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How the police trawl the innocent
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New Statesman special report
19 July 1999
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ONE EVENING IN MAY of this year, Brian
Johnson, a 43-year-old former care worker from South Wales, telephoned me
from a call box in Cardiff. He had been charged on several counts of
physical and sexual abuse. But the prosecution had offered a deal.
Good-humoured as always, Johnson told me: ‘If I plead guilty to the
physical charges, they are prepared to drop all the sexual allegations and
I will almost certainly walk out of court a free man. So what do I
do?’
I didn’t really need to answer. Johnson had already made up
his mind. His legal team had collected substantial evidence that all the
allegations against him had been fabricated. ‘I’m going back tomorrow,’ he
said, ‘and I am going to tell them exactly where they can stick their
offer. I am going to fight.’
For some time, there was no news.
Then I found out what had happened. After a three-week trial, Brian
Johnson had been found guilty on several counts of sexual abuse. He was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was led from the court, shouting out
that he was innocent.
The evidence against Johnson was collected
during a new form of police inquiry which has developed only in the past
ten years: the trawling operation. First used by Leicestershire police in
the Frank Beck case in 1990, the method spread to North Wales, Cheshire
and Merseyside. Now it has been used by as many as two-thirds of the
country’s police forces to convict dozens of alleged abusers.
Detective Superintendent John Robbins, of the Merseyside police,
has described this new kind of investigation as ‘the reverse of normal
police methods’. Instead of starting from a crime and setting out to find
the criminal, the trawling procedure starts with the suspect (or an
allegation) and then attempts to find the crime. Police officers trace and
interview former residents of care homes and, during these interviews,
more evidence against the original suspect, or against other care workers,
almost unfailingly emerges.
These investigations are often said to
involve ‘children’s homes’. In fact they are usually residential
institutions for troubled or difficult adolescents and, since the
allegations of abuse usually refer back ten, 20 or even 30 years, those
making them are not children at all. They are almost always adults, many
of them with long criminal records. In a number of cases they make their
allegations in prison or while facing serious criminal charges. It is here
that the real dangers of police trawling operations become apparent – or
ought to become apparent.
If police officers interview hundreds of
damaged young people with long records of deception and dishonesty, with
the aim of gathering allegations of abuse against those who once cared for
them, it would be surprising if they did not succeed in provoking a large
number of false allegations – particularly when it is known that such
allegations can result in thousands of pounds being paid out by the
Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Yet police forces up and down
the land continue their trawling operations with the full knowledge and
implicit approval of Home Office ministers.
Lord Williams of
Mostyn, for example, recently wrote that there are ‘no viable
alternatives’ and that ‘sexual abuse allegations are too serious not to
look for further evidence’.
Here is an example of how the police
do it. In September 1997 former residents of St George’s School in Formby,
Merseyside, which had always enjoyed an unblemished reputation, received a
letter from Robbins, headed ‘Operation Care’. It read:
I am the senior
investigating officer of the above operation which is currently
investigating allegations of child abuse reported to have taken place
within a number of residential establishments in the Merseyside area.
I am aware from records provided to me that in times past you have
been a resident at St George’s/Clarence House School . . . I am concerned
that there is a possibility that such abuse may have taken place whilst
you were in residence there.
If you have any information or if
we can help you with any complaint you may have [my italics], please
respond by completing and returning the attached slip using the enclosed
pre-paid envelope or by contacting a member of my staff using the above
telephone number.
One man interviewed as
a result of this trawl is the Southampton football manager Dave Jones, who
worked at St George’s for four years during the 1980s, and whose conduct
at the time was considered exemplary. His case was leaked to the press
because he happens to be well known. But it is believed that 80 former
members of staff face allegations, and Robbins recently told a judge that
charges would be brought against as many as 50 of them. Yet until recently
St George’s enjoyed an unblemished reputation.
St
George’s is only one of a hundred institutions that have been investigated
by the Merseyside and Cheshire police forces in the past five years. It
would seem likely that, in these two counties alone, trawling operations
have led to allegations being made against as many as a thousand care
workers.
The original North Wales investigation produced
allegations against 365 different people, and this tally has now risen. In
South Wales, according to a report in Community Care magazine, an
investigation carried out by Gwent police into a single home, Ty Mawr, has
already led to accusations against 60 former members of staff. So far,
however, the police have interviewed only 200 former residents. According
to the report, it is their intention to interview another 6,800 before
their investigation is concluded. In another care home, five former
members of staff, one of whom is in his eighties, have recently been
charged by the South Wales police with more than 200 counts of abuse.
