Sex ring at Cyril's school: He WASN'T a lone wolf. In our latest devastating extract from the book shaking Westminster, we reveal how Cyril Smith led a ring of abusers who launched night-time raids on a school for vulnerable boys

Knowl View was a residential school for children with learning difficulties

Was Cyril Smith's playground where lives of vulnerable men were scarred



It was closed by Rochdale Council in 1994 and bulldozers levelled it

Former social worker Martin Digan speaks about activities at the school



Honoured: Smith in his robes as Deputy Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University

Today Knowl View is the site of penthouse apartments, with juliet balconies looking out onto the Pennines. But before the developers moved in, this was Cyril Smith’s vile playground, where the lives of vulnerable young men were scarred and, in some cases, destroyed.

Cyril was at the official ceremony when the 50-bed residential school for children with learning difficulties was opened in 1969. It was closed by Rochdale Council in 1994 — and, when the bulldozers levelled it, every last trace of what had happened there was carefully erased.

But memories are not so easily obliterated, and one brave man in particular has fought to make sure that the horrors of Knowl View are not forgotten.

Martin Digan started there as a social worker in the late Seventies. He did his job without any concerns for years. It was only when he was promoted to head of care that he realised dreadful things were going on unchecked.

Smith, who was a governor, had his own set of keys and would saunter around eyeing up young boys. Frequently, he was joined by the chairman of the governors, a Conservative councillor named Harry Wild, who also had keys.

Digan found Wild, a former officer with the Territorial Army, particularly menacing. ‘He looked like a really unpleasant drill sergeant.

‘He was about 6ft 5in and was always standing behind Cyril on his left shoulder, as though he was his minder. He used to wear this Crombie coat that went down to his ankles, black polished boots and a tie. He had really cold eyes.’

The two of them would pace up and down the school for no reason, just looking at the boys. The way Digan saw it, they looked like they were cruising — and he became more and more uneasy about their presence at the school.

‘They would arrive and start walking through the units when the boys were showering,’ he said.

‘I could see it was wrong, so I complained four or five times. I said we needed notice when officials were coming because the boys couldn’t be in a state of undress.’

But Knowl View’s headmaster not only dismissed his complaint but threatened him with disciplinary action and the sack if he said anything about Smith again.

The pair’s unannounced visits carried on. Matters came to a head one night in 1994.

‘One of the boys came to me and said he’d just been sexually assaulted. He wasn’t even 11 years old. He was shaking. I sat with him and listened, and it was horrifying. I knew he was telling the truth.

‘I asked who had done this and he started to describe the Crombie and the boots. It was clearly Wild. It couldn’t have been anyone else.’

Consumed with anger, Digan called the police and said there had been a serious incident at the school. A patrol car’s blue lights were flashing outside in minutes. They searched the place but could find no evidence of a break-in.

How, Digan asked himself, had this happened? Wild and Smith had keys but they didn’t have the school’s alarm code. How had they managed to get in at night?

Over the next few days he combed the building looking for signs of entry. He paced up and down the hall trying every door until he came across one that was ajar.

It was the door to the headmaster’s office. The headmaster hardly ever slept on the property. Was this how Wild and Smith were gaining access at night?

Digan made his way into the empty office, flicked the light on and looked around. It was neat and orderly, with no sign of any disturbance.



Former social worker Martin Digan whose complaints about activities at the school were brushed off

Then, just as he was about to leave, he caught sight of files of papers spread out on the desk.

Almost without thinking, he began to read them — and saw the name of the boy who’d complained to him about abuse a few days earlier.

Heart thumping, he gathered up the papers and went to his own room. As he read through the files, he could not hold back his tears.

One of the documents was a 1991 report by Phil Shepherd, an HIV prevention officer at the local health authority, that had been presented to Rochdale Council’s director of education. It warned that boys aged eight to 16 at Knowl View were at risk of Aids.

In matter-of-fact language, the report described the extreme sexual abuse to which boys had been subjected. They were beaten and raped continually by men from as far away as Sheffield who had travelled to Rochdale to take part.

A shocked Digan knew every one of the boys involved. They were under his care.

'When I tried to expose them, the paedophiles threatened to abduct my own children'



Former social worker Martin Digan



‘It was my responsibility to look after these children,’ he says. ‘I can’t explain how I felt when I found out what was happening. I was sick.

‘Something inside me died that night. I was destroyed. These boys were sold to paedophile gangs. They had done nothing wrong. They were like lambs to the slaughter.’

He spent the rest of the night making numerous photocopies of the files, his hands shaking as he did so. Then he put the originals back on the headmaster’s desk and went home to tell his wife.

She told him he would have to do something about it: the public had to know what was going on. The council’s director of education, Diana Cavanagh, had already instructed Shepherd not to ‘undertake any independent action’, nor, given the sensitivity of the information, to circulate the report any further.

