..to think that Max Clifford is not a suitable person to head ......

[margerybruce]

....Children in Need - A man who knew an MP had had sex with two 14 year olds and did nothing about it.

My complaint to the BBC, Copied and pasted from the BBC Complaints Website just before I submitted it:

Type of complaint:
Television
Choose channel:
BBC One
Programme title:
Children In Need (General Information & Background)
Transmission date:
16/11/2012
Broadcast type:
Not applicable/Not heard or listened myself
Complaint category:
Other
Contacted us before:
No
Complaint title:
Involvement of Max Clifford with BBC Children In N
Complaint description:
Max Clifford, the PR ambassador for Children in Need, has admitted or intimated that he has had for many years knowledge and/or evidence of many well known celebrities being involved in child molestation, paedophilia and sexual activity with underage teenagers.He is currently withholding that information whilst, at the same time, promoting himself and the fact that he has this knowledge. I'm sure that most reasonable people would feel that Max Clifford should at least provide every shred of information to the Police, or maybe he should be prosecuted himself for 'protecting' these evil criminals. It is wrong and shameful that an individual who has covered up and even profited from such atrocities should be an 'ambassador' for BBC Children In Need.

Link to BBC complaints website if anyone wants to do the same:

www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online

Hello Mumsnetters! I'm from the Icke forum but have lurked here since we got links to you a couple of weeks ago. I'm very impressed with what you're saying and unfortunately I think you'll see that despite it's reputation, the Icke forum members have been consistently correct about not only the terrible abuses but also the magnitude of the cover up that is needed to keep this from the general public. I hope you can see that "conspiracies" like this need people to be complicit without knowing they are involved. Many innocent people have been caught up in this so we need to offer them an environment in which they can talk. The true evil will come out eventually and the ones who are now annoying their friends by talking about this will be vindicated. Then you'll know what it's like to be a "conspiracy whacko" :)

If you are brave enough I think you should post the Tom Watson and the Max Clifford vids on Facebook. If we don't publicise what's going on then we will become part of the conspiracy ourselves! If people get upset with you for ruining Children in Need then perhaps suggest they give direct to a charity this year and give the BBC a chance to redeem itself over the coming months. Maybe donate some food or even just visit an old person in your area and do their shopping or something.

Jimmy Savile was a very dangerous man with serious connections. If you saw the Channel 4 piece yesterday you will have seen that there was no way his behaviour was a secret from the highest level.

If you have time to research Dunblane, Haute de le Garrene, Broadmoor and the political and charitable circles around them you will see just how far this mess goes.

I believe we are witnessing the biggest cover up in our history being played out in front of our eyes but seeing Mumsnet talking about it has made me feel much more positive so thanks.

Wrong thread I think.

No, there are 2 or 3 threads here on MN .....

Ignoring some of the other issues on this thread, can we remove Shiloa Shetty from the list of MC's dodgy clients? AFAIK she's never been accused of anything worse than being snogged by Richard Gere.

Ok, cool.

Re. Max Clifford, he was protecting abusers. Children in Need employed him at the same time that his PA was named as being a phone hacking victim in July 2011.

MrsVincent, yes you're right - I was wondering what she was doing on that list! perhaps because of something I'm not aware of but probably it's just a mistake?

Well, just heard that Freddie Starr has been arrested by Met Police! Sorry, what was that you'd said about FS last week Max, how talented he is, how he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown with all the worry and how he's almost had a heart attack because of the worry of it all? Thats right you also added did you not Max how you'd been his publicist as well? Poor old Freddie, Sorry what was that Max, why so quiet now eh??? I think I feel sorrier for those poor girls Max, even if they were "throwing themselves at him" as no doubt you'd like to believe they were!!!!!!!!!!! I'd like to congratulate those women on coming forward, and urge all the others who havn't yet to, follow in their footsteps and try and stamp out child abuse, or at the very least send a very clear message to those abusers that there is no grey area here, they were children! And those men just didn't care how old they were!

