Today the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse published a report many people have waited decades to see.

As reported earlier today, the inquiry's investigation into four decades of abuse in Rochdale , including by the late MP Cyril Smith and on the streets of the town, issues a damning verdict on former council leader Richard Farnell, finding that he lied under oath.

But the wider inquiry is about the victims, what they went through between the 1960s and mid-1990s, and why the abuse was not stopped or prevented.

Here we run through some of the report’s key findings, including the abuse taking place right outside the window of the town hall’s social services department.

Cyril Smith and Cambridge House

The late Liberal MP Cyril Smith was not the entire focus of the inquiry, but he was the ‘starting point’.

IICSA outlines his considerable power within the town - even while still a councillor in the 1960s - and his close involvement with the council’s decisions over where children would be placed in care, more so than would appear to be ‘usual’. Over the course of his political career he was governor of up to 30 different schools in the town.

In particular the inquiry focuses on his activities at the Cambridge House boy’s hostel in Rochdale, set up under by the Rochdale Hostel for Boys Association - of which he was honorary secretary - in 1962.

(Image: PA)

It heard the testimonies of several men who described assaults and molestations carried out under the pretext of medical examinations during the three years it was open, some of which were later reported to the police.

One victim said he believed the couple who ran the hostel had it under ‘instruction’ that any time any boy felt ill, he would be called in to examine them.

When questioned about the allegations in 1970, Smith said that he had been acting ‘in loco parentis’ to the boys there.

“But we found it inexplicable that he thought his role permitted ‘medical examinations’ when he had no medical qualifications,” finds the report.

“He had considerable control over which boys were admitted to the hostel and, in general, showed a strong, perhaps unduly detailed, interest in children in care as his political career developed.

“This interest appeared to go unchallenged by the council.”

It finds he tried to use his power in the town to exert undue influence, including by trying to keep victims quiet - but that the police were not leant on and, in fact, were not well-disposed to Smith at any rate.

Neither does it find evidence of a cover-up by the Director of Public Prosecutions, who in 1970 recommended that he not be charged, or by the committee in charge of awarding knighthoods under the Thatcher government in 1988.

However it is still critical of those discussions, finding: “While there was never any expression of concern for boys who had made allegations against Smith, there was considerable discussion about whether it would be fair to Smith to refuse him a knighthood, and worries about the potential reputational risk to the honours system.

“There was little further investigation into the allegations against Smith by the political honours scrutiny committee, demonstrating a considerable deference to power and an unwillingness to consider that someone in a position of public prominence might be capable of perpetrating sexual abuse.”

The Smith Street toilets

The report identifies a particularly stark fact about the child exploitation taking place right under the nose of Rochdale council .

By the late 1980s the Smith Street toilets, slap bang across the road from the town hall’s social services department and visible from its window - pictured below - had become a well-known place for grown men ‘from all over the north west’, as far away as Blackpool, to seek out sex with young boys, including youngsters from the council’s own Knowl View school.

The report describes how police recorded that '14 children from various children’s homes had been organised into a ring' and were ‘extracting money for sexual favours’, organised by an ‘older’ boy - of just 13.

Another child of just 11 is described asking a man for 50p for sexual activity.

All the activity was taking place directly opposite the department charged with protecting them.

(Image: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse)

“Sexual exploitation of children from (Knowl View) school at Smith Street public toilets was known about by the authorities from at least 1989,” finds the report.

“Indeed, some social services staff could see the toilets from their offices, recognised some of the boys as children in care and were deeply suspicious of what was going on, although there was no apparent follow-up.”

Records of individual children convey a ‘total lack of urgency’ on the part of the authorities to address the problem, however.

“One boy’s file recorded that he had contracted sexually transmitted hepatitis through ‘rent boy’ activities,” says the report.

“We concluded that no-one in authority viewed any of this as an urgent child protection issue. “Rather, boys as young as 11 were not seen as victims, but as authors of their own abuse.”

Police ‘did not turn a blind eye’ to this abuse but were unable to get enough evidence to prosecute, it says.

However there was ‘no satisfactory answer’ as to why they did not charge the men involved, despite knowing the names of perpetrators and having spoken to some of the victims.

Knowl View

Not only was the now-notorious Knowl View school - which was run by the council between 1969 and 1996 - rife with abuse, but even its fabric was not ‘homely, safe, secure, caring or therapeutic’, finds the report, which adds that it also ‘failed in its basic function’ to keep children safe.

Despite widespread abuse within the school by pupils and paedophiles, including known sex offender Rodney Hilton, staff did little or nothing about it, it finds.

In 1990 Hilton managed to get back inside the school - six years after first abusing children there, but staff still did not act.

Even while out on licence a year later he continued to be a ‘malign presence’ there, it finds, yet still ‘little’ was done.

Staff were ‘at best complacent but arguably complicit in the abuse they knew to be taking place and they must take their share of the blame for what was allowed to occur’, says the report.

Meanwhile the council’s handling of appalling abuse at the school - a residential institution for vulnerable youngsters with learning and behavioural difficulties - draws scathing criticism from the inquiry.

As well as slamming the then-leader Richard Farnell for having ‘lied’ to it over what he knew , the report also finds two separate directors of social services seriously wanting.

(Image: Joel Goodman)

It is ‘incredulous’ that Ian Davey, acting director of social services in the late 1980s, did not choose to pursue the child protection issues at the school through formal procedures, including pupils being abused at the Smith Street toilets.

