Andrew Gilligan Times: 'Green high-flyer Aimee Challenor hid father’s rape charges' David Challenor 'A paedophile rapist posed a “major safeguarding risk” for almost two years'

[R0wantrees]

(extract)
"A paedophile rapist posed a “major safeguarding risk” to young Green Party members for almost two years because one of the party’s rising stars did not clearly tell colleagues that the man had been charged with serious sex crimes.

An independent investigation has found that Aimee Challenor, a transgender activist and candidate for the Greens’ deputy leadership, committed a “serious error of judgment” by appointing her father, David, as her agent at two elections even as he faced trial for kidnapping, raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl.

The inquiry, by the investigations consultancy Verita, criticised the Greens for treating the matter “primarily as a communications one” and “failing to see the safeguarding issues that arise”. The party’s “support for diversity” did not remove the need for someone like Aimee Challenor to have proper “training and support” in a leadership role, the investigators said.

A 17-page summary of the report was quietly published last week. However, the full 80-page report, seen by The Sunday Times, is more critical. It says Challenor, the Greens’ equality spokeswoman, had been guilty of a “serious omission” by not telling her local party and most national officials about her father’s charges.

Challenor blamed her autism for not doing so and told the inquiry: “At the end of the day you can’t go about telling every Tom, Dick and Harry.” The investigators said they found it “hard to understand some of Aimee’s actions and explanations”.

The omission allowed David Challenor to run his daughter’s office and mix with young activists and members’ children at events that included a picnic only weeks before his trial.

A jury at Warwick crown court convicted Challenor of holding his victim captive in the attic of the family home. He was jailed for 22 years for the series of offences." (continues)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/green-high-flyer-hid-father-s-rape-charges-kdhrfhll3

current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3474311-Veritas-report-due-tomorrow-Thursday-at-midday-re-Aimee-Challenor

Oh no that photo.. or if various versions of it been posted...

What's a "gender activist"? They say Phipps is a "fellow gender activist

As the Chair of the party's Executive Committee she encouraged and assisted prominent TRAs: for example, by fast-tracking disciplinary proceeding and vexatious civil proceedings against gender critical greens. As Chair of the Green Women's Group she made an arse of herself by standing up for the term 'non-men'.

I think that she saw herself as the mentor to those rising stars with edgy agenda. Whenever there was a policy motion to promote some sort of sexual lifestyle (like polyamorous relationships for instance), Claire Phipps could be relied upon to back you - even though it had rock all to do with social and environmental justice.

She was completely out of her depth as a Chair of the party. Although she was supposed to line manage the paid Chief Executive, it's said that he did a very good job of managing her and diverting her energies.

It's a wonder that the Green party hasn't folded from lack of management and direction, before now.

It's a wonder that the Green party hasn't folded from lack of management and direction, before now.
Off-topic, sorry, but this is why I'm less keen on proportional representation than I was. Countries that have it, have a plethora of little parties as disorganised as the Greens, as open to entryism, with an equally shallow talent pool and who might feasibly be asked to join a coalition government.
The alternative is sticking with the big two, forever, with lots of wasted votes, but at least it seems more stable.

Committee of Standards in Public Life, Intimidation in Public Life: Evidence from the Green Party:
TRANSCRIPT OF HEARING WITH AIMEE CHALLENOR, GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE FOR COVENTRY SOUTH IN 2017 GENERAL ELECTION
21 September 2017 London
Committee members present: Lord Bew (Chair), Sheila Drew Smith OBE, Dr Jane Martin
CBE, Jane Ramsey, Monisha Shah, Rt Hon Lord Stunell OBE

(extracts from AC's evidence)
"In the election campaign, I was targeted because I was an openly transgender person in politics, I received tweets or direct messages calling me a “delusional child abusing freak” . I had people telling me to kill myself, comments saying “zero debate needed, just point and
laugh hysterically. This needs bullying”. It is quite clear from the most recent general election in the UK, as well as conduct during other recent elections around the world, that politics is becoming more toxic. Intimidation from activists, members, and indeed other
candidates is growing. More can, and should, be done by all parties to tackle this behaviour and offer support to candidates.
These actions should include implementation and proper enforcement of Codes of Conduct, as well as the introduction of a ‘Candidate Welfare Officer’ or similar, so that Candidates may have a point-of-contact. It is also my belief that action needs to be improved beyond political parties, social media websites need to improve at removing abusive content: too often I see “We reviewed your report carefully and found that there was no violation of our Rules regarding abusive behavior” - this has happened with some of the comments I read out to you earlier. Division in society is fuelled by social media; people feel they have an anonymous face. And it is fuelled by others behaving in a hateful way, it encourages others."

