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ALL PARTY GROUP FOR ABUSE INVESTIGATIONS NEWSLETTER
DECEMBER 2002 FROM CHAIRMAN CLAIRE CURTIS-THOMAS MP 16 BEACH LAWN WATERLOO
MERSEYSIDE L22 8QA This newsletter is given entirely
to the speech by Earl Howe, Vice Chair of the A PG at the UCAFAA Conference
on 9'h November 2002, as l am certain that you will all find his words of
immense interest. "Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I begin by
thanking you very much for inviting me to speak to you today and for the
warmth of your welcome. I am very pleased indeed to be here. Why am I here? Well, two and a half years ago, as
Opposition Health spokesman in the House of Lords, I received a letter out of
the blue from a lady living in North London, and her letter told a disturbing
story. Her son, who suffers from learning difficulties and various medical
problems, had been taken a number of times to the family doctor without much
positive result. All of a sudden, the family received a visit from the local
social services department. Before they knew what was happening, social
services were accusing the boy's mother of Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy and
of perpetrating abuse on him by fabricating his illness. They threatened to
put the boy on the child protection register. The boy's parents, who are
highly educated professional people, got in touch with their local MP and
with one of their local councillors. As a result of representations from
those people, social services dropped their allegations against the mother.
The boy has since been diagnosed as suffering from autism and assessed as
being in need of special educational help. That case opened up for me a parallel world of which I
had previously no knowledge at all - namely the hundreds of people who are
accused of child abuse in its many diverse forms and guises, and who are
pursued and often hounded and persecuted by the authorities, but who
steadfastly maintain their innocence. I have been an active member of the
House of Lords for some twelve years, but never, prior to two years ago, had
I become aware of false accusations of abuse as a major issue or as a cause
for widespread concern. Those of you who are here today are here because, for
your own individual reasons, this is a burning issue for you. But I think you
will agree with me that even today, after all the widely reported cases of
falsely accused people - Cleveland, the Orkneys and all the rest - most
recently, of course, Shieldfield - this is not an issue that has imprinted
itself more than fleetingly on the public consciousness. That is hardly surprising. Most people, if you ask them,
feel that child abuse is widespread. They feel it is such a ghastly thing
that the main concern of the authorities should be to catch and punish child
abusers. So long as that is done, or is being seen to be done, people are
frankly not worried about much else. Horrific cases like those of Victoria
Climbie convince them that if anything the pursuit of child abusers is not
being expedited vigorously enough. And, I am sorry to say, for similar
reasons you will not find many politicians evincing public concern for the
phenomenon of false accusations. Sex abuse investigations are a significant
issue, I have little doubt, in the postbags of most, if not all constituency
MP's. But in a world in which paediatricians can be targeted by mobs because
some people do not know the difference between paediatricians and
paedophiles, it is not difficult to see why Members of Parliament tend to be
wary of the whole subject. It is a short step from being reported as someone
who is worried about people accused of child abuse to being reported as
someone who sticks up for child abusers. By the summer of last year, after a good deal of
research, I had made up my mind to table a motion in the House of Lords on
this whole issue; and some of you will know that that debate took place just
over a year ago. It was the first debate of its kind, ever, and I believe
that it was extremely valuable in bringing directly to the notice of ministers
a subject which they had not been called upon to address before. Then, almost
at the same time as the debate took place, I learned to my astonishment that
there was a Member of Parliament who, unbeknownst to me, had been working on
a parallel track for a considerable length of time. Claire Curtis-Thomas, the
Labour Member for Crosby, had become so passionately concerned about false
accusations that she proposed the setting up of an all-party group to examine
the whole issue thoroughly and from scratch. With my help she succeeded in
gathering the requisite number of signatures to achieve official recognition
of the group. And so it was that almost exactly a year ago, she and I
together with a number of others, including Tim Boswell MP, inaugurated what
is now the All-Party Group for Abuse Investigations. The Group has about 60
members. Many do not attend our meetings, but their silent support is
absolutely crucial to the executive team. Now, it is important to make clear what this group is
not. It is not a group which investigates or champions individual claims of
innocence from people in prison or elsewhere. It is not a group that takes up
the cudgels on behalf of Mr X or Mrs Y who may either have been convicted of
