The late Marlene Guest interviews a Rotherham man about the terrible ordeal of his granddaughter at the hands of the ‘local’ rape gang and their police collaborators.
Marlene and I worked very closely as she did her best to get action to protect the girls of her home town. Another victim came to her at around this time to say that she had been made pregnant, while aged under 16, by her principle abuser but had suffered a miscarriage.
The baby’s remains had been kept by the hospital and she and her family had asked the police to get a DNA test so as to provide forensic evidence against the rapist. South Yorskire police repeatedly refused, claiming a “lack of resources”. Marlene asked me if I would pay for the test to be done privately, at a cost of £500 (which was quite a lot more in 2013 than it is now).
All BNP candidates for European Parliamentary seats had signed a pledge, if elected, to put their surplus travel expenses and attendance allowances into a ‘“Good Causes” fund for their constituency. Although Rotherham was in the Yorkshire region rather in than my North West seat, I agreed that this was indeed a very good cause.
The BNP’s Yorkshire MEP, Andrew Brons, had studied the parliamentary rules and concluded that to honour this pledge would break the regulations, so he refused to do it. I therefore paid the money. The test was done and the evidence was used to convict and jail the Pakistani rapist.
It later turned out that Mr. Brons was right about it breaking the rules; I was investigated and convicted by the Parliament’s internal ‘fraud squad’, OLAF, for giving surplus expenses money to good causes, instead of spending it on hotels, meals, champagne or prostitutes (all of which the chief investigator admitted, would have been perfectly legitimate uses of the money - my offence was using the money for ‘political’ purposes).
The internal motto of OLAF, it has often been alleged, is “We investigate our enemies, not our friends”.
At the end of term, I was forced to pay back that £500, and many thousands more, with which I had helped my own constituents with various desperate problems.
In passing, this does give some of the background to the falling out between Mr. Brons and myself. Perhaps I was somewhat hard expecting him to place himself at risk by breaking such an outrageous ‘rule’. But I can certainly say that I’m still glad that I did.
Like Tanya Lumby who did the first two interviews in this harrowing series, Marlene Guest is sorely missed. They were very brave ladies indeed. Rest In Peace.
