Heart of Darkness III: Elm Guest House — What Happened at London’s Child Sex Brothel?

Dismissed by the press as having been a hoax all along, what is the truth about the brothel linked to government and establishment paedophile rings?

Aug 13, 2025

The phrase “conspiracy theory” has become a pair of dirty words, thanks largely to the tabloid press. No matter how factual a thing may be, once the press has termed it a “conspiracy theory,” it will no longer be taken seriously, no matter how grave the accusation. In their eyes, those who believe in “conspiracy theories” are not victims of abuse, serious journalists, or level-headed citizens. Instead, they will be put into the same box as those who believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and lizardmen.

Calling your accuser “mad” is the oldest type of deflective defence in the book, and the denigration of child sex abuse allegations as conspiracy theories are just another form of that. The number of paedophilia rings and organised cases of mass abuse in the United Kingdom is staggering, many of them having been “conspiracy theories” for decades. Equally, when there are so many cover-ups, such as that with Boothby and the Krays, it’s also very easy to believe that everything is a conspiracy and also very easy to manipulate people into believing falsehoods.

For example, in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s conviction, many prominent names were falsely linked to the scandal on social media for political reasons, despite the records of who was on Epstein’s island and plane being matters of public record. After all, very few people are willing to fact-check a tweet before sharing, particularly if it plays into pre-existing biases. The false accusations against Lord MacAlpine also stand as a prime example of allowing falsehoods into such emotive cases.

However, child sex abuse cannot be used as a fake news weapon against whichever political side we oppose. This cheapens the horror and is a disservice to the victims. It’s important to ascertain what is true and false without preconvictions.

This brings us to the aforementioned Elm Guest House.

The Dying Declaration of Carole Kasir

What’s true and what’s false about Elm Guest House is, by this stage, pretty hard to deduce. The waters have been so muddied as to be essentially unpenetrable. We can say that the London guest house was used between 1977 and 1982 as a place where gay men could hire rooms for sex with prostitutes. It was opposite Barnes Common, a popular spot for gay men to meet when, although it had been legalised, society still frowned on homosexuality. As such, discretion was often required.

The establishment was run by Haroon and Carole Kasir and advertised quite openly in gay magazines as a friendly place containing a sauna and solarium. In 1982 the police moved in, arresting the pair, with both convicted of running a disorderly house at the Old Bailey. The raid was “bungled,” with Kasir said to have been tipped off. Few men were in the building at the time, though a 17-year-old “masseur” was found to be working there. Under interview, the masseur revealed that one of the clients had been an obese politician who’d once got stuck in the bath, a reference to Cyril Smith. Police involved in the raid were told in advance that it was connected to child sex abuse, and that famous individuals may be in the establishment.

Carole Kasir died on June 17, 1990, with the official finding being suicide via an insulin overdose. It’s perhaps worth noting that suicide by insulin overdose is highly irregular.

However, that wasn’t the end of the matter.

That same year, Chris Fay, a Labour councillor and campaigner for the National Association of Young People in Care, claimed on oath to have seen a sexual image of then Conservative Party Home Secretary Leon Brittan with a young boy. Fay alleged that Carole Kasir had shown him the photograph weeks before she died.

Perhaps fearing for her life and wishing to unburden herself, the story went that an individual at Richmond Council was grooming children to attend parties at the guest house, and that developed into making child pornography at the venue, which included a video production studio. Kasir was paid well for the service, and the porn was then distributed through links in Holland. Fay further alleged that children from the Grafton Close Children’s Home had been trafficked to Elm Guest House and Fay backed up Kasir’s allegation, noting that he had been told this himself by the victims.

The Observer, August 10, 1990, via The Needle Blog

Writing on FOIA Centre, Journalist Mark Watts reveals some of the coroner’s notes relating to Kasir, including what Chris Fay said at the time.

