"Find upsetting tonight, are these the most serious accusations ever levelled against members of the British establishment?" "I've never experienced pain like it." "I hope I never do again." "They had no fear at all of being caught." "The claim that politicians, military leaders and secret service chiefs got together to torture, rape and murder children." "I am a homosexual." "I'm not a murder." "I'm not a paedophile or pederast. 30-year-old rumours of a VIP paedophile-ring have been revived." "I recognised him instantly from the photograph who he was." "Ah, he was wearing only a frilly aprong and cap with a naked boy on his lap." "Powerful people got away with in the past, but has the pendulum someone too far?" "There may be a danger the police are now spending an undo you amount of time investigating cases that have all the hallmarks of being fantasy." "How the vulnerable say they have been persuaded to name names." "I believe it's time that the truth came out." "I feel guilty for the names of people that I've never even said." "If my name's been used, or" "I've been the thing, then I'm sorry about that." "And we ask, what is the truth about Britain's VIP paedophile-ring?" "For 30 years, the possibility of a paedophile-ring within Britain's establishment remained the stuff of rumour." "An elite group of men who used their power to abuse children." "It was said to have happened at two key locations." "One, on the doorstep of Parliament." "The exclusive apartment block where many MPs had a home, Dolphin Square." "The other, a down-at-heel b along the River, Elm Guest House." "The whispers are now the focus of ongoing police inquiries." "One man says three children were murdered." "It's been a secret for far too long." "It's not just me." "There are are others." "Whether they have the ability to come forward, I don't know." "I hope so." "His identity can't be revealed." "Known only as "Nick" he says he was abused for nine years." "At military bases, the Carlton Club, London townhouses and Dolphin Square." "It's one location that I was taken to as a child." "I was both physically and sexually abused by quite a number of different men." "Some were very powerful people, and some were politicians." "A Prime Minister, a Home Secretary, a Chief of the" "Defence Staff, a General, heads of the security services and MPs." "All accused of colluding in the most horrific sexual abuse and murder of children." "For almost a year, Panorama has been investigating what lies behind these allegations." "What's emerged are politicians using their influence to reach right into the justice system." "Some journalists treating unsubstantiated allegations as fact." "A police service that some say is now too willing to believe anything." "All of them trying to make amends for the terrible mistakes of the past." "Scotland Yard says the latest Sir" "Jimmy Savile was a predatory sex offender who carried out abuse over four decades." "It's three years since Jimmy Savile was exposed as a paedophile." "His celebrity had given him the power to abuse children." "His crimes hidden in plain sight." "Some of our most trusted institutions the police, the NHS and the BBC had failed in their duty of care." "Saville was a predatory sex offender." "He has perpetrated four decades of abuse." "Peter Spindler led the police inquiry into abuse by celebrities." "The Savile investigation was a watershed moment for the investigation of non-recent abuse." "I don't think anybody had anticipated the scale and nature of the allegations that were going to be made against him, against some of his colleagues and against other powerful and important people." "For decades some celebrities had got away with abusing children, but now the climate has changed." "Rolf" "Harris, Max Clifford and Stuart Hall among those taken to court and jailed." "Their victims, at last, believed." "There has been a move on the part of the authorities, and particularly the police now, to be far more receptive to these allegations, and to not do as many used to, which is to concentrate on looking at who is reporting the" "crime as opposed to the person who is being accused of the crime." "It was those attitudes which had stood in the way of victims getting justice." "Ian McFadyen was abused by teachers at his boarding school." "Basically, it stole my childhood." "It created a demon." "I was not the same person who I was before I was abused." "I learnt how to lie." "I was taught by teachers how to lie." "How to keep secrets." "It's pretty devastating stuff when, as a child, an adult seems to think they have the right to lay their hands on you for their own sexual gratification." "I've carried shadows and demons with me for over 30 years and, for 30 years, I never said anything." "When he did go to the police, it was two years before they took his allegations seriously." "The head teacher, who abused him, was finally jailed." "I have no joy sending old men to prison." "I don't." "But, do you know what, when you do what these people did to me