F.A.C.T.

Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers

Fighting injustice – lobbying for change

THE INNOCENT PEOPLE FOR WHOM BRITISH JUSTICE WAS

STOOD ON ITS HEAD.
Sir William Blackstone [1723-1780] said:-
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape justice than one innocent
suffer.”

In January 2002, Lord Justice Judge (now Lord Chief Justice) said that in “Appeal
Court Ruling (following the successful Appeal of Angela Cannings against the
conviction for killing her two baby sons,)

“Could lead to some guilty mothers going free or not facing trial at all.
“That,” he added “is an undesirable result which avoids a worse one.”

He went on to add, “unless we are sure of guilt, the dreadful possibility always remains
that a mother, already brutally scarred by the unexplained deaths of her babies, may
find herself in prison for life for killing them when she should not be there at all. In our
community, and in any civilised community, that is abhorrent.”

It would therefore appear from such comments, that the concept of British Justice,
regarded throughout the world as the epitome of honesty and truth, where an accused
person ‘is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty’, is still alive and well and
protecting British citizens from injustice in the same way as it was intended to in the
18th Century.

I intend to point out similarities between two groups of persons, each of whom were
totally failed by British Justice, when they were deemed to be guilty until they could
prove their innocence of crimes they had not committed. To be able to furnish proof of
negative events would tax the minds of the greatest philosophers known.

This however, is what was expected of those accused of killing their babies when they
died in unexplained circumstances, and especially those accused of sexually and
physically abusing children in children's home or residential school at some time during
the past four decades.

Not all those in the former category are women, nor all in the latter category men, but
since they form the vast majority in each instance, simply and only to make the article
easier to write, and hopefully to read, I shall continue to refer to each group of people in
this way. I hope it causes no offence to any reader.

Angela Canning was recently released from prison following a successful appeal. She had
spent almost two years in jail, having been wrongly accused and convicted of killing her
two baby sons. Her case naturally aroused much disquiet and concern among members
of the public that such a tragic mistake could have been made yet again.

Her case also generated extensive and widespread media coverage and informed
comment, plus comprehensive reporting on the reasons given by the Appeal Court
judges for their decision to quash Mrs. Canning’s conviction. The Appeal Court also made
recommendations regarding the manner in which cases of sudden unexplained infant
deaths should be handled in the future.

The reasons and recommendations, together with the informed comment, pertain of
course, only to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). However, their underlying call for
justice for those accused of crimes which they did not commit and for which there is no
tangible evidence, to either accused of historic sexual abuse in children's
establishments.

Striking similarities
There are several striking similarities between the treatment of the women accused of
killing their babies and the men accused of what has become known as ‘Institutional
Abuse.’ This phrase I find clumsy and not really apt, but it does serve to distinguish
between the wrongly accused men who taught and looked after children in children's
establishments, and any other child abuse cases brought before the Courts.

I have identified what I consider to be the most striking similarities between what has
happened to the people in both the above groups. I shall look at their treatment at the
hands of investigating . teams and the way ‘evidence’ has been gathered against them;
the problems caused by the historic nature of the cases; the impossible concept of
having to ‘prove their innocence’ of what did not happen and also the effects on their
families.

I intend to look more closely at the categories of similarity and develop each in turn, to
show how official criticism of past handling of either group and the implementation of
recommendations regarding future improvements, may be to the advantage of both.

The identified similarities are as follows:-

1. The bias in the treatment of the women and the men from the commencement
of an investigation into the alleged offences.
2. The historical nature of some alleged offences.
3. The assumption of ‘guilt until innocence is proved’ and the means used to
gather evidence.
4. The reliance on expert witnesses, or on preconceptions of how children react in
given circumstances.
5. The concept of guilt by volume.

6. The effects on the families of those falsely accused.

Inherent bias.
In the cases brought against the women and the men, there is an inherent bias present,
from the outset of the investigation right through any subsequent court case. It is there
because all the alleged offences concern children, or those who were children at the time
of the alleged offences. It permeates the entire proceedings, but is not discernible in any
other type of criminal investigation.