At the risk of banging my head against a brick wall, the late Alan Clark MP's shenanigans were known at the time. He wrote a book about it. Which was a best-seller. If anyone was outraged by it, they had plenty of opportunity to say so at the time. Very different to Savile.

I really don't see the point of getting cross with someone who did an interview years ago talking about someone completely different who died years ago especially when that second person had been extremely open about his behaviour.

In the light of the Savile revelations, of course I can see why people are disgusted by Alan Clark and why you disapprove of Clifford's interview. But you are acting as if this stuff is new and as if it can be judged by the current news agenda. It wasn't hidden, like Savile's behaviour. It was known and published and discussed years ago. And it wasn't Clifford shagging teenagers, it was Alan Clark, who is dead and has been for some years.

Well, you don't know what MC has been doing in fairness do you? All we know for sure is that he readily admits NOW to knowing others who shagged teenagers ie. Saville, and has not been open and is protecting his friends (who are v. frightened) and is trying currently to taint the stories of those women who are now coming forward,implying that they are not telling the truth at the same time as he says his friends are - which I find extremely puzzling. He takes money for protecting famous, wealthy people from the media. Look at his list of clients. I don't know why you don't find him morally reprehensible?? I think everyone on this thread does! I think there's more to come on this ....................... and he must be very frightened.

Edam i find your posts very hard to read but maybe my judgement is clouded by my own past so i will try to articulate my feelings.

Your attitude of 'whats in the past has no bearing on the present' i find totally offensive. Unless the law was different when that interview was recorded then MC knew that a vulnerable child had been abused and didnt contact the relevant authorities. To be polite, that makes him a total fucking wanker and a seedy little shite who should be no where near CIN.

Alan Clark sold a best selling book, well point proven really, there are a lot more sexual devients in the UK than i first thought who get their rocks off reading about a sexual assault on a child or 2.

Clark was not shagging teenagers he was sexually abusing at least 2 of them. They were underage. Please dont try and minimise an illegal sexual assault on a child by calling it shagging. This is an abusers way of defending the despicable crimes they commit. A shag is a quickie with 2 consenting ADULTS.

I wont stop you banging your head against a wall, hopefully it will knock some sense into it

Good grief shagging!

Well said MrCWife.

Edam,

You are correct, he has protected abusers for a long time. You seem to think that CiN didn't know of his past and how he operates:

watchdocumentary.com/watch/when-louis-met-max-clifford-video_eceba0f56.html

A good watch.

They knew he was Clark's publicist btw. And they knew about the sex with fourteen-year-olds too.

Links are not working.

no MrsJR it is working

If MC knew a child was being abused everyone else knew it too. Why single him out for opprobrium?

I have no wish to defend child abusers, at all, and I am jolly glad that society has changed since I was a child in the 70s and 80s and we were expected to steer clear of 'oddballs' (yup, that really was how people that would now be described as sex offenders were regarded). But it seems strange to try to hang Max Clifford for something someone else did and loads of people knew about - not just the rich and powerful but thousands of people who bought Alan Clark's Diaries and read serialisations in the newspapers. It's not like Savile, where the truth was hidden.

here's wiki pointing out his involvement with the mother and daughter was cited in the mother's divorce case in 1992 so hardly a secret.

Edam.

He is a PR consultant. The best advice he could have given the BBC is to stay away from him because they are a charity and he defends abusers amongst others. If they weren't slightly concerned themselves then they would have called him PR "consultant" not "Ambassador" and they would have publicised it. Weasle-words imo. Clearly they knew something was going to happen with Savile (Clifford's PA was phone-hacked btw), they knew the S would hit the F so got the best man in for the job. It shows the type of man they are prepared to use, the type of man they need to use and that they almost certainly had something to hide regarding what they knew of Savile.

