Council Implicated in Recent Asylum Seeker Sexual Assault "Cover-Up", Councillor Alleges
Just days after Baroness Casey's review condemned such behaviour...
A councillor has accused senior officials at Portsmouth City Council of attempting to suppress information after local police charged an asylum seeker—housed in a taxpayer-funded hotel—with r*pe.
Councillor George Madgwick, of the Portsmouth Independents Party, revealed to The Sun on Friday that he was explicitly instructed to stay silent about the charge.
According to Madgwick, rumours about the incident began circulating online roughly a week earlier. In response, council officials held private briefings with various councillors and party leaders.
That’s when a senior officer contacted him directly.
“She called me during the day and said, ‘George, I must make it very clear to you: you're not to discuss this with anyone,’” he recalled.
She told him he was under the council’s code of conduct, which required him to keep quiet.
A council spokesman later told The Sun:
“We knew the Home Office accommodation link would become public knowledge through the court proceedings and, based on events elsewhere in the country, were conscious there may be community tensions related to it.”
So it seems it was less a case of procedure than a political choice.
Thinking it was a complete overstep on the council’s part, Madgwick soon sought legal advice. “It was ridiculous,” he said. “I was frustrated. We were being told we couldn’t speak, even though we were being told things the public had a right to know.”
Later that day, he vented on Facebook—without naming the case—saying councillors were being briefed about important information but told not to share it.
That post triggered another warning.
Around midnight the same day, he received another call—not on his council-issued phone, but his personal one. Again, it came from a senior council official. Again, she reminded him of his obligation to “keep quiet.”
The person behind those phone calls?
Portsmouth City Council’s Chief Executive, Natalie Brahma-Pearl—a career civil servant who previously held senior posts in Horsham and Crawley before being appointed to Portsmouth in 2023.
Her annual taxpayer-funded salary: between £149,099 and £164,794, according to the council’s website.
When challenged by Madgwick, she reportedly claimed she was simply enforcing the council’s code. But as he put it in a subsequent TalkTV interview, “With all due respect, that’s not her job. I’m an elected official, chosen by residents—not appointed by her.”
The next day, Madgwick went directly to the courts, gave them the suspect’s name, and was provided with a public record: the individual’s address, charges, remand status, and upcoming court date.
“All of it,” he said, “was public domain. Anyone could access it.”
In short, Brahma-Pearl and the council leadership had told an elected councillor to stay silent about information available to any member of the press or public.
Portsmouth’s Liberal Democrat leader, Steve Pitt, has also remained notably silent.
The same man whose X profile features a "Refugees Welcome" banner and who’s previously spoken at rallies organised by Stand Up to Racism—a campaign group closely aligned with the Socialist Workers Party.
The police response has raised questions too.
In that TalkTV interview, presenter Peter Cardwell noted the contrast with the recent horrific incident in Liverpool.
The former Royal Marine, who is accused of deliberately driving his car into a crowd after Liverpool FC's trophy parade, had his age and ethnicity very publicly disclosed before police charged him.
In this Portsmouth case, despite a rape charge being formally laid, the asylum seeker’s identity remains hidden.
More concerns were aired about the council’s duty of care.
Police informed The Sun that the suspect had been housed at the Royal Beach Hotel in Southsea—an asylum seeker facility funded by the Home Office.
Among the people who frequent that area?
Young girls, who reportedly walk past it daily on their way to a nearby school.
Despite this, the council issued no public warning—no announcements to parents or schools nearby.
Worse yet, this isn’t a one-off.
The Sun uncovered two similar cases that occurred in the last few weeks. In West London, a 27-year-old man was charged with sexual assault while staying at another asylum seeker hotel. In Manchester, a 34-year-old Jordanian asylum seeker was charged with rape—also while housed in Home Office-funded accommodation.
There were no official statements or warnings from those councils either.
For years, survivors and whistleblowers have warned that suppressing reports of sexual abuse can not only devastate lives—sometimes end them. Some abusers walk free. Victims are silenced. Justice remains out of reach.
Now, another council appears to have followed the same script.
And all of this comes just days after Baroness Casey’s landmark National Audit into grooming gangs. The same audit that just publicly condemned scores of local authorities for suppressing abuse committed by minority offenders on white British children to avoid sparking “community tensions”.
Casey’s audit also revealed that asylum seekers were already linked to several live grooming gang operations being investigated by police.
So we’re not only dealing with isolated assaults—but with reported networks of foreign asylum seekers eating, sleeping and living at our expense, all while grooming British girls on our streets.
And this is still occurring in a vacuum where authorities opt for silence for fear of unrest over the safety of their residents.
The political reckoning couldn’t come sooner…
You can follow George Madgwick on X — HERE
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I live in Portsmouth and never knew anything about this. Anyway I stopped paying my council tax to them in January 23. Like all councils, they're run by inept, low iq, brainwashed corrupt charlatans. They also didn't hold any local elections this year.
These illegal immigrants are not "fleeing" persecution, war, famine or anything else. They are young men who have seen on social media that coming to the UK means getting everything they ever dreamed of with absolutely no effort required. They clearly believe white people are irrelevant and the only ones they meet are the ones who stupidly bend over backwards to ensure they get everthing they want. They clearly believe white women and girls are there for the taking and they are continually having that view confirmed. I bet many of them have connections with men already here who have the same views on white people. That idiot councillor with his refugee welcome banner has no idea about these people - he needs to have a couple of them billeted in his house, especially if he has a wife and daughter.