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This bias is the element of emotion, which seems to totally preclude a rational and
logical approach to any case and to eliminate the normally required evidence of a crime
having been committed before proceeding further. The Oxford Dictionary defines
‘emotion’ as a strong feeling such as joy, anger or sadness. Instinctive or intuitive feeling
as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.

Not all the cases investigated are proceeded with, but for those that are, the same bias
is still there. For many jury members, this could be their first experience of a Court of
Law, and a daunting experience, being concerned about what will be expected of them.
Being assigned to a case dealing with the death of a baby, or a child said to have been
sexually assaulted in a Children's Home, would heighten their apprehension further.

Historical nature of some alleged offences

The jury will be required to listen to harrowing details of what is said to have occurred.
When, as so often happens, the prosecution presents its case using highly emotive
language, playing on the already emotional state of the jury members, are they not likely
to use only .instinct or intuition, rather than also using reasoning to assess the
knowledge they have gained from the facts of case?

What chance then does a defence barrister have of convincing a jury that the accused
mother is kind, caring and innocent of harming her baby when the jury have been given
a picture of a defenceless infant whose life was cruelly and prematurely ended?

Or indeed, how can the defence team for an honest and upright man, prove to a jury that
the defendant could not have committed the crime of which he is accused? The jury is
likely to have been accorded the image of a young boy, taken from his own home and
family and placed in a Home where he was badly wronged. This mental picture is likely
to over-ride the reality before them, that of a middle-aged recidivist making false
accusations.

Not all such court cases end with a ‘guilty’ verdict. There are times when common sense
prevails; when reasoning and knowledge are used to assess both sides of the arguments
put by the prosecution and defence. In these instances, instinct and intuition have been
kept in check and allowed only to supplement the more rational thinking, as indeed they
should. They have not been given free rein to mask objectivity with emotion and the
result is that a ‘not guilty’ verdict is returned, and an innocent man is vindicated.

I shall however, comment at a later stage on the effect being accused of a crime, which
disgusts decent society, has on the person accused, that persons whole family, their own
future prospects and also the tragic consequences that can ensue.

There is one big difference between the cases of the women accused of killing their
babies and those of the men accused of abuse in children's establishments - the date,
the time and place of each baby’s death will have been recorded, as well as being
indelibly imprinted on the heart of each mother. For the men it is usually an approximate
date, (sometimes very approximate.) The general location of the fictitious assaults are
usually specific, although the immediate locations are frequently vague and subject to
tactical changes!

When a baby is found to have died in unexplained circumstances, but where there is no
reason to assume foul play, initial inquiries are carried out. The baby’s mother and the
rest of the family are treated with the respect and sympathy that should be accorded to
the tragically bereaved. If a second, or sadly in some families, a third child dies, the
attitude towards the mother is vastly different. The investigating team become highly

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suspicious and decide to reopen the inquiries into the former unexplained deaths. From
then on, the bias of emotion clouds the issue.

The mother is unlikely to have forgotten the details surrounding the deaths of any of her
babies, which, on each occasion were declared to be ‘unexplained.’ That is, none of the
doctors involved could offer a rational explanation for what had happened. How then is
the mother, innocent of any wrongdoing, able to offer a rational explanation, after
several years have elapsed and nothing that could even be considered evidence, still
remains, or ever existed?

The majority of the accusations against the men accused of sexual assaults in Children's
establishments will have been “promoted” by police investigations in various ways that
will be discussed later. Coming many years, sometimes even several decades after the
assaults are said to

The assumption of ‘guilt until innocence is proved’ and the

means used to gather evidence
have occurred, the men are at a disadvantage from the outset. Not only from the shock
of such allegations, but also because of this totally unexpected and unwarranted
intrusion into their lives. From then on, they seem to be living in some sort of surreal
world. Nothing makes sense and all the precepts of honesty and justice by which they
have always lived are shown to no longer be there for them. They are however expected
to account for what happened at an approximate time in their working lives in which, as
no untoward events had occurred, is not memorable for them.

