The story was fantastical but horrifying, told by a man known only as “Nick.”
When he was a boy, Nick told police and the press, he was “handed over” by his abusive stepfather to a powerful group of men who repeatedly raped and tortured him, traumatizing him and countless other boys for life. Some of the most powerful men in British Parliament and the military – including the former prime minister and chief of the armed forces – were part of the ominous gang, operating from 1975 to 1984, Nick remembered. How could he forget? he said.
They would send cars to pick up Nick and the other boys at random locations – the train station, a street corner – and take them to luxurious apartments and hotels all over London. There, one by one, or sometimes all at once, the boys would endure unthinkable sexual abuse and torture, sometimes so brutal that the beatings resulted in young boys’ deaths, Nick said. He said he witnessed the murders of three boys, two of whom he claimed were killed for sexual pleasure by a Conservative member of Parliament at the time.
The lurid tale shocked the nation, launching an enormous investigation by the United Kingdom’s largest police agency. In December 2014, a homicide detective for the Metropolitan Police Service described Nick’s allegations as “credible and true” and begged any other victims to come forward. Nick appealed to the public too, appearing in videotaped interviews as a black silhouette with a disguised voice, saying to the other abused boys he hoped were listening, “It’s important that they come forward too. . . . It’s something that stays with you forever.”
But month after month – as the sensational allegations remained under investigation by police, as the accused high-ranking former government officials watched their reputations disintegrate into scandalous tabloid fare – no other boys came forward. In fact, nobody did.