Veritas report due tomorrow (Thursday) at midday re: Aimee Challenor

Charities and organisations who Aimee Challenor works for and with need to take this point very seriously.

Full report see page 44 & 45 for significant Safeguarding comments.

Aimee is still vice chair of Prism LGBTQ, a youth group in Coventry. I hope they have sound safeguarding policies.

My understanding is that there can be questions asked if you are seeking an enhanced DBS and share an address it’s a known sexoffender. The Veritasreport seems to point fights at the police. Should the police be at least talking to this group.

I also am finding it odd that the Green Party is saying that only only two people in the National or local party knew about it when in fact five people did.

6.9 and 6.15 are interesting: AC was a member before DC.

6.11 implies TC barely knew she was a candidate, and could have been acting purely as a front for AC or DC. It's hard to tell: she isn't challenged.

6.13 shows again the pernicious and disingenuous effect of "reporting restrictions" and "contempt of court". None of what Tina Challenor is reported as saying is true - neither reporting restrictions nor general concepts of sub judice make the existence of charges something that cannot be communicated by the general public. However, this is not challenged in the report.

6.34 is the problem Labour now have: candidates who were selected in a hurry without scrutiny in 2017, who turn out to be major liabilities.

Anyone who can explain what 6.53 means is better than I am.

The top of page 45 clearly points of AC's culpability over safeguarding, both past and present.

Page 50 is more wearisome bullshit about autism, which AC uses to excuse everything.

Sounds like Verita is very strongly suggesting that AC does not actually have capacity to understand safeguarding.

From the full report:

"From our conversations with her, it is clear that Aimee Challenor did not demonstrate a clear understanding of safeguarding and still does not see the safeguarding issues that this case gave rise to."

For example:

6.62. We asked Aimee whether she considered there were safeguarding issues arising from her father’s involvement with the party. She told us: “There wouldn’t have been safeguarding. He had no personal access to members or members’ data".

Clearly AC thinks that safeguarding relates to data.

QuietContraryMary Thank you!

It says "I first found in November 2016 that he had been charged with serious sexual offences" (from AC, re DC)

However, Aimee's FB post from October 2015 to the victim of DC's rape suggests that Aimee had been interviewed by the police then & was therefore aware in substantial or whole part of the nature of the crime & identity of the victim.

It also notes that Aimee appointed 'Baloo [sic] Challenor' as Aimee's representative at a Green party disciplinary hearing in March 2018, to which Baloo attended.

Aimee goes on to say 'if the party had given me proper support, what with me a helpless autistic person', I wouldn't even have NEEDED to appoint a rapist as my aide (@ page 42)

Also even though Aimee knew David Challenor had immediately been removed from Coventry Pride on news of the rape charges, Aimee thought it was ok to continue to involve David in the Green Party.

ReflectentMonatomism
Very true - all the more reason to be cautious. Maybe other members felt unable to stand up to Aimee when she suggested him.

It was a lot quicker than waiting for the first report

QuietContraryMary
Thanks for link - think I will save for tomorrow. Don’t want to lie in bed steaming about it

If she was born female you'd all be 'poor thing, nasty dad but not her fault, shouldn't be blamed etc etc'. You're a bunch of hypocrites.

If Aimee was born female, my reaction would be exactly the same.

I think some of Aimee's actions, or lack of them, may have been a result of shock and self-preservation causing Aimee to keep going as if everything was fine.

It's odd that the two people who were told, and who wanted to 'support' Aimee, didn't mention it to Aimee again before the conviction.
And that neither of them, especially Matt, thought to ask if DC had any connection to the Green Party.

Thanks, QCM. That was quick: redacted release to leak of full report in, what, four hours?

He had hardly been a member for more than a couple of years.

Entryism. Moribund local party, run by a long-serving, loyal but exhausted old salt who is simultaneously chair, membership secretary, treasurer and campaigns officer, with at best nominal help from a revolving cast of students and transient hipsters.

