A Very Private School by Charles Spencer

A Very Private School: A Memoir

Charles Spencer

William Collins, 2025, £10.99

There used to be two prestigious prep schools near Market Harborough. Nevill Holt closed in 1999, shortly after the police arrived to talk to the deputy head about allegations of sexual abuse and he fled the building and hanged himself in some nearby woods. A former member of staff was later jailed for ten years for 33 sexual offences against boys aged between eight and twelve.

The second school was Maidwell Hall, which closed earlier this year and is the subject of Charles Spencer’s book. He was a pupil there from 1972 to 1977, and reveals it to have been a nest of physical and sexual abuse. 

The headmaster was skilled at keeping parents and even governors away from the school, which he had to be because his regime was geared to providing him, each evening, with half a dozen boys to beat. Some of Spencer’s fellow pupils still bear the scars 50 years later.

Life was no better at Nevill Holt. In the school’s last years, its sporting teams had to travel up to 50 miles to find other schools prepared to play them. Visiting teams had noticed that the facilities for showering and changing at Nevill Holt were designed to maximise masters’ opportunities to ogle naked boys and declined to return.

Charles Spencer writes beautifully – this is no run-of-the-mill celebrity memoir – and what he brings out is the misery of being sent to board at the age of eight, even if the school is more benign than Maidwell Hall and Nevill Holt were. The child loses his parents, his home, his bedroom, his pets and his toys and is instead looked after by strangers those parents know little about. 

Psychologists liken the experience to bereavement and some children never get over it. Others learn to dissociate themselves from their feelings, building a false personality that will please the school authorities. If you are reminded of some of our recent political leaders, I recommend Richard Beard’s book Sad Little Men, which explores this idea further.

When A Very Private School came out, Maidwell Hall issued a statement saying that “almost every facet of school life has evolved significantly since the 1970s”. No doubt that’s true, but it still comes as a shock to find that a group of parents who opposed the closure of the school lodged a formal complaint about it with the Charity Commission. 

What kind of country has charities that exist to send children away from home at the age of eight? After reading Charles Spencer’s book, you will feel we ought to have ones that campaign against the practice instead.

This review appears in issue 432 of Liberator magazine.

The murder of Charles Walton at Lower Quinton in 1945

You can't beat the local by-election previews that Andrew Teale posts every week.

Yesterday there was an election in the Lib Dem held Quinton ward of Stratford-upon-Avon District Council. (Don't worry: we held it.) I wondered if Andrew would know about a notorious murder that took place there.

I needn't have worried. Andrew wrote in this week's preview:

The Quinton ward extends north-east from here to take in the village of Lower Quinton. This was the scene for the 1945 murder of Charles Walton, with local rumour having it that he had been ritually killed and that witchcraft was involved. 

Despite the involvement of the Metropolitan Police officer DS Robert Fabian of the Yard as chief investigating officer, no-one was ever prosecuted for Walton’s death and Warwickshire Constabulary class it as their oldest unsolved murder case.

My suspicion is that – as in many an Agatha Christie plot – what appeared to be an extraordinary killing was in fact an ordinary one with mundane financial motives. But, like poor Bella in the Wych Elm, this murder has gone down in West Midlands history.

For a short introduction of the case, you can try the relevant episode of Punt PI. But what I really recommend is the three-part investigation of it by Hypnogoria. I like its observation that it's common to come across, when researching your family history, to come across people who have left no mark on official records.

The case also inspired a new film called The Last Sacrifice. I've not seen it, but the trailer below plays up the idea that the murder of Charles Walton inspired the folk horror cinema that flourished two or three decades later.

I found the press cutting above in my folder of newspaper stories about Dennis O'Neill. The juxtaposition of the two stories is positively spooky, but that was the West Midlands in 1945.

Disturbing moment binman punches naked cyclist off bike during charity ride 'by mistake'

The Daily Star wins our Headline of the Day Award.

As the judges remark, it's come to something when a naked Englishman can't go for a bicycle ride without being punched by a mistaken binman.

Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this story.

