New Barns School

Cast your mind back to September 8, 2013.

An article hit the Mirror, detailing the arrest of the former Head of New Barns School, Toddington.

Detectives swooped at the home of Richard Alston, 69, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
He was held after we put a witness in touch with Met Police working on Operation Fairbank.
The man – now in his 40s – claims to have ­information about a high-level paedophile ring.
Alston was arrested on August 20 under Operation Cayacos – a new strand of Fairbank.
He was questioned before being released on police bail and is due to appear again in November.
Alston is former head of New Barns School, Toddington, Glos, which closed in 1992.
The independent boarding school took children aged six to 12 with emotional and behavioural problems.
When told the People knew he had been arrested over historic sex allegations, he replied: “That’s true, but I have no wish to say anything further.”
A statement from the Met Police said: “We can confirm that officers from Operation Fairbank have arrested a 69-year-old man in connection with historical allegations of sexual assault.
“The man was arrested at an address in Suffolk on August 20, taken into custody locally and later bailed to return, pending further enquiries. ”
Fairbank was launched after Labour MP Tom Watson raised concerns in the Commons about high-level paedophiles in the UK establishment.
Mr Watson asked a question in the House of Commons last October about paedophiles with alleged links to the heart of Government.
Since then, numerous sources have told us of abuse allegations. Information we passed to police led to 68-year-old Charles Napier’s arrest at his home in Sherborne, Dorset, last November. He was bailed until November.
Earlier this week, another offshoot of Fairbank – Operation Fernbridge – saw two of the three people they have arrested so far come to court.
Father Tony McSweeney, 66, of Pease Pottage, West Sussex, and John Stingemore, 71, of St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, were arrested in February and are charged over seven youngsters allegedly abused at Grafton Close Children’s Home, south-west London in the 1970s and 1980s.
Both were bailed by Westminster magistrates. Father McSweeney faces charges of indecent ­assault and child porn – Stingemore of indecent assaults, child porn and plotting a sex offence.

What The Mirror failed to point out was two important pieces of information....

New Barns School was Peter Righton's own personal prey ground 

and 

Richard Alston is Righton's ex-lover. All of this information was available if a simple search had been done.... 

So the question begs.... why the hell did it take the police 21 years to arrest Righton's lover, from the initial raid on the house they shared?

His correspondents included an assistant bishop, artists, aristocrats and public school teachers. It then  emerged that Righton’s lover ran a school for emotionally disturbed children, and Righton was vice-chairman of governors. New Barns School in Gloucestershire, which was atteneded by many children from London care homes, was  investigated and closed down on child welfare grounds. A criminal trial followed and all eight staff were cleared of charges of  conspiring to falsely imprison. Another teacher was jailed.
Eileen recalls the story of Liam, a boy in one of the Islington homes central to the paedophile ring’s production of pornography. Liam attended New Barns school; the deputy superintendent , Nick Rabet (who committed suicide in 2006 after being arrested for abuse), used to drive him there. Liam suffered such trauma that he had a breakown at 16, and his memories today are fragmented. He began telling people of the abuse in 1989, three years before the school was closed. His social worker was deeply concerned and promised action. But on Christmas Eve 1989, he disappeared and Liam’s files disappeared with him. Source

Wonders what happened to Operations Fairbank and Fernbridge.....

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