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

[criticalthinking]

Long time lurker, first time poster - subject says it all really.

I suspect Coventry Pride have more experience of predatory entryism.

Coventry Pride were on this straight away and acted accordingly.

Aimee Challenor was one of the Coventry Pride Trustees.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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)?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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]]

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?

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.

Important context and comparison re Safeguarding and Standards.

apologies for breaking the link above:

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

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.

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