Sunday Herald linked Leon Brittan to child sex abuse in 2013, by Judith Duffy, Herald Scotland (July 26, 2015)

FORMER Conservative Home Secretary Leon Brittan is the latest and one of the most high profile figures to be linked to historic child abuse allegations.

The Sunday Herald was the first to report on the former Thatcher minister's connection. We reported in December 2013 that Brittan was being investigated by detectives leading Operation Fernbridge, but his name could not be revealed at the time for legal reasons.

Now, however, he has been identified in previously secret government sex abuse files along with Sir Peter Morrison, one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest aides, former diplomat Sir Peter Hayman and former minister Sir William van Straubenzee. All have since died and the contents of the documents have not been revealed.

Operation Fernbridge, run by the Metropolitan Police, examined claims of abuse in the early 1980s at Grafton Close Children’s Home and at Elm Street Guest House in London. Earlier this year Catholic priest Father Anthony McSweeney, was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy at the children's home and jailed for three years.

As a result of Fernbridge, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is also investigating claims the Met Police covered up child sex abuse because MPs and police officers were involved.

Operation Fernbridge was taken over by Operation Athabasca, which is examining allegations of a paedophile network centred on Elm Street Guest House in the early 1970s and 80s.

The Met Police also has two other investigations ongoing – Operation Midland, which is examining claims that boys were abused and murdered by a group of powerful men including politicians, military officials and law enforcement agencies in the 1970s and 1980s. It is focused on the Dolphin Square apartment complex in London.

The force also has Operation Cayacos, which is investigating allegations of a paedophile ring linked to Peter Righton, who died in 2007. Righton, a convicted paedophile, was a founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange.

Other investigations include an independent inquiry being chaired by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard, which will investigate if public bodies and other institutions in England and Wales could have done more to protect children from sex abuse.

In Scotland, a national public inquiry into the historical abuse of children in care is due to begin work in October, chaired by Susan O’Brien QC.