Files reveal the full horror of sexual abuse at Knowl View school Files reveal that at least a quarter of Knowl View special school’s 48 pupils had been victims of horrific sexual abuse – including boys as young as eight. The children were said to have been put at risk of Aids through prostitution and liaisons with well-known sex offenders. The files did not specifically name Sir Cyril Smith, but his name was linked But whistleblower and former head of care at Knowl View, Martin Digan, said that he feared the political giant was among those abusing boys at the home and he verbally reported his suspicions to the police and council. In 2013, the Crown Prosecution Service admitted Smith should have been prosecuted for abusing young boys in the 1960s.  It was alleged he raped boys at Knowl View and abused boys at Cambridge House Children’s Home.  He had a long association with Knowl View where he was on the board of management when he was a councillor.  Smith was originally a Labour councillor in Rochdale and later a Liberal then Liberal Democrat MP for the town from 1972 to 1992. He died in 2010 aged 82. This week former pupil Chris Marshall told how he was sexually abused by Smith when he was just seven or eight years old after being summoned from his bed in the dead of night. Mr Digan became head of care at Knowl View – where  Cyril Smith was chairman of governors – in its final year. On his arrival he was given access to a dossier of abuse suffered by vulnerable young boys at the school, which he told the Observer on November 17 was a ‘sweet shop for paedophiles’, and he immediately called for Knowl View to be closed down. He said he was sickened to read files revealing that young boys were being transported into Manchester to meet men who would pay to have sex with them. And he said a known paedophile had been allowed into the residential school at night to abuse the children. Mr Digan handed the dossier to police and the council’s head of education Diana Cavanagh in 1994 and the school was earmarked for closure. He told us: “There was only one reason for Cyril Smith to be on that governing body. “He knew their vulnerability and saw an access to young boys. “What I was successful in doing was making sure it didn’t go to LMSS (Local Management of Special Schools). And I sacrificed my career for this.” Mr Digan says the unmasking of Cyril Smith as a predatory paedophile has come ’18 years too late.’ Shortly after the closure of the home, which had been widely believed to have been brought about by a fire, Mr Digan was made redundant by the council. He decided to leave Rochdale because of intimidation from people angry about the closure of the special school. He added: “When it closed I even had neighbours who would ridicule me – people who thought it was all just a pack of lies – and strangers would come up to me and make comments. “It is sad that children who said they were sexually abused haven’t been believed. This is 18 years too late for these children. And there will be parents who don’t even know that their children have been abused.” Mr Digan says he is aware of at least one former pupil who went on to take his own life because of the abuse he suffered at Knowl View, while others went on to commit violent crime. He said: “I raised the alarm as soon as I had time to digest what was in those files. “When I was appointed head of care at Knowl View I was given access to the files and I acted on it. “The place was in disarray and in the death throes and the writing was on the wall that it had to close. “And it was thanks to the support of my doctor Dr Nick Dawes that I was strong enough to bring this forward. “He signed me off sick immediately with stress because I couldn’t go back there. As soon as I digested what was in the files I went to the police.” Mr Digan said he had also been alarmed to learn that Smith was pushing for the school to be placed under a policy called Local Management of Special Schools, which would pass him full control of Knowl View from the council. A spokesman for Rochdale Borough Council said: “Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council has been made aware of alleged abuse that is said to have occurred at Knowl View School, which closed in 1995 and also at Cambridge House Hostel for Boys which closed in 1965. It should be noted that Cambridge House was not operated by Rochdale Council.  “An investigation into these matters is currently being undertaken internally by the Council and also by the Police. As public comment may prejudice any on going investigations we are unable to comment further at this time.” David Higgins was convicted of abusing boys there in 1971. Rochdale Council was warned in 1991, in a report written by an AIDS specialist from Rochdale Health Authority, of “sexual activity” at the school that most people, including parents of boys at the school, “would be horrified were these facts to be made known”.  Crystal Methodist in link to school described as ‘sweet shop for paedophiles’ as plans for Amsterdam holiday with male prostitutes is revealed Shamed Co-op Bank boss Paul Flowers was linked to a special school at the centre of one of Britain’s worst child sex abuse scandals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Methodist minister Flowers was vice-chairman of Rochdale Council’s social services committee which oversaw Knowl View School, during a time when it was described as a ‘sweet shop for paedophiles’.  Yet a series of damning reports – at least one sent to Flowers – about the crimes at Knowl View were hidden from the public. The residential unit for boys  aged seven to 16 with learning and behavioural problems is now subject to a police investigation into the sexual and physical abuse of former pupils. Meanwhile Rochdale Council is conducting its own inquiry into Flowers’s years as a councillor in the light of his drug-taking The Knowl View scandal broke last year after the Crown Prosecution Service accepted that the school’s founder, the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith, who knew Flowers through the council, should have been prosecuted for child abuse. The school, founded in 1969, eventually closed in 1995, after a member of staff alerted council bosses to ongoing problems. Yet alarm bells were being rung constantly by health professionals from 1988 to 1992 when Flowers held key council posts.  Whistleblower Martin Digan, whose appointment as the school’s head of care heralded its closure, said: ‘Flowers was one of many people in power in Rochdale who knew what was happening and yet did not act to close the school down.  