Tam Paton

Thomas Dougal "Tam" Paton (5 August 1938 – 8 April 2009), was the manager and primary spokesman during the 1970s of the Scottish band, the Bay City Rollers.

Born in Prestonpans, Scotland, he was the son of a potato merchant. Paton drove a truck to initially aid the group financially. He went on to guide the band through their peak during the 1970s, nurturing the band's image to be that of the "boys next door". He was responsible for starting a myth that the band members preferred drinking milk to alcohol, in order to cultivate this clean, innocent image.

In 1979, Paton was fired as manager, and went on to develop a multi-million pound real estate business based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Paton was homosexual and a pederast. He has been called the "Scottish Jimmy Savile".

In 1982, Paton was convicted of gross indecency with teenage boys, serving one year of a three-year prison sentence.

In April 2004, Paton was convicted of supplying cannabis and fined £200,000. In 2007, the the band's guitarist Pat McGlynn claimed that Paton had attempted to rape him in a hotel room in Australia in 1977, but the police said they could not gather sufficient evidence at such a distance in time to mount a prosecution.

After Paton's death in 2009, Rollers singer Les McKeown also claimed he had been raped by him and said: "I can't imagine a man nor beast who will be mourning his passing."

Pederasty Allegations and Convictions

In 1982, Paton was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to molesting 10 boys over a three-year period." But he only served one year of his sentence.

According to McGlynn, Paton abused boys as young as eight - allegations which he reported to police several times over 35 years, yet usually nothing was done. He said: “He [Paton] would have young boys at his house – him and others I don’t even want to mention that were out there. There were police officers there, but I couldn’t name them. This was 1976 to 1981 – there were lots of parties at Tam Paton’s house and there were always young boys there, older men there. They used to dress the young boys up in women’s clothes, and they’d be dancing in Paton’s living room". "He would have a big punchbowl he would fill full of drugs – you wouldn’t even know what you were taking... The police should really be investigating. The amount of people that I saw out there – there must be hundreds if not thousands of people that’s been abused." It was rumored that Paton had a dossier of famous people implicated in with him, and this was the reason he got off so lightly.

Eight years after he was imprisoned, Paton was again at the center of the Operation Planet rent boy scandal. It was launched in 1990 after a 16-year-old boy on leave from a children's home was held at an address in central Edinburgh, drugged and repeatedly raped over a period of 10 days. The investigation initially resulted in 57 charges against 10 men, later reduced to 10 charges against five men whose not guilty pleas were accepted by a court in February 1991.

Paton, who built up a huge property portfolio using his pop earnings, owned a house on Palmerston Place which police believed to be at the hub of the Operation Planet network.

In January 2003, Paton was arrested and questioned by Surrey Police over historic abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s but the charges were dropped.

In 2009, Dr Sarah Nelson of the University of Edinburgh revealed that she had uncovered an abuse network centerd on Paton. Her demands for an inquiry were never followed up - despite compelling evidence that dozens of boys were involved. Her findings were that young runaways or children in care were lured in, drugged and then sexually abused. Many were then forced to work as 'rent boys' at a number of seedy secret flats.

The pedophile ring is thought to have operated over several decades and to have included well-known TV personalities, lawyers and police officers. Victims were forced to stay quiet by a fear of reprisals, with at least one murder rumored to have been carried out by the network. A dossier of Scottish pedophiles with links to Paton was prepared in 1982 but never made public.

In 2004, Dr Nelson carried out a study into adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse on behalf of NHS Lothian - and was stunned to hear so many allegations against Paton.

Her report detailed a pedophile ring operating across the region, which had resulted in many damaged young men ending up in prison or dying from drug overdoses. They found a number of 18-25 year olds, most of whom had been in jail and who disclosed that they had been abused by a particular pedophile ring.

In 2009, Dr Nelson carried out a follow-up study and again came across a substantial number of Paton's alleged victims. Their age indicates that Paton's crimes may have continued well into the new millenium. She added, "This was so blatant and so obvious that there were suspicions he was being protected in high places."

Paton's activities were an open secret for many years in Edinburgh, where he shared his fortress-like home at Gogar with teenage runaways and other troubled youngsters. He and the man who would later become his homosexual lover, Ray Cotter, prepared a 200-page dossier containing names and photographs of members of the pedophile ring. Cotter said in 2009 "I've seen him [Paton] do horrendous things, like putting drugs in people's drinks. He got away with it because people were scared of his criminal connections." He is said to be writing a book about Paton.

Illness and Death

In later years he suffered poor health including two heart attacks and a stroke. Paton died of a suspected heart attack aged 70 at his Edinburgh home on 8 April 2009.

References

• Stambler, Irwin. Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul. 1974. St. Martin's Press, Inc. New York, N.Y. ISBN 0-312-25025-8.