A senior Liberal Democrat councillor is fighting allegations that he represents a serious risk to children, insisting that the claims are false and stem from his arrest eight years ago after his cloned credit card was linked to a website featuring images of child abuse.
Cornwall council has written to schools and sports clubs warning of the risk allegedly posed by Alex Folkes and has issued two press releases spelling out its concerns.
Folkes resigned from the council’s cabinet and has agreed to the suspension of his party membership but he has said the allegations are “outrageous”. No charges were brought after his arrest in 2006 and police told him the case was closed. He expressed shock that the council had released public statements and said he could face attacks from vigilantes. The police are not involved in any current investigation into Folkes.
Nationally, a Lib Dem spokesperson said it would have acted had Folkes not volunteered to suspend his membership while he cleared his name. Folkes, who is from Launceston, has often campaigned alongside party leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and has also worked as a photographer for the Lib Dems on a voluntary basis.
Cornwall council released two statements last week revealing that it launched its investigation in October.
In its first statement it said: “The council received information raising serious child protection concerns relating to Alex Folkes and immediately launched a formal investigation into the circumstances.”
In a second statement it said: “As part of the investigation we were given information by the police which was assessed by the local authority’s designated officer (LADO). Based on the information supplied by the police at this stage, the LADO process concluded that councillor Folkes represented a serious and enduring risk to children. This decision was later confirmed by additional information supplied by the police. This led to the director for education, health and social care writing to schools and children’s settings in the Launceston area.”
Folkes has resigned from his cabinet post but the council’s chief executive, Andrew Kerr, has written to him urging him to step down from the authority completely. Folkes declined to be interviewed about the situation but directed the Guardian to his blog in which he described the council’s allegations as “incredible”.
He said that in 2006, before he became a councillor, he was one of a number of people arrested after cloned credit cards were linked to a website containing indecent images of children.
Folkes said: “I have never viewed any such images nor had I ever visited the site or any others like it. I was able to show the police that my card had been cloned and used illegally for various things including a hotel in Brazil.” He said the police did not bring charges and he was told the case was closed.
The arrest was flagged up in an enhanced CRB check in 2009 when Folkes was elected to Cornwall council. He said he discussed the matter with the council’s chief legal officer and heard nothing more about it.
He said in the past few weeks someone raised the matter with the council. “Since then, anonymous letters and emails have been sent to the press and to opposition councillors. There seems to be a concerted campaign against me,” he said.
Folkes said the council had only shared limited information about its investigation and that judgment was passed on him during secret meetings. He said he had repeatedly asked officers for the information they had received but they had refused to pass it on.
He said: “That limited information which has been shared with me I know to be untrue and they have not offered any evidence to support their outrageous claims.”
Folkes said he asked for time to try get the information from “the various organisations concerned which would prove their claims to be wrong.”
He said: “They refused to give me this time and convened another secret meeting which passed judgement. They then made deeply libellous and completely untrue statements to organisations, other councillors and the media.
“Nevertheless, I have started the process (which is likely to take some months) of seeking the information held and then correcting it where it is false. All they have told me is that everything relates to the original investigation in 2006 and that there have been no concerns or claims made about me relating to any time before or since.”
On Folkes’s claims that it had not shared the information with him, the council spokesperson said: “We took legal advice on all aspects of this matter in order to make certain that the process was conducted fairly and properly and in the interests of ensuring the maximum safety of children in Cornwall. We are confident that the investigation, which was aided by the police, has been dealt with appropriately and all proportional steps have been taken to ensure children in Cornwall are protected to the maximum possible degree.”
Devon and Cornwall Police said the matter was “subject to an internal investigation by the council, not police.”