child abuse or who may otherwise have suffered as a result of being falsely
accused. There are several reasons why we cannot do that. The first is that
there are not enough hours in the day for a small group, with many other duties
and responsibilities, to pursue all these cases. The second is that we must
at all costs retain our political credibility. We could get it wrong. The day
on which we champion the cause of someone who claims to have been falsely
accused, only for that person to turn out to be guilty, is the day when our
credibility as a group is blown to smithereens. We would no longer be taken
seriously. But the third and perhaps overriding reason is that investigating
individual claims is not the best way for politicians to make their influence
felt. Politicians are ideally placed to bring about changes in the system,
and that is how I believe they can be used to best effect. To do that, they
must spend their time looking at the broader picture and trying to identify the
weaknesses that may be inherent in the underlying process. That is why the
all-party group has set itself the task of examining the methods by which P2 allegations of sexual abuse are investigated and handled
by social services, by the police, by lawyers and by the judiciary. We are
also focussing on the other main concern expressed by those affected by abuse
allegations; the motivation of the accuser. We are doing all this with the
aim of making recommendations as to how the system as a whole might be
improved, so as to ensure that the guilty are caught but the innocent are
not. We could have embarked upon this o=n of a subject at any
of several points of departure. What we chose to do was to start looking at
criminal convictions for child abuse where the alleged offences were supposed
to have taken place in the distant past, often decades before any initial
allegations were made. Typically, an allegation of this sort comes from a
number of adults who, when much younger, were residents of a care home, and
will centre upon an individual who worked in the care home at the relevant
time. It seemed to us that this type of case presented a number of
particularly disturbing features, not the least of which was the total lack
of any objective evidence for the crime other than the statements of the
accusers. Now, there is an obvious, golden principle that should apply if you
want to see justice done in that kind of situation. The principle is that the
manner in which statements are taken from witnesses should be completely
fair, transparent and beyond reproach. Let me describe, if I may, what we
have found out during the course of the last year. The police receive the initial allegation either
directly or through a solicitor. Let us say that it relates to a Mr Smith who
worked in a particular care home twenty-five years ago. What do the police
do? They ask the accuser whether he can think of anyone else who was present
at the time. A list is assembled. The police then make efforts to contact all
the individuals who lived in the care home during the period in question
asking them to help with their enquiries. They urge them to make contact if
they suffered any problem whilst living in that home. Very frequently the
individuals concerned are in prison or on parole. The police go to prisons,
often unannounced, and sit down with a complainant. They say "We have come
to see you today because we hope that you can help us with our enquiries in
connection with Mr Smith. Here is a photograph of him. He has been accused of
very serious sex offences against other people. Is there anything you can say
to help us, because the one statement we have got is not enough to convict
him. We need more. Oh, and by the way, if you were harmed by Mr Smith, there
would be compensation available." And so it goes, until finally the
individual is led towards making a statement which is all of a piece with the
first one. For some witnesses who are serving time in prison, money
is not the issue. To these people the police can say "You know, when you
come up for parole, it might help your case if you have established that you
were abused as a child." And with all this, subconsciously, comes the
realisation on the part of witnesses that they are suddenly important. They
may receive several visits from the police. They become the centre of
attention. To their delight they are not the baddy any more but the goody. In one real case that came to court this year, the
police had been to see an individual in prison. At the interview, the man
said that he had nothing to tell them. As far as he was concerned Mr Smith
had done nothing. The police went away. They then came back and interviewed
him again. Still nothing. They came back to interview the man no fewer than
15 times in 10 different prisons. At the end of the fifteenth interview they
got their statement. This process is frequently repeated and repeated with a
number of witnesses. At the end of it the police may have accumulated as many
as twenty statements. They need that many to get to court, because they know
that some of the statements will inevitably fall by the wayside and that on
average they need at least eight to secure a conviction. If a jury is
presented with eight statements, each of them saying much the same thing, it
is very difficult indeed for their validity to be challenged successfully.
