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UK: False Accusations
of abuse BBC
Panarama In
the name of the children
(multimedia) We have provided the transcript here
(from the BBC site). Back to Saskatoon's champion trawler, Superintendent
Brian Dueck | USA: PBS Frontline
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Abuse witch-hunt
traps innocent in a net of lies
26 November
2000
Public alarm
over paedophiles has led to a relentless 'trawl' for sex perverts.
David Rose and Gary Horne report on one man whose life was ruined
when he fell victim to the wave of panic.
In a spartan
special-visits room at Wakefield prison, Roy Shuttleworth leans
across the bolted-down table and displays his most treasured
possessions: letters and cards from his wife, Irene. 'My darling,
innocent Roy,' one begins, 'I am as much in love with you as
the day we met nearly 40 years ago. My only wish is to spend
what life we have left together. I only hope nothing happens
to either one of us, because I know the other will die of a broken
heart.'
As he speaks
of his shattered family, he makes no attempt to hide his grief.
His children, Roy junior and Suzanne, cross the Pennines from
Cheshire to visit him twice a month. Now 67, the pale, broken
man they find is a ghost of the jolly paterfamilias they see
in family photos. This former champion swimmer, mining foreman
and long-distance truck driver is serving a 10-year sentence
for crimes deemed by some to be worse than murder - 11 counts
of sexual assault and buggery against boys once in his care.
From his arrest
in 1995, he has protested his innocence. Although it could shorten
his sentence by two years, he refuses to take the prison sex
offender treatment programme: 'How can I sit there in a so-called
therapy group talking about my crimes if I haven't committed
them? And listening to them who has done it - it's disgusting.'
Tonight, after
five months of investigation, the BBC Panorama programme will
reveal dramatic new evidence supporting Shuttleworth's claim
of innocence, including evidence from former residents at the
home where he worked - Greystone Heath in Warrington - who refute
key elements of the prosecution case, contradicting key elements
in the stories told by Shuttleworth's alleged victims. One man,
confronted by huge discrepancies in his story, has now changed
it beyond recognition from the version he gave in court.
All of the
eight men who made allegations against Shuttleworth have criminal
records for dishonesty; three were serving seven-year sentences
when they testified. Three have since allegedly disclosed they
fabricated their claims for money, hoping to be awarded compensation
from the government criminal injuries scheme and from civil actions
against Liverpool City Council, which owned and ran Greystone
Heath. The rewards from this process may run to more than £100,000
for each claimant.
It would be
deeply disturbing if Shuttleworth's story was an isolated case.
But it is not. Since the time allegations of sexual abuse in
care homes first surfaced in North Wales in 1991, more than 100
former care workers have been convicted and jailed for terms
of up to 18 years. Some of them, perpetrators of foul and degrading
crimes whose victims were long disbelieved, confessed to the
police and pleaded guilty. Others, like Shuttleworth, continue
to protest their innocence.
Police investigations
into care-home abuse have become an unregulated phenomenon with
90 separate inquiries under way at present, and thousands of
former and serving care workers and teachers under suspicion.
Officers from a single inquiry in South Wales recently announced
they had more than 500 suspects.
All are using
'the trawl' - the highly unusual method piloted in North Wales
and by the Cheshire force that investigated Greystone Heath.
It relies, not on victims coming forward, but on the police visiting
hundreds or thousands of men once at a particular care home to
discover if they were abused. Shuttleworth's solicitor, Chris
Saltrese, calls it a 'begging bowl operation, a hunt for allegations'.
Some of those identified this way are genuine abusers. But as
Shuttleworth's case shows, it is a blunt weapon, likely to produce
false allegations.
The trawl that
led to Shuttleworth's conviction began with a single allegation
from a resident of Greystone Heath, a prolific offender sent
there by the courts. Early in 1994 'Paul' (the law says alleged
victims of sexual offences must have their identities protected)
found himself in the custody of the police. He told them that
nine months earlier he had been driving his car in Widnes when
he saw a former Greystone worker, Alan Langshaw, leaving the
magistrates' court with a boy. This, he said, brought back the
horror of the sexual abuse Langshaw inflicted on him at the home
during the 1970s.