and others, behind closed doors, there has to be ramifications for them." "People will hide behind their status and their power and use it to either exploit the vulnerable or to convince others that they are beyond the law, and we have got to make amends for that." "And, we've got to show the victims that that won't be tolerated ever again." "MPs as well as the police had a chance to uncover pasta bus." "Labour's Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, had already ex-spoked police failings over phone-hacking." "We found News Corporation carried out an extensive cover-up of its rampant law breaking." "Now, he was onto to something more serious." "I want to ensure the Michael Pleasted secure the evidence, re-examine it and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and" "Number Ten." "I think that was a turning point." "Now people were realising that the type of abuse that we were talking about, from the 60s and the 70s, wasn't just being per pee traited within the world of the media and celebrity, but it actually might have involved other" "high-profile prominent people and it might not have been investigated properly at the time." "Tom Watson'ses allegations of a cover-up were taken seriously." "Cyril Smith had escaped prosecution during his lifetime, protected by his status as a well-known politician." "Another paedophile, a well connected prepp school teacher, was jailed for 13 years after Tom Watson's call for action." "It was only when Tom Watson started making a noise about, it and putting pressure on the police, they then opened an inquiry and they tracked down everyone who had been at school with me." "They found a third had been sexually abused by this Master." "Dozens of witnesses, they finally prosecuted him In the wake of his claims of a paedophile-ring linked to Downing" "Street, Tom Watson received dozens of tip-offs about where the police should look." "He passed them onto the Met." "Something like 220 lines of inquiry and they were particularly focused in south-West London." "There was one name that kept coming up, a place long rumoured to have been at the heart of the VIP paedophile-ring" " Elm Guest House." "Well, this is it." "Just a normal house in a respectable area of south-West London, but when it was Elm Guest House, this was supposed to be one of the key locations in the VIP paedophile-ring." "There were two many allegations, that boys had been trafficked to the guest house for sex and that the clients had included politicians and other VIPs." "Our investigations into Elm Guest House started here, a local archive." "Newspapers reported that Elm Guest House had been run as a gay brothel." "We spoke to a man who worked there briefly in the 80s." "It's the first time he's spoken about it." "You worked initially there doing cleaning?" "Just cleaning, yeah." "Just cleaning around, bath rooms, bedrooms." "And, after that, it just turned." "Into something else?" "Into a brothel." "I just needed the money to survive." "He was put to work in a saua room on the top floor of the house." "What kind of sexual services were involved?" "It was oral and hand relief." "The guest house was raided by the police and shut down in June 1982." "The owners, Carole Kasir and her husband, Harry, were given suspended sentences for running a disorderly house and having obscene videos." "Elm Guest House had been advertised in a newsletter for the Conservative Group for Homosexual" "Equality." "There were a few reports at the time that MPs had been there, but nothing came of them." "Until a former social worker entered the story." "Hello, Chris, how are you?" "Not so bad, thanks." "Yourself His name is Chris Fay." "For years he's been trying to get the rumours about" "Elm Guest House taken seriously." "He says he met the owner, Carole Kasir, in 1989." "She was claiming that she'd been stitched up by the police." "She told us that the whole thing had been organised by MI5 and Special" "Branch." "It was to protect, what she called "people in high places" who visited her guest house." "He says Carole Kasir showed him a guest book and he copied down the names." "They were nicknames." "These are the names, the VIPs used when they were registering to stay at the Elm Guest" "House and, together with the nicknames that the victims had given them." "You've got Leon Brittan there?" "Yeah, his nickname was Roger." "With" "Carole Kasir's help, Chris Fay turned those nicknames into a list of well-known people." "That list, the Elm Guest House list, has become significant in the story of VIP abuse." "Leon Brittan is on it, so too are former MPs Cyril Smith and Harvey Proctor." "So Proctor booked in as Jensen, but he was known by the kids as Nutter." "Chris Fay says" "Carole Kasir showed him photographs." "What did you see?" "Well, she had a big cardboard box in there and in that cardboard box were lots of files, papers, VHS cassettes, all sorts of stuff, including about 200 pictures. 