She wrote to thank him for his report and said that although there were ‘serious issues’ at Knowl View, ‘these are now being addressed through concerted professional action’.

Ian Davey, acting director of Rochdale social services, told Pam Hawton, chairwoman of the health authority, that the council and police would ‘take a concerted approach to the problem’.

But according to Digan, ‘the action that was taken was zero’.

He decided he would have to go public and face the consequences.

The file was eventually released by Digan, but Cyril Smith and Harry Wild were not named in it. The resulting bad publicity was enough to force the school to close — but not before Cyril Smith had done all he could to destroy Digan.

A journalist tipped Digan off that Cyril was calling for the police to raid Digan’s property to find files taken from Knowl View. ‘I’d distributed the material far and wide by then,’ says Digan, ‘and I had to move home.’

Worse was to follow. ‘I started to get phone calls threatening my children at school,’ he says.

The callers were paedophiles, and Digan is adamant that Cyril Smith was behind it all.

Politician Cyril Smith, who was at the official opening ceremony for the school in 1969

‘They’d say things like: “We know where your children go to school. We’re going to pick them up and take them on a ride they’ll never forget.”’



Digan spoke to anyone who might be able to help — but no one would listen. One weekend, he even took the files to his local Roman Catholic priest, Canon Mortimer Stanley, for advice on what to do next.

‘I told him there was terrible abuse going on at Knowl View. I thought he’d be horrified — but he didn’t want to know.’

In fact, the priest told Digan to leave and not repeat ‘any of this nonsense’ again. ‘He literally threw me out,’ he said.

It has now emerged that Stanley, who has denied any alleged offences, is being investigated by police for sexual abuse of children over a 20-year period.

Today, almost 20 years later, Digan is still trying to get people to listen — and his sense of loss is painfully clear. From priests to the police, everyone has let him down.

He is also still getting letters from solicitors for Rochdale Council’s insurers demanding the return of copies of the report. That report has lost none of its power to shock. It makes grim reading.

From the evidence, it’s hard not to conclude that paedophile gangs have been operating in Rochdale for many years.

Digan, like others, is of the view they were encouraged and protected by Cyril Smith.

But at least those files have now gone to the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester.

SURPRISE SURPRISE, HE WAS FRIENDS WITH SAVILE

Instant friendship: Jimmy Savile As a regular on the chat show circuit in the 1970s, Cyril Smith was well acquainted with all of the stars of the day.

It wasn’t long before he ran into someone he had more in common with than many would have guessed: Jimmy Savile. Just as Savile built his career around supposedly helping children, Cyril was doing the same.

They first met at a medieval banquet in Worsley, Greater Manchester, and immediately hit it off. ‘When I joined in the community singing,’ Smith recalled in his autobiography, ‘Jimmy blurted out: “You’ve got a nice voice there, Cyril. You must come on my programme.”’

Their friendship continued, and in 1973 Cyril appeared on Savile’s TV show Clunk Click, where children were bussed in to make up the audience.

He went onstage and treated millions to the incongruous sight of him singing. ‘There’s only one girl for me, she’s a lassie from Lancashire, just a lassie from Lancashire, she’s the lassie that I love dear,’ he crooned.

A few years later, Savile appeared with Cyril in a Liberal Party political broadcast giving his backing to the party.

Like Savile, Cyril was building a remarkable public image — a shield behind which his extra-curricular activities escaped any scrutiny. And, like Savile, he also abused his position to get access to young boys.

By now he’d founded a youth charity called Rochdale Childer (an old Lancashire word for children) to raise money for Christmas presents, holidays and treats for deprived youngsters. He’d set it up at the request of the Catholic Children’s Rescue Society in 1969 — a time when police were investigating him over abuse claims connected to the Cambridge House hostel.

The fact that he was totally unsuitable for the role didn’t seem to enter anyone’s head.

On the contrary, he was earning a reputation as a one-man charitable tour de force. ‘He was our inspiration,’ says Maureen Cooper, who runs the charity today. ‘He gave his life to this town.’

Certainly, there wasn’t a school or youth club in Rochdale that he didn’t manage to inveigle his way into.

Cyril was everywhere. His raucous belly laugh was a familiar sound on teatime telly. And his jolly smile frequently leapt out of newspapers. Cyril’s friends in the media grew by the year. His networks were incredible. People from all walks of life wanted to be associated with this smiling giant of Northern politics. Savile appeared with Cyril in a Liberal Party political broadcast giving his backing to the party Among his closest friends was the former executive director of the Football Association, David Davies. Previously the BBC’s political correspondent and a presenter on North West Tonight, Davies made Cyril godparent to one of his children.

Many journalists from that period have subsequently experienced a collective realisation that they were conned.

The BBC veteran Jim Hancock is one such journalist. ‘I should have got that story,’ he says of Cyril’s abuse of boys.