Oh, btw, I'm not singling him out! Would you like me to give you a list of 100 other people I am absolutely disgusted with regarding this case? :)

The BBC should have known better and you know it. But they had to appoint him because of the pickle they'd already got themselves into.

Yep, i bet hundreds of people on their hols in Magaluf were laid out on the sun loungers reading about the sexual abuse of 2 children and chuckling away at this little oddball man

The problem with MC is that he is the only one that i personally know of that is working within a charity that is for children and within an organisation that appears to support child abuse which of course is the BBC..........

Edam, I'm more upset with the BBC/CiN than Max.

This is going mad. I seriously don't think in a month of Sundays Children in Need got Max Clifford in a year ago because they knew something would come out about Savile. The story only struggled out because one of the people who had worked on the Newsnight investigation (an ex-copper) was sufficiently cross about that being pulled that he took it to ITV - and jolly well done that man. How on earth would CiN know that a year ago?

How on earth would they have known Savile would have any ramifications for CiN, given he had nothing to do with it? And how would they have known the Savile revelations would someone lead to people digging up an old interview with Clifford and somehow drag him in, even though he's talking about something completely different in that interview?

Being furious about Savile is entirely right and proper. Being furious about the people who enabled him is right and proper. Being furious about the multiple police investigations that were always dropped is right and proper (especially given the half-arsed nature of them). Being furious about Beeb management leaning on their editors to suppress legitimate investigative journalism that was about to reveal wrongdoing is entirely right and proper.

Being furious about Max Clifford talking about Alan Clark when everything Clark did was in the open and had been for decades is just mad, and to use that to tarnish CiN is really pushing it.

Btw, I do know what PR consultants, do, I'm a hack. (Don't work for a national or do crime though, not my field.)

Oh, and while we are being furious, let's not forget to be angry with Broadmoor, Leeds General Infirmary, Stoke Mandeville, Duncroft Approved School, Barnardos (who ran the school), Jersey social services, the Department of Health, Edwina Currie and Maggie Thatcher. Max Clifford really is small beer compared to the ruddy Prime Minister at the time!

You don't sound mad. And this isn't about tarnishing CiN. They wouldn't all have known for a fact that there would be ramifications, but him appearing on the show for a couple of years and then getting banned would suggest there may have been at least one (even very small) story that could have compromised them considerably.

I'm not saying they're any more guilty than any of the other parts of the establishment that failed and they obviously tried to distance themselves from him as best they could. But given what we now know that move seems somewhat suspicious. As Freddy Star said about Savile's victims tonight: "I feel so sorry for them, that this animal has been going round for years and years and years. The press knew about it. The police knew about it. The BBC knew about it." Well we didn't know about it!!! Maybe some people think that charity workers should blow the whistle on child abuse instead of keeping quiet for the sake of their careers and pensions and reputations..? :)

I can only speculate on what they actually feared, but it was enough to get someone of Clifford's calibre in there. Or a massive coincidence. There is enough info on the net to show that Savile had a short but unwelcome stint on CiN. Are we to assume this is coincidental given what we know now?

You're right about directing anger in the right way and I won't get distracted by Max. But it illustrates how impossible it would have been for people to speak out. The structure there has allowed public anger to be directed at innocent people - ie. the genuinely good people at CiN of which I know there are many. I can only speak for myself, but I have left several jobs and put my career in jeopardy several times because of moral reasons or the improper practices of others and it's easier to rebuild your career than you think :) Did no-one there think to look into all this and say something? Believe me, this process will be good for charity in general when we see just how much nastiness is associated with it. Especially children's charities :(

Children in Need is just the first institution to suffer this humiliation. It's bad timing for them. But wait until the stories of Broadmoor and Haute de le Garrrene and Dunblane come out, that'll highlight a load of other public services, the scary ones. Unfortunately because of the BBC's reluctance to be open they keep putting their foot in it. And the general public don't really see CiN and the BBC as separate entities even though there is a distinction.

And although some people may know about Clark's taste in girls, the general public may not. Why might that be?