'Paul' made
a statement, and in the days that followed, accused a further
17 former care workers, including Roy Shuttleworth. Without independent
evidence his claims posed a serious problem for the police. However,
two years earlier the media had fiercely criticised the failure
of police in North Wales to bring the perpetrators of sexual
abuse in local homes to justice. The Cheshire officers talking
to 'Paul' did not want to expose themselves to similar attacks.
The force decided to set up a major investigation - Operation
Granite.
Using health,
prison and benefit records, the police traced hundreds of former
Greystone residents. At least 1,000 made statements, though only
a small minority claimed they were victims. When the police arrested
Langshaw, he confessed almost immediately and was finally jailed
for eight years. Langshaw's Greystone Heath contemporary, Roy
Shuttleworth, was a different matter.
There were
striking differences. Langshaw, a gay single man, had a private
flat at Greystone Heath where he could lock the door and do as
he pleased with his victims, immune from scrutiny. Shuttleworth
lived on the campus with his wife and children. He had come into
care work in his forties, when his wife Irene, sick of his absences
driving HGVs, persuaded him to apply for a joint post as houseparents.
The couple did everything together. Why such a man would want
to abuse young boys is a matter for psychologists. How he could
have done so is a crucial question on which his proof of innocence
turns.
The vital principle
which trawl inquiries must follow is to avoid 'leading' potential
witnesses by planting ideas in their minds. Professor Mike McConville
of Warwick University, an authority on miscarriages of justice,
tells tonight's Panorama how easy it is to generate a false allegation
in this way. The police, he points out, do not simply record
what interviewees say: they write up their statements from lengthy
question and answer sessions, and it is impossible to tell the
spontaneous account from one which has been suggested.
By telling
interviewees they were investigating sexual abuse and reminding
them of the names of care staff, detectives could sow the seeds
of a wrongful conviction. McConville believes that introducing
mandatory taping of all detective-witness encounters in trawl
investigations is urgently needed.
When talks
with police generate untrue statements, says McConville, the
witness will almost invariably 'adopt' the misleading account
as his own. In the present climate, a wrongly accused care worker
is the deadly foe.
Panorama's
investigation revealed that this process was at work in Operation
Granite. A former Greystone inmate who left the home seven years
before Shuttleworth began to work there in 1974 made a graphic
statement, describing how Shuttleworth had forced him to masturbate
him in the shower. The man sticks to his account now, insisting
that Shuttleworth abused him. But the man got Shuttleworth's
name from the police who descended 'out of the blue' one day
in 1995. The detectives, he says, showed him photographs of Shuttleworth
and told him they were investigating claims he was a paedophile.
The case reveals
a second, deadly way in which wrongful convictions can be generated
by trawls - the lure of compensation. After the man had made
his statement, the police suggested he see a solicitor. He went
to Abney Garsden McDonald in Cheadle, which by early 1995 was
co-ordinating actions for damages on behalf of alleged abuse
victims throughout the North-West. (Today there are more than
700 claimants in these actions, all funded by legal aid, 350
of whom the Cheadle firm represents.)
The lawyers
told him he had two ways of making a claim: the Government criminal
injuries compensation scheme, and a civil action against Greystone's
operators, Liverpool City Council. He began to pursue both courses.
Only then did the police realise the discrepancy over dates,
forcing him to withdraw from both the criminal and civil legal
process.
The police
have taken an unusually close interest in the compensation aspect
of the case. Senior officers visited the government scheme's
Glasgow headquarters and persuaded them to waive the normal three-year
time limit for claimants. They also had meetings with Peter Garsden,
Abney Garsden McDonald's lead partner in the abuse cases, and
with other lawyers involved in the civil actions.
'It very quickly
became apparent that it was important for us and the police to
have a symbiotic relationship,' Garsden says. 'For example, the
police would want us to refer any new complaints of abuse that
they didn't know about to them, because it would help them in
their process. We depended on them, because we wanted as much
information about the pending criminal trials as possible.'
