Dead Chester MP Named By Channel 4 News In Bryn Estyn Sex Scandal

Two developments have occurred in the ongoing revelations over the Bryn Estyn and other North Wales care homes sex abuse scandals. Locally we broke the initial developments via this story after the BBC Newsnight programme on Friday evening.

Home Secretary Theresa May has said there will be a new police inquiry into the abuse allegations in the 1970’s onwards. The head of the relatively new National Crime Agency will investigate ‘new’ allegations and also review how original complaints were handled. This inquiry is quite short, and is due to report by April.

A second investigation, headed by Mrs Justice Macur, will investigate the terms of the original Waterhouse abuse inquiry from 1996.

Channel 4 News named Sir Peter Morrison, who died in 1995, as someone seen several times at Bryn Estyn with boys getting into his car. The written report from Channel 4 can be read here. Morrison was MP for Chester 1974 to 1992, and was Parliamentary Private Secretary to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. There has been previous reports (such as this on the Daily Mail) recently but this is first with an ‘eyewitness’.

MP Tom Watson who has taken a lead on this issue, did refer to Peter Morrison in his blog, however said that the allegations he referred to were todo with someone else not Morrison however for ‘obvious reasons’ he didnt name them.

The Channel 4 report gave further details of Steve Messham saying he passed photographs of children being abused, including himself, to the police but they ‘failed to act’. (video report here).

Messham says he broke into a flat in Wrexham in 1979 and removed the photographs and handed them to the police. , Mr Messham alleges that they included images of the ‘prominent Conservative’ politician he accuses of abusing him.