The Joy of Six 1431

"Nine of the groups are being run from Sri Lanka, three have admins in Nigeria, and the admins of six other groups appear to be located in Mexico, the US, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Kosovo. The remaining eleven have hidden their locations, but conform to the same pattern of fake address – AI memes – gaming video creator, suggesting they are similarly moderated." Katherine Denkinson explains how foreign entrepreneurs are monetising the clicks of British racists.

Rebecca Hamer on the common thread that links abusers, from grooming gangs to Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.

"His speech on Monday was a sprawling grievance tour, hitting every GB news talking point: immigrants, net-zero, lefty lawyers; all responsible for our economic woes and declining living standards." Zoe Gruenwald deconstructs Nigel Farage's big speech.

"In July 1616, nine women from the small South Leicestershire village of Husbands Bosworth were hanged after being found guilty at the Leicester Assizes of bewitching the teenage son of the Lord of the Manor." Margaret Brecknell says the case of the so-called Witches of Husband Bosworth shines a spotlight on the atmosphere of fear and superstition sweeping the entire country during the reign of King James I.

Rob Goulding reports on disagreements over the restoration of the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire. This marvel of Victorian engineering lifts boats from the River Weaver to the Trent and Mersey Canal.

Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow show that Orson Welles notorious 1938 radio dramatisation of War of the Worlds did not cause hysteria across the US and ask why this legend persists.

The Joy of Six 1430

David Howarth knows how to make the BBC less afraid of Nigel Farage: "Proportional representation would free the BBC from fear, but more than that, since under PR many parties would enjoy a reasonable prospect of entering government and so of supplying the secretary of state for culture, the BBC would have better incentives to maintain impartiality among democratic parties."

"Calling Andrew entitled is beside the point. He was raised with no economic purpose and now he finds himself as a connector to whom no one wants to be connected. 'I have no idea who he will socialize with,' one Norfolk grandee told me. 'All his friends are Chinese spies.'" Tina Brown claims to have the inside story on how King Charles pulled the plug on Andrew.

AI is supercharging abuse against women journalists, but Megha Mohan argues that it doesn’t have to be that way.

"For a period beginning in the 1960s and ending around the turn of this century, the preferred form of the homicidally inclined was the drawn-out danse macabre of serial murder. This was especially true in America’s Pacific Northwest, where an astonishingly large number of serial killers, from Ted Bundy to Israel Keyes, from the Green River Killer to the Shoe Fetish Slayer, from the Werewolf Butcher of Spokane to the Beast of British Columbia, grew up or operated." James Lasdun on the serial killers of Seattle.

Stephen Prince introduces us to the 1970 book Filming the Owl Service (1970), which is "long out of print and rare as hens' teeth to find second hand, which is a shame as it is a fine companion piece to the series, full of rather lovely photographs, artefacts, anecdotes, background story, prop sheets and designs from the filming and the series itself".

Robert Hartley explores the Leicestershire connections of George Stephenson, the father of railways.

Neville Heath at the Tollard Royal Hotel, Bournemouth

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There was something about the immediate post-war period that made its most notorious murderers remain long in the public's memory. There was Christie at 10 Rillington Place, Haigh the acid-bath murderer and Neville Heath.

Heath had already murdered one woman in a London hotel when he arrived in Bournemouth. Lindsay Neal takes up the story:

A wanted suspect for the Margery Gardner killing, Heath fled London with the police on his heels and ended up in Bournemouth where, calling himself Brook after the World War I poet (but without the poet’s final ‘e’), he met ex-Wren Doreen Marshall, who was staying at the Norfolk Hotel on Richmond Hill as she recovered from ’flu. 

He invited her to afternoon tea that day, Wednesday 3 July [1946], at the Pavilion and met her again that evening for dinner at his hotel, after which they left together, saying he was going to walk her back to the Norfolk.

On the Friday, the manager of the Norfolk reported her missing to the police and contacted his counterpart at the Tollard Royal, who advised his guest Group Captain Brook – Heath – that he should contact the police, which he did by phone on the Saturday. 

He then walked into Bournemouth Police Station where, quite by chance, he met Doreen Marshall’s father and sister who had come to Bournemouth to find her and joked with them that he looked like the fugitive Heath. 