200 photographs, rather." "He says two of the photographs were of Leon Brittan, who went on to become Home Secretary." "I recognised him instantly from the photograph, who he was." "He was wearing only a frilly aprong and cap with a naked boy on his lap." "The second photo of" "Leon Brittan, he was semi-naked with a very young boy on his lap, who looked to me to be about eight years old." "The boy was naked." "When you saw stuff like that, it just made you angry because you understood why they wanted to cover this up and why they didn't want it coming out." "Chris Fay set about persuading foam believe his story, including the journalist, John Oakes." "Well, obviously as you would, I was very hopeful." "I mean, it's like being told about the promised land." "You want to get there as soon as possible." "You know let's see the photograph, Chris." "Where are they?" "Who has them?" "He said they'd been" "Carole's possession and following her, they couldn't be traced." "In 1990, Carole Kasir took her own life." "At her inquest, Chris Fay named the VIPs he said had abused boys at Elm Guest House." "It made the papers, although no names were published." "John Oakes kept pursuing the story but drew a blank." "I spent a lot of shoe leather and I rated myself as a reliable journalist." "If there had been anything solid there that I would certainly have found it." "I certainly tried hard enough." "But there was no gold in the pan." "For decades the allegations about" "Elm Guest House had died down." "Three years ago, Tom Watson, who reignited suggestions of a VIP paedophile ring was put in touch with Chris Fay." "I got a phone call." "Ewent to see Tom Watson and told him basically what I told you, what I know." "What was his reaction?" "He was appalled by it." "Soon after, the police turned up to talk to Chris Fay." "He told them that boys had been trafficked to Elm Guest House for abuse from a nearby children's home." "How many children or former children who'd been taken to Elm Guest House and abused did you speak to?" "22." "How much of them implicated VIPs?" "I would think most of them, probably 17, 18 of them" "VIPs, yeah. 32 years ago Mark was in care at the children's home." "Chris" "Fay told us he was one of the boys that had been trafficked to Elm" "Guest House." "What due tell Chris Fay?" "At the time when Chris Fay came to my house, I was not there." "I have never spoke ton him." "Were you ever take ton Elm Guest House?" "No." "How can you be sure?" "I don't recall it." "I don't recall ever going to anywhere in South West London of that sort." "Unless I've completely blank today from my memory, I have no recollection whatsoever." "The Met knew Chris Fay had been jailed over a shares fraud in 2011, but they listened to him and followed up his leads." "Monday morning, 9. 30, two policemen knocked on my door and said, "We're from the Met police, we'd like to talk to you about your experience in care 32 years ago." The children's home Grafton Close is" "now a block of flats." "The police traced man former residents." "They quickly discover today was not at Elm Guest House that the boys were sexually abused." "It was at the children's home by the home's manager and his friend." "What I experienced more of was grooming, which certainly took place and was taking place." "Another boy and I were being, seen as being his favourites." "We were both very small for our age, pretty boys." "The children's home manager died before he could be put on trial." "His friend, a Catholic priest was jailed for three years." "His conviction was nothing to do with Elm Guest House." "Mark is pleased there's been justice for the Grafton Close residents, but the legal process has been difficult." "When the police come into your house and ask you questions, they take your box of horrible memories and open them on the floor in front of you, and they can't be put back in." "The scaffolding that you've put around your life to keep you together has all been ripped down." "After the trial, Mark felt he was given little support." "If you're going to take somebody to that place of vulnerability, you need to wrap them in cotton wool." "If you don't support victims and don't help them through that emotional turmoil, then you are, by default, supporting the abuser." "The rumours about Elm Guest" "House continue." "The police now say they have a witness, a former male prostitute, who claims Cyril Smith was a guest." "The man we spoke to, who briefly worked there in the 1980s, doesn't recall any high profile visitors." "Do you think it's possible that any of them might have been MPs or VIPs?" "No." "What makes you say that?" "Because they're on TV and that." "You would have recognised them." "Do you think there could have been young children being abused there on a regular basis, as far as you were aware?" "No, never." "That never happened." "But there was evidence a boy who'd been living there had been abused." "He was interviewed by the police, after the raid that shut down the guest house." "A social worker, who sat with the child during the interview, has recently told