Another case involves Derek Brushett, former head of Bryn-y-Don.
So well-respected was he that he became a Welsh Office inspector. Yet he
now faces 40 counts of sexual and physical abuse relating to more than 20
complainants. None of these complaints was made spontaneously and all were
the products of police trawling exercises. At least 50 other institutions
in South Wales are under investigation.
Meanwhile on Tyneside,
Operation Rose has reached such a pitch that Gill Rutherford, a solicitor
with Thompson’s, has retained the services of five barristers, who meet
weekly. About 100 care workers have already faced police interviews; more
than 20 have been charged.
Given the statistics already in the
public domain, it is reasonable to assume that the number of care workers
implicated by trawled allegations is now in excess of 3,000 and may well
be approaching 5,000. Many of these cases will never come to court. But
with the cost of the North Wales tribunal alone estimated at £10-15
million, the overall cost to the public purse of convening inquiries,
mounting police trawling operations, co-ordinating with social services,
bringing suspects before the courts and holding those convicted in prison
must already run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Most people
would consider this money well spent if it were indeed contributing to the
cause of justice. But many lawyers believe that exactly the opposite is
happening. Certainly some of the care workers involved in these cases are
guilty of sexual abuse. But from the beginning, solicitors have expressed
concern about the alarmingly high level of false allegations that appears
to result from trawling operations. Chris Saltrese, a solicitor based in
Merseyside, takes the view that at least half the convictions obtained in
Cheshire and Merseyside are unsound. He also thinks that, as the
investigation in the North-west has gathered momentum, the number of false
allegations has multiplied, to the point where as many as 90 per cent of
trawled complaints have been fabricated. Chief among the complex motives
of those who make false complaints, he believes, is the desire to gain
compensation.
The
principle underlying all trawling operations is, in the words of Robbins,
that of ‘corroboration by volume’. Terry Hoskin, the former head of St
Aidan’s, Widnes, whose appeal against his conviction in 1996 on a number
of serious sexual offences will be heard later this year, found himself
facing allegations made by no fewer than 40 complainants. All but one had
been trawled by the police. Even after the prosecution had discarded the
more obvious fabrications, 20 complainants remained. In the face of such
multiple allegations it is all but impossible to find judges or juries who
are prepared to acquit, however many inconsistencies the evidence
contains.
The same factor appears to have played a part in the
conviction of Brian Johnson last month, even though his own trial involved
only four complainants. One allegation against Johnson and his
co-defendant Geoffrey Morris (who pleaded guilty to a number of counts)
involved a claim of satanic abuse: a black cloak, an altar and the
drinking of blood were supposedly used as ritual preludes to sexual
assault. Although the jury rejected this allegation, they accepted another
from the same man that actually ran counter to the evidence before them.
The man claimed that Morris had driven him in a minibus to a venue where
he was sexually abused by both Morris and Johnson. Even though Morris
could not drive, and even though this was accepted by the Crown, the jury
convicted Johnson on this count.
Another witness was a woman who
claimed that Johnson had indecently assaulted her. Her psychiatric records
suggested that she was unable to distinguish between truth and fantasy and
that she had made numerous allegations which were not true. Ten years ago,
after making an allegation of rape which had resulted in a police
investigation, she eventually admitted that she had made up the entire
incident. In court last month, however, she claimed that the rape had
taken place after all. In spite of a great deal of other evidence,
including the testimony of her former foster mother, which completely
undermined the credibility of this witness, Johnson was found guilty of
indecently assaulting her.
In this respect, the trial followed the
pattern of countless others involving care workers: the sheer quantity of
complainants and allegations leads to a situation where the quality of the
evidence offered becomes all but irrelevant. That Johnson – who, in the
view of his legal team, is entirely innocent – should have been found
guilty ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ on the evidence presented is extremely
disturbing. It is tempting to criticise the jury system itself. But the
real responsibility lies with those who decided to put such cases before a
jury in the first place.
For sound historical and evidential
reasons our legal system contains safeguards designed to protect both
individual citizens and the public purse from unsound prosecutions ever
being brought before a court. Since its creation in 1986, the Crown
Prosecution Service has played a central role. Its brief is that it should
allow prosecutions only if there is a realistic prospect of a conviction
and if a prosecution would be in the public interest. A second safeguard
has traditionally been provided by the magistrates’ court. In cases
initiated before April 1997 it is still possible to hold an old-style
committal hearing in front of a magistrate. Witnesses can be called and
magistrates can dismiss weak cases without them ever going before a judge.