"More needs to be done by the Police, when I myself have reported abusive content to the appropriate authorities, it’s been brushed aside and eventually not even forwarded on to the Crown Prosecution Service."

"There should be a strong Code of Conduct. We [Green Party] have one and a specific policy with regard to bullying behaviour. We don’t tolerate it. There should be a welfare officer, if only to signpost further. Local Council candidates in general face it too. The public see no difference between local and national candidates"

" We [Green Party] have particular groups e.g. Greens of colour, women, LGBTIQA+ and others. These groups specialise in supporting these people - has led to better relations with the Party. At election time they form a key part of supporting those groups of people.
Generally, it’s support with emails, social media, and peer support. We did some press handling too for a transgender candidate where the local media wanted to write pieces referring to the candidate’s gender identity in a sensationalist way and the candidate was very uncomfortable with their use of language. We worked with the paper and also reported to Trans Media Watch, which did help. After we spoke to the newspaper, they did write a piece using more appropriate language."

"We should be in a society where we teach to treat each other with respect. It comes from the top and bottom. Politics is toxic. A lot of campaigns involve negative campaigning. We need to see less of that to see a decrease in negative campaigning.

With respect to the Green Party, there is an executive, and a regional committee. We can recall leadership if they are bringing the Party into disrepute. There have been no difficulties with Caroline Lucas or our other Spokespeople."

www.gov.uk/government/publications/intimidation-of-parliamentary-candidates-evidence-from-the-green-party

I would have liked to see all of ACs other roles mentioned esp links to stonewall but as others have said maybe there are legal reasons why this hasn’t been mentioned. It really should be though

It's all over the comments, which is something.

Thanks for that link Rowantrees It is very disturbing but informative.

Autistic kids - Aspie or High Functioning like Aimee usually have a better grasp of the rules. They like to stick to them.

Yes, this.

I think that she saw herself as the mentor to those rising stars with edgy agenda

You can see this in the Labour Party as well. Take a nice, privately educated, law abiding posh boy like Benn or Corbyn or, even more ludicrously, Seamus Milne. He wants to be edgy, because being a nice, privately educated, etc hurts his street feels. So he gets a taste for big, bearded rough men who are relaxed about murder and torture - the IRA, Hizbollah, etc - and puts up posters of them, wears their tee-shirts, and eventually, miraculously, is able to hang out with them too. He gets the vicarious street cred, while still being able to dissemble about how the big bearded men are also secretly men of peace, who even if they do those things people say they do, only do so grudgingly and with a heavy heart. A few rounds of that and you are empty of morals.

In the environmental world the gap between Greenpeace and the ALF is wafer thin, and similarly you get people (the anti-vivisectionists are well-practiced at this) who say "well obviously we wouldn't blow up cars belonging to researchers, but we can see why people might, and if you give us what we ask for, we might be about to rein these people in". It's basically "you've got a nice shop, be a shame if it went on fire" but outsourcing the violence.

The NCCL was hi-jacked in the 1970s by paedophiles. Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, amongst others, sold their souls to the devil and, more seriously, gave the old "gays are kiddie fiddlers" trope real legs: not so much smoke as a whole pile of burning tyres. Peter Tatchell now tries to distance himself from this, but is not convincing The Green in Germany were at least as bad, if not worse: Cohn Bendit was an actual paedophile (or felt the need to pose as one, which is at least as bad) and the whole party was interpenetrated by paedophile organisations. It is now trying to clean up, but the damage is probably permanent. The paedophiles did a reverse trick on the "gays are kiddie fiddlers" trope: "who are the state to regulate love? So rights for men to have sex with men are indissoluble from rights of men to have sex with boys, and therefore to have sex with girls".