detectives that he heard the boy mention an "uncle" "Leon" but the police officer failed to record it." "The officer insists it was never said." "During months of research, we found no evidence of a" "VIP pedestrian file ring using Elm Guest House. -- paedophile ring using Elm Guest House." "Neither have we found any other evidence that the photographs Chris Fay told us about ever existed." "Officially the police investigation continues, although Panorama understands that privately detectives are conceding that it's running out of steam." "Despite that lack of police progress, the story of a VIP paedophile ring was about to get much, much bigger." "Good evening, welcome to the BBC News at six." "Detectives are investigating allegation that's three young boys were murdered by a paedophile ring that included figures at the heart of the British establishment in the 1970s and 80s." "The claims have been made by an alleged victim known obl as Nick." "Nick described a childhood stolen by a group of men who rained and tortured him at smart London venues, including Dolphin Square." "He said he watched them murder three boys." "The story was broken by an investigative website called Exaro." "They'd been speaking to Nick for five months." "So Nick, just tell me a bit more about the nature of the politicians who sexually abused you and other boys at Dolphin Square." "Particularly nasty individuals." "One was probably a lot worse than the other." "One was a former Cabinet minister, and the other just an MP, but nasty." "He liked to inflict pain." "He liked to see us in pain." "Exaro was laurchled four years ago" " launched four years ago." "Its mission:" "To investigate issues ignored by the mainstream media." "It says it does reliable journalism which holds power to account." "Exaro's Ed toward in chief is " "Exaro's editor in chief is Mark watt." "Whilst we don't have the powers that the police have, we're trusted." "Exaro news website was supposedly going to break lots of stories about political corruption and all sorts of things and actually now, it is entirely about VIP paedophiles and nothing else." "In the months ahead, there's going to be a lot more, even more shocking than we have exposed already." "Exaro published its first story, based on Nick, in July last year." "In it, he said he'd been abused at sex parties by powerful men who rained and beat him. -- raped and beat him." "Nick's allegations of murder hadn't yet been published." "But the article caught the attention of the police." "The police contacted you, wanted to speak directly to myself." "What went through your mind in deciding what to do next?" "Overcoming the fear because of who the individuals are, deciding what I could and what I couldn't say, again, because of who they were." "Three months after the story was published, Nick agreed to meet detectives." "He'd spoken to police before." "His story would evolve over time, which is not unusual in abuse cases." "In 2012, he told Wiltshire Police hoed' been abused -- he'd been abused as a boy by his stepfather." "There was no claim VIPs had been involved." "His stepfather had died, so the police took it no further." "Then Panorama came across what we think was his first appearance on TV." "This time, he'd been called Stephen." "My father started it." "Started being very violent." "I don't really know how many months before others were involved." "It was a dock umentary about the Savile scandal." "He told the programme he'd been passed onto a paedophile ring that included Jimmy Savile." "Just like with his stepfather and later MPs, he said extreme violence was involved." "Did" "Savile abuse you directly?" "Yes." "Yeah." "He was just sadistic in what he wanted to do and what he wanted other people to do." "Yeah, just evil and enjoyed seeing plain inflicted and humiliation, I suppose." "Nick then wrote about his experiences online." "He said the group were made up of infloun shall people -- influential people who believed they could get away with anything." "Detectives are now appealing for other victims to come forward." "Here's our home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds." "Nick had also been talking to the BBC." "Help was a top item on the television news." "They had no fear at all of being caught." "It didn't even cross their mind." "Nick had a professional background." "His claims have convinced many." "I've had some communication with Nick." "I have no issue with believing him." "He sounds entirely credible to me." "Why would somebody make such, any wild allegations shall we say, about something so serious." "Because if it was discovered that it was nothing but fantasy, then the police would quite rightly, and the CPS, would quite rightly throw the book at such people." "The police decided to believe Nick too." "A month after hearing Nick's story the Met announced a triple murder inquiry called Operation Midland." "It came to a judgment that would define it from the start." "Nick has been interviewed over a long period of time by