The natural reaction of anyone listening to them is to suppose that there can
be no smoke without fire. These people cannot all be telling lies. Sometimes of course they may not be telling lies. But
sometimes they most certainly are. This summer a man went to court facing ten
complainants. One of the complainants was vigorously cross-questioned in the
witness box and admitted that he had applied for compensation prior to the
court case. The defence lawyer then said "You might as well admit it.
You're doing all this for the compensation, aren't you?" to which the
answer came "Yes, I am. And everything I have said in evidence is a
complete pack of lies." The next witness, summonsed to the court on the
following day, did not turn up but instead sent a letter to the judge which
said "I am not coming to court because all the statements I have given
to the police are untrue." After receiving that letter the judge
discharged and exonerated the accused man. This kind of situation is by no means uncommon, but
several people who have spoken to me have said that the only difference
between those who are acquitted and those who are convicted is luck. Luck and
the calibre, or lack of it, of the defence team. But that is not the end of
the story. Even those who have been acquitted and exonerated find that their life
is in ruins. Teachers and social workers find that they are the subject of
internal enquiries. At the end of the enquiry, which can go on for a
considerable time, they may lose their job, because their employers are
reluctant to re-engage them in the shadow of lingering suspicion. And often
this marks the end of long professional careers dedicated to the care of the
young and vulnerable. Many hundreds of such cases have been documented. One
cannot see how such people, or their families and friends, will ever recover
from the allegations. Mr Chairman, this situation is one which any right
thinking person must find deeply, deeply worrying. It is not necessary to
arrive at an opinion on whether this or that person is guilty or innocent of
the crimes alleged. The key point is a much broader one. It cannot be right
that the only evidence used to convict a man is evidence obtained by the
police P3 from a witness in private, with no independent
observer present. The processes that are being followed by the police in
cases of this kind are wide open to abuse. I do not say that the police are
corrupt. I do say that very often the police wish to get a result, and they
will go to enormous lengths to succeed in that aim. And when a case collapses
in court, such as the one I have just described, when witness statements are
totally discredited, is there any come-back on the police officers who
extracted those statements? There is not. During the course of our work In the all-party group, we
have spoken to judges, ministers, compensation authorities, social workers,
barristers, solicitors, prison governors, the Criminal Cases Review
Commission, the British False Memory Society, and of course many victims of
false allegations. Claire Curtis-Thomas has personally undertaken a
considerable number of visits to people in prison. That work is still
continuing, and the group has not yet published a report on the evidence it
has taken. But let me tell you one particular thing that we believe ought to
be done. We believe that when a witness comes forward making allegations of
sexual abuse, the interview in which he or she makes those allegations should
be videotaped. We believe that any subsequent interview with that witness or
with other potential witnesses should also be videoed. There is already
provision in statute for video cameras to be used to record statements. We
think they should be used as a matter of routine in cases of this kind. It is
a system that would protect both the witness and the police. This idea is not
a flight of fancy. Our view has been supported vigorously and, I may say,
without hesitation by a number of senior judges in private meetings. Indeed,
there does not seem to us to be any other way of demonstrating beyond
peradventure that the police have not persuaded, cajoled or otherwise induced
individuals to make allegations, nor any other way of showing that the
witnesses have made statements of their own free will. By no other means than
a video can one show conclusively that the process of investigation has not
been corrupted. A video would be clear proof of the subtler things which
never come out at a trial - the demeanour of the witness, the expression on
his face during silences, and generally how convincing he was when making the
original allegations. For what we have seen in many of these cases are
allegations being made by people who are mentally unstable; people who are
themselves child abusers; people who are convicted criminals; and people who
may have an improper motive for saying what they do about their former
carers. I do not say that such individuals can never tell the truth; but they
have to be treated, a priori, with some caution. More importantly perhaps,
the consequences that can flow from allegations of this nature are so
serious, so devastating for the person accused that we need to make 100% sure
that the process of evidence-gathering is totally beyond reproach. My friend and colleague in the House of Commons Edward
Garnier has said that police trawling, which in recent years has mushroomed,
has become a public danger in itself, different from the danger of child
abuse, but every bit as corrosive to our justice system as child abuse is to
the public care system. I believe that observation is as wise as it is true;
but alongside the danger Edward Gamier has alluded to, 1 also believe that
the presumption of innocence, which has always been integral to our system of
criminal justice, is being submerged - in fact for all practical purposes it
is non-existent - under the sorts of circumstances I have described. If we look at the larger backdrop of the criminal
justice system we see that it offers much weaker safeguards than it did twenty
years ago for someone accused of historic sex abuse crimes. Since 1991, the
Crown Prosecution Service has been able to join similar allegations together
in one indictment; and since 1994 it has not been open to the trial judge to
direct a jury that similar fact evidence corroborates the allegation in
question or that it is prejudicial. Since 1994, judges have not been warning
juries in sex cases about the danger of convicting on uncorroborated
evidence. Since 1999 there has been no requirement for evidence to be sworn.
