Knowl View: No Charges, No Case, No Cover-up

by Brian Bamford

SIMON Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale, often sounds like a gramophone record in which the needle is stuck.  When faced with the bad news that, after the expenditure of almost three-quarter's of a million pounds on Operation Clifton, there is no case to support charges against anyone for the alleged cover-up of a child sex-abuse scandal at Knowl View school up Bamford in Rochdale, Mr. Danczuk does what he always does and blames the investigators for doing a bad job.
True to form Danczuk has declared:  'I am not at all surprised at the outcome of Operation Clifton, as it has been a shambles from start to finish.' 
Then Danczuk hints at yet another cover-up, saying:  'They've wasted a lot of public money trying to protect their reputation and this doesn't help anyone.'
It seems that this whole investigation which has cost so much public money has turned out to be a castle built on the sand of the book published by Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker called 'Smile for the Camera', in which the authors extrapolated in an imaginative way about claims that there had been widespread abuse at Knowl View by Cyril Smith and others, and a cover-up.
The report on Operation Clifton, which we on Northern Voices' participated, has now been written, and will eventually be incorporated into the national overarching inquiry into child sexual abuse.  This is not expected be published in full for the best part of decade.