experienced detectives in the child abuse command, and he has also met an investigator from the murder command." "They and I believe what" "Nick is saying is credible and true." "So, yes, we do believe what Nick is saying." "And that belief would be repeated in subsequent interviews. ." "I believe I believe what Nick to be saying is credible and to be true." "It's way radical departure from the past when accounts from victims would be questioned." "Victims have to have the confidence to come forward and approach us knowing that they will be believed and their allegation, their report of abuse will be dealt with in the appropriate manner." "The police hoped the approach would encourage more witnesses to come forward." "As it had during the Operation Yewtree investigation into some celebrities." "Successful prosecutions in yew tree and many other investigations up and down the country have relied on completely unconnected victims coming forward, in significant numbers, and all saying the same thing about the perpetrator." "When you've got so many people saying the same thing and talking about the same way, this is what's convincing juries to convict some of these prominent, high-profile individuals." "In the Jimmy Savile investigation, hundreds of witnesses came forward very quickly." "Operation Midland has struggled to find any." "Even so, the homes of three suspects were searched:" "Leon Brittan, Lord Bramall, who was once head of the" "Army, and the former MP, Harvey Proctor." "I gave an interview on the" "BBC Today Programme." "I have nothing to add to this Kafkaesque fantasy." "All three names quickly became public, connected to allegations the" "Met had described as credible and true." "This was a completely inappropriate statement for a police officer to make at a press conference to the nation at large." "It's critical when investigating cases of this sort that the police are completely fair and rigorously fair." "While of course we all understand the difficulties for people who genuine play are victims of this sort of crime, the difficulties for people accused of this sort of crime are also stark - massive publicity, horrible allegations, careers ruined," "reputations trashed and a lingering sense, always in these cases, that there's no smoke without fire." "It's always hard to prove an allegation that goes back years." "For Operation Midland, vegging murder, there were nobodies no specific crime scenes." "But Nick had given some details about one of the murders, a hit-and-run, he said, in" "Kingston, south-West London." "This was the only murder that Nick claimed had happened in a public place." "It meant that it was possible to check whether there was any report or record of an incident reembling the one he'd described." "Nick said he and a friend were walking to school some time between May and July 1979." "He said his friend was deliberately run-down and killed by a car driven by one of the paedophile gang." "Afterwards, Nick says he was bundled into the car and driven off - a warning to him he mustn't make friends." "Nick told police he could only remember the boy's first name." "Panorama has attempted to trace every boy with that name who was at school with" "Nick." "We can't be 100% sure, but we think we've found them all." "None could be the victim of murder and none of the former pupils we spoke to remember any boys being run over and killed." "We found no reports of the accident in local newspapers." "Before Jimmy Savile any apparentlily serious holes in a witness' account might have brought an end to the whole investigation." "Since Savile, police have said they are prepared to give greater lay way to victims to get facts wrong about individual incidents while still being believed in the round." "Do survivors ever get it wrong?" "Do survivors mess things up?" "Do they get confused?" "Do they sometimes tell their truth that is not perhaps entirely 100% accurate?" "Well, of course that can happen because memory plays all sorts of tricks on you." "And certainly, as you get older, your memory fades and your memories can change, but the fundamental memory of whether whether or not something terrible happened to you isn't going to change." "Nine months had passed since Operation Midland was launched." "Harvey Proctor had been interviewed twice, for several hours." "He'd had enough." "Anyone of a delicate or nervous disposition should leave the room now." "The world was about to learn exactly what Nick had accused him of doing." "Mr Proctor then stripped the victim and tied him to a table." "He then produced a large kitchen knife and stabbed the child through the arm and other parts of the body over a period of 40 minutes." "Mr Proctor untide the victim and anally raped him on the table." "Mr Proctor then strangled the victim until the boy's body went limp." "A violent, sadistic murder." "On another occassion, at the same location, Mr Proctor sexually assaulted Nick before producing a pen-knife and threatening to cut Nick's genitals." "There were