All these changes, designed to respond to the public's wish to ensure that
those guilty of crimes are convicted, have at the same time made it easier
for the innocent to be convicted as well. And it seems that we are about to
carry this slowly shifting process still further. Under the proposed criminal
justice reforms announced in the summer, previous convictions would be
disclosed to juries, and hearsay evidence would be admitted in court. It is
an uncomfortable truth, but a truth all the same, that the spirit and
direction of the times we live in is out of tune with the spirit and
direction of this conference. When I hear, as I do, from professionals in the
field that we should be more concerned about the guilty people who get away
than about the innocent people who may be convicted, I get very worried
indeed. But that is not by any means an unusual sentiment to hear being
voiced. It is against that dark and somewhat pessimistic
background that last week's report from the Home Affair Select Committee came
as a sudden and brilliant shaft of light. Claire Curtis-Thomas gave extensive
evidence to that committee, and sparing her blushes as she is not here, I
believe that we have her to thank for many of the recommendations that the
report contains. Those recommendations resonate fully with the aspirations
and the work of the all-party group. It is no exaggeration to say that the
select committee report has changed the political landscape; the subject of
false accusations, and the issues surrounding it, are now well and truly on
the parliamentary map. It is without doubt a huge step forward. What do we see in the report? We see a public declaration
of something that I personally believe without equivocation; that there are
very many innocent people locked up in prison for sex abuse crimes which they
did not commit. We see strong criticisms of police procedure. We see a whole
raft of sensible recommendations; for the videoing of witness interviews; for
the need to get the permission of the court before a prosecution of historic
child abuse cases is able to proceed; for a review of the rules of similar
fact evidence; and for a change in the remit of the Criminal Cases Review P4 Commission. All these are issues which we in the
all-party group have been pursuing. The Government have now got three months
in which to respond to the report. During that time, we in the all-party
group will aim to submit our own report to the Home Office, to buttress and
back up what the select committee have recommended. Indeed the main focus of
our activity over the next three months will be to maintain pressure on the
Home Office to accept the select committee's recommendations (which they will
almost certainly be reluctant to do) and simultaneously to work with the CCRC
in reviewing the validity of the processes employed in about 30 historic
abuse cases. Now, we are going to have a question session in a
minute, and I believe I know what is going through your minds some of you
will be thinking 'But he hasn't talked about me!' So let me in the final few
minutes touch upon some of the issues I haven't yet covered and which the
all-party group intend to look at during the months ahead. Next year, I hope,
we will be turning our attention to the so-called domestic, one-on-one cases
of alleged abuse. If you are someone who has been accused falsely of sexual
abuse within your own family; or perhaps in a school; and you may have been
to prison; or perhaps not have been to prison, but have seen your life fall
apart as a result of what has happened to you; you may not at first sight
regard the kinds of historic cases that I have been talking about as relevant
to you. If so, I think that is a mistaken view. There are factors which in my
opinion unite all cases of false abuse accusations. The main factor, to which
I have already referred, is the climate of the times we live in; where child
abuse, above all other offences, is regarded as so horrendous, and the mere
suggestion of it so appalling, that the normal conventions of unbiassed
investigation can go by the board. That, to me, is the single biggest
problem; getting the police, social services and the courts to acknowledge
that the possibility of someone being falsely accused, and what follows from
a false accusation, is as serious a matter as the need to bring the guilty to
justice. I have heard it said that the start of an investigation is like
initiating the movement of a juggernaut. Common sense and reasoned argument
are abandoned. And quite often those who find themselves accused do not
initially realise how difficult it is to stop the juggernaut from careering
on. Many people, for example, turn for legal advice to the solicitor who
handled the conveyancing of their house. There is a naive belief that in the
end 'the truth will out'. There is a naive belief in the inherent
professionalism of the investigating authorities. There is often a belief
that defence witnesses who come forward to attest to a lifetime of
upstanding, honourable conduct on the part of the accused person will somehow
serve to blow the evidence of the prosecution witnesses out of the water. All these are issues which our group will be examining.
