Green Party: The Challenor Scandal Report

Regular readers will recall the case of Aimee Challenor, a leading Green Party spokesperson and candidate in the local elections who appointed her father David Challenor as her election agent whilst he faced charges for and was subsequently found guilty of child abuse. I wrote:

Trans activist Challenor is the Green Party's "Equality Officer" and has refused to step down from the forthcoming election despite her agent & father who shared a home was sentenced to 22 years after being found guilty of raping and torturing a 10 year old child in their home.

According to the Sunday Times Aimee Challenor would "not make a statement" but an an anonymous Green Party spokesman said their candidate had "been unaware of the crimes".

Since David Challenor acted as agent despite facing these charges during the election. Aimee even changed the name of her agent on election material to Baloo Chalenoor which is illegal under British Electoral Law which rather undermines her claims of ignorance.

The local paper reported the outcome:

A man who held a young girl captive in his ‘torture den’ and sexually abused her has been jailed for 22 years.

Pervert David Challenor subjected the 10-year-old girl to horrific sexual abuse and even gave her electric shocks.

He also took photographs of the youngster being tortured and abused to help him relive the sick ordeal he had put her through.

When he was arrested, Challenor accused the girl of being a liar and a fantasist – but the police found the gruesome attic kitted out just as she had described, a jury has heard.

Despite that, he pleaded not guilty to charges including false imprisonment, rape, gross indecency, sexual assault, indecent assault and assault causing her actual bodily harm.

The report into the affair has now been published and can be found in full here. It turns out that Challenor's mother also a Green party candidate also employed David Challenor as her agent. Both these individuals had full knowledge of his crimes and how serious the charges were.

One further problem I see with the denials by Aimee Challenor that she hadn't been aware of the charges until told was that she lived at the house where the crimes were committed and the police must have raided the house for evidence and sealed the fathers "den".

Member of the local party were not told by the Challenor's and only the national Green Party was told yet the official concerned did not warn the local party. Nor did they check to see if David Challenor was a member which would be usual for an election agent, family or not. A serious breakdown in Green Party procedures that could have led to vulnerable people being put at risk.

In stark contrast the Coventry Pride group suspended David Challenor from all volunteering duties as soon as they were told. That is to their credit. The Greens also have not addressed the question of David  Challenor's name being changed on the leaflets, an illegal act.

The Independent report concludes:

-We find it hard to understand some of Aimee Challenor’s actions and explanations: • we do not understand how she could not have been aware that, in giving her father official roles in the party, she was putting her own reputation at risk;

-we do not understand how she could have had the good judgement to inform officials in the party about the charges that her father faced, but the poor judgement not to make sure that all relevant information was included. It would have done her no harm to have told the officials that her father was a party member. If she had done so, it seems highly likely that Aimee would have been guided away from using him as her election agent; and

-we accept that Aimee chose not to seek further information about the charges her father faced, but we do not understand why she did not recognise that this was a mistake. Once again, sheer self-preservation would suggest that she should know as much as possible about these matters, so that she could make well informed decisions about her own actions.

The excuses for Aimee Challenor's revolve around he/r autism. I don't think that this is reasonable given that s/he was a National Spokesperson for the Green Party and standing for the position of Deputy Leader. Most reasonable people would acknowledge she must be able to cope with a multiplicity of complex issues to be in such a position.

However the final act of Aimee Challenor is the appearance of a Liberal Democrat logo on her Twitter picture (see above). He/r career in the Green Party is well and truly at an end.  And a poor advert for "Trans-rights" that s/he proclaims.