of complaints about his behaviour leading to allegations that he had been shown favouritism by some of the members of the ruling Labour group. The Labour Party members of the council split between councillors following the former mayor Nick Tallentire (which called themselves "The Hackney New Labour Group") and councillors following the former council leader John McCafferty, who was eventually backed by the national Labour party. Mark Trotter was a children's social service employee of the Hackney and Liverpool Councils who had been reported four times for child abuse and multiple times for suspicion of abuse, and was reported for beating his boyfriend and illegally evicting him from their shared council-provided house. An independent inquiry carried out by John Barrat stated that the reason why Mark Trotter was not properly investigated by the council or terminated was "the fact that he [Mark Trotter] had quite an influential position in the trade union in a council where trade unions have a lot of power." Mark Trotter died of an AIDS-related illness in 1995, shortly before the police informed the Hackney council they were about to prosecute him for sexually abusing five boys in 1980–81 when he lived in Merseyside, UK. None of the known victims, twelve in all, contracted HIV/AIDS from the alleged abuse. Electoral wards The nineteen wards in that make up the borough are mostly made up of four polling districts, the exception being Dalston ward with five. Most are named after geographical locations or features with the exceptions of Chatham and Stoke Newington Central centred on Stoke Newington High Street, part of the Roman Ermine Street, the Central part both separating the surrounding parts of Stoke Newington that are parts of neighbouring wards and also apeing Hackney Central. The only ward named after street is Clissold for Clissold Crescent and not Clissold Park located in neighbouring Lordship ward. Most are named for the hamlets originally found there, Haggerston, Hoxton, and Wick, country estates between the hamlets, Brownswood after Brownswood Park and Lordship after Lordship Park, or the planned developments themselves, Cazenove, De Beauvoir, and Kings Park. Three are named after parks, Hackney Downs, Springfield Park, Hackney, and Victoria Park, East London although after a boundary change there no longer is any part of Victoria Park within the Borough. Two are named after bridges the first of the River Lea and the other Queensbridge after a bridge over the