Under questioning later that evening, he confessed to being Heath and was taken to London before Doreen’s body was found the next day.

I wondered whether the Tollard Royal still stood, but not enough to go hunting for it. Then I saw this sign and realised that it still stands. Not only that, it is next to the Highcliffe, which was the conference hotel.

The building has been altered several times in its history, but I think this may be the part of the hotel shown in the photo from 1946.

This is what was the front of the hotel today, and you can learn all about the latest alterations to the building in the edition of Grand Designs embedded below.

Corby man who set up vigilante group to protect women and children admits violent assault on former partner

Really, you could have knocked me down with a feather. 

The Northamptonshire Chronicle reports:

A man who started a vigilante group to ‘protect women and children’ has admitted carrying out a shocking attack on his former partner.

Reece McCarron started his controversial patrol group ‘The Corby Guard’ just three weeks ago, claiming he and his pals were carrying out public protection duties, to widespread public condemnation. He has also been responsible for putting up some of the town’s lamp-post flags, regularly posting footage on his social media accounts.

But this weekend he carried out a shameful drunken assault on his former partner, a video of which has been shared by people across Corby.

There was more about the Corby Guard in the NN Journal earlier this month. 

GUEST POST The Tyranny of Numbers by David Boyle

Anselm Anon pays tribute to David Boyle, who we lost earlier this year, by revisiting one of his best books.

David Boyle’s death in June this year was mourned by many in the Liberal Democrats and beyond. These tributes give a good sense of a life well lived. I barely knew him personally, but greatly admired his writing, so was prompted to re-read The Tyranny of Numbers, published in 2000.  

There are two strands to the book. One is historical: it traces the impact of ‘statistical thinking’ in Britain from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. This isn’t mathematics as such, but the application of numbers to the organisation of human society. 

The crucial figure in this history is Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).  The founder of Utilitarianism devoted his considerable, albeit idiosyncratic, intellectual gifts to the project of re-ordering society on rational and benevolent lines.  

Boyle is acutely aware of the paradoxes of Bentham’s legacy. On the one hand, it informed and inspired fundamental developments in nineteenth-century society. These included practical improvements in public policy (for instance by his disciple Edwin Chadwick, the public health pioneer), and social research (such as Charles Booth’s classic studies on poverty in London), as well as the work of the Liberal writer and MP John Stuart Mill. 

Yet at the same time, the preoccupation with ‘rational’ counting fed into the “dull authoritarian socialism” of Beatrice and Sidney Webb and others. It fostered the attitude that qualitative data is real, and lived human experience is secondary.  As Boyle puts it, this empowers “people who muddle up the numbers with the truth.”  This is at the root of many of our ills.  

The book’s second strand examines the impact of ‘statistical thinking’ on a variety of political, economic, and environmental questions.  Boyle’s argument is clear but nuanced. He criticises an inappropriate over-reliance on numerical data – the tyranny of numbers.  Operation waiting times are prioritised rather than health, school league tables rather than education, crime statistics rather than neighbourliness.

And in every area, narrow short-term financial calculation carries more weight than real yet intangible human and environmental qualities (“the strange idea that once you have counted the money, you have counted everything”). 

But Boyle isn’t an obscurantist, or a touchy-feely romantic who wants to do away with boring numbers. He recognises their value as a tool to inform and improve peoples’ lives.  One example he gives is how, in the 1960s, gathering and publishing data on air pollution drove improvements in air quality in American cities. 

As he puts it:

You do have to count – the important thing is to realize that you can’t succeed in measuring the real value of anything.

Boyle correctly identifies three interconnected looming challenges: the environment, the digital economy, and what he calls the ‘counting crisis’, as public policy becomes warped by preoccupation with its own data, rather living human experience.   

Subsequent developments have intensified the trends that Boyle identifies. In an unwittingly prescient turn of phrase, he mentions the widespread desire to “take back some kind of control” in response to the tyranny of numbers.  It is depressing that so little progress has been made. 

