The Observer - 04.08.2019

Section:OBS 2N PaGe:37 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 12:26 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Observer
  Focus 04.08.19 37

Alexis Jay led the inquiry into

the Nottinghamshire scandal.

Collins arrives

for sentencing

last week at

Westminster

magistrates

court. PA

Tom Courtenay,

far left, starred

as Kenny Collins

in the 2018 fi lm

King of Thieves,

alongside

Michael Caine

and Ray

Winstone.

Child protection?

Britain is pitiful...

I

n his book The Disappearance

of Childhood, the American

writer and educator Neil

Postman wrote: ‘‘Children

are the living messages we

send to a time we will not

see.” Last week, the Independent

Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

(IICSA) published its damning inves-

tigation into children in care in

Nottinghamshire. It gives gruelling

details of how generations of chil-

dren were abused by predatory car-

ers in homes and foster families

while Nottingham city council and

Nottinghamshire county council, as

well as police, social workers and the

Crown Prosecution Service, repeat-

edly failed to act.

What can we learn from the mes-

sages these children send? How can

decades of abuse occur , and why is

so little invested in childhood?

In 1985, 400 children absconded

from a Nottinghamshire home ,

including 70 girls who had “fl ed”

more than once. In 1989, an inter-

nal investigation into a 14-year-old

girl who had sex with a num-

ber of boys in a home, incredibly

reported: “At no time did this take

part against her will.” In one home,

a 16-year-old sexual offender and

suspected psychopath was placed

in the same unit as an “inade-

quate” 11-year-old. One care worker

had a conviction for grievous bod-

ily harm.

“You were almost made to feel

they were objects,” reported another

residential care worker of the chil-

dren in need of nurture and pro-

tection. Instead, they were beaten,

raped and sexually assaulted, and

when they sought help... “I was told

to stop lying”; “I felt very alone ...

sick, dirty and ashamed.”

Sixteen residential staff and 10

foster carers have been imprisoned.

Professor Alexis Jay , the inquiry

chairwoman, said: “Despite dec-

ades of evidence and many reviews

showing what needed to change,

neither of the councils learn ed from

their mistakes, meaning more chil-

dren suffered unnecessarily.”

November marks the 30th anni-

versary of the UN Convention on

the Rights of the Child. In the UK,

the convention is still not incorpo-

rated into law. As a result, we have

no statutory duty for government to

consider the impact on children of

After last week’s

shocking report into

abuse in Nottingham,

it ’s t i me t h is a f fl uent

nation fi nally learned

from past mistakes,

writes Yvonne Roberts

decision-making. We have no chil-

dren’s minister in cabinet. Instead,

last month Kemi Badenoch became

the fi fth children’s minister in four

years , a junior appointment.

The report card on UK children

living in what is an affl uent country

is pitiful: four million in poverty ; a

punishing benefi ts cap; poor hous-

ing; rising rates of mental ill health;

inadequate funding for schools and

childcare. The list goes on. And, as

the IICSA’s investigation underlines,

when children speak out, too often

they are disbelieved and discredited.

The IICSA investigated

Nottinghamshire councils not

because the credibility of survivors

had suddenly been validated but as

a result of the number of allegations,

then 350 now at 418. What triggered

the disclosures is an extraordi-

nary alliance between David Hollas

MBE , a retired army lieutenant colo-

nel, and two survivors of childhood

abuse, Mickey Summers and Mandy

have said it was worth about £8m

retail – it was mostly old. Even if we

had had £14m , the fi gure they claim ,

we would only have got about 10%

for it – £1.4m. I wanted my barrister

to call all the people who claimed to

have lost so much as witnesses but

they said, ‘ Who are people going to

believe – you or them?’”

Collins has so far paid back

£730,000, and his house in

Islington, north London, is being

sold for £740,000, which will also

be forfeited, as will an apartment in

Spain, worth £90,000.

W

hat about the

suggestion

that part of the

plan was to

break into spe-

cifi c boxes to

extract material that might be used

for blackmail? “It was complete bol-

locks that we were looking for a par-

ticular box. The story about some

papers that John Palmer [the man

known as “Goldfi nger”, who was

murdered in Essex in 2015, not long

after the burglary ] had in a box that

he was going to use for blackmail-

ing the Adams [the north London

crime family ] – complete and utter

cobblers.” What else was found? “No

guns, no coke but in one box, there

was six passports – now why would

you keep your passports in a safe

deposit box?”