Garsden also
appointed a 'press relations officer' who succeeded in getting
articles placed in the local media which made it clear that victims
might be able to claim thousands of pounds in damages. A former
Greystone resident, Eric Oldham, went to the firm and lodged
a claim after seeing this publicity. Only after he had made his
statement for the lawyers did he agree to talk to the police.
In McConville's
eyes, this relationship between criminal and civil justice was
risky. 'You cannot have a cheque book investigation in a criminal
case. Victims can be legitimately assisted in pursuing compensation,
that's one thing, but you must not have the issue of compensation
colouring their accounts.'
In some cases,
the relation between lawyers and police has been closer still.
'The police have been very helpful,' says solicitor Keith Robinson,
handling over 100 abuse claims. 'I have had several clients who
have been referred to me by officers. They will often supply
important documents, such as unused material from a trial and
supporting evidence.'
A third and
final factor made the position in which Shuttleworth found himself
more perilous still.
In 1991, a
House of Lords judgment in the case known as Director of Public
Prosecutions versus P changed the law. Normally, an allegation
of a criminal offence has to stand or fall on its own merits:
if a witness accusing someone of sexual abuse was sufficiently
credible, or could adduce supporting evidence, then an abuser
would be convicted. Until 1991, multiple allegations against
the same person could only be held to be mutually corroborating
if there were 'striking similarities' between the alleged crimes,
indicating a criminal's 'signature,' a distinct modus operandi.
But the judgment removed this protection. In effect, the courts
have accepted the idea of 'corroboration by volume'.
Peter Garsden
insists that every allegation in the 700 cases he is co-ordinating
is true, because nobody would be prepared to put up with the
unpleasant business of giving evidence unless they were telling
the truth. He further believes he is, literally, fighting the
forces of Satan: 'I believe that we're messing with the Devil,
because you know, child abuse is evil, and the people that get
involved in it are powerful, manipulative people. And they will
do their level best to stop us succeeding and stop us getting
justice for the victims.'
Garsden, who
is also executive officer of the national Association of Child
Abuse Lawyers, says that even when discrepancies occur between
allegations and known facts, this doesn't cast doubt on their
story: their memory may have deceived them over some of the details,
but the one thing they will always remember is how they were
abused, and by whom.
Lesley Cohen
from Nottingham, who has prepared reports for more than 100 victims
disagreed. 'You cannot tell from using a psychometric assessment
whether a person has experienced [the abuse] they're talking
about.'
The seven men
who gave evidence accusing Shuttleworth all made criminal injuries
claims, most before his trial; all have also lodged civil actions.
One already had been convicted and jailed in 1991 for conspiracy
to defraud the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
A psychiatric
assessment dating from 1983 described this claimant as 'unable
to separate fact from fantasy'. Nevertheless, as the trial opened
at Chester Crown Court in May 1996, the police were convinced
that he and the other men were telling the truth.
Shuttleworth's
defence scored important points. For example, faced with the
difficulty that Shuttleworth had no private space to take his
supposed victims, the complainants claimed they'd been abused
in public parts of the home. One, 'Dave', said he had a key to
the swimming pool where he worked alone as a cleaner and Shuttleworth
used to abuse him there.
Peter McCudden,
the former head of PE, said this was untrue: there were only
two keys to the swimming pool, guarded religiously by himself
and the duty head, and anyone found alone there would be banned
from the pool for life. The discrepancies were ignored by the
jury. The judge described the men as 'coming forward', and asked
the jury to consider how they could have made their claims independently
unless they were true. But they had not 'come forward'.
Panorama tested
'Dave's' story further. He also claimed that Shuttleworth used
to wake him in the dormitory and take him away to abuse him at
night. We traced two of his former room-mates, both of whom insisted
such a thing was impossible: they would have known. They denied
Dave's claim that one of them had also been abused. One, abused
by Langshaw, is now a successful entrepreneur who asked to remain
anonymous. He said: 'No, no, not in this world, no, no, never
- Shuttleworth never did anything to me.'
