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Leo Abse 'being investigated by police in connection with allegations of child abuse'
By Steffan Rhys
The late Welsh MP and solicitor Leo Abse is being investigated by police examining allegations of child abuse, according to reports. The Sunday Times says documents from South Wales Police reveal that allegations against the long-serving politician, who died in 2008 aged 91, are being examined by another force. The Sunday Times says it understands the investigation is centred on an alleged “politicians’ network” involving Abse’s close friend George Thomas, the former Labour Speaker of the House of Commons. Last year it emerged that Thomas, Viscount Tonypandy, who died in 1997, was being investigated for sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy in Cardiff in the late 1960s. Scotland Yard refused to confirm or deny whether it was involved in the Abse inquiry. The Sunday Times said it had also established that a Church of England review into historic sexual abuse has passed Abse’s name to detectives from Operation Fernbridge, a Metropolitan police inquiry into an alleged Westminster VIP paedophile network. The newspaper said Dominic Walker, the former Bishop of Monmouth, has told senior clerics that Abse was named by three alleged adult survivors of abuse whom he counselled when he was vicar of Brighton in the 1980s. It said Walker was questioned by Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham who is leading the Church of England review, after the discovery of a book from 1991 in which he is quoted as describing counselling sessions with adult survivors. “A number of survivors independently gave the name of a particular MP as being involved. I don’t believe there was any collusion in their stories,” Walker said. Walker told The Sunday Times that his quotes in the book might have been “selective” but confirmed that three adult survivors had told him Abse was involved. He added: “They never had a shred of evidence to support it.” Abse was MP for Pontypool from 1958 to 1983 and Torfaen from 1983 to 1987. He was a prominent early supporter of gay rights. He was also a well-known solicitor.
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