Yet Boyle’s response remains sensible and thought-provoking.  One element is decentralisation, which surely needs no elaboration to readers of Liberal England. Another is to address “… a massive loss of faith in our own judgement, intuition and our trust in other people”. 

This seems more important than ever, especially in a digital environment awash with malicious nonsense. There isn’t a single way to do this, but that is rather the point.  It is something we can all try to integrate into our own lives and politics.

Having enjoyed Boyle’s earlier book on local currencies, Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash, I first read The Tyranny of Numbers in 2001. The book is not explicitly party political, but the critique of New Labour’s managerialism is everywhere. 

That was part of the appeal to me at the time, as a Liberal Democrat campaigner in complacent Labour local authorities. But the book’s historical perspective gives it much more staying power.

The Tyranny of Numbers is engagingly written, and animated by an insatiable curiosity. It is sensible, clear-sighted, and humane. Alongside David Boyle’s other writing, it is well worth continued attention.

 Anselm Anon has been a member of the Liberal Democrats since the 1990s.

The Joy of Six 1401

Natasha Lindstaedt on the new 'iron curtain' being built across Europe: "Every European nation bordering Russia and its ally Belarus is accelerating plans to construct hundreds of miles of fortified border to defend against possible Russian aggression. The reasons are clear. The post-cold war European security framework – which relied on strengthening international institutions and trade, Nato expansion and US military guarantees – is being eroded."

American liberals should speak out John Bolton's behalf, argues Noah Berlatsky.

"Much of what’s known as 'AI' has nothing to do with progress – it’s about lobbyists pushing shoddy digital replacements for human labour that increase billionaire's profits and make workers' lives worse." John Chadfield says AI is a total grift.

Polly Atkin considers The Salt Path and the dangers of publishers endorsing quackery: "Publishing is so attached to the idea of a narrative arc that peaks with healing that it simply cannot encompass the truth: if it were that simple, no one would be ill. If we could all walk or swim or wild ourselves better, one in five of us would not be disabled. After all, Thoreau, the godfather of walking literature in the US, still died of TB."

Annie Whitehead has been watching King & Conqueror: "Does it matter that they got the history so wrong? In this case, I think it does, because so much is wrong, and especially as it shows the women in such bad light (Emma irredeemably evil, Matilda a torturer). There were powerful women at the heart of this story and they’ve been done a disservice."

"In February 1748, customs officer William Galley and Daniel Chater, a witness travelling to Chichester to give evidence against the gang disappeared.  Due to the fear of reprisals, few people spoke out against the smugglers." Jenny Bettger uncovers the dark history of the Hawkhurst Gang in West Sussex.

The BBC series The Marksman (1987) is back on YouTube

Years ago I blogged about The Marksman, a BBC drama that became controversial after the Hungerford Massacre of 1987. Some sources even say it was never broadcast because of it, but I know it was because I remember watching it.

It was a revenge drama, with David Threlfall returning to Liverpool from Spain to uncover the killers of his young son.

The cast list was impressive: Threlfall, Richard Griffiths, James Ellis, Leslie Ash, Craig Charles. And the theme music was by Richard Thompson, aided by some poetry written and performed by Charles.

Yet when I wrote about it in 2011 I said there was not a scrap of it or of Thompson's music to be found on the net. Since then, the series has come and gone from YouTube a couple of times.

The reason for this post it to say that it's back on YouTube - on the excellent Classic British Telly account.

Play the video above and you'll see a short extract, but you can watch the whole of it, and of parts 2 and 3, on YouTube.

Rupert Matthews, Leicestershire's Tory PCC, joins Reform UK

I leave Leicestershire for five minutes and look what happens. Our Conservative police and crime commissioner Rupert Matthews has defected to Reform UK.

Matthews, a publisher of books on esoteric subjects, got high on his own supply at some point and became a lecturer with the International Metaphysical University - it sometimes styled him as "Professor" Rupert Matthews.

There used to be a video of him introducing his course "PAR 501 Understanding Our Paranormal Universe" on the IMU website. That's been taken down, but you can still view an extract from it online.