The investigating teams clearly assume a gratuitous belief in the guilt of both the
women and the men, apparently based on nothing more than a sinister preconception,
but it is sufficient for them to prejudge innocent persons guilty from the outset.

As the title of this article implies, British Justice is no longer something that any British
subject can absolutely rely on should they be falsely accused of a crime. By the same
token the old and widely held belief that if a person has done nothing wrong and tells the
truth to those investigating a crime, that person has nothing to fear.

Alas, not only is this now a fallacy, but it appears that anyone who has charge of children
in any capacity, and is accused of committing a crime against them, can no longer
expect justice to be done. It seems to matter not one iota whether the accused person is
likely to have committed such a crime, nor even whether they had the opportunity to do
so. Commonsense, it would seem, plays no part in the investigation and they are
deemed guilty, from the time the accusation is made, unless they can furnish proof of
their innocence.

Such proof is, of course, impossible to provide. In the case of the women, if all the
medical evidence could not explain how a baby died, the mother has no hope of doing
so. Thus it is left open ended, and with no proof either way and going against all that was
held most dear in British Justice, the mother is assumed by the investigating team, to be
guilty.

For the men, accusations against them may not have been spontaneously made, but are
more likely to have resulted from a Police Operation involving several Children's Homes
and establishments in an area. Such operations, which have been replicated in many
parts of the Country under various code names, may have emanated from an extremely

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small number of spontaneously, or even spuriously made complaints. They were
however, sufficient to cause investigators to view the men they interviewed as guilty.

Yet again, commonsense appears to have been lacking in the investigations, which went
ahead, regardless of the quality of the complaints made. It is well documented that men
were charged with offences supposedly committed in establishments they were not
employed at when the assaults were said to have occurred; accusations were made by
men who had never been at the Homes where they claimed to have been abused;
assaults were said to have been carried out in places that did not exist within the named
establishment. These are a few of the fallacious complaints that could so easily have
been checked, yet were allowed to reach a Court of Law.

However, both during the investigations, and also if the accusations led to a court case,
the accused men would be expected to account accurately for their actions and
whereabouts at the specified time. Any inaccuracies on their part being regarded as a
sign of guilt. In contrast, any inaccuracies on the part of the accusers, concerning any
aspect whatsoever, would be regarded as natural confusion after such a time lag, and
could be attributed to having suffered such an ordeal. Again, a clear assumption of guilt
pertained until proof of innocence could be found. Since no crime had been committed,
what “proof” could there be to find?

Expert witnesses and expert opinion on children.

When the sudden death of an adult occurs, if it is considered to be a ‘suspicious death’
the police investigate. Should a baby be found dead in ‘unexplained’ circumstances, it is
reclassified as ‘suspicious’ if there have been previous unexplained baby deaths in the
family – and the police investigate.

One of the main reasons for doing so is the excessive reliance on the opinion of experts,
particularly that of Professor Sir Roy Meadow. He became a recognised expert on cot
deaths and also developed the theory of Munchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, where
mothers are said to have harmed their children in order to draw attention to themselves.
The Professor is currently facing an enquiry by the General Medical Council into
allegations of serious professional misconduct.

There are those who consider themselves experts in child behaviour and they claim that
children do not lie, especially when it comes to issues of a traumatic nature. They also
claim that adults do not lie about such issues if they experienced them as children. This
so-called expert opinion also has its adherents, and they are prepared to accept the
most implausible stories as truth, simply because they relate to what are claimed to
have been childhood experiences. The investigations into complaints of historical abuse
in Children's establishments do not depend on the accusations of children, but on that of
men who were children when they claim the offences occurred.

Despite what ‘experts’ on child behaviour say, and no matter how convincing they may
sound in a Court of Law, anyone who has had any dealings with children know that they
will lie about having done something they should not have done, even when caught ‘red
handed’ or with the ‘evidence’ such as chocolate smears still visible! Children will lie in
order to say what they think an adult wants to hear, either to please that person, or to
save themselves from rebuke or punishment.

These may not be serious issues, but most of us also know how manipulative children
can be, lying about an occurrence or twisting the truth, either to gain an advantage for
themselves, or else to make trouble for others.

