Simon Danczuk Steps Back from Campaigning against Child Abuse

By Frances Perraudin
The Guardian
July 6, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/06/simon-danczuk-steps-back-campaigning-against-child-abuse

The Labour MP who helped expose the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith as a paedophile is to step back from campaigning against child sexual abuse to seek help for depression.

Simon Danczuk, who has been the MP for Rochdale since 2010, said victims’ accounts of their experiences of sexual abuse had left him experiencing flashbacks and unable to sleep.

“What I’ve experienced is nothing compared to what the victims themselves have experienced, so I feel a bit guilty that I get upset about some of this stuff,” Danczuk told BBC Radio 4’s the World at One on Monday.

“I would say I’ve been suffering from depression to the point where I’ve decided to seek help for that,” he said.

In 2014 Danczuk and his parliamentary aide Matthew Baker published Smile for the Camera: the Double Life of Cyril Smith, an expose of the abuse committed by Smith, Danczuk’s predecessor as MP for Rochdale. Danczuk has also been a key member of a campaign for the Home Office to take action on historical allegations of child sex abuse committed by figures associated with the British government.

The claims of an establishment cover-up of child sexual abuse by public figures prompted the home secretary to announce an inquiry with statutory powers to investigate whether “public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales”.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will be formally opened on Thursday, chaired by Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand judge.

Danczuk said his depression, which he had been living with for about a year, had caused him to get angry about “fairly mundane stuff”, drink too much alcohol and have occasional suicidal thoughts.

Danczuk announced last month that he was separating from his wife Karen Danczuk, a former Labour councillor. The MP said there was no doubt that his depression had taken its toll on his marriage.

The MP said a psychiatrist had advised him to step back from campaigning. “On one level it’s regrettable, because I know how important it is, but on another level I need to look after myself.” Danczuk said it upset him to think that victims might feel he’s let them down, but “what else can I do?”.

The BBC interview marked the latest twist in the Danzcuks’ increasingly messy – and ever more public – split, amid rumours Karen was preparing a damaging tell-all interview about their relationship, which began while the MP was still married to his first wife.

After confirming their break-up last week, Danczuk used Twitter to suggest his estranged wife was using their split to promote her personal trainer’s business, after she was photographed wearing a branded vest.

Friends of the couple have said for months that there were tensions in their relationship, partly caused by the stresses of maintaining a family life while commuting between Rochdale and Westminster, but also Karen’s habit of posting risque selfies on Twitter, which he feared made him a laughing stock within the Labour party.

Asked publicly, Danczuk would always defend Karen, saying she was just behaving like any other working-class woman, and that a man had no right to tell his wife what she could or couldn’t do.

But since the split Karen has said her husband grew jealous of her growing media profile, which rocketed last October following an appearance on the ITV show Loose Women when she was criticised by the presenters for presenting a poor role model for girls.

She went on to use her burgeoning fame to sell signed selfies of herself to fans for ?10 each on eBay and auctioned herself off on Valentine’s Day for charity. She claimed the winning bid was for ?10,300, but that her suitor had been unavailable for dinner on the night.

Before long she had signed with an agent, had stepped down as a town councillor in Rochdale and closed Danczuk’s Deli, the cafe she and the MP set up together, in order to concentrate on her media career. In one interview she claimed she had been abused as a child – an allegation which led to her brother being arrested on suspicion of rape.

Meanwhile Danczuk continued his work as a child abuse campaigner and was re-elected in May with a 12,442 majority – up from a precarious 889 in 2010.