UNITED KINGDOM
The Daily Beast
Nico Hines
Accused of raping and sexually assaulting three boys just hours after Britain’s largest inquiry into sexual abuse opens.
LONDON — A senior British police chief was charged with the rape and sexual assault of three boys Thursday, just hours after a massive public inquiry into child sex abuse was officially opened.
Gordon Anglesea, 78, a senior policeman in Wales for 34 years, is accused of abusing three boys between the ages of 11 and 16 in the late 1970s and ’80s.
His arrest comes after decades of systemic cover-ups that left thousands of children victimized. Lowell Goddard, the judge presiding over the long-awaited Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, said she had reason to believe that more than 1 in 20 British children were sexually abused while police and the authorities systematically downplayed the number of crimes reported to them. Britain’s police forces have only begun to properly investigate hundreds of cases of alleged child abuse in recent years.
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