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A child who regularly finds itself in situations where its wellbeing depends on lies,
evasion or manipulation of facts, is not likely to grow up to be an honest and upright
citizen. Unless some dramatic changes for good come about in that child’s life, he will
continue to lie or to offend. Very occasionally, such changes do happen, but sadly, it is
evident that they never have for those who have made false claims of abuse against the
people who once tried to help them.

Guilt by volume
The concept of guilt by volume pertains for both groups of wrongly accused persons we
are considering. Although it is used rather differently for the women than for the men, it
nevertheless has the same catastrophic outcome in that innocent people are sent to
prison, and it is this concept that has played a significant part in their convictions.

In many types of criminal case, guilt by volume is a reasonable concept, especially

where there have been, what in today’s parlance, are termed ‘serial crimes’. When, for
example, a series of rapes, murders, or high profile thefts have occurred and within each
category of these crimes a very similar method has been used; they have been
committed within a relatively small area; or have been committed in the same type of
terrain. The media often refer to such crimes within a category by a title which connects
them and describes the location in which they were committed.

It is then reasonable to assume that, because all the crimes in a category are of such a
similar nature, when the perpetrator of one crime in a category is apprehended, that
person is likely to have committed them all – and the police have a volume of evidence.
Each is a crime in itself, but they can be safely linked when a case is being put together.

This is a very important factor when considering unexplained baby deaths. According to
the now infamous “Meadow’s Law” which states – “Unless proven otherwise, one cot
death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder.” It would therefore appear that
each tragic death is just that, a tragedy. However, when they are linked together, each
one becomes a crime. Once again it seems, the Law changes its standard of ethics when
dealing with the mothers of cot death babies.
There can be few people who do not know that if someone needs an organ or bone
marrow transplant, one of the most likely sources of a compatible donor is a sibling of
the patient. It therefore seems a reasonable assumption that, since the physical make up
of some siblings is so similar, they will have similar reactions, and so could succumb, to a
like set of circumstances. Arguably then, one could foretell that more than one child in a
family could be at risk from cot death syndrome. Loving parents who have lost one baby
in this way are bound to be more vigilant with subsequent offspring but regretfully, even
this extra care will not be sufficient to save some.

Guilt by volume in the case of the men refers to the number of complaints made. In
reality, it refers to the number of false allegations which have been coached, coaxed or
coerced from ex-residents of Children’s establishments, by police operations and by law
firms which specialise in the lucrative business of compensation claims. A great deal has
been written on the subject by people who have first hand knowledge of such inquiries
which have become known as ‘trawling’. It is sufficient to add that the investigating
police, starting with the premise of wrongdoing, visit a number of ex-residents to see if a
crime has been committed. This is, yet again, the opposite of normal police investigative
procedure where a crime is reported before being investigated.

It is unclear how the sample of possible complainants is chosen, but two things are very
clear:-
Many of the men visited have no complaint to make and, despite several police visits,
refuse to make false accusations.

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Others receive many police visits and at some stage accept the inducements on offer.
(These inducements include cash compensation, lighter sentences for current offences,
plea bargaining etc.) This is strongly and consistently denied by the police, and yet there
are many who have written and spoken of receiving numerous such visits and of the
offer of incentives.

Despite the legal requirement to do so, the defence are not told of the number of men
who refused to make allegations of abuse. If they were so advised, there might be a very
persuasive counter claim available – that of ‘Innocence by Volume’. When one considers
the number of people who spent some time in Children’s establishments, and the
number who actually make complaints, (or indeed have cause to do so), the percentage
is extremely small. Therefore, should not the concept of Innocence by Volume be
accorded at least equal value to that of Guilt by Volume?

Earlier in this section, it was shown that in certain circumstances, crimes could be linked,
without causing prejudice to the defendant. However, a great deal of prejudice is caused
when the cases of several falsely accused men are tried at the same time, each being
variously accused by different complainants. This indicates an attempt to persuade the
jury that there is a volume of evidence against each man whereas, had the defendants
been tried separately, the paucity of evidence against each of them would have been
patently obvious. Yet again, perceived crime against children changes the ethics of the
Law.