“I saw her on a number of occasions last year. She said that she was being followed around. She gave us car registration numbers. She said she was being harassed. I went to see her on a number of occasions,” Fay said. “Once, there were a number of young people present. There was a white Escourt [sic] outside with a man in it. I went downstairs, she was upset and angry. We tapped on the window. Two police turned up. There was some discussion. She was threated [sic] with arrest for breach of the peace. She said that this was a common occurance [sic].”

Fay goes on to say that Kasir “gave me the guest house registers” and that she had named boys who had been abused at Grafton Close. The manager, John Stingemore, was also named as being involved in child pornography.

Indeed, the abuse at Grafton Care Home is a confirmed fact. In 2015, Catholic priest Father Tony McSweeney, a friend of Stingemore, was found guilty of abusing a boy from the home between 1979 and 1981 alongside three counts of making indecent images of children.

Stingemore himself should have also been on trial, but he died just weeks before it was due to begin. McSweeney’s offending had been uncovered back in 1998 when his housekeeper found a videotape of two young boys engaged in sex acts. She sought help from the Catholic church, who told her she was mistaken.

Fay drew up a list of people he claimed had been to the brothel, with Brittan’s name at the top. The list was subsequently uploaded to the internet by a colleague, and there was much conversation on forums throughout the 1990s and 2000s around what had gone on at the guest house. Despite some claiming it to be the case, this list did not form the backbone of Geoffrey Dickens’ dossier in which he named paedophiles in Westminister. That list was constructed in the early 1980s and handed to Brittan rather than his name being on it. The lists are separate things.

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, the press and police were seemingly keen to push forward with wide-ranging investigations into high-level child sex abuse. Elm Guest House featured prominently, driven in parliament by Labour’s Tom Watson. Watson arranged to meet with Fay in 2013 but cancelled when his reliability came into question, with Fay having a conviction for fraud when in 2011 he was part of a scam where pensioners were conned out of nearly £300,000.

Yet, Fay wasn’t the only one making allegations.

Operation Hedgerow

In 1987, Kilburn police in Brent undertook Operation Hedgerow following complaints by a 10-year-old that Kenneth Martin, a social worker, had sexually abused him. The operation was to be a wide-ranging investigation and, by the time it closed in 1989, was deemed to have been an immense success, all be it with many connections left unexplored. 653 separate allegations were recorded, over 20 arrests, 14 convictions, and two paedophile rings were broken up.

One of those arrested was Colin Peters. Peters was a Foreign Office barrister, and in 2013, The Independent reported that he “was allegedly a regular at the Elm Guest House in London, where it is claimed children from care homes were trafficked before being mistreated by well-connected people in the early 1980s.”

The article revealed that Operation Hedgerow had discovered that those involved in the same paedophile ring as Peters were “highly placed civil servants and well-known public figures,” but police didn’t have “the evidence or manpower to pursue them in court.” Back in 1989, the same allegations were published, with The Daily Express stating they included “people in Parliament and Whitehall… a senior House of Lords official.. and a West London vicar.”

Daily Mirror, Daily Mirror, 4th February 1989, via Spotlight on Abuse

The Independent article said that Peters’ presence at Elm Guest House was confirmed by multiple sources, with one saying that: “He was named by a number of boys who claimed they were abused.” Another was even more specific about what went on:

“He was a regular and was named by two, possibly three, boys as a man who abused them. Peters used camera equipment and hired a conference room at the guesthouse. There was only one reason to do that, and that was to make porn films of the boys. There was a sauna attached to the room, which was also used.” — Unnamed victim of Colin Peters

Indeed, these allegations tallied with what was published in the press in 1982 at the time of the police raid on Elm Guest House, long before Chris Fay became involved. In August of that year, The Daily Express claimed that inquiries into the establishment had led police to compile a list of names that included “at least three MPs, a member of staff at Buckingham Palace, and leading lawyers, doctors, and businessmen,” all of who were questioned. The article alleged that MI5 had been called onto the case as the men had exposed themselves to “blackmail,” a possible veiled reference to the KGB.

The same story appearing in The Daily Mail a week later would reinforce the allegations. However, by September, police denied any such list existed, and the story vanished from the press. In 2014, The Observer reported that two newspaper editors had come forward to say that the security services served them with gag-order D-notices, a warning to stop publishing the allegations for national security reasons. Those who run the D-notice system work alongside MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defence.