A broadcaster in the North-West with more than 30 years’ experience, he admits ‘the media has a weakness for colourful characters’ — and says journalists couldn’t help but notice that Cyril ‘was loved by his public’.

He also points out that at a time when there were few Liberal MPs around, Cyril was deemed vital to safeguard BBC impartiality.

‘We used him in a lot of stories,’ he says. ‘He had the same Savile chemistry. I mean, Savile was everywhere — on Top Of The Pops, with the Queen, working in Leeds Hospital. You couldn’t doubt his character.

‘Then there was Cyril — committed to charity. Rochdale Childer, man of the people. The idea that there is a different side to these people . . . you just can’t see it. When these people are so celebrated, so famous . . . to make that leap is quite difficult.’

The police have also announced that they are reopening investigations into historical allegations of sexual abuse there.



Let us hope that justice finally catches up with those who were responsible and are still alive.

Worryingly, Digan points out that some of the people working at Knowl View at the time, who knew what was happening, are still working with children.

Of others involved, in 1997 the former chairman of the governors, Harry Wild, was heavily criticised and accused by prison guards of assault following inappropriate advances to young male prisoners while on a visit to Buckley Hall Prison in Rochdale.

In 2000, the Manchester Evening News reported that Wild was being investigated for alleged abuse of boys at Knowl View.

Wild’s response was to describe the boys as ‘low grade, with problems’ and to accuse them of making ‘mischievous claims’.

Charges were never made, but the investigation came at a time when he was in line to become the next High Sheriff of Greater Manchester. On the recommendation of the police, he was not appointed.

Knowl View itself was closed down by the council. Smith failed in a bid for it to be run privately.

In the three years I’ve been Rochdale’s MP, I’ve dealt with many abuse cases. But the list of abused children at Knowl View provided by Digan will forever stay in my memory. A secret history of children who were denied a future.

Some joined the Army to try to blot out what they’d experienced. Some got involved in crime and drugs. Others became abusers themselves.

And for some, the pain was just too much.

Digan remembers one boy in particular: ‘He just couldn’t be on his own. It tormented him.’

He lived in one of the tower blocks known locally as the Seven Sisters flats, and he’d climb on to the roof, then stand on the edge looking down, tears pouring down his cheeks.

Digan was petrified that one night he would jump. He didn’t. He took his life through drugs instead. A massive overdose.

He wasn’t yet 20 years old.





'He hit my flesh like a man possessed': The boy handed into Cyril Smith's clutches by his parents to be disciplined

One of the oddest aspects of Cyril Smith’s sinister reign in Rochdale was how well-meaning parents came to connive in the abuse of their own children.



As whispers of his penchant for doling out corporal punishment spread across the town, he would offer his services to give boys ‘a bloody good hiding’ if they stepped out of line.



Parents on Rochdale estates would often use his name to try to frighten badly behaved sons.

‘He was a kind of bogeyman,’ recalls Stephen Moore, a Labour councillor in the Seventies. ‘Parents would say: “If you don’t start behaving, we’ll call for Cyril Smith.”

‘And sometimes they would. Cyril would make his way round, tell the parents he was happy to help, then go upstairs and spank boys till they screamed. He saw it as a kind of public service.’



One such victim was a 16-year-old scooter-riding Mod with a taste for amphetamines and all-night clubbing. He’d spent three months in a detention centre for possession, and relations with his parents were very strained.

Talking politics: Cyril Smith on the campaign trail

‘My dad would scream in my face about how I was causing my mum to worry. The tension was unbearable.



‘Then I came home one night from work and this man was sitting on the settee with my parents on either side of him. He was enormous. Acres of flesh packed into a pinstriped suit.



‘My dad said: “I want you to meet Cyril Smith. He’s the Mayor of Rochdale and is very important. We’ve told him about the problems we’re having and he’s going to have a little chat with you.”



‘My mum and dad left and Smith and I sat staring at each other. “I don’t like your attitude,” he snarled. “Things are going to have to change.”



‘Then he lunged at me, lifted me off my feet, and threw me over his knee. He pulled my trousers and pants down and hammered my flesh with his bare hands like a man possessed.

When he’d finished, he dropped me to the floor and stood above me while I lay with my face down trying to forget about the pain. I never made a noise. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt me.



‘My skin was on fire and I could feel the welts forming, but I pulled my trousers up, sat up and stared insolently back at him. “Is that it?” I said.

‘He was still panting but a nasty little smile formed on his face as he knelt next to me and pushed his face close to mine. “Your bad behaviour is going to stop,’ he hissed, “or I’ll kill you.” I thought he was a psycho.’



The teenager hoped he’d seen the last of Smith. He was wrong.



When he went back to his job at a local factory, his boss sidled up to his workbench and asked what he was doing at the weekend, adding: ‘I was thinking that maybe we could go camping together in the Lake District.’