The effect on the families.

When a decent person is jailed because they have been falsely accused of crimes that
right thinking men and women find abhorrent, the effects on their families are manifold.
This, however, is only the start of the horror and fear to come.

From the time the first false accusations are made and the questioning begins, the lives
of the women and the men accused, and all those closest to them, are shattered, if not
irrevocably ruined. The attitude of the investigating teams and the sensational press
coverage can affect the perception and behaviour of neighbours, those thought to be
friends, employers, colleagues, and all who do not know the families sufficiently well to
believe in the honesty, integrity and innocence of the accused persons.

From that time on, those accused will lose their jobs; their future employment prospects
will be adversely affected and possibly even those of their husbands, wives or partners,
especially if they work with children. Whilst all this is unwarranted and extremely
distressing, worse may follow if Social Services decide that any children of these families
are also “at risk” and either take them into care, or threaten to do so. This is no idle
threat.

Over the past fifteen years, ‘family courts’ have ordered the removal of approximately
5000 children from their families, some immediately after birth. Margaret Hodge, The
Children’s Minister has admitted that the vast majority of these children will never be
reunited with their natural parents. Many of these callous acts were once again the result
of over-reliance on ‘expert opinion’ which decreed that on a balance of probability, some
mothers were harming their children, or might harm them in the future! In a criminal
court they would have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, what is little more than
supposition in a family court. British Justice seems yet again, to have deserted those who
have no other recourse left to them to refute false allegations.

At some stage, the case against someone falsely accused may be dropped, or, if the
case does go to court, a verdict of ‘not guilty’ returned. Good news, but not good enough
to make reparation for what has gone before. There is no way that anyone can ‘walk

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away’ from such an experience and carry on normally with life. After the stress and
trauma of such an ordeal, the marriages of some will be over or family life will have been
irrevocably torn apart. For others, their health or the health of a loved one will have been
impaired. For all, job prospects will still be affected and they will always be viewed with
suspicion by some people. Then there are those for whom the strain was just too great
and they never recovered from the ordeal they were made to suffer so unjustly

For the people found guilty of crimes they did not commit, and for their families, a whole
new dimension is added to the nightmare situation. The sentences handed out are
usually savage, as befits the perception of the crimes said to have been committed, and
it could be several years before an Appeal date is given. Meanwhile, the innocent person
serves an undeserved jail sentence, with all the horrors of imprisonment, plus the added
horrors of being regarded as a baby killer or a paedophile.

The families carry on with life as normally as possible – with one parent absent and the
bias and bigotry still around them. The parent at home tries to make up for the absence
of the other and keep life as it used to be. Prison visits will replace normal family
interaction; the children will miss the care and influence of one parent, while that parent
misses family birthdays, outings, Christmases and all the other milestones in the lives of
their children.
A very high price to pay for being a loving mother,
Or for showing care and concern for children in need.

Conclusions.
It would be very interesting to know whether anyone from the groups of women and men
whose plights we have considered, would have been wrongly accused, if experts like
Professor Sir Roy Meadow had not been so eager to air dubious theories and opinions, or
if the police nationally had not set up ‘trawling’ exercises to rival the fleets that once left
Grimsby. The element of wanton gullibility also played a large part in the whole tragic
fiasco when ‘expert opinion’ was accepted unquestioningly, as were the most lurid tales
of abuse in Children's Homes, and none were evaluated, or weighed against facts known
about situations or the persons accused. The training and past experience of police and
social workers alike seems to have deserted them, almost as if some form of mass
hysteria had swept the Country causing a manic desire for sensationalism. Under normal
circumstances, an air of reason would have prevailed and they would have proceeded
with caution, checking details for rational answers.

