Lambeth Green Party Councillor Scott Ainslie joins MPs calls to investigate the ‘apparent cover up’ of how a convicted paedophile was allowed to become a foster carer.
Lambeth Green Councillor Scott Ainslie (right) calls for “justice for all those whose lives have been destroyed by Carroll and all those who facilitated his offending.”
A Lambeth Green Party councillor is backing calls for an investigation into what the Daily Mirror has called “an apparent cover-up” by Lambeth Council, relating to foster care failings.
According to the paper, Lambeth Council was involved in “what appears to have been a concerted and involved effort by several influential people” to secure permission for convicted paedophile Michael John Carroll to be a foster carer.
Local Green Councillor Scott Ainslie is urging cross-party support for a full investigation. An inquiry is already being called for by two MPs.
The Daily Mirror reported that the manager of Angell Road children’s home in the eighties, Michael John Carroll, had previously been convicted in 1966 for sexually assaulting a twelve year old boy. An application by him and his wife to foster two young boys was rejected by Southwark Council in 1986. This led to a prominent Labour politician contacting Southwark Council to put “direct pressure” on them in an attempt to reverse the decision.
Carroll and his wife then took the case to the neighbouring Wandsworth Council. Lambeth’s executives backed his application and failed to disclose Southwark Council’s previous involvement. After this application was also rejected, Lambeth Council eventually began paying Carroll £67.85 a week in 1990 to act as carer to one of the boys, and prior to that four senior Lambeth officers recommended allowing Carroll and his wife June to become both the boys’ “official aunt and uncle”.
Carroll was eventually convicted in 1999 for a series of child sex offences dating back over three decades.
Richard Clough, who was then the General Secretary of the Social Care Association, has questioned why Lambeth Council went to “extraordinary lengths” to enable the Carrolls to officially and unofficially foster the children. A witness has also since alleged that the same unnamed Labour politician made night-time visits to Carroll’s flat within Angell Road children’s home.
London Metropolitan Police are presently examining new allegations relating to Lambeth care homes, but neither they nor the Home Office are agreeing to investigate any possible cover-ups.
Lambeth Green Councillor Scott Ainslie supports MPs Simon Danczuk and Tom Watson’s call for a full “Hillsborough style” investigation into all cases on a national level, and is urging Lambeth’s MPs and councillors to support a full enquiry into Lambeth Council’s conduct.
Cllr Ainslie said: “It is shocking to hear the allegation that Lambeth failed to disclose their contact with Southwark to Mr Clough’s public inquiry. A fully independent investigation should be set up. This dark chapter in the history of Lambeth must be investigated so the facts about exactly what happened and who was responsible are made clear. There must be justice for the people whose lives have been destroyed by Carroll and all those who facilitated his offending.”