The Liberal Democrats greeted the news of Matthews changing parties with:

"Elected Conservatives are becoming more and more like UFOs themselves - they're rarely if ever seen, and most people don't believe in them."

Do you what we did there? Rupert Matthews once told an American website:

The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling. However, most of the evidence that suggests some sort of global threat is a lot less convincing.

But I suspect what will really worry Reform about him is this...

Police and Crime Commissioner Rupert Matthews has hailed the success of a state-of-the-art new solar farm at Police HQ which is helping the force reduce its carbon footprint and become greener. www.rupertmatthews.org.uk/news/new-sol...

[image or embed]

— Rupert Matthews (@rupertmatthews.bsky.social) 30 June 2025 at 12:29

The Joy of Six 1388

"Humiliation is not 'merely' symbolic. It is an immoral act that has serious, long-lasting consequences. The effect of it is the destruction of our status claims. Even the most desperate among us try to present themselves with a certain amount of dignity. Humiliation removes that. It also isolates us from other  people, makes us feel more alone, and leaves a deep and lasting anger." Toby Buckle argues that humiliation has moved to the center of the reactionary project under Donald Trump.

Nick Cohen on the right's abandonment of law and order: "Conservatives used to support the forces of law and order. Now they equivocate. They treat the police and courts as the coercive arm of the liberal elite – just as leftists once viewed them as the coercive arm of the capitalist class."

"Places where children commonly used to play, such as streets and local neighbourhoods, have been transformed into car-only spaces where traffic and parking take priority. Likewise, city spaces frequently 'design out' children by prohibiting skateboarding, ball games and other kinds of play." Michael Martin looks at ways of giving children the freedom to play all across cities, not just in playgrounds.

Will Tavlin explains the economics of Netflix: "For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats. "

" The last hostile invasion of mainland Britain took place in south-west Wales on 22 February 1797. The French revolutionary force, led by an Irish-American colonel, William Tate, were captured two days later. The initial plan had been a three-pronged attempt to liberate Ireland but various misadventures meant that the landing of a rump force in Pembrokeshire, planned as a distraction, was all there was to be – a disconsolate arrival on the wrong island." Gillian Darley visits Fishguard to see a locally produced tapestry that records this failed invasion.

Jamie Evans remembers the ghost photographs that frightened him to his core as a boy, but also imparted a lifelong love of horror.

Tortoise rescued after starting fire in south London flat

An inadvertent nomination from a reader sees the Independent win our Headline of the Day Award:

Pictures from the aftermath of the scene show crew members smiling and posing with the pets, with the flat understood to be only lightly damaged by the fire.

A spokesperson for London Fire Brigade said: “A mischievous tortoise and his canine friend were rescued last week from a fire on London Road in Mitcham.”

“The fire was caused by the naughty tortoise knocking over his heat lamp which fell onto the hay, a combustible material, in his aquarium.”

The Joy of Six 1377

"The government’s planned disability benefit cuts could affect the majority of current working-age claimants with ischaemic heart disease, inflammatory arthritis, hip and knee disorders and Crohn’s disease, according to official figures revealed to Big Issue." Chaminda Jayanetti analyses data on the likely impact of the cuts.

Ella Cockbain interviews a representative of SPACE (Stop & Prevent Adolescent Criminal Exploitation) about the authorities' inadequate response to recruitment of children into serious crime: "Nobody’s trying to look beyond that to see the child’s victimisation as the source of their criminality. We’re not asking, why has this child got drugs? Why is this child miles away from home? Why does the story begin where it suits the police – with the child’s criminal act – rather than showing the problem in its entirety?"

Hans Broekman took his school from the private to the public sector. Here he recommends a series of measures the government could take to encourage more schools to do the same.

"From the point, in February 2024, when directors began to tell authors that cash flow difficulties would result in postponed payment, Unbound continued to spend on everything but authors – including the Boundless Substack magazine, launched this January. And the company continued to solicit pledges and sell to readers right up to March 2025." The Bookseller prints a letter from more than 30 authors who published with Unbound.

Finding a tale of British landed gentry, slavery and sugar plantations, Paul Lashmar traces the source of the Drax family's wealth.