This just did not happen. Theories were embraced unreservedly and seem to have
masked commonsense, even when there were doubts about them. Lord Howe, Shadow
Spokesman for Health in the House of Lords, has described the work of Professor Sir Roy
Meadow on Munchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy as “one of the most pernicious and ill
founded theories to have gained currency in child care and social services over the past
ten to fifteen years.” The Professor also claimed that the chance of losing two babies in
one family to cot deaths was 73million to one, a figure he randomly plucked from an
unfinished piece of research.

Similarly, when the police ‘trawled’ for complaints of abuse that might have occurred in
Children's establishments, they accepted that 82% of the staff at one Liverpool Home
had been abusing boys. Allowing that many of the remaining 18%of staff must have
been female, it would appear that they were prepared to believe that virtually every
male employee was an abuser. Surely reasonable thought applied to the investigation
would have shown this to be a nonsense.

Since, however, the investigating police and the CPS considered it to be a credible
situation, one must question what other preposterous claims they have unquestioningly
accepted. One must also query what sort of strange world they inhabit if this to them is

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acceptable as a ‘norm!’ To take their dubious logic further, could it not be reasonable to
assume that any establishment, about which there have been no claims of abuse, must
be suspect and so in need of investigation? A worrying aspect of such an argument is
that it could become accepted as ‘expert theory’!

Such investigations have been aptly named “witch hunts” and bear the hallmarks of
those shameful episodes in history. Neighbours were encouraged to lay claims against
neighbours and some did so, sometimes in an attempt to protect their own families,
sometimes out of spite or malice. ‘Trawling’ investigations encourage ex-residents to lay
claims against staff or ex-staff on whom they once relied, and some do so, sometimes to
save themselves from prison, sometimes out of spite or malice, sometimes out of greed
for cash compensation. Little change there! The ducking stool was frequently used. A
woman who was still alive after having been ducked, was clearly a witch and killed. One
who had died under the water must have been innocent. Oops! A simple mistake. Little
change there either in the casual attitude to the ruination of a life and a family, three
hundred years on,.

In Salem, the witch hunts finally imploded when claims became so ludicrous and
implausible that the authorities had to accept that they could no longer go on. Are we
now approaching that stage since so-called evidence in cases brought to court have
been variously described by judges
as “nonsense that could so easily have been checked”, and” unsafe evidence on which
to convict a person”, whilst one claimant was described by the judge as “a fantasist”?

Our courts of law do sometimes bear strong resemblance to theatres putting on a farce.
Simon Jenkins, in the Times in June 2003, writes of the Crown producing the same stage
army of “child abuse experts” to give evidence against the experts marshalled by the
defence in cases of cot deaths. He adds, “The distortion of evidence, the onus to prove
innocence and the hyping of juries are all medieval and barbaric.”

Professor Tony Risdon, consultant paediatric pathologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital,
is also critical of the adversarial system as a means of getting at the truth, especially in
a case where there is a suspicion that the baby’s death was not natural. He advocates
panels of pathologists and paediatricians jointly reviewing all the evidence for each case
before making a decision about handing it over to the CPS. Provided there is honesty and
openness, such a system does seem to have a lot to recommend it. However, Sally
Clarke served three years in prison for killing her two baby sons, but her conviction was
quashed at her Appeal when it was revealed that a Home Office pathologist had
examined both her sons after their deaths and had failed to pass on vital information to
other doctors involved in the case.

Similar panels to those mentioned above could be a way of helping to refute some of the
wild claims made against those accused of historical abuse. Among panel members,
should be someone familiar with the type of establishment which features in the
allegations, at the time the alleged offences were said to have occurred. All too often,
cases are brought when neither the defence or prosecuting teams, nor the juries, have
any idea of the accepted norms of daily routine, expectation of resident’s behaviour, or
the forms of acceptable and legal punishments and restraints of those particular times.
Neither do they know what written records various types of establishments were obliged
to keep.
Not infrequently, many who worked at the establishment cited, have died during the
interim period, or become too old or infirm to be of assistance after so many years. It is
often claimed that no records of the establishment remain, or ever existed, even though
the police have found sufficient documentation to enable them to draw up their list of
possible complainants. Convincing a jury of what normal routine and expectations would
have been in the named establishment at the time claimed thus becomes almost an
impossibility, without an experienced person there to guide them, should the case be
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referred to the CPS and proceeded with. Men have been convicted of physical abuse
when they actually administered legally permitted corporal punishment according to the
guidelines of the day. Such details, which highlight discrepancies and inaccuracies in the
concocted stories of false claimants, should help to form a stronger case for the
defendant.