One of the former editors said both uniformed and plainclothes police had accosted him, presumably Special Branch, over a dossier on Westminster paedophiles passed to him by the former Labour MP Barbara Castle. Not much has ever been revealed about this dossier, and its certainly not as famous as the Dickens Dossier.

The Castle Dossier is said to have listed 16 high-profile political figures who were sympathetic to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), who we’ve talked about across our previous two articles. The dossier was given to Don Hale, the then editor of the Bury Messenger.

Cyril Smith addressing the UK Liberal Party Assembly in 1987 | Rodhullandemu, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Speaking to The Daily Star in 2014, Hale says that he was soon visited by Liberal MP Cyril Smith who tried to persuade him that the contents were “poppycock.” Smith’s name was likely then on the list. When Smith failed, Hale says that, “an astonishing operation kicked in to silence the claims.”

Hale would tell the newspaper that a D-Notice was issued.

“I was sworn to secrecy by special branch at the risk of jail if I repeated any of the allegations,” he recalled. “When I met Barbara again, she apologised for the ‘hassle’ caused and reluctantly admitted she was fighting a formidable foe.”

“Obviously, I had to contact certain members named [in the dossier] and the home office for their responses. Each call was met with shock horror as to why I should be wasting my time asking these ‘daft’ questions as nothing was happening within parliament. When I explained the detailed nature of the information available and that I couldn’t reveal my source, you could almost hear a pin drop as officials were unsure as to what to say or do.” — Don Hale

The Observer could not confirm the D-Notice as authorities told them that records “are not complete.”

“[Files] going back beyond 20 years are not complete because files are reviewed and correspondence of a routine nature with no historical significance destroyed,” a spokesman told the newspaper.

So, not only are there multiple reports from victims and the police that Elm Guest House was a child brothel that serviced VIP clients, not only was this what the owners said, but the security services issued a D-notice for reasons of “national security.” Yet, today, Wikipedia entitles their article on the matter as the “Elm Guest House hoax,” with all references in the press always making sure to throw in that same word, “hoax.” Why?

Let’s take a look.

An Element of Doubt

Unfortunately for Chris Fay, during his interviews with Carole Kasir, he took her at face value and, essentially, believed everything she said. The list of VIP guests that eventually leaked to the internet wasn’t from any official documentation; rather, it was constructed from his notes following conversations. As a reminder, Kasir ran a brothel linked to child sex abuse, making her testimony untrustworthy at best.

This list did include several notorious individuals who would later be exposed as child sex offenders, such as John Stingemore and Cyril Smith, indicating that perhaps some of the names were legitimate. It’s worth remembering that the list was constructed by Carole Kasir and Chris Fay in 1990. How, then, if a complete hoax, does the name of Sir Nicholas Fairbairn crop up when the first accusation against him wasn’t made until 2000? How does Smith, when to the general public, he was a lovable old character? How does the name Anthony Blunt pop up? To the general public, his only crime was treason, not the child sex abuse he would later be linked with.

However, amongst the legitimate guests who’d used the house were undoubtedly names that had nothing to do with the affair, as Fay later realised. Kasir was telling Fay what she believed he wanted to hear, mixing legitimate names of those who’d visited the brothel with fantasy. This means that without corroborating evidence, it’s impossible to tell which names were legitimate or entirely fraudulent.

In 2015, he said that he regretted that the list ever made it to the internet, saying, “It was so wrong to put that list online; it starts a witch hunt. People have suffered from that. That list could have led people to make up claims. It’s wrong; it is a witch hunt.”

However, he also stood by his original allegations that a VIP child sex ring had been in operation, and it’s worth remembering that his initial allegation included a claim that he’d seen a photograph of Brittan with a nude child. These photographs were kept by Carole Kasir in a shoebox and had been taken at ‘Kings and Queens’ parties and inside the guest house sauna. The photos were said to have vanished days before she died.