This was nothing
to the unravelling of the claims of another witness - 'Jim'.
He claimed he was assaulted one afternoon in the shower in a
brutal attack which ended in buggery and lasted for 10 to 15
minutes. Finally, he said, he pushed Shuttleworth off him, banging
his head against the shower door, and ran wrapped in a towel
to the headmaster's office.
But 'Jim' would
have had to run 400 yards in full view of the road and passers-by
who used Greystone Heath as a short cut - on his account, crying,
screaming and bleeding from his anus. Unfortunately, the trial
never heard crucial details of the evening shower routine which
cast further doubt: the shower was open, with no door against
which Shuttleworth could bang his head. The boys showered together
in a tightly supervised regimen, with two staff patrolling. 'There
was never any stragglers,' says Lee Fielding, once 'Jim's' best
friend.
Confronted
by Panorama with these discrepancies, Jim changed his story:
the attack, he said, lasted only 'a matter of seconds'; and he
was no longer sure whether he had been penetrated. His one-time
friend Lee then asked how he could have left the building, because
the doors were always locked. 'Jim' claimed he jumped from a
first-floor window - a detail he never mentioned before. Last
week we went back to Greystone Heath and found - as Lee had told
us - that the windows were restrained by metal brackets, and
could not open more than three inches. 'Oh, aye,' 'Jim' said.
'I was skinny in them days.' Our inquiries found problems with
the evidence of all the witnesses. The more we checked it, the
more it fell apart.
Some of this
fresh evidence was available when Shuttleworth applied for leave
to appeal in 1999. The most dramatic example was the story of
'Tony,' who claimed Shuttleworth bent him over his bed and started
to bugger him, and that he screamed and bit Shuttleworth's finger
so hard he fell to the floor in agony. He claimed that another
care worker, Phil Fiddler, was drawn by the commotion and was
told by Shuttleworth (with trousers, presumably, at half-mast)
that 'Tony' had attacked him.
In 1997, 'Tony'
gave evidence in Fiddler's own trial. This time he claimed that
Fiddler bent him over his bed and started to bugger him, and
that he screamed and bit Fiddler's finger so hard he fell to
the floor in agony. Drawn by the commotion, he said another care
worker, Ted Tipton, entered the room and Fiddler told him (with
trousers, presumably, at half-mast) that 'Tony' had attacked
him. Fiddler's jury acquitted him of all charges. It was a carbon
copy of the evidence against Shuttleworth. As Fiddler's barrister
told the court, he had to be lying. In tonight's Panorama, another
former Greystone resident who met 'Tony' in prison describes
how he boasted that he was making false allegations for money,
adding: 'You should try it yourself.'
At about the
same time as Fiddler's trial, Shuttleworth's solicitor, Chris
Saltrese, traced 'Paul', the man whose claims had first triggered
Operation Granite. He admitted he had fabricated his allegations
against Shuttleworth, and agreed to consider making a statement
saying so. However, after consulting his lawyer, he declined.
He is still claiming compensation - although by the time of Shuttleworth's
trial, the police had decided not to call him as a witness. The
reason, an internal police memo records, was that 'doubts must
be cast on his competence as a credible prosecution witness'.
Shuttleworth
was refused leave to appeal. Last year Irene suffered a heart
attack and died. Shuttleworth was allowed to throw a handful
of earth on her coffin handcuffed to a prison officer.
'My life is
in fragments,' he says. 'I am in darkness. What those men's lies
have taken away can never be put back. All there is left is to
clear my name.'
See also: False
Accusations of abuse
| Panorama
- In The Name Of The Children | Wrongfully
convicted in Canada | The
Scandal of the Century (Saskatoon's Foster Parent case covered
by CBC fifth estate) | Tulia, Texas
| Gilmer, Texas | Murder
on a Sunday morning |
|
Truth can never be told so as to be understood,
and not be believ'd.