Knowl View School: A mother complains

ON Tuesday the 12th, March, the mother of a lad who was resident at Knowl View School, commented on a post entitled 'Midsummer Murders & Knowl View School'.

She wrote: 
'I AM that mother and I can guarantee that story is TRUE.the names of the 2 staff members are available on request. I have minutes of a meeting on 8/5/1992 which clearly states "ASHWORTH JUNIOR UNIT INVOLVED IN SMITH STREET TOILETS " and at the side of this sentence is the comment "KEEP QUIET" the IICSA report found no cover up in Rochdale.
'Of that's not a cover up I'll eat my hat..or yours' 

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 On the 13th, March, she followed up by drawing Les May's attention to an error in his account and today Mr May's original report was ammended:

'Plus an incorrect part of the comment by Les May ( who I have never met) is where he states the second member of staff backed up the perpetrator..  I never said this, and the man was never involved in any discussion I had with the school about the incident.
'So any information Les May has about me or my son is relayed to him through another person..chinese whispers.  He has never contacted me directly to hear the story or look at my documental evidence...  I guess it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion when you're hell bent on putting forward your own agenda.  Has he ever thought why I would continue my fight for justice for the knowl view boys for 25 years if what I say isn't true?  If he thinks it's about financial compensation that path could have been trodden 25 years ago, that has never been a consideration in my fight.'

Les May gives his reply to the mother concerned below:

MANY of the claims about what happened at Knowl View school are based upon assertions by individuals with no good evidence to back them up. The 2014 book by Danczuk and Baker is a prime example of this.   As I had no intention of falling into the same trap I made clear in my article that the account I gave had been relayed to me by third parties.  I also made it clear that I was not asserting that it was incontrovertibly true.

It would appear that my caution in doing this was justified as the accuracy of the account I gave of what I understood had been said has now been disputed. Nothing in what I wrote could possibly lead anyone to believe that I was suggesting that there was any financial motivation behind this story.

Had I not believed that the story recounted to me was essentially true I would not have gone to the trouble of writing a piece pointing out that when the word abuse is mentioned there is an immediate assumption that it should always have the word ‘sexual’ in front of it, and that this assumption is not always correct. There are other things which constitute abuse.

I will repeat what I said in my piece:  ‘If this story is true and if it is typical of what was going on at the school, then this is the real scandal of what happened at Knowl View, not some vague innuendo about Cyril Smith being involved in sexual abuse at the school.   We will never know whether events like this were commonplace, or even if they happened, unless men now in their later thirties are willing to break their silence.  If they feel they want justice it will be too late when the perpetrators are dead.’ (my emphasis)

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