A chauffeur to the queen who admitted sexually abusing two young boys, and carried out one of the attacks at Buckingham Palace, has died before he could be charged with the crimes, despite reportedly admitting his guilt to British police.
The Sun reports that Alwyn Stockdale molested a boy of 10 at his royal household quarters in Buckingham Palace and also sexually assaulted a second boy, aged 14, at a relative’s home in the 1970s.
Stockdale, 81, admitted the attacks, which took place in the 1970s, but he died in hospital last week before he could be prosecuted, The Sun said.
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The paper reports that it took 19 months for Metropolitan Police officers to trace Stockdale after a man in his fifties claimed he assaulted him when he was 10 and Stockdale was a trusted staff member in close contact with the queen and living at Buckingham Palace Mews. He later lived in a cottage on the Windsor estate, a reward often given by the royals to particularly well-liked servants.
He was due to be charged with indecently assaulting one of the boys and with three offences of gross indecency against the second youngster.
His second victim was allegedly attacked at the West Yorkshire home of a relative, who was also a royal servant, but was unaware of the alleged crime.
A source told The Sun: “The victims are understandably upset that Stockdale will not face justice. They’ve lived with what he did all their adult lives. There are questions over why it took so long for police to identify and get round to questioning Stockdale. Given his age, it was a race against time to bring him to justice.”
It is not the first time the Windsors have been found to have inadvertently enabled pedophiles: there has been huge controversy over Prince Charles’ backing for a convicted pedophile bishop.
Charles provided Peter Ball with a grace and favor cottage, later saying he believed Ball’s claims that he had been falsely accused because “in the 1980s and 1990s there was a presumption that people such as bishops could be taken at their word.”
Charles denied attempting to pressurize police officers who were investigating Ball in the 1990s. He also claimed that he did not intervene to try and get the bishop restored to his ministry, although he admitted discussing Ball with Britain’s most senior churchman, Lord Carey, in 1994.
Ball, who preached at the funeral of the Duchess of Cornwall’s father in 2006, was sentenced to just 32 months in prison for offenses against 18 men, including one who later took his own life.