Cyril Smith at Buckingham Palace in November 1988. Parents on estates in Rochdale would use his name to scare badly behaved children

When the lad said he’d rather not as camping wasn’t his thing, he suggested they get a caravan instead. The boy said no again.



Later that day, his boss called him in and fired him. It was clear this was to be his punishment for having turned down his advances. And worse was to come.



‘You won’t be out of a job,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve seen to that. There’s a friend of mine who runs a spring manufacturing company across town and takes on lads with criminal records. He helps them back on the straight and narrow.



‘I’ve called him and he said he can give you a job at his factory. His name’s Cyril Smith.’

On the boy’s first day there, Smith put his arm around him and said: ‘I’m going to look after you now.’ The boy shuddered.



‘And so began the strangest time I’ve ever known. All week I worked for Cyril, and at weekends he’d be round our house beating the living daylights out of me.



‘I sometimes wondered if it was all a bad dream. I worked for an enormous fat man who’d wink at me all day and tell me he was going to be my dad — then, when the weekend came round, he’d be knocking on our door itching to get my trousers off and start spanking my backside.



‘Cyril tried everything to intimidate me. He told me all the important people he knew. He boasted of his relationship with the chief constable. I wasn’t impressed.



‘I asked him once why he had such a fixation with smacking my backside. Did my parents know he was doing this? He backhanded me and told me I had an attitude problem.



‘After a few months, I think Cyril realised he wasn’t going to win this battle. He wasn’t going to batter me into submission.



He got his business partner, Geoff, to sack me. He didn’t have the guts to do it himself. He told my parents I was a lost cause and that there was no hope for me. It was the best day of my life. I got another job soon after and things started to look up.



‘I never told my parents what Cyril had done to me, though I suspect they’d known what was really going on. I was more than relieved to have escaped Cyril’s clutches — but I soon came into contact with boys who hadn’t.



‘Because I’d spent three months in a detention centre, I still had to report to a probation officer, so every few weeks I’d make my way over to their office on Drake Street in Rochdale.

‘That’s where I met other boys who told me that Cyril Smith had seriously sexually abused them. We’d all sit in the corridor waiting to be seen, and the conversation would quickly turn to Cyril.



' There were other boys I’d bump into in town who told me Cyril had abused them, too.'



One victim of Smith



‘As I listened to their stories, I started to realise I’d got off lightly. These were damaged kids. They had no confidence and came from broken homes. Some had been in care.

‘Most had been in the Cambridge House boys’ hostel that Cyril had opened. That’s where he’d abused them. Their stories sent shivers down my spine.



‘I asked one lad why he’d put up with it. He had nowhere else to go, he said. He couldn’t bear to sleep on the streets.



‘There were other boys I’d bump into in town who told me Cyril had abused them, too. I remember one lad who worked in the cinema as an usher. He had a hollow look in his eyes, as though his future had been ripped out of him. All he had left was a deep sense of loss.



‘I still wonder what happened to those lads.



‘Once I no longer had to meet the probation officer, that world began to recede and I moved on to different things. I worked hard, got married, and ended up going to work in Australia.



‘I returned to Rochdale many years later and no longer thought about Cyril. Then, one day in 1990, the police knocked on my door. They were investigating claims that Cyril Smith had abused young boys.

Smith in the Commons. One victim says the MP smacked him after his parents told him he was badly behaved

‘I had no idea how they’d got hold of me. Perhaps some of the lads who I met at the probation office had mentioned my name.



‘I told them what had happened in the 1960s and made a statement. Cyril was still the town’s MP, and I hoped it wasn’t too late for his past to catch up with him.



‘I never heard anything more from the police, and it wasn’t until his crimes were publicly exposed after his death in 2012 that I realised there had been a number of investigations into Cyril that had gone nowhere.



‘I thought back to what he’d said to me at the time. The threat that he would kill me; the talk of how close he was to the chief constable.



I’d laughed it off. But how would other less assured boys have reacted? They’d have been terrified. And that was his aim. Finding vulnerable young boys, striking fear into them and breaking them.



‘I tried to talk to Mum about it, before she got Alzheimer’s. She just shook her head and I could see the tears forming in her eyes. I put my arm round her and didn’t say any more.



‘She knew calling him in was a mistake, but I guess they were at their wits’ end. I didn’t blame them. How could they have known what a real monster he was?



‘But plenty of people did know what a real monster Cyril was. He wasn’t acting on his own. We used to laugh when we saw groups of men getting off the train and coming into Rochdale because we all knew what they were up to. The dirty mac brigade, we called them.



‘Cyril couldn’t have abused all these boys on his own. He had a team of people behind him. They were all in on it.



‘It took the police long enough to knock on my door. I hope there’s still time for Cyril’s cronies to get a knock on their door.’