He was vice-chair of the social services committee in 1991 when the first of three reports was circulated internally about the risk to pupils in terms of sexual and physical abuse.  He knew what the parents of pupils were never told – that the school was basically a sweet shop for paedophiles.’ The current storm surrounding 63-year-old Flowers’s shocking drugs habit prompted his arrest by police on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs, including cocaine and crystal meth.  The Treasury is holding an inquiry into the Co-op Bank, where he was chairman until his resignation in June, and the bank has launched its own internal review.  Flowers was suspended by the Labour Party and the Methodist Church for which he was a minister in Bradford. By the time Flowers moved to Rochdale in September 1986 to take over the Methodist church at Champness Hall in Drake Street, he was already a controversial figure.  In 1981 while ministering in Southampton, he was fined £75 for ‘gross indecency’ in a public toilet with a trucker and was moved to West Bromwich by the church.  Four years later, he was chosen as a Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Meriden, in the West Midlands, but he resigned three months later when his criminal record surfaced. Once in Rochdale, Flowers, an ardent Labour supporter, was elected to the council in 1988 and joined its education and social services committees. In 1988 Dr Alison Frazer, a child psychiatrist at the town’s Birch Hill Hospital, first alerted the council to possible sexual abuse at Knowl View.  Three years later, Phil Shepherd, of the Rochdale Health Authority Aids Unit, was asked to go to the school to carry out a ‘sexuality’ training day with staff.  His discoveries, penned in a report to council bosses, were shocking: ‘One boy who is homosexual has contact with an adult outside the school. Several of the senior boys indulge in oral sex with one another. ‘Reputedly five of the junior  boys have been or are involved in “cottaging” in and around public toilets. Men as far away as Sheffield are believed to be aware of this activity and travel to Rochdale to take part. One eight year old is thought to have been involved .  .  . some boys have been “forced” to have sex with each other.’ He concluded: ‘We are committed to preventing the spread of HIV. The boys in this school look  to us to be increasingly at risk.’ One former pupil, Chris Marshall, now 41 but aged seven when at the school, told the MoS: ‘Our lives were a living hell. Teachers would take pupils to a public toilet in Manchester where the boys would have sex with men who had travelled from all over the North. Men would come to the school and we were made to have sex with them. I was forced to perform a sex act on the late MP Cyril Smith who we called the Fat Man. ‘It had such an effect on us that some of the boys have either committed suicide or are in prison. ‘I feel let down by the council because we were vulnerable children and they were supposed to be taking care of us but instead we were exposed to the most horrible acts of depravity.’  The Mail on Sunday has seen a letter, dated April 16, 1991, concerning this report from the Director of Social Services to the local health authority, copied to Flowers among others. By then, Flowers and his colleagues on Rochdale social services committee were already facing calls to resign over the Satanic abuse scandal when 16 children were wrongly taken from their parents and rehomed, some in Knowl View. Last week, Rochdale Council announced an inquiry into his time at the authority. A spokesman said: ‘We have nothing to hide and want to move on from the past.  It was a dreadful period and unfortunately Rev Flowers was around at the time, although whether he was calling any shots is another matter.’ There is no suggestion that Flowers was in any way involved in criminal activity at Knowl View.
However, Flowers had been going through a turbulent time. In October 1990, he suffered a suspected heart attack a day after his car was stolen and his house burgled. The following month, he was forced to come out as gay after his gross indecency conviction came to light. Last night, the MoS put the Rev Flowers’s link to Knowl View School as well as the latest text message revelations to his lawyer. Solicitor Andy Hollas said: ‘I can make no comment whatsoever. It would be in everybody’s interests  if the spotlight was turned off to let the police make their inquiries.’ Flowers’s text to his rent boy: ‘I’ll use telephone banking to pay you… when I’m not so trolleyed’ Since The Mail on Sunday first revealed his debauched lifestyle,  the Reverend Paul Flowers’s fall  from grace has been accompanied by lurid text insights into a man obsessed by drugs and sex. Now a series of text messages between the Methodist minister and  a male escort throws a fresh light on the depths of his depravity and  prove that his use of hard drugs  was no aberration.  As these messages show, immediately after the story of his shocking lifestyle first became public, he was planning a trip to Amsterdam with two rent boys. 
And his favourite method of payment for the services of young men was telephone banking. We join the minister on October 29, after he has spent the day waiting in vain to give evidence to the Treasury Select Committee, only for his appearance to be rescheduled.
He is reclining with one escort  while making plans to see two more the following night…     ‘Still at it… had 8 grams of Charlie and some G’  Flowers surfaced mid-afternoon and once he transferred the money for sex, his mind was soon back to his other preoccupation .  .  . hard drugs.     ‘No, seeing MPs wasn’t for church… it was for co-op’ It’s the following Wednesday and his appearance before the MPs is over     ‘Coke, crack and weed before leading Cenotaph service’ With a prayer to read later that morning at Bradford’s Remembrance Day service, Rev Flowers limbered  up with an alarming unholy trinity of mind-altering substances.     ‘In a k-hole for 12 hours… am a tad shaky’ His post-Select Committee bender still ongoing, a friend helps the Rev find a novel new way of imbibing his favourite horse tranquilliser, ketamine.     ‘Disgraceful!’ The day after his exposure by the MoS Worried by the sudden break  of contact, his friends ask if something’s wrong. It is. His  double life has been exposed by The Mail on Sunday.   …and then planning a trip to Amsterdam with rent boys Ever the forward-planner, Paul Flowers is soon thinking ahead to when the story is all forgotten and holidays can be taken .  .  . with rent boys .  .  . in Amsterdam .  .  . naturally.