCC is now set to investigate Wiltshire Police's handling of the allegation.
This is while the Wiltshire Police force has said it is trying to find "witnesses or victims who support the allegations of child sex abuse," and urged victims to come forward.
Now Dr. Jon Bird, operations manager of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), says these cases have come to the fore as victims have come out and spoken against such crimes over the past years.
A public inquiry in Britain is investigating whether police and other authorities covered up sexual abuse by powerful people over several decades.
New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard, who is leading the public inquiry, said last month that Britain had been stunned by revelations about child sexual abuse in the country, and warned that the true scale of the crime has long been underestimated.
A dam of official silence around child abuse in Britain began to break after the 2011 death of BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile, when dozens came forward to say he had abused them. Subsequent revelations have implicated other entertainers, as well as British priests and senior politicians.
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