Even if this safeguard fails, judges can themselves dismiss cases or
prevent unsound evidence going before a jury on a number of grounds.
In any sane and reasonable society, no prosecution based on
allegations that have been actively sought or solicited by police forces,
in circumstances where substantial material rewards may be available to
those who make false allegations, would ever be allowed to proceed. The
case would be halted by the CPS or the evidence would be ruled
inadmissible either by a magistrate or by the judge.
The problem
that our criminal justice system now faces is that the attitude we have
adopted as a society towards allegations of sexual abuse is neither sane
nor reasonable. So terrifying has the spectre of child sexual abuse
become, so convinced are we that we are beset by some unspeakable evil,
that the ordinary checks and balances built into our justice system have
been rendered powerless.
In recent years barristers have noticed
an increasing tendency for the CPS to allow sexual cases to proceed,
regardless of the quality of the evidence. At the same time both
magistrates and judges seem terrified to use their powers to dismiss
unsound prosecutions or to halt trials as an abuse of process. The terror
that an innocent person might be found guilty, which has traditionally and
rightly been the foundation on which our entire justice system has been
built, has been replaced by the terror that a guilty man might go free.
In these circumstances, in which both magistrates and judges have
in effect relinquished their traditional responsibility to protect the
public against ill-founded and dangerous prosecutions, it should scarcely
be surprising that juries, misled by the court into believing that the
evidence being presented to them is safe, should use this evidence as the
basis for convicting the defendant. For juries, too, are susceptible to
terror. And they, too, are liable to reach a verdict of guilty not on the
evidence but in response to the fear that they might acquit a guilty man.
If recent rulings are any guide, even some appeal court judges appear to
have succumbed to the terror.
When you are faced by an unspeakable
evil, the safest course is always to convict, whatever reasonable doubts
there may be about whether the defendant has actually committed the crimes
of which he or she is accused. We saw that again and again in the cases
brought after the IRA terror bombings.
In such a climate, the
dispensing of justice is replaced by a witch-hunt. And, because police
trawling operations have been allowed to develop virtually unchallenged
over ten years, we are now in the midst of a witch-hunt of unprecedented
intensity.
Perhaps the most lavishly resourced witch-hunt in
history, taking up thousands of police hours and draining hundreds of
millions of pounds of public money, the present one stretches across
England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and involves literally thousands of
care workers, former care workers and an increasing number of teachers.
One of the reasons that it has spread so rapidly, so silently and so
invisibly is that all free societies depend ultimately not upon lawyers or
politicians but upon journalists to watch over their essential liberties
and to keep them safe. Yet in the present case journalists have themselves
been responsible for driving the witch-hunt forward.
Although we
tend to assume that investigative journalists are among the most sceptical
of observers, that is by no means always the case. As at least one former
national newspaper editor has noted, journalists are sometimes the most
credulous of people. So anxious are they for sensational stories that they
are frequently unable to interrogate these stories sceptically or to
investigate them properly. It is because the great children’s home panic,
in the midst of which we now find ourselves, was largely created by
apparently responsible journalists writing for broadsheet newspapers (or
for Private Eye) during the early years of this decade that its
true nature has remained, in effect, invisible for so long. It is because
it has been virtually undocumented by serious journalists that this
particular moral panic has become so vast, so powerful and so dangerous.
Much can now be done by politicians, by lawyers and by the
judiciary. But whether it is done will depend on whether editors and
journalists can wake from their slumberous credulity and begin to document
in detail the phenomenon that they have played such a large role in
creating.
If they do not, it is likely that Brian Johnson, and the
dozen or more other innocent care workers who are already serving long
prison sentences, will continue to protest their innocence in vain and
that the carefully prepared submissions of their lawyers will continue to
be turned down by the Court of Appeal. If this should indeed happen, it is
certain that they will be joined by many others from among the thousands
who have had allegations made against them. Given the scale of the
investigations that are now taking place, the number of innocent care
workers in prison is likely to rise by the score until it reaches a
hundred or more.
Such a prospect should not be tolerated in any
society that calls itself free. The present situation, where police forces
hunt crimes, rather than criminals, should not be tolerated, either.
In allowing retrospective trawling operations to develop in the
way they have, we have created a machine for producing miscarriages of
justice. That machine is now out of control. It has already done
inestimable damage to countless innocent care workers and their families.
If it is not halted soon, and halted by the very people who have thus far
driven it forward, a great deal more damage will be done, and a tragedy
that is already grave beyond the power of words to express will become
graver still.
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© Richard Webster, 2002
www.richardwebster.net
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