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-links-haunt-german-green-party-a-899544.html

Now the UK Green Party looks as bad. It has cosied up to sexual predators, under the guise of "rights". David Challenor is a predatory rapist. His child is at the very least an unstable, damaged person in need of help, and is probably being manipulated by their predatory father to act as the tip of the wedge.

The best you can say of the Greens is that their hearts are so pure they do not no evil when they see it. They get excited by hanging out with bad boys and bad girls, but think it's all a game.

And standing idly by while a child rapist is welcomed by your organisation is not "all a game". It's deadly, deadly real.

ReflectentMonatomism
Spot on

I think nicey-nicey people with moral relativist outlooks are seduced by the pious, the zealous and the impassioned generally.
When your argument is that those opposed to you are 'evil' you need to be ready to defend your assertion in the face of evidence contradicting it.
But it's human nature to take sides and be tribal.
The binary nature of almost all political debate nowadays is very frustrating, and it's due to the niceys picking a side of zealots and slowly becoming zealots themselves.

Times comments are interesting. I noticed a rather cryptic one purporting to be from George Monbiot, a Guardian journalist. Heading for the naughty step? Or evidence journalists are frustrated by the stories they are not allowed to investigate/report.

Is there any explanation of how autism in itself makes you unable to understand safeguarding, and what support in this regard A.C. is now expecting from the organisations they are now involved with?

I’ve been a H&S rep for over a decade. If anything, I am hyper vigilant.

The comments are far more hard-hitting than the article itself. Stonewall's involvement in all of this mess is certainly noted.

The comments are, so far, excellent.

Aspie that is interesting to hear and was my first reaction too. An ability to focus on structure and rules in difficult circumstances is what was needed here. It's something that autistic people are often good at.

Coventry Pride were aware of the criminal proceedings against David Challenor in November 2016 (He was a volunteer for them), so from that point on he was not allowed to be a volunteer at any of their events. It would therefore seem that Coventry Pride have a far more aware and efficients setup than the Green Party?

archive.is/PUSzs

Then we have this article from Transcrime, which again highlights contradictions and indiscrepancies which exist all over the place.

"As a trustee of Coventry Pride in both 2016 and 2017, Aimee Challenor was therefore party to the offences David Challenor had been charged with, seemingly in conflict with the statement issued the previous day saying “I did not know about the full details of the crimes” and the day before being ““unaware of the crimes”. Nevertheless Aimee’s own blog reveals that David Challenor attended a Coventry Pride event in June 2017 as a photo credit on the site is attributed to “Baloo Challenor” when Aimee was well aware of the directive issued."

"It remains to be seen how Coventry Pride were made aware of the criminal proceedings but the Green Party apparently were not until sentencing in August 2018. Or, for that matter, why none of the Coventry Pride trustees could have notified the Green Party of concerns using safeguarding procedures."

transcrimeuk.com/2018/08/22/david-challenor/

Can’t the electoral Commission do something? Just can’t believe Greens can basically do nothing and that’s fine...

DrEM has done a fabulous job of making all the links on Twitter: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1084385680262877184.html

D'you think the Lib Dems know AC is still involved with the Global Greens LGBT+ (for what it's worth)?

"Our aims are simple; we support LGBT+ groups within Green Parties around the world to work together and support each other, we support Green Parties looking to set-up LGBT+ groups, and we promote LGBT+ equality as outlined in the Global Greens Charter.

greenslgbt.net/about/people/

This might be worth watching;
''As part of the wider Government strategy to improve safeguarding practice across the voluntary sector in England, DCMS in partnership with Big Lottery Fund are investing a total of £1.14 million to improve access to training, support and advice.''

''We are looking for organisations or partnerships who have experience of providing safeguarding training resources to charities, and are able to provide some evidence of its impact on charities’ safeguarding practice.''

www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/funding/programmes/safeguarding-training-fund-phase-1

I just emailed the whole report to the Lib Dems in case they hadn’t read it. Along with my (reiterated) promise to neither campaign for nor vote for them again, ever, until they put their house in order, ditch the transactivists and prioritise the rights of women and girls.

"Greens of colour..."

Snigger?

TimeLady they have been told - whether the people who receive the emails etc. are all TRAs is not certain. And whether MPs actually see these emails etc. is not certain. Their aids have a lot of power.

Do make sure that Brian Paddick is also directed to this report... cos... well... just because.