Honours system is under scrutiny after senior member of the royal household was allowed to keep his award for services to the Queen for THREE YEARS despite being exposed as a paedophile
- Hubert Chesshyre was exposed as a paedophile at inquiry into sexual abuse
- However the 78-year-old was not deemed fit enough to face a criminal trial
- Faced a ‘trial of the facts’ instead and so did not receive a criminal conviction
- His name was misspelled in the trial, making it difficult to connect him with case
Hubert Chesshyre (pictured) kept his honour despite being exposed as a paedophile in a trial of facts
The honours system is facing scrutiny after it emerged that a paedophile kept his award three years after he was revealed to be a child abuser.
Hubert Chesshyre was recognised for services to the Queen after holding multiple senior positions in the royal household.
The 78-year-old expert on heraldry and genealogy held the highest order in British chivalry as secretary of the most noble order of the garter.
He held the Queen’s Silver and Golden Jubilee Medals and the Royal Victorian Order (CVO).
But the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse exposed him as a paedophile in 2015.
He abused a teenage chorister in the 1990s but his abuse remained little-known because Chesshyre’s case did not result in a criminal conviction, the Observer reports.
The inquiry heard that Chesshyre ‘was found to have committed the acts in question’ during a trial of facts.
A trial of facts is held when somebody facing accusations is unfit to stand trial, which Chesshyre was deemed to be after having a stroke.
He was also believed to be suffering from dementia and was given absolute discharge.
His name was misspelled throughout the trial, making it difficult to connect him to the case in legal databases despite police efforts to correct the error.
The choirboy he abused believes that Chessyre may have abused other youngsters. The victim – who cannot be named for legal reasons – said: ‘I know of other boys from the choir where their parents became concerned and stopped Mr Chesshyre from having anything more to do with them.’
Chessyre’s case has similarities to that of Lord Janner. The Crown Prosecution Service decided in 2015 that there was sufficient evidence to mount a prosecution against the Labour peer.
But it deemed that it was not in the public interest to pursue it as he was suffering from dementia. A review overturned that decision and a trial on the facts was scheduled for 2016.
The trial was abandoned due to the fact that Lord Janner had died the previous year.
In October that year, Chesshyre’s victim wrote to the secretary of the Royal Victorian Order, Sir Alan Reid, asking him to forfeit the honour.
Sir Alan wrote back that it would be wrong to do so because there was no conviction and Chesshyre had been given an absolute discharge.
Lord Janner (pictured) faced a similar trial of the facts when he was suffering from dementia
The Heraldry Society responded with in an email that it had no plans to scrap his fellowship.
The Society of Antiquaries of London said that it would not raise the question of his removal to fellows of the society.
The Bach Choir replied that it was ‘not incumbent’ on the group to take further action because Chessyre, an associate member, no longer had involvement with it.
And the Corporation of London emailed the victim to say it did not have the power to scrap his status as a Freeman of the City of London.
Chesshyre is still listed as a vice-president at the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies.
The honour was only forfeited after the victim contacted his MP. The abuse survivor only learned of the action in October 2018.
This was five months after the honour was removed and three years after Chesshyre’s trial.
A Cabinet Office email informed him that the forfeiture would not be published in the London Gazette, despite such notifications being standard procedure.
As late as Saturday night, Chesshyre’s Wikipedia page made no mention of his trial and various societies of which he is a member told the paper they would not be disassociating from him.
This morning his Wikipedia page had been amended to include details of his sex abuse.