The secret of Bryn Estyn, the former children's home in North Wales that
became the focus of one of the biggest child abuse scandals of recent
years, is, according to Richard Webster, the very opposite to the
version of events supplied by the police, the media, the courts and the
government. In a 700-page book, the result of nine years of research,
first published in 2005 and republished in paperback this month, Webster
claims that, far from being members of a 'paedophile ring', staff at the
North Wales children's homes were the victims of a modern witch hunt and
grotesque miscarriages of justice.
The bare bones of the Bryn Estyn story, also supplied on the Orwell
Press website (*1),
(*1) See the Orwell Press website. The Orwell Press is Richard Webster's
own imprint.
are this:
On 15 March 1992, 40 police officers arrested 16 men and one woman in and around Wrexham in North Wales. All
but one had worked at Bryn Estyn, a care home for adolescent boys on the
outskirts of Wrexham, which was closed down in 1984. According to reports which began to appear in the press in 1991, Bryn Estyn had lain
at the centre of a conspiracy which supposedly involved the extensive
homosexual abuse of adolescent boys by a paedophile ring, whose members
terrorised their victims and subjected them to a regime of violence and
brutality.
This triggered the largest child abuse investigation in Britain, which
used a novel method of police investigation: trawling former residents
of care homes for retrospective allegations. This method means that,
instead of acting upon allegations of abuse made spontaneously by
individuals, the police contacted those who were resident at the care
home at the time of the alleged abuse.
The trawling method resulted in allegations from 650 witnesses, who
accused 365 people of abusing them at homes throughout North Wales. When
only six prosecutions followed, with only two new convictions for sexual
abuse, the police and the authorities were accused of mounting a
cover-up, with police officers said to belong to the very paedophile
ring they were supposed to be investigating.
The story became a national scandal. A senior police officer, publicly
accused of raping adolescent boys at Bryn Estyn, sued two national
newspapers, a magazine and a television company for libel and won.
However, rumours of a cover-up persisted; and in 1996 the then Tory
government set up the largest Tribunal of Inquiry in British history,
under Sir Ronald Waterhouse. In February 2000, the Tribunal made damning
findings of extensive abuse in North Wales - although it did not find
evidence of a police cover-up. By then, the police trawling operation
which had begun there had spread to the whole of Britain. Police forces
collected allegations against 5,000 former care workers and teachers,
and hundreds were arrested.
What really happened? One purpose of Webster's book is to conduct his
own investigation into the Bryn Estyn affair, providing a powerful
counter-narrative to the officially endorsed story of widespread
institutional abuse. Webster argues that, while there were cases of
abuse at Bryn Estyn, and two former members of staff pleaded guilty to
physical and sexual abuse respectively, many of the allegations of
abuse, and particularly those related to supposed police cover-ups and
paedophile rings, simply could not be true. Using an impressive volume
of documentation and a tight chronology of events, the book details
inconsistencies and implausibilities in many of the allegations, and
points out the flaws in official procedures that prevented these from
being identified. He concludes that the 'secret of Bryn Estyn' is that
'it was an ordinary community home where the majority of the staff did
their best to look after the difficult adolescents in their care'.
This investigation is compelling, and at times fascinating. But it is
not the most significant aspect of the book. While Webster's writing
skill makes the tome readable, what Webster terms 'the story of the
story' is ultimately bewildering. Even when you make it through the mass
of names, dates, and places, all of which are confused by the fact that
Bryn Estyn closed in 1984 but the police investigation did not start
until 1991, the gulf between the official version of events and the
version uncovered by Webster's investigation is so wide as to be
incredible. The more persuasive Webster's version seems, the harder it
is to believe that official procedures came to such different
conclusions. By page 581, when the appendices start, you are left not
really knowing what to believe.
But that, in many ways, is the point. For in exposing the difficulties
in attempting to prosecute for alleged cases of child abuse that
happened in the past, The Secret of Bryn Estyn offers some undeniable
truths. Allegations of child abuse, solicited from damaged young men by
police officers and social workers actively seeking such allegations,
should not simply be accepted as matters of fact. Changes in the law,
which have sought to make prosecutions for child abuse more efficient
and effective, make people highly vulnerable to being convicted as a
consequence of false allegations. And these changes have taken place in
a climate of insecurity and mistrust, which provides fertile ground for
witch hunts of the most dark and dangerous kind. In these circumstances,
not knowing what to believe is far preferable to accepting allegation as
fact.
