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

Hardly 'minimal' involvement with the party

I know they are only a small party but if that is all they are expecting from their council candidates - well they aren't going to do well in the council elections - it doesn't say much for the party and it doesn't say much for the candidates. Might as well vote for the family pet.

Those screenshots R0wan

Nick Martin CEO Green Party response to members.

He wants to pin it all on the two communications people. I've worked in comms. The job is not to make decisions, it's to put a positive spin on the decisions made by other people.

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.

DC was reported as attending the pride march under "Baloo" when he went as photographer. Aimee knew he wasn't supposed to be there but took him anyway. There was a discussion between some rather dim young greens on Twitter about how they couldn't check if people had previous names in case they "deadnamed". They then protected the tweets, but I think there were screen shots.

Surely any thorough investigation would have seen the evidence that Aimee wasn't just some confused ditzy youth but was, in cases like this, actively covering. Plus, was there not evidence Aimee was told by the victim (so knew it involved a child contrary to what Aimee told veritas)?

3.6 In May 2018 Aimee Challenor, and her mother stood as candidates for Coventry City Council. They both appointed David Challenor as their election agent

Hardly 'minimal' involvement with the party

Veritas are looking really incompetent from this report. I bet they're regretting taking this job on. This will haunt them.

Why was no mention made of Aimee's behaviour which included some really awful posts on Twitter, and contacting the victim?

2) Coventry Pride may have paid better lip service to safeguarding than the Green Party did, however the major plank in their safeguarding plan wrt David Challenor was that if he attended a Pride event he would be supervised by a Trustee. Aimee Challenor was a Trustee until very recently. This report highlights AC's poor judgment on a number of occasions.

Pencils I'd forgotten this. Yes, Aimee Challenor could have been supervising David Challenor at Pride events iwithin her capacity of trustee.

David Challenor also accompanied Aimee Challenor as the official photographer for Green Party campaigning I believe?

Tina Challenor's 'minimal' involvement in the party..

Entryists arrive mob handed. She was probably a cats paw for her husband. Controlling abusers are like that.

Nick Martin says " there was no knowledge of the criminal charges against David Challenor by anyone in the local Coventry Green Party, national party or national office - aside from two people who were then members of the directly elected government executive".

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

Has he conveniently forgotten that the candidate for Deputy Leader of the Green Party knew too?

3.14 Aimee Challenor joined the Green Party on 11 December 2014. The following year she became chair of the national LGBTIQA+ Greens. She became membership secretary of Coventry Green Party in April 2017 and subsequently stood as the general election and local election candidate. She was elected to the Green Party’s national executive committee in September 2017 and ran for deputy leader of the national party in June 2018.

Why doesn't the report make more effort to establish whether Aimee could plausibly claim ignorance of the charges David Challenor was charged with.

Why does the report not seem to have gone into the trial transcript to see what kind of support David was getting from Tina & Aimee, Aimee's knowledge of the victim & the crime, etc.

There were a number of witnesses at the trial, was Aimee one of them?

I could pick holes in this but it wasn't nearly as bad a whitewash as I was expecting. The main themes I got from an initial reading were:

• far too much focus on uncritically protecting Aimee and protecting the reputation of the party
• widespread cluelessness about safeguarding
• many of Aimee's actions and inactions remain incomprehensible, even allowing for the autism, difficult family background and stunning bravery.
• if they're going to put inexperienced 'diverse' people into high responsibility roles they need to support them properly.

Safeguard/safeguarding is mentioned 32 times in 17 pages. Transition is mentioned once. This is good, we've been pushing safeguarding concerns for a long time and it seems our concerns are starting to be recognised, at least in the most dire cases. Verita are not safeguarding experts so there's probably a lot they're missing but they are giving it importance.

The quibbles I have are:

1. Tina Challenor's 'minimal' involvement in the party. To me that means paying membership fees and turning up to an occasional meeting, not standing as a candidate in a local election and hiring a child rapist as your election agent. Is Tina still in the party, does anyone know?

2. Coventry Pride may have paid better lip service to safeguarding than the Green Party did, however the major plank in their safeguarding plan wrt David Challenor was that if he attended a Pride event he would be supervised by a Trustee. Aimee Challenor was a Trustee until very recently. This report highlights AC's poor judgment on a number of occasions.

Oh come on, of course they knew...

This is Jimmy Saville all over again. Everyone knew, but nobody said anything. When questions were asked, everyone played dumb.

Aimee Challenor was one of the Coventry Pride Trustees

I know - I constructed my post badly. What I'm getting at is that she must have seen CP swing into action, but didn't seem to notice that GP were doing sod all or think that she might need to raise it properly with her local party.

I do find it hard to believe there is no overlap in the membership of Coventry Pride and Coventry Green Party
even if no dual membership, surely there will have been at some point a conversation in a pub
my god, you know what, we had to kick out AC's dad, you know, DC, I couldn't believe it, he's been charged etc etc
what?? AC's dad?? but she's our LGBT spokesperson...
etc etc
did that really not happen?

Coventry Pride were on this straight away and acted accordingly.

Aimee Challenor was one of the Coventry Pride Trustees.

I suspect Coventry Pride have more experience of predatory entryism.

I know the Pride committee in my city are all volunteers - I'd think it's similar in many places outside Manchester and London.

Coventry Pride were on this straight away and acted accordingly. How can the Green Party, with all the money and access to professional services they have behind them ever excuse their utter failure on safeguarding?

floral the talent pool in parties that have no chance of electoral success is puddle-shallow. Your local model railway club probably has more intellectual heft because they at least wire shit up. Challenor Pere was able to get away with it because he was keen and active. People were willing to go along with him.

The report doesn’t raise the issue of his being a Scout leader, but same problem. Why ask questions of someone keen?

I'm sorry, what? Are we actually supposed to believe that AC is simultaneously a responsible active member of a number of political organizations, so much so that they are considered a rising star, and a poor, fumbling incompetent who vaguely waves 'autism' around as a catch all excuse for being spectacularly obtuse and economical with disclosing that their father was suspected and then convicted of being an appalling child rapist?

Which is it? Glowing admiration or massive pity party? Good grief.

The scope of the report is so very narrow. It doesn’t address at all the implications of what The Challenors have done to party policy or discourse and the risks of that.

someone needs to shine light on the wider implications of this. Challenor and others have been allowed to influence policy across government and organisations like the NHS, guides etc, with absolutely no due diligence done on who they are, or what affiliations and agendas they may have. They’ve been actively shielded from questions and procedures that would have been asked/implemented on anyone else.

The report paints a horrifying picture of how a sexual predator is able to rapidly establish themselves in an organisation of stupid people who are so naive they cannot imagine bad people. The Green Party is clearly welcoming and safe for sexual predators. Do they believe challenor to be the only one?

Coventry Pride took immediate action.

Aimee remained unaware of safeguarding implications/issues.

Aimee Challenor was a Trustee of Coverntry Pride.

Coventry Pride took appropriate steps.
Trustees have safeguarding responsibilities.

The implication of the second page of Nick martin’s statement is that Coventry Pride and Coventry Greens are disjoint, such that one could bar a suspected rapist while the other knew nothing. I find that hard to believe; we are supposed to believe that by a handy coincidence the challenor family were the only
Link.

And I did laugh at the repeated "David Challenor should have informed the Green Party". Yeah, right. Perhaps a rapist and torturer of a young girl might not actually follow safeguarding procedures in reporting his rape and torture to others. Just a thought

David Challenor will have had bail conditions.