“It was his decision alone; it was inexplicable, professionally indefensible and extremely poor judgment on the part of the most senior social work officer in the council’s employment,” it concludes.

Even when Diana Cavanagh took over his role, there were still major flaws in her handling of the allegations, it finds.

While she disagreed with Davey - by concluding that action did need to be taken - and commissioned an independent review in 1992, before also writing her own, the resulting reports were factually inaccurate and ‘flawed’.

There was ‘no urgency’ in resolving the allegations either, it finds, adding: “Matters were allowed to drift.

“All this occurred on Mrs Cavanagh’s watch, made worse by a feeble board of governors who seemed unable to fulfil their governance responsibilities.

“Regardless of the board of governors, Rochdale council was the provider of the facility and its external manager.”

By 1992, the matter was still drifting, it finds, including under the leadership of Liberal Democrat Paul Rowen, who took over from Coun Farnell in May of that year.

“Mr Rowen bore considerable responsibility for the school as council leader from 1992 to 1996,” it concludes.

“As with Richard Farnell, he was prepared to blame others without acknowledging his own failures of leadership.

“At best, he was insufficiently inquisitive about Knowl View school, despite having knowledge of the serious problems that persisted at the school; at worst, as council leader, he turned a blind eye to these problems and chose to give them low priority.”

It does not make a judgement on whether the former MPs Jim Dobbin and Liz Lynne failed to act on this issue once allegations were raised by the school’s former head of care, Martin Digan, due to conflicting testimonies by those involved.

However it does find that Mr Digan - who has campaigned on the scandal at Knowl View for more than 25 years - did pass on his concerns to the MPs.

Police and prosecutors

The report finds no evidence of any cover-up by any institution, including the police.

In particular the Rochdale police officers who investigated the initial claims about Cyril Smith at Cambridge House hostel in 1970 did a ‘comprehensive’ job and were not swayed by his status, it finds.

All the evidence suggests Lancashire police - under which Rochdale fell at the time - were very keen to prosecute, it notes, to the point where they had even drawn up a timetable for the process.

But their 80-page dossier on Smith was knocked back by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the predecessor to the Crown Prosecution Service, in just three days, it finds.

The inquiry is ‘troubled by the cursory nature of this analysis’, as well as the DPP’s denial to the local paper Rochdale Alternative Press nine years later that a file had ever been passed to them. That may well have helped fuel conspiracy theories ever since, it believes.

However it again concludes that there was no evidence of a cover-up and makes no judgement on whether the DPP was legally correct not to pursue a prosecution.

In the early 1990s it finds the police did investigate the Smith Street abuse, although it is unclear why nobody was charged due to a lack of records. Had a better report been commissioned by the council at the time, the police may have more easily been able to act, it adds.

Later, in the 1990s, allegations of abuse surfaced again and were looked at under Greater Manchester Police ’s Operation Cleopatra.

The inquiry does not direct criticisms at GMP but does find the Crown Prosecution Service wanting.

“A valuable opportunity was lost in 1988 and 1999, not only to charge and to prosecute Smith during his lifetime but also for the complainants to seek justice,” it says.

Nevertheless it was the CPS’s advice, not a ‘cover up’, that caused that failure, it finds.

The victims

Ultimately the inquiry is fundamentally about the many victims who were abused in Rochdale between the 1960s and the 1990s, some of whom reported their suffering but were ignored.

Some of them ‘may have been very young indeed’, finds the report, which says that not only were they abused in residential care homes such as Cambridge House and Knowl View themselves, but also ‘targeted on the streets of Rochdale’, which it says was a ‘compelling’ reason to investigate abuse in the town.

Many came forward and gave evidence to the inquiry under anonymity.

The report describes the backgrounds of the teenagers and young men who were offered places at Cambridge House in the mid-1960s, often in unhappy foster placements and wanting an escape, or in one case, having moved down from Glasgow to work in a factory in the town.

One victim describes how Smith simply turned up one day at his home and offered him a place at the hostel - and says he was initially ‘happy’ there, but that things later took a darker turn.

Others experienced abuse straight away.

(Image: Sean Hansford)

One boy, who was 16 at the time, was told on his second day to have a bath and go to the ‘quiet room’, where Cyril took off his clothes on the pretext of a ‘nit’ check and molested him.

He ran away the next day.

“But the police were called and someone from Cambridge House came to pick him up,” says the report.

“When he was brought back to Cambridge House he was again taken to see Cyril Smith, who shouted at him and asked him to take his clothes off onces more.”

Smith would later pressure him to withdraw his police allegation, which he refused to do, but he was still never prosecuted before his death in 2010.

The children at Knowl View were vulnerable in a whole range of additional ways, some having autism, others with learning disabilities and mental health problems.

At least two children taken into care at the school in 1989 - both aged 11 - were already known to be engaging in sexual activity at the Smith Street toilets, one of them walking up to a man and asking for 50p in return.

Yet while at Knowl View, matters only got worse.

“Not only did his exploitation continue after [he] was placed at Knowl View, he was also being exploited out of the area,” says the report, describing how he had sex with a man at a house in Salford for £5 six months later.

“We conclude that no individual, not any institution with responsibility for them, took decisive action to address what was happening to these exploited children,” it concludes.

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