Collins’s role in the burglary

was to act as look out from a build-

ing opposite the safe deposit cen-

tre. He was said to have dozed off on

the job.

“They said I had fallen asleep.

That was bollocks. And we didn’t

have a walkie-talkie like they said.

What really happened was that

‘Basil ’ [Michael Seed, the electronics

expert who was jailed for 10 years in

March for his part in the crime], who

I only knew as ‘the Boffi n ’, rigged up

the phones between the place where

The Proceeds

of Crime Act of

2002 allow ed

police to

confi scate the

ill-gotten gains

of criminals

and to jail

those who did

not comply for

up to 14 years.

 The act

has been used

against Curtis

Warren, a

drug dealer,

who in 2013

was ordered to

pay £198m or

face another

10 years; and

Terry Adams,

of the north

London Adams

crime family,

who in 2017

was ordered to

pay £730,000

or face prison.

 3,840 orders

amounting

to £163m

were made in

2018-19, down

from 5,357 the

previous year.

 According

to the Joint

Asset Recovery

Database,

£185m of

criminal

proceeds were

confi scated

in 2017-18, of

which about

£30m was paid

to victims.

 According

to fi gures

obtained by the

Daily Mirror ,

4,057 orders

made in the

past fi ve years

were for a

nominal £1.

CRIME

PAYBACK

Coupland , who persuaded others to

come forward.

Hollas had met an ex-squaddie,

a survivor from a children’s home,

who was protesting in the street

about his experiences. Five years

ago, it prompted Hollas to campaign

for a national inquiry. Council offi -

cials were obstructive but, with the

support of others, the result is last

week’s report.

In 2018, Jon Collins, then leader

of Nottingham city council, said he

would only apologise “ when there

is something to apologise for ”.

Apologies have now been made,

however inadequate, but still, Hollas

points out, accountability and pun-

ishment for profound neglect

of duty is absent – as is so often

the case (Rotherham, Rochdale,

Islington). “It won’t stop until those

happy to take the big bucks take the

big fall,” he says.

The two councils have six months

to conduct an independent evalu-

ation of risk and provide an action

plan. “Then what?” Hollas asks. The

reply would be so much more con-

vincing if it was anchored in a soci-

ety in which children are believed

and properly protected, and their

rights robustly upheld.

I was and them. I had just gone to

the toilet so I didn’t hear it ring.”

He paid credit to the honesty of

the detectives in the case: “ This lot

of police have more or less played

the game. Not like some of the ones

I’ve had in the past ... And it never

occurred to us to take any weap-

ons. You don’t need them. If some-

one comes in, you’re nicked. We

wouldn’t have been able to run

away! After it happened, I would

have left the country straight away,

but the thing that stopped me was

my dog .” (Dempsey, a Staffordshire

terrier, who has since died.)

He served his time in Belmarsh,

the high-security jail: “ The young

prisoners treated me very well

because I was old – and I was one of

them. Most people my age are nonce

[sex offender ] cases.

“Anjem Ch oudary [the radi-

cal Muslim cleric ] tried to talk to

us about Islam. I don’t suppose he

knew who he was talking to – he

don’t know us from a bar of soap.

We told him to fuck off.”

Collins has diabetes and cancer

of the oesophag us. He also suffers

from high blood pressure, anaemia

and kidney problems, and his mem-

ory and hearing are going. He said

that prison was now much more

violent than in his early days behind

bars, mainly because of the preva-

lence of the drug spice.

The burglary led to three fi lms –

King of Thieves , The Hatton Garden

Job and Hatton Garden the Heist – a

recent television mini-series, called

simply Hatton Garden , and six books.

What did he think of them all?

“Most of them I never saw but I

have to say the guy who played me

on television [ Alex Norton ] did look

very like me. They got that right .”

As for the books, he said: “In

prison I’ll be reading a bit – but

it will be Karin Slaughter and Jo

Nesb Ø.” For Collins’s next few years,

crime fi ction will replace true crime.

Viewpoint

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