Suddenly, over the horizon comes an organiser. Someone with experience in other groups - scouts, say - bringing also a wife and children who are also keen and motivated. Suddenly, there's a meeting which is quorate! They bring some of their friends, too, so there is stuff happening!

The Labour Party learnt the hard way that those bright, keen new arrivals are usually Trotskyites, and their objective is to use the respectability of a moribund local party to further their political agenda. Which is bad, probably, but amongst the groupuscles of the hard left it sort-of doesn't matter.

David Challenor didn't have different views on the role of Leninist Vanguard Parties in the early stages of a revolution. He was a child abuser, who wanted to get a cover for abusing children. The respectable family man, who's a scout leader and local politician? What could be better?

So what now? What happens to things like girl guiding, the gymnastics organisation, and all the schools stonewall have had Aimee advise on policies for?

What about Stone wall tbf. They can't keep them on now can they?

Full report here: docdro.id/9or0q0H

DeRigueurMortis
Absolutely agree about why Aimee was allowed to gain such a senior position. As other posters have said, there are parallels with other people in other parties For instance Jared O’Mara was selected in haste, and this now looks like a very poor decision. I am more shocked about DC. In my experience, election agents usually have lots of experience because of their legal responsibilities. He had hardly been a member for more than a couple of years.

Hard to learn much from the summary alone. It looks bad to publish just 15 pages from such a serious debacle

Oh yes. Serious questions need to be asked of Scouting. A Scout leader who is a noisy trans-rights exponent is in jail for rape. Stonewall's advisor on trans rights, who advised the scout and guide movement, is heavily criticised even in a report written by people predisposed to exculpate them.

apologies for breaking the link above:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3301266-Safeguarding-girls-and-protecting-women-post-Jimmy-Saville-metoo

Important context and comparison re Safeguarding and Standards.

Verita I'm sure cost a fuckton of money.

The wider the brief, the more money the greens would have to spend. It was in the greens' interest to keep this investigation as narrow as possible, both in terms of their financial interests and their reputation.

Verita were never going to do work they hadn't been paid for. Given the narrowness of the brief and the political minefield they're tiptoeing through, I honestly don't think they've done a bad job.

And this now looks rather cleverly nuanced (if only Greens could actually deal with rapists with the same alacrity them engage in subtle distancing tactics to avoid any sort of accountability):

coventry.greenparty.org.uk/news/2018/08/27/green-party-statement-aimee-challenor-stands-down-in-green-party-deputy-leadership-race/

"No disclosure was made of Mr Challenor’s arrest or any of the charges against him as part of formal nomination or selection processes." (my emphasis)

Well, strictly, I guess that's true...but whose responsibility was it to bring to the local party's attention that the agent was a suspected rapist on bail?

There must surely be someone else in the greens with responsibility for standards - like making sure election agents are not child rapists.

The two comms people named in the report have been utterly clueless but the responsibility for safeguarding and for standards does not lie with them. To scapegoat these two is to once again focus on protecting the party's image above any regard for safeguarding, which is a major failing identified in this report.

YY Safeguarding and Standards should of course be more important.

We know though some of the many the failings and failures of Safeguarding frameworks:
[[https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3301266-Safeguarding-girls-and-protecting-women-post-Jimmy-Saville-metoo]]

Andy Healy posts the evidence "against" him from Claire Phipps.

twitter.com/djandyhealey/status/1033671833390907392

She really had got a crush on Aimee, hadn't she?

Presumably he means Matt Hawkins and Clare Phipps? Why are they being made scapegoats?

I guess that despite other people being culpable in relation to the general atmosphere in the Party, there was no evidence that anyone else knew specifically about David Challenor, and I can well believe that there is no crossover between the Coventry GP and Coventry Pride - I'm in the Party and I haven't heard anything else other than this. If the scope of the report had been wider then I suspect it would have pointed the finger at more people. It is depressing that there is no sign yet of the wider problem being addressed.