“I saw it with my own eyes, Brittan sitting with these boys. This isn’t secondhand or hearsay — I saw it… Carole showed me eight photographs. Leon Brittan was in two of them. In one, he was naked except for a frilly apron and cap, a sort of French maid’s outfit. On his lap was a boy of about 12, prepubescent, stark naked. Carole described him as ‘a rent boy from Grafton’. In the second picture, Brittan was wearing just briefs. There was a naked eight-year-old sitting sideways on his lap. He had his arms around this boy, and another man was standing in the background.” — Chris Fay, as quoted in the Daily Star

Leon Brittan, 1996 | Christian Lambiotte, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Equally, it wasn’t the only evidence that was out there concerning Brittan. The fact that Geoffrey Dickens gave his paedophile dossier to Brittan, and Brittan refused to ban the Paedophile Information Exchange, could be explained away quite easily as politics. However, what couldn’t be explained away so easily is how, if true, in 1986, Brittan was photographed by detectives entering an underage brothel, with the operation soon pulled and the photographs disappearing. The brothel wasn’t named but was most likely Elm Guest House.

“The rent boys would be driven to flats or garages where large groups of men were waiting. These included Brittan and [Cyril] Smith. Pictures were taken as men entered or left buildings where the abuse was taking place.” — Mirror source

The Mirror source, who claimed to be a friend of a detective on the case, alleged that the police had been working on Operation Orchid, an enquiry into missing children focusing on the paedophile ring led by the notorious Sidney Cooke. However, this operation didn’t start until 1989, meaning it couldn’t have photographed Brittan in 1986. The Mirror seemingly did no fact-checking on the story, again raising doubts about the validity of the entire case.

However, it wouldn’t be Chris Fay or The Mirror that buried the entire story and ensured that it would never be taken seriously again; that was down to Carl Beech.

Operation Midland

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, there was, briefly, a period when it appeared like the police and press were finally ready to take action against prominent people in British society who’d long been accused of paedophilia and gotten away with it. Celebrity names such as Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall were arrested. Yet, in the scheme of things, these were small fry scraps to be thrown to the mob. Those in the Royal Family, aristocracy and government were still protected.

That was until Carl Beech came along.

Mugshot of Carl Beech, whose false claims were the basis of Operation Midland | CPS

Beech had a lot to say about historic child sex abuse, alleging that, as a child, he’d been abused by powerful men at addresses in London. These men included high-ranking military officers and politicians. In 2014, Beech met with journalist Mark Conrad, and soon enough, his allegations made it to Exaro, a website that published investigative journalism based in London. From there, the story was brought to the attention of the Metropolitan Police, who also met Beech.

Beech told an interesting tale indeed. He gave a full and thorough account of his life and how he’d been abused at various locations, including Elm Guest House. He gave names. What police failed to consider is the fact that much of what Beech was saying was already out there on the internet. The allegations about Elm Guest House were well known. There had been significant child sex rumours about individuals he named for many years. Everything he was saying may well have been picked up from the internet.

And then, as fantasists often do, he added his own spin to elevate himself above other accusers. Beech claimed that during his abuse, he’d witnessed the murder of three children, two for sexual pleasure and one as a form of intimidation. He named two victims, Vishal Mehrotra and Martin Allen, two of Britain’s most infamous unsolved cases involving children of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Eight-year-old Mehrotra was confirmed dead, having been found in 1981, while Allen hasn’t been seen since 1979. Police have linked both to organised paedophile rings, while Beech was now alleging that VIPs, including members of parliament, were responsible.

Alarm bells should have been ringing loudly by this point. The murder of Vishal Mehrotra and the likely murder of Martin Allen have both been linked to the aforementioned Sidney Cooke, a notorious child molester and likely serial killer who ran a ring that was responsible for as many as 20 killings throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

The two cases do show some stark differences, and there is no certainty they are linked. The death of Mehrotra, for example, shows many of the Cooke gang’s trademarks, and one of the gang boasted in prison that they had killed “an Asian boy,” believed to be a possible reference to Mehrotra. However, the vanishing of Martin Allen was different, and brother Jeffrey says that he was told there were, “high-up people involved” and they’d be wise to “not take it further because someone will get hurt.”

