2005 - Homeless Cornish Gay/Bi youth sleeping rough
June 2005: Lidbury was approached & asked by serving members of RNAS Culdrose to assist a homeless 15yr old gay/bi youth who was living rough on the streets of Helston, Cornwall.
Lidbury a gay equality campaigner of many years was shocked & angry to find Police, Social Services, Youth Service & Education Services ALL knew & were ALL aware the 15yr old gay/bi youth was living rough homeless on the streets.
None of the authorities had done ANYTHING to intervene or assist the youth. A local youth café had been providing free meal vouchers to the homeless youth.
Lidbury contacted a number of organizations on behalf of the youth.
ALL declined to assist:-
#Intercom Trust (Exeter)
#Albert Kennedy Trust (An LGBT homeless youth charity. Cornwall was outside their remit area)
Lidbury also sort help from professional members of the LGBT community whom he knew personally within education & social services, but they also declined to assist the youth.
Jun 2005: Lidbury took the youth to Helston police station where the youth was questioned regarding allegation against the youth of criminal damage. Both Police PC Fuller 4446 & the youth requested that Lidbury sit in during the youth’s police interrogation.
Police later denied in police complaint proceeding & court that the interview took place. However the youth was subsequently required to report to Cornwall Youth Offending team regularly … this as result of a police interview police later claimed in police complaint & in court proceedings did not take place?
During attending police questioning of the youth at Helston police station carried out by PC Fuller 4446 Lidbury established police were fully aware of the youth’s homeless status. PC Fuller claimed police had submitted a report to social services as to the youth’s homeless situation. PC Treloar was already supposed to be the family liaison police officer prior to Lidbury being asked to help.
NB: In 2006 in a civil action brought by police Lidbury was admonished by Judge Rucker for not taking the homeless youth to the authorities, when Lidbury clearly had done so which police denied in court.
Lidbury having campaigned against institutional homophobia for so long in Cornwall was utterly incensed by Cornish authorities’ homophobic responses & refusal to help a homeless gay/bi youth. Lidbury set about creating a voluntary support team for the youth, similar to that he’d recruited (RAIN Trust) for his former partner Andrew, when Andy had been declined any help by Cornish Social Services when as a gay man terminally ill living with HIV/AIDS 1994-96 (now deceased).
Lidbury recruited his neighbors, members of RNAS Culdrose, a mix of heterosexuals, lesbians & gay men & students as a broad base voluntary support network for the youth.
Lidbury’s partner, Paul (Diddy), a serving member of the navy stationed at Culdrose accompanied the youth to Cornwall Social Services case conference. The Social Services case conference failed entirely to meet a single one of their own objectives they set themselves. The case conference adding to failure & physical abuse the youth had already suffered in his, the youth’s own family home & homophobic environment of Helston School.
No assistance was forth coming from authorities to house the youth, who was then ‘sofa surfing’ on the couch of a female member of the voluntary support team organized by Lidbury. The youth on his 16th birthday asked Lidbury’s pensioner mother for a rented room. Lidbury’s pensioner mother already provided room-to-let rented accommodation in her home, a former five bedroom B&B guesthouse.
The youth lived ‘on & off’ as a tenant of Mrs Rita Lidbury from 2005 - until 2013, until he was 24yrs old.
In the complete absence of assistance forth coming from Cornish authorities following the case conference to help gain employment or even provide further education for the youth. Lidbury contacted the Skills Council and organised a modern apprenticeship for the youth in conjunction with Camborne College & made employment arrangements. As a result the youth attained an NVQ level 2 qualification.
This is the Cornwall authority & Cornwall police abused gay youth, own video which he co-produced & created originally on his own video channel on youtube.
The youth made complaints about Cornwall social services & wrote many letters to his Mp Andrew George & the local government Ombudsman. He was ignored. (Many of the gay youth’s letters held on file by the Sprocket Trust LGBT archive).
The internal findings Cornwall Social Services own internal investigation blamed the gay/bi youth entirely for his being homeless & living on the streets at 15yrs old, his parents having moved 400 miles away to the north east of England leaving him behind.
Ten years later - 2015 -5,000 young LGBT people in UK living rough on streets Gay Times Magazine LGBT Homeless Youth