some familiar names and places." "I was asked if I knew Jimmy Savile." "I told them I did not." "Nick alleges, surprise, surprise, that Savile attended the sex parties." "I was asked if I visited Elm Guest House." "I'm sorry to have to disappoint the fantasists on the internet, but I did not visit Elm Guest House." "And there were some new names too." "Maurice Oldfield a former head of MI6." "Michael Hanley, a former" "Director General of MI5 and former Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath." "I was asked if I could recognise images of the pen-knife that was mentioned earlier it." "Was suggested that it was Edward Heath who persuaded me to castrate Nick with it." "It's so far fetched as to be unbelievable." "It is unbelievable because it is not true." "Harvey" "Proctor demanded the police shut down Operation Midland." "The Met says it's carrying on, but admits it wasn't helpful to call Nick's allegations "credible and true." "True.." These allegations really tarnish people's reputations." "And, I think, sometimes, just on occasions, that maybe everything that is being said is believed because police are frightened." "You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. ." "We've gone too far." "The pendulum has swung too far." "A strong investigator needs to make sure the evidence that is being received is credible and can be investigated thoroughly." "Pressure on the police was building." "And, Exaro was claiming to have another victim of abuse at Dolphin Square." "They called him, Darren." "I would be forced to attend parties where I would be abused by men." "He says his abuse happened ten years after" "Nick's, but other details were similar." "Without going into names, tell me a bit about who sexually abused you at Dolphin Square?" "There was a Constable net minister, specifically, who abused me at" "Dolphin Square." "The he would like boys to wear women's underwear, specifically knickers." "Next on 60 Minutes." "Exaro were heavily involved in a documentary for Australian television." "Darren was a key part of it." "You'd be basically told who to go and talk to and what to do with each person." "The details were lurid and, one again, focused on Leon" "Brittan." "One of the most powerful men in the land, Leon Brittan, should have been prosecuting paedophiles, but instead, according to Darren and other witnesses, he was one of them." "He likes boys to dress in women's underwear and then to be in a room alone and discover you in women's underwear and punish you." "A member of Margaret Thatcher's" "Cabinet?" "Yes." "Raping children?" "Yes." "You but is it fair to Darren to rely so heavily on him?" "His past has not been easy." "He was convicted in the 1990s of making bomb hoaxes and he's also falsely confessed to murder and rape." "Two years ago, he sent an email to a social worker saying," ""Leon Brittan never abused me or anyone I know", so why name the poor man?" "We think Exaro were aware of Darren's background." "We asked if they knew about the email?" "They didn't respond, but told us their stories are always based on evidence." "Darren's interview remains on their website." "We wrote to Channel 9 in Australia, they didn't respond." "I didn't meet Darren, but I'm on my way to see another man who's been talking to Exaro and says he suffered abuse over many years." "We're calling him David." "I became just nothing." "I became..." "Became abused." "I became just cheap." "Cheap." "Sex is cheap, like just slagging me off." "Just like selling me to the highest bidder." "I was more vulnerable then than I was today because I couldn't read properly or write." "David started making claims about VIP paedophile abuse in 1990." "He'd met Chris Fay at a support group and he says he was encouraged to name names." "I don't know how" "Chris got me into saying names." "It was done over a period of weeks, you know?" "It were like done as a joke." "Suggestions to start with." "That suggestion became reality." "David told me he'd described a distinctive birthmark on one of his abusers." "I described a birthmark and a first name and described the person and they said the surname and everything and says that can only be him." "Why should I doubt them?" "The man who ended up being named was Leon Brittan." "I believed it because I believed that, I don't know." "I just believed it." "I couldn't of..." "I couldn't say why I believed it." "I believed it at the time." "It was 25 years since David had had those conversations." "He'd been trying to put his past behind him." "I was doing OK, you know." "I weren't doing brilliant, but I was doing OK." "Then I was starting to build my life back with my family and everything and it took years and years and years to do that." "Then two years ago, according to David, Chris Fay got back in touch." "VIP abuse was in the news again." "He was phoning up every single day." "He was phoning me up virtually every day." "Phoning me up, like he's talking like he's your best fend." "Do everything through me." "Because you can trust