Also of great value on such a panel would be someone who could read and verify the
likelihood that the statements of the men making the accusations contained what they
had actually said. Such a person should be able to check out the wording used, both to
describe the said abuser, and the setting and circumstances of the claimed abuse. The
majority of men making false accusations, not only struggled with basic learning during
their school years but have since spent their time, both in prison and on the outside, in
the company of similar men and women. Their speech, and therefore the statements
they make, will naturally be in the ‘restricted code’ that is appropriate to their type of
friends and acquaintances. This is true of any group of people, at ease within a family
gathering, among friends, colleagues or workmates, or with those who share specific
interests or hobbies. The more able revert to an ‘elaborated code' for formal occasions or
when in the company of others who share only general interests, those less able, retain
the same restricted code throughout.

No-one objects to someone else writing out the statement of one who finds the task
difficult, but it should be in the claimant’s own words so that the jury are not given a
false impression. Two statements which are almost ‘carbon copies’ of each other, from
men claiming not to have seen each other for many years, are either indicative of
collusion, or of a third party writing what are supposedly their statements. Whatever the
explanation, the accumulative affect of such incidents, which a panel would uncover,
should be sufficient to make it unsafe to proceed with a case, whether or not it goes to
court.

Observations.
Should panels of knowledgeable people be seen as the way forward in eliminating claims
of abuse that are either patently false, or else impossible to prove or disprove because of
the excessive time delay, such panels should be completely impartial and not allowed to
become all-powerful, as the family courts appear to have done, seeing themselves as
apart from the normal concept of justice in this Country.

It would also be an immense step towards fairness if independent persons or electronic

methods were used to take the statements of complainants, with all parties concerned
knowing exactly what was said and not reading the version drawn up by a policeman
who may well have been part of the investigation which helped to encourage the claim
in the first place.

There was a time, not that long ago, when the uncorroborated word of a career criminal
would not have been accepted, without added proof, that he had been abused by a man
whose life’s work had been teaching or caring for disadvantaged children; who had never
been in any trouble with the law, and who had worked in several other children’s
establishments without a complaint of any sort being made against him. Conversely,
despite a law that bans a loving parent from slapping a child, children are still being
tortured and terrorised by parents who seem able to also frighten inexperienced social
workers into submission. This is in spite of reports and pleas from concerned family
members and neighbours who have heard and witnessed the terrible abuse.

In the current climate of ‘Political Correctness’- where the majority of ordinary, decent
citizens feel that the ‘Yob’ or ‘Thug’ Culture is what influences official decisions; where
people are seen as less important than property; where motorists are thought more likely

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to be apprehended by the police than muggers or burglars, it can sometimes be seen as
an impossible task to bring any influence on judicial or political decision making.

Most social reforms however, come about because of economics rather than altruism
and this could well be the over-riding influence if it becomes cheaper to listen to public
opinion than it is to pay off those making false accusations of abuse, often so many
years after the assaults are said to have happened, that they are impossible to prove or
disprove.

The Children's Minister, Margaret Hodge, has said that she not only anticipates mothers
suing local authorities for the loss of their children, but that claims will be made by those
taken away as children for loss of family life. All who have been wrongly imprisoned will
also have rightful claims to compensation, as will their children, since one doesn’t have
to be taken from home to suffer the loss of normal family life. It can be achieved just as
successfully by the removal and imprisoning of one innocent parent, labelling that parent
as a baby murderer or a paedophile. That is sufficient to disrupt family life, but the
national and local media coverage so often given to such cases, tarnishes the whole
family, including the children, by association. Surely, all these legitimate claims for
compensation should be sufficient to cause a rethink, resulting in the vital and long
overdue reforms necessary in the administration of British Justice.

Iris Jensen

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