The police method of trawling for allegations of abuse that happened is
based, it would seem, on a humane and commonsense notion: that children
who are abused often do not report the abuse, with the result that their
abusers can get away with it. If an adult later reports that they were
abused as a child, it is even more difficult to prove the abuse, and
convict the abuser. But by trawling the alleged victims' peers, who
would have also been in contact with the alleged abuser, it is deemed
possible to ascertain whether the accused is likely to have committed
those crimes, or whether the individual complainant is making a false
allegation. In short, the idea seems to be that if a lot of people claim
to have been abused by the same person, they probably were.
Logically, this process seems to make sense. However, it is fraught with
dangers. The fact that allegations of abuse collected by trawling are
not made spontaneously immediately introduces the power of suggestion
into the proceedings. This can be compounded by certain psychological
theories to do with the denial of abuse by its victims and the need for
'disclosure'. This assumes that victims of abuse often initially deny
they are abused, and therefore need to be prompted, or questioned
several times, in order to disclose the 'truth' that they were in fact
abused. It is not hard to imagine that individual police officers,
working to build a case, can sometimes inadvertently steer their
witnesses in a particular direction.
Major press coverage, with lurid stories of unimaginable horrors
allegedly suffered by former care home residents, appeared at the time
of the North Wales investigation. The offers of financial compensation
to those who had been abused during their time in care could, one would
think, easily sway young men with little money at their disposal towards
making allegations when they might not otherwise - and how much more so
when law firms realise the potential rewards of seeking compensation on
behalf of those who could be victims.
All of this creates a situation ripe for false allegations of abuse -
which, it should be stressed, often does not mean stories that are
consciously or systematically made up. False allegations are
fundamentally untrue. However, in a climate where individuals are
continually confronted with the possibility they may have been abused
and the awareness that their peers were allegedly abused, and when they
are offered rewards for saying they were abused, they become highly
suggestible, to the point where it is possible for them to believe that
they were abused by a particular person in a particular way, even if it
never happened in reality.
This is especially the case when dealing with such a vulnerable group as
the former care home residents in North Wales. For the most part, these
were young men with troubled backgrounds, who often ended up in care
because of their brushes with the law and gained criminal records when
leaving care. The significance of finding oneself suddenly on the other
side, treated with respect by the police officers who would normally be
arresting you, and hailed as a victim/hero, should not be underestimated.
As Webster writes: 'People who have previously felt overlooked and
insignificant may suddenly find themselves the centre of attention,
concern and sympathy. At the same time the idea that they are now
engaged in a battle against evil, in which many other people, including
counsellors and social workers, are fighting alongside them, can be a
source of great emotional energy. It may give people both a raison
d'etre and a feeling of strength and solidarity which they did not
previously have.'
This is not to say that police trawling operations, such as the one in
North Wales, will solicit nothing but false allegations. Some
allegations will be true. The difficulty lies in sorting which cases of
abuse actually happened from which did not. But this is where Webster's
criticisms of the legal process used to prosecute child abuse cases
comes into play.
As Webster notes, different alleged offences are normally tried
separately in order to protect innocent defendants against the
presumption of guilt. However, in certain circumstances, if crimes are
sufficiently similar they can be tried together under the rules
governing 'similar fact' evidence - meaning that testimony about one
crime can be offered as corroboration of another. Again, this makes a
certain logical sense - and it is easy to see how, if somebody stands
accused of indecently assaulting several children in a similar way a
long time ago, trying the crimes together appears to be both an
efficient use of resources and the only possible way to secure a
conviction.
But what if the allegations are false? Focusing on the sheer volume of
allegations of depravity against an individual must surely sway a jury
in a particular direction, and when many allegations are being dealt
with, the quality of the specific allegations comes under less scrutiny.
A crime that, because of the lapse of time between the alleged abuse and
the allegation, is necessarily a case of the defendant's word against
the complainant's, is tried on the basis of a defendant's word against
that of several presumed victims. At worst, this invites the possibility
that false allegations are collected against individuals who are not
guilty of the charges they face, and these false allegations are used as
corroborative evidence that other false allegations are true. How can
somebody hope to defend himself against that?
