Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby, Lab) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions in the last five years the police have enforced a criminal sanction against an individual who has made a false allegation of abuse.
Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office) replied
Defendants charged for making false allegations are likely to be proceeded against for "perverting the course of justice". It is not possible from the information held on the Home Office Court Proceedings database to identify from the number of defendants proceeded against for "perverting the course of justice", what number were for false allegations of abuse, as the circumstances of the offence are not collected centrally.
Hansard Reference
Acknowledgement
On 14th March 2005 Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby, Lab) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the number of individuals under the age of 18 years who were sexually abused in each of the last five years.
Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office) replied
In the recorded crime series there are four sexual offences where, by definition, the victim is a child. The available statistics for the last two years are given in the table. It is not possible to identify the age of the victim for other offences within the sexual offences group.
Recorded sexual offences against children in England and Wales
| Offence |
2002–03 |
2003–04 |
Unlawful sexual intercourse with
a girl under 13 |
184 |
212 |
Unlawful sexual intercourse with
a girl under 16 |
1,515 |
1,907 |
| Gross indecency with a child |
1,880 |
1,942 |
| Abuse of position of trust |
678 |
792 |
Acknowledgement
Hansard Reference
(This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T web site on 20th March 2005)
Richard Websters much acclaimed book has been reviewed by the Times Educational supplement and the London Evening Standard. You can read the reviews here and here
If you haven't ordered your copy do so now.
This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T. website on 19th March 2005
Orwell Press have announced the publication of a new book by Richard Webster. The Secret of Bryn Estyn tells the story of the greatest series of miscarriages of justice in recent British history – how innocent lives have been destroyed, the public deceived and millions of pounds wasted in a witch-hunt against innocent people. The book is essentially a story of false accusations, judicial blindness, bad journalism and innocent lives destroyed.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn is a richly documented account of the development of a modern witch-hunt. It focuses initially on a small number of key players in the North Wales story and shows how their actions helped to shape an unprecedented police investigation (which would eventually spread to the whole of the United Kingdom) and a judicial inquiry set up under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Waterhouse. The book poses the question of whether Waterhouse was right to find there had been wholesale abuse in North Wales? Or did his inquiry, and the investigations that led up to it, form part of a modern witch-hunt?
It tells the extraordinary story of what really happened in North Wales. It is a story with disturbing implications not only for the modern child protection movement but for the way we understand our history and ourselves. It is also very instructive and will be of immense help to those who have been falsely accused of child abuse and are still fighting to clear their names.
The book traces the origins of the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in modern British history, as a result of which thousands of people have been falsely accused and as many as a hundred wrongly imprisoned. The book records these continuing injustices and sets them in the context of earlier historical witch-hunts. And, in chapters interspersed through the narrative, The Secret of Bryn Estyn offers an illuminating analysis of the development of the modern child protection movement, tracing its roots back to Victorian London.
This is a must read book for any one who is concerned about justice, investigative practice in child protection case, and the truth of what really happens when the State investigates allegations of historical abuse in children's homes or in residential schools
The Secret of Bryn Estyn - the making of a modern witch hunt.
Published by Orwell Press
Author: Richard Webster
ISBN 0 9515922 4 6
Price £25 inc p&p in the UK
Available direct from the publishers and from good book stores
This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T website on 17th March 2005
Richard Websters long awaited book the Secret of Bryn Estyn was pre-launched on the 10th Match at a packed meeting at Portcullis House. Earl (Freddie) Howe announced that the book would be launched shortly and praised Richard for his courage and achievement.
Text of Earl Howe's Speech
The first thing I’d like to do is to congratulate Richard on what is by any standards a most impressive achievement.
You were kind enough, Richard, to send me a prepublication copy of the book some weeks ago; and let me say to you that I believe you have written something that is of national importance, not just as a history – though it is a very good and most compelling history - but, much more significantly, as a lesson and a warning for the future.
I was one of those people who until I read your book believed what the Press had told me about the North Wales children’s home scandal. I remember responding to the Government statement in the House of Lords when the Waterhouse report was published five years ago. We were all shocked and ashamed at what that report contained.
What you have done – it seems to me triumphantly – in this book is to take us carefully and rationally and calmly through that whole story and the people who comprise it; and anyone who reads your book cannot help but come away from it with two overriding feelings: admiration at the way in which you have written it and deep gloom about the state of our police and criminal justice systems.
A person accused of having committed physical or sexual abuse against a child, 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years ago, is immediately placed at a disadvantage. There is no objective evidence to which he can turn after such a lapse of time. Effectively the burden of proof is reversed, because a plausible witness making allegations is treated by the investigating authorities as a victim. Then, the police quite naturally look for corroborating evidence from other possible victims. The techniques of enquiry which you describe are exactly those which Claire [Curtis-Thomas] and the all-party group brought to the notice of the Home Affairs Select committee in 2002. Chief among these is the trawling of witnesses who are often highly damaged individuals as well as suggestible in the face of leading questions. They are often people for whom the offer of financial compensation is temptation enough to assent to the propositions being put to them about the nature and detail of past events. The result is “corroboration by volume”.
The process of investigation through which the book takes us involves an element of fanaticism and collective insanity. That is why Richard is so right to say, as he does, that it is a book that is not only about a series of terrible events but also about human nature. People’s irrationality and gullibility; the demonisation of a group of professionals – care workers – which drives and fuels the process; the suspension of critical judgement.
But the part of the book which I found most disturbing of all – indeed shocking - was the account of the Waterhouse tribunal. I had fondly imagined that the processes by which Waterhouse reached his conclusions would be above reproach. I will not spoil the book by telling you the ways in which Richard has succeeded in removing the scales from my eyes. The flawed nature of the Waterhouse tribunal is not just of significance to those who were almost certainly accused falsely. It is of deep significance to us now, because for the modern child protection movement – police and social services and NSPCC – it has acquired the status of canonical scripture.
That is why I hope that this book will be widely read. It deserves to be. I thought of saying to you that it is a book of great depth and insight – which it is – but when people say that it is usually a euphemism for boring. This book is a compulsive page turner. It is riveting. So in paying tribute to your achievement, Richard, it is your skill as a writer as much as your skill as a teller of the truth which I believe we should all now warmly applaud.