I am in no doubt at all that the so-called one-on-one or 'domestic' cases of
alleged abuse are not only numerically far greater than the historic,
institutional cases; but they also present a particularly difficult and wide
ranging set of issues. For example, we need to look closely at the role of
social services and ask whether it is appropriate that social workers should
take on the mantle of crime investigators, when an accusation is made. We
need to look at the extent of professional dumbing down within social
services; the culture of blame and fear under which social workers operate;
their lack of real accountability; their tendency, come what may, to err on
the side of caution and to discount what may be contrary evidence; their
tendency, if I can be blunt about it, to look for ways of justifying their
own continued existence. We need to look at the training of social workers
and the training of the police. We must look at the prevalence of untested
theories such as Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy and 'recovered' memory. At a
practical level we need to look at how defendants can access effective legal
advice, not from generalist high-street solicitors but from those
practitioners with a true understanding of the subject. These are only a few of
the tasks ahead of us. All this represents by any standards a challenging
agenda for the remainder of the current parliament. Speaking for myself, it
is some of the most important and worthwhile work I have ever undertaken. If
you ask most politicians what brought them into politics in the first
instance most will say that it was to try to make the world a better and
happier place. One of the obstacles to that end is the incidence of
injustice. Injustice is an offence to any civilised society; and where it is
found it needs to be stopped. I could therefore not be more pleased that the
particular facet of injustice that has brought us all together today should
now be the focus of serious attention in Westminster. The mission of the
allparty group is to roll back the frontiers of this hitherto taboo subject;
to expose what we find; and thereby to set in motion what we hope will be
another unstoppable juggernaut - but this time in the cause of British
justice." I can add no more to Earl Howe's
words, he has accurately reflected my thoughts and my concerns and has
pointed the way forward for the All Party Group. The Executive and the Members of the
All Party Group join with me to send you seasonal good wishes, for what we
know is a difficult time. Claire Curtis-Thomas MP To Mr Ivor Catt |
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Irresponsible behaviour by Betty Moxon of the Home Office
in the matter of the alleged problem of False Allegations. http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/19164.htm Sent to Australia/NZ in aug 1999
to study the subject of sexual offences, Moxon initially reported that in one
situation (see below) 50% of such allegations were false. She then suppressed
this information at the sep 1999 Leicester Conference, where the concept of a
false allegation did not exist, and in her later reports. In The Sunday
Times, Melanie Phillips wrote that the Home Office was desperate to jail more
men and didn't care how. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://www.policecareers.gov.uk/cpd/sou/apefgh12.pdf
by Betty Moxon (Home Office) …. …. The police had also sponsored some
research of false The concept of a false allegation did not exist when Moxon pursued the Sex Offences Review in Leicester only days later, in sep99, in spite of the fact that I, who attended the Leicester meeting, had also flagged up the alleged problem of false allegations in letters to Moxon even before she went to Australia. Ivor Catt http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/19164.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/03072.htm @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Teenagers 'wrongly convicted' for Central Park rape |