Sven Mikulec praises Peter Yates 1973 film The Friends of Eddie Coyle: "The large portion of this masterfully executed film’s appeal lies on the back of Robert Mitchum, one of the best American actors of all time, who never uses his screen time for any affectations or theatricality, only to deliver the distressing story fully immersed into the character he embodies."

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"In cases of adult rape, it takes the police an average of 344 days to decide whether to press charges (for all other crimes, it is 41 days). During this period, victims have no right to independent legal advice or representation unless they pay for it themselves. The court backlog of rape cases is at a record high. Court dates can be scheduled and then postponed with as little as 24 hours’ notice – I’ve heard of this happening to a victim more than twenty times." Lili Owen Rowlands volunteers with a rape crisis helpline.

Charles Wright looks back on Kemi Badenoch's two years as a member of the London Assembly: "Interestingly, she went on to compare the treatment of 'white and middle class' protestors with the tougher treatment of those arrested during the 2011 London riots, who she said were 'young, relatively working-class and poor, including a 'high proportion of ethnic minorities. 'Why is it that they can get away with criminal damage that young black people doing exactly the same thing get strict sentences for?'"

"Farage isn’t here to build anything. He’s here to brand himself. He wants viral clips, retweets, headlines. He wants you angry, not informed. He’s a master of the bait-and-switch - say something outrageous and emotionally charged, then let others waste time debunking it while he soaks up the spotlight." Owen Williams on what Nigel Farage wants from Wales.

David Baines, Labour MP for St Helens North, says it was well past time that a Rugby League player - Sir Billy Boston - was knighted.

Underground Culture 12 celberates the days when bands got it together in the country: "First and foremost on this list, Traffic began the getting-it-together-in-the-country trend by renting a remote cottage in the Berkshire village of Aston Tirrold in April 1967, just two months after the Band located to the Big Pink house near Woodstock."

"[Captain] Richard Todd ... was one of the first British officers to land on D-Day. Todd was part of the British airborne invasion, that took place June 5 through June 7. During Operation Overlord, Todd’s battalion were the reinforcements parachuted in after the gliders landed and captured Pegasus Bridge to prevent German forces crossing the bridge and attacking." Comet Over Hollywood surveys the actors who saw action on D-Day.

Responsible Child: When the facts come before the drama

The success of the Netflix series Adolescence, and my doubts as to how far it reflects reality, has put me in mind of the BBC television play Responsible Child from 2019. This showed how the legal system deals with a 12-year-boy who has helped his older brother murder their abusive stepfather.

Responsible Child was the first play directed by the BAFTA-winning documentary maker Nick Holt, who was interviewed at the time by Deadline:

Tell me how Responsible Child came about.

I was up in Scotland making The Murder Trial, probably for about 18 months in total, looking at various cases, and it was whilst I was up there that I saw a very young child, and I asked one of the lawyers, “Was that a witness?” She was incredibly young to be in a courtroom. And the sister of the accused, said, “No, actually that’s the accused.” 

I was quite taken aback by that. This child doesn’t look older than 10. And then I was told that actually, yes, there are trials for children of 10. And they’re put on trial as adults and they’re put on trial in front of juries, and they’re not part of the youth courts.

Then Holt came across the case of  Jerome and Joshua Ellis, who were 14 and 23 when they killed their stepfather. The case was reported because the press overturned an injunction that banned them from naming either brother to protect the younger's anonymity:

And that’s what led me to being able to go to a trial and see one of these. It was extraordinary to see, and then I became very close to a legal team involved in that case, and started understanding all about what it’s like to work on these cases, what it’s like to work with young accused.

And he later says:

I’m no stranger to sitting through murder trials. I’ve sat through a great many in my time. But there was just something extraordinary seeing the focus of the entire room on a small child. There was just something so potent about the image of a child who could barely see over the witness stand, and subjected to examination, cross-examination.

And of course, you wonder about children, in general, is how much do they understand about what’s going on. How much of the case they understand, how much do they understand of what they’re saying, the consequences of what they’re saying, what’s being really asked for in what they’re saying? It’s an incredibly stressful situation and so, yes, it was extraordinary to see it first hand.