me from 1990." "David says Chris Fay wanted him to meet journalists from Exaro." "They were interested in Dolphin Square, a place he'd first mentioned two decades ago." "The conversations we had with Chris Fay on the phone and everything like, stuff like - they wanted to know about Dolphin Square because you'd said it to us." "So it's got to be true and other people had said the same thing." "David says he's provided information for a number of Exaro articles." "They'd used all sorts of bits of stuff." "I'd said a lot of truths and everything." "When they looked at the truths I'd told them they matched and everything." "Obviously, there was stuff, odd little bits of stuff which I wasn't sure about." "Then David said something extraordinary." "He told me he'd called the police saying he was worried about Chris Fay putting words in his mouth." "The police bugged David's home." "It weren't just a bug, it were a camera." "It were a proper recording surveillance and everything and they brought a team down from London and there was..." "They filmed my house for about two months." "A long time." "Panorama understands the police did investigate Chris Fay for a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice over David's claims." "The Met says it won't comment." "David admits he finds it a struggle to recall details and I'd certainly found it difficult to get a clear and consistent picture from him." "In the past, he's been willing to tell people what they want to hear and it's possible that he may be doing that to us too." "Thanks Nick for joining us here at Exaro today." "Yet, we believe, it's David who Exaro used to corroborate their first report of abuse at Dolphin Square." "The the one based on Nick's story and which propelled the VIP paedophile-ring into the headlines." "I do never be 100% sure it were Dolphin Square, not really, no." "I can only be..." "I can only be sure about..." "I can only think I'm sure in my mind by people saying, yes, you're right." "It is Dolphin Square." "So really it came from other people, not from me, because I never properly from back in 1990, being honest." "I've never actually said" "Dolphin Square." "And what about the man David identified as one of his abusers, Leon Brittan?" "The surname came out of Chris Fay's mouth and I just went along with it." "I identified him with a photograph, but, there again, he's a well-known MP and I might have seen him on TV through the years and stuff and I might have got confused." "Chris Fay told us he never put words in David's mouth." "To have done so would not have stood up to scrutiny by police or journalists." "Exaro say they won't comment on confidential sources, but make extensive attempts to corroborate what they say." "Police interviewed David for 50-hours, but didn't pursue his case." "They didn't consider Darren's evidence to be significant either." "But a year ago, a new allegation was published, once again through Exaro." "The this time, a politician would ensure police did take it seriously." "My brain had seized up and I couldn't move." "He pointed me towards the bedroom and pushed me towards the back of the flat." "The year was alleged to be 1967." "The woman went by the name of Jane and "he" was Leon Brittan." "It was very dark there." "He just lifted my dress up." "I don't know." "But he got on top of me and he raped me." "Alongside Exaro, another familiar figure was taking on Jane's case, the MP Tom Watson, even though she wasn't one of his constituents." "Police investigated but there were problems from the start:" "She claimed she'd been raped in his basement flat." "Leon Brittan had a top-floor flat." "All the people Jane said could corroborate a key part of her story contradicted it." "Even if things had happened as Jane said, a rape prosecution was unlikely to have been successful." "Police thought she hadn't been clear enough on the night that she wasn't consenting to sex." "It is up to a senior investigating officer based on all the evidence and their experience of reviewing the evidence in front of them to decide whether or not to go and interview a perpetrator." "I would want to go and speak to the suspect." "They have a right to know, at the end of the day, you have to investigate that allegation." "But this time the police decided that" "Leon Brittan, who was terminally ill with can Sir, would not be inter-- cancer, would not be interviewed." "Tom Watson was outragened and wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, suspicious about why" "Brittan wasn't being interviewed." "He said, "I am driven to the unpalatable conclusion that the identity of the alleged perpetrator," "Leon Brittan, may in some way have influenced treatment of the case."" "For a politician to take a campaigning role on a justice issue is very common." "To combine that campaigning role with an attempt to influence investigations in particular case that's have no constituency link, I think, is far riskier form of behaviour." "Because the consequences for the people accused of