The allegations that the two crimes were linked to Elm Guest House, again, dated back to the early 1980s and were available online.

Beech’s outlandish allegations turned the real facts about Elm Guest House into a farce, as the whole affair became reminiscent of America’s Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria. Like all good con men, there was enough truth in his lies that the police believed the possibility that everything else might then be true as well.

For example, he named Lord Greville Janner, whose paedophilia had been exposed in 1991. He walked away after those allegations, but the internet ensured nobody forgot. He named Harvey Proctor, who in 1986 was forced to resign from the government after being charged with gross indecency with a 17-year-old male prostitute. The age of gay consent was 21, and paying for sex with a 16 or 17-year-old remains an offence. He named Ted Heath, another popular name for internet rumours. He named Lord Brittan, who’d lost Geoffrey Dickens’ dossier all those years ago and had been the subject of a salacious talk that he’d been caught at customs in possession of child porn. Most of the names had been on the leaked lists.

News of the investigation hit the press and was fuelled by the efforts of Labour’s Tom Watson, who met with Beech and stayed in contact as the study progressed. Police eventually raided the homes of Harvey Proctor and Lord Brittan, who by that point had died, with plenty of people lining up to take their shot, including Zac Goldsmith, a member of Brittan’s own Conservative Party and Watson, who described Lord Brittan as “evil” in the House of Commons.

Tom Watson before giving his Deputy Leader of the Labour Party speech at the 2016 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. | Rwendland, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

The foundations of the case crumbled when Panorama interviewed a second accuser who had given weight to Beech’s allegations. Given the nickname ‘David’ for anonymity reasons, the individual in question publically recanted his claims and said he’d never met the people involved. Despite a 14-month investigation, no other witnesses or corroborating evidence could be found, and it was soon revealed that Carl Beech himself was a child sex offender.

It was a spectacular failure of policing. By accepting Carl Beech’s testimony at face value, despite much of it coming from internet rumours and constructed on top of existing facts, they showed incredible naivety about how fantasists work. While the mantra of “believe all victims” comes from the best place, it must always be backed by evidence, and investigators have a duty to leave themselves open to the possibility of deception. Their role is not to decide on guilt or innocence; that is the role of a court and a jury.

Equally, it was a huge disservice to the genuine victims of child sex abuse who now would no longer have their stories heard. The press’s reaction made it seem like he was the only person making accusations. While he’d certainly become the most prominent, there were dozens of others who, thanks to Beech, had their stories crushed. By unquestioningly allowing Beech’s claims of murder into the public domain, despite longstanding belief that the killings he highlighted were the work of Sidney Cooke, it was also a disservice to the families of Vishal Mehrotra and Martin Allen who still have no answers of what truly happened to their children.

In 2018, Carl Beech was convicted of child sex offences, 12 counts of perverting the course of justice, and one of fraud. He received an 18-year sentence.

Conclusion

It’s likely that many in positions of power were secretly glad that Carl Beech existed. When it was all said and done, he added a level of unbelievability to the case surrounding Elm Guest House when there had been significant evidence and witnesses long before Beech to suggest that the house had been used for the sexual abuse of children. Now whenever Elm Guest House is brought up, it’s very easy to bury the allegations under the weight of Beech’s lies and Chris Fay being a convicted fraudster, despite the fraud happening 21 years after he first made the allegations.

Indeed, while Elm Guest House’s primary function may have been servicing gay clientele, there is significant evidence that it also provided an underground service for paedophiles. That isn’t to suggest that everyone who visited there was a paedophile, nor even that the majority of guests were child sex abusers, or even that they knew of the availability of boys, nor that everyone on those widely distributed lists ever visited there. However, to call the allegations a complete “hoax” is also a disservice. After all, as reported by The Observer, a D-Notice was issued, and the security services were involved for reasons of “national security.” Why that is, has never been answered.