A report by the House of Commons Home Affairs select committee in 2002,
titled The Conduct of Investigations into Past Cases of Abuse in
Children's Homes, included in its conclusions a caution against the
increased use of the 'similar fact' principle, for precisely these reasons:
'Whilst we accept that the criminal justice system needs to be more
sensitive to the needs of victims and witnesses, we are concerned that
the proposed removal of safeguards for the defendant-- may further
prejudice the defendant in historical child abuse trials. We are
particularly concerned about the proposed relaxation of the rules of
evidence, which may allow for greater admission of "similar fact"
evidence. In our view, given the sensitive and difficult nature of
investigating allegations of historical child abuse, there is a strong
case for establishing special or additional safeguards for the exclusion
of prejudicial evidence and/or severance of multiple abuse charges.' (2)
(2) Home Affairs - Fourth Report, House of Commons
As the select committee's report indicates, since the North Wales
children's home scandal the law has been gradually moving further in the
direction of relaxing the legal safeguards that presume defendants to be
innocent, in order to secure convictions of sexual abusers whom it would
otherwise be very difficult to convict. The trouble is that the extent
to which these developments rightly punish sexual offenders for heinous
crimes, and the extent to which they imprison innocent people on the
basis of false allegations, we will probably never know.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn is invaluable in reminding us of these legal
trends, and the dangers they can pose to people wrongly accused of
abuse. It is also a timely commentary on cultural trends, and the
dangers that the contemporary obsession with child abuse pose to the
fabric of our society.
Towards the end of the book, Webster details the numerous investigations
into alleged abuses at children's homes that were triggered by the
investigations in North Wales, again involving massive trawling
operations. As a consequence, residential care home workers - whether
they find themselves accused of abuse or not - have become demonised.
Such is the suspicion that now surrounds anybody working with children
in such a setting, and so nervous have these workers become that they
might face an allegation of abuse, that it is hard to imagine why
anybody would choose to work in this low-pay, high-risk sector. Indeed,
it is now assumed that the only reason why somebody would choose such a
job is because they have a base motive for living in close quarters with
children.
What this reveals, Webster argues, is 'one of the most terrible
instances of collective ingratitude' towards people prepared to help the
minority of troubled, abandoned young people our society produces. And
we have to ask what the general suspicion of care workers does to the
young people in their charge. How does it affect young adults, having
left care to gain jobs and families of their own, to be the subject of
trawling operations that tacitly encourage them to think about their
childhood in terms of abuse? Five minutes of fame and some small
financial reward cannot compensate for the emotional pressure this must
bring to bear; indeed, in the five years following the North Wales
police investigation, three former residents committed suicide.
Moreover, the more false allegations of abuse that are solicited by
police trawling tactics, the more this leads to what Webster describes
as an 'inflationary spiral of disbelief', which sheds doubt upon any
allegation of abuse. As Webster argues:
'[O]ne of the greatest failings of the modern child protection movement is that, in its zeal to believe
all allegations, it has betrayed the very children it seeks to protect
and ushered in the return of the climate of disbelief that it sought to
banish for ever.'
Residential care workers are not the only group to find themselves
vulnerable in this climate. An excellent review in the Times Educational
Supplement, published in 2005 when Webster's book first appeared,
encouraged teachers to read Webster's discussion of 'similar fact
evidence' with care, as teachers too are 'potentially vulnerable to
allegations' (3).
(3) No smoke without fire, Times Educational Supplement, 18 March 2005
Daycare workers have also found themselves accused of
the most depraved acts, and been unable for several years to clear their
names, despite acquittal early on by the criminal courts (see Child
protection questions: Issues raised by the Lillie and Reed case, by
Jennie Bristow). Where can this lead, except to a situation where we do
not trust anybody to care for children without abusing them? Is this the
kind of society that we want to create?
Introducing his book, Webster argues that
'of all of the misconceptions about historical witch hunts, perhaps the most important is the notion
that they were driven forward by the common people - that they were
based on the untutored instincts of the mob. This is the very opposite
of the truth' [The witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] were sent in motion not by ordinary people but by an educated
elite consisting of bishops, ministers, magistrates and judges.
Historically, indeed, witch hunts have always relied upon judges and
magistrates, and on official inquiries, in order to maintain their power
and authority.'
Occasionally, our society does worry that it is in the grip of a
'paedophile panic', and points to illiterate mobs on housing estates
allegedly running intimidation campaigns against the local
paediatrician. The Secret of Bryn Estyn reminds us that the real danger
comes, not from the passionate mob, but from the higher echelons of the
British state. However the North Wales children's home scandal started,
in the end the protagonists were politicians, the police, and the law
courts. In his new introduction to the paperback version, Webster has
written a powerful commentary on last year's Jersey care home scandal,
showing once again that it was the elite - police, politicians,
broadsheet journalists - who created and spread stories about children
being murdered and incinerated.
In the name of protecting children and punishing perverts, in the Bryn
Estyn scandal the state was able to embark on a crusade to cleanse
society of an unspeakable evil, overturning core principles of truth and
justice as it went, regardless of the wider damage this could cause to
care workers around the country and those who had grown up in children's
homes. And now, it takes a book like Webster's to force us to think what
has become the unthinkable: that not every residential care worker is a
paeodophile just waiting to get caught.
