Rochdale Chief Executive & the Abuse Scandal

LAST week, Steve Rumbelow the Chief Executive of Rochdale Council apologised for 'the events that took place at Cambridge House and Knowl View and other establishments in Rochdale' decades ago from the early 1960s.  
Mr Rumbelow said:
'The council acknowledges that there were significant failings, both in the way that Knowl View School was managed, and in the council’s response to concerns about sexual abuse within and outside the school.'
Rumbelow declares:
'That was, frankly, unforgivable. On behalf of Rochdale Borough Council, I would like to apologise sincerely to anyone who was failed by the council during those years.'
He then concludes:
'We cannot turn the clock back. But as the current chief executive of the council, working with the director of children’s services and partner agencies such as the police, and through the Rochdale Safeguarding Children’s Board, I can make sure that we continue do our level best to safeguard our children and young people now and in the future.
'The council is doing everything it can to support and work with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in its task and I hope that it can help us fully understand what happened in Rochdale all those years ago.'

This tearful, contrite apology by the Rochdale Chief Exec. Rumbelow comes on the eve of the IICSA hearing into evidence about Rochdale for three weeks, beginning on the 9 October.  Yet one can't help but think of it as an attempt at damage limitation, in order to draw the poison that may be expose on the body politic of Rochdale, when and if, all the evidence comes out in the near future.

Since 2012, and all the revelations about Cyril Smith promoted by the former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, it has been the fashion owing to the Danczuk book, to blame the old Liberal Party for what happened at Cambridge House and what is alleged to have happened at Knowl View.  Sources inside the Labour are now suggesting that the findings of the current inquiry will be uncomfortable for the Rochdale Labour Party.

Afterall, Cyril Smith was a leading Labour Party councillor at the time he is said to have abused the lads at Cambridge House.

Over a year ago, a participant in the Operation Clifton told N.V. that the current leader of the Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell, had reason to be concerned if the evidence came out about his awareness of what was happening at Knowl View in the early 1990s.  Souces close to the Rochdale Labour Party are now confirming that he could well have had access to a report expressing concern about conditions at Knowl View during his term in office as leader of the Labour Party in the 1990s.

Knowl View residential school was what is called a total institution by sociologists:  prisons, hospitals, asylums, holiday camps and private schools are all forms of total institution.  Yet, Paul Rowen, another former leader of Rochdale MBC, has admitted to seeing a report on conditions at Cambridge House, and has told N.V. that it was really only a part-time total institution in so far as the lads went home at weekends.  We need to understand the context of the institution in which the abuse is alleged to have occurred.

******