27/05/2014 BBC London News

Good evening from BBC London News. More than five days after the polls

opened for the local elections, counting has finally finished in

Tower Hamlets. Labour won the last two seats but the party has lost

overall control of the council. Two Labour candidates were elected in

the recount for Bromley South, which was overseen tonight by the

Electoral Commission. It's told the BBC it's also looking into claims

that some voters were intimidated. Chris Rogers is in Tower Hamlets.

This has been a complicated process, what does this result mean for the

council? As far as political dramas go, Tower Hamlets never seems to

fail. At 3am on Saturday, the counting for the local election was

cancelled. It was postponed because the counting of ballots for the

borough's Merrill elections overran. Then six recounts were ordered, the

final four Bromley South took place today. That brought Labour's

counsellors to a total of 20, short of the 23 the need for majority. Mr

Rahman's party currently has a team, but the drama is far from over.

There are still pre`councillor places left. The election for those

places has been postponed for 35 days because of the death of a

candidate. This is a borough under increasing scrutiny. Mr Rahman is

still being investigated by the government over allegations he tried

to influence votes by handing out generous grants to charities, an

allegation he denies. Today it emerged from politicians that there

was intimidation of the polling stations. This was how the count

started on Friday. And still on Tuesday evening it continued. The

results from 18 wards had been decided, but one was still

outstanding. The council says it prefers an accurate and transparent

count to a fast one. But the leader of the Tory group says it has been a

shambles. It was inefficiently organised will stop the accuracy was

not there. In my own ward I was told I would be given figures. I called

an immediate recount and there was a 21% variation on the figures between

the first count and the recount. It appears one in five votes had gone

wrong will be misplaced. After the re`election of Tower Hamlets' Mayor

Rahman, there were enthusiastic scenes outside the count at about

2am on Saturday morning. But it's now alleged by some that there may

have been a few too many people outside some polling stations on

election day. We saw groups of campaigners or activists from

various parties grouping together at the entrances to the polling

stations. That is in contravention of the rules, that you are not

allowed to put leaflets in the hands of voters as they go in. Tower

Hamlets politics are always a livelier affair than anywhere else

in the country. Yes, we had a pretty wild time with lots of people

hanging around polling stations. Some people find that intimidating.

The returning officer says the election has been carried out

correctly and the delays are unavoidable. On the day we had a

police officer at every polling station, we had a electoral

commission observers touring the borough visiting many polling

stations during the day. They didn't report any large scale intimidation.

So you think this has been a free, fair and proper election I do think

it has been free and fair, I don't think it has been a shambles. But if

there is evidence of intimidation at this stage that people are aware of,

we do want to hear about that. The police will investigate any specific

allegations where there is evidence someone was intimidated or not able

to cast their vote in the way they wanted to. A former primary school

teacher has been jailed for four years for sexual assaults against

children under the age of 13. Paul Cannon, from south London, admitted

to assaulting a number of children over a ten year period. The judge

described him as "every parent's nightmare". One of his victims spoke

to our home affairs correspondent Guy Smith. As I went to go he

grabbed my elbow and kicked the back of my leg to kick me down to the

floor. Pulled my bottom half down and was pinning me down from my

chest and hold on my leg stump. I was screaming and he was telling

me, don't worry, it's going to be OK. She was just nine when he

attacked her. He went to pull his trousers town but my dog came. My

dog scared him off. The run`off. She is now 22 but still finds it hard to

cope with what happened. I was always worried, nervous, and happy.

Paul Cannon is a former primary school teacher. The court heard he

had abused one of his pupils, but at least another 40 children, some as

young as six, were chosen at random in what the judge described as

serious predatory behaviour. The sexual offences we know what started

in 1999 and spanned a decade. He targeted both young girls and young

boys in south`west London, in Sutton, Carshalton and Merton. The

attacks are usually taking place in parks during the day. He carefully

planned the assaults, getting to and from the scene by mountain bike. But

13 years after the first attack, the police investigation had a

breakthrough. One of the victims came forward following huge

publicity surrounding Jimmy Savile and sexual abuse. That sent a clear

message to the public as a whole, that irrespective of what somebody

does for a living, what position they are in society, these sort of

offences will not be tolerated. Detectives also found 4000 indecent

images stored on Paul Cannon's computer, the judge saying his

behaviour was every parent's nightmare. But in sentencing took

into account that Paul Cannon had pleaded guilty to more than 50

offences and jailed him for four gears. A bit like the Pope today

talking about zero tolerance for child abuse, I think it's about time

that in our society we have zero tolerance for these kinds of crimes.

Police hope the bravery shown by people like Shannon will encourage

people to come forward, detectives believing there could be more

victims of this former teacher. That's all from me, so I'll wish you

a very goodnight. And hand you over to Wendy for the weather.

Plenty of rain to come overnight tonight, a bit of a lull in places,

but still some heavy rain falling at the moment and it will continue to

come down as we go through the night. Some big puddles to watch out

for. A mild night. Most of the rain should have cleared by the first

part of tomorrow. We will be left with a fair amount of clothes `` low

cloud. But it will start to brighten up a bit as we go through the second

half of the day into the afternoon and evening. Temperatures will be a

little higher. We have showers for Thursday and then it becomes drier

with Thursday and then it becomes drier

with sunshine by the weekend. If you've been sat at home with

miserable Mayweather today wondering why on earth we didn't go abroad for

half term week, we are just going to add insult to injury because people

have been basking in some sunshine across southern