the crime can be so serious." "The consequences can be serious for police too." "Whatever they do, it'll be wrong because politicians will be giving the police more pressure." "It needs someone at the stop to say stop, enough is enough." "Stay out of policing, let them get on with their job and stop putting pressure on cops." "After seeing Tom Watson's letter, Scotland Yard changed their mind and" "Leon Brittan was interviewed." "Norman Lamont is one of his oldest friends." "I do profoundly believe these matters must be investigated, but I don't think they should be reported or be assumed to be true until an irrefutable case has been made." "The Met says it is not unusual to review cases like this." "But the very fact of his questioning by police finally enabled the mainstream media to name Leon Brittan as a suspect in a sex abuse case." "His family, of course, saw him suffer, saw him being accused all the way right up to his death." "There were press all the time outside his house, while he was literally dying." "I think he put all his effort in trying to get better, but alas, he didn't get better." "But" "I'm sure it affected him." "Of course, it profoundly affected his family they were very hurt and very hangery about this. -- angry about this." "Tom Watson had got his way on the rape allegation, but his letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions didn't stop there." "He demanded that the whole file of child abuse allegations against Leon Brittan be re-opened; including those made by David, 25 years ago." "But these are allegations for which David says he knew poll Ises -- apologises." "I believe it's time that the truth came out." "I believe that it's time that maybe the police could stop putting their efforts into just things that probably aren't even true, you know, in some things because it's made up, just by a few people, you know, for whatever" "motives." "Or whatever games they've got out of it." "I feel guilty for names of people that I've never even said." "If my name's been used or I've been the thing, then I'm sorry about that." "Leon Brittan died in January this year." "On Twitter a former colleague John Gummer described the news as very sad." "Tom Watson responded with one word: "Hmmm... "" "Tom Watson has told Panorama that information he's given to the police has led to three successful prosecutions." "Some victims of child abuse acknowledge MPs' good intentions but also wonder if there's more to it." "I see a lot of politicians stepping forward for these massive exclusives, where it's all about the establishment." "Do I think that they're inherently bad or dishonest people?" "No, I don't." "Do I think that some people have used us as a step politically upwards?" "Yes," "I do." "Since Savile, there's no doubt that things have changed." "Victims of abuse are now being properly listened to." "The last Government have set up the UK's biggest ever public inquiry into this subject area." "I think they have recognised that there is a very serious issue here that we need to get to grips with." "The thousands of people that have come forward already and will come forward in the future cannot all be making it up." "What if some of them are making it up?" "How do we look after the rights of the accused?" "We have to be very careful that the increasing respect that we've accorded to victims doesn't bring in its wake a decreasing respect for the rights of accused people." "That's one of the risks." "I think we've been seeing that." "If the most high-profile police investigation of all, Operation" "Midland, were to conclude it's not true that men in powerful positions tortured, abused and murdered, what then?" "What we've got at the moment is a reaction to the failure to investigate people like Jimmy" "Savile." "I fear what we may get is a reversion to that saying, it's all been a waste of time, enormous sums of money have been spent on this." "We will scale it all down and pursue other things." "That means some genuine victims probably will go uninvestigated and not get any sort of justice." "There's no more highly charged question in this country than how the police, politicians and the press have dealt with child abuse." "Institution that's now reise they made terrible mistakes." "Are they in danger of using victims in the rush to make amends?" "I think that everybody involved in this process has to be responsible for their actions." "You know, this is not for public show." "We're not a commodity, you know?" "Survivors are not a commodity for people's careers, people's bank accounts, whether it be politicians, whether it be media, whether it be the police." "We're not a PR stunt for people." "That's what really needs to be made clear." "The truth about the" "VIP paedophile ring may take its time to emerge." "But for both victims of abuse and those who are accused, how we get to the truth has become nearly as important as the truth itself." "For details of organisations which offer advice and support go online to bbc.co.uk/actionline."