Holt also says that he told his story through a drama rather than a documentary because that's the only way you can bring one of these trials to the screen,

Responsible Child was screened just before Christmas 2019. It was widely praised and nominated for a BAFTA.

Then came the International Emmys. The play won its category and, remarkably, its young lead Billy Barratt* won Best Actor for a performance that was filmed just after this 12th birthday. But even this was not enough to win Responsible Child a repeat.

* Trivia fans will be pleased to learn that Billy Barratt is the grandson of Shakin' Stevens (whose real name is Michael Barratt).

An official inquiry into 'child rape gangs' reported in October 2022 but the Tories showed no interest

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Elon Musk has demanded an inquiry into 'child rape gangs',  now his acolytes in Reform and the Conservative Party have followed suit.

This demand ignores the fact that one of the streams of the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse was into "Child sexual exploitation by organised networks" and covered just this ground.

The report from this stream was published in October 2022. You can read its executive summary on the IICSA webpage. It includes the following recommendations:

We recommend the strengthening of the response of the criminal justice system by the government amending the Sentencing Act 2020 to provide a mandatory aggravating factor in sentencing those convicted of offences relating to the sexual exploitation of children.

The government should publish an enhanced version of its Child Exploitation Disruption Toolkit as soon as possible. We recommend that the Department for Education and the Welsh Government should update guidance on child sexual exploitation. This should include the identification and response to child sexual exploitation perpetrated by networks or groups and improve the categorisation of risk and harm by local authorities and other institutions. The toolkit and guidance should specify that the core element of the definition of child sexual exploitation is that a child was controlled, coerced, manipulated or deceived into sexual activity.

We recommend that the Department for Education should, without delay, ban the placement in semi-independent and independent settings of children aged 16 and 17 who have experienced, or are at heightened risk of experiencing, sexual exploitation.

We recommend that police forces and local authorities in England and Wales must collect specific data – disaggregated by sex, ethnicity and disability – on all cases of known or suspected child sexual exploitation, including by networks.

But having set up the IICSA after pressure from all sides of the Commons, the Conservative government proceeded to ignore its conclusions. Notably, there was no progress with bringing a legal duty to report suspicions of child abuse.

And you will recall that Boris Johnson, a few months before becaming prime minister, described this inquiry as "£60m spaffed up the wall".

Josh Babarinde makes progress with his campaign for a separate domestic abuse offence

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The Guardian has slapped an "Exclusive" label on its report that Josh Babarinde has called for a specific defence of domestic violence to be introduced.

This is a bad case of overselling, given that he appeared on Good Morning on 10 December to talk about the idea.

But there are encouraging developments in the report. Josh says he has received support from both Labour and Conservative MPs, and its claims that:

Officials are examining whether to change the way domestic violence crimes are recorded after a campaign by an MP who says the lack of a specific offence allows abusers to be freed early from jail.

The quote from a Ministry of Justice spokesperson at the end is less definite than this:

"Domestic abuse comes in many forms, not just physical. Under the current system, domestic abusers already face longer sentences as it is considered an aggravating factor in sentencing for a wide range of offences. However, the independent review of sentencing, led by David Gauke, has been tasked with looking at how best to address crimes of violence against women and girls in future."

The other day I heard David Blunkett quoted as saying this government has "hit the ground reviewing," but let's hope something good comes of this one.

Josh spoked movingly to the Guardian about his own childhood, saying he recalls violence as creating a "really lonely" home life: 

"I would be upstairs in my room hearing an argument unfold, voices raised, shouts, screams, things smashed, and I would pull my covers over me and just sit crying. I didn’t know if my mum was OK."

Man 'who looks like Vladimir Putin' hunted by cops after flashing on path in UK

The Mirror wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges hope Grandpa in his bunker has a good alibi.

The Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness

Once again, Grok proves able to illustrate the darker aspects of the world of Lord Bonkers.

I commented on the inspiration for this unlovely establishment in a post on this blog - and note the comment with two further links.