UNITED KINGDOM
Herald Scotland
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.
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