The accusations couldn’t have been more lurid. They told of devil worship, with blood being drunk as children were raped. But this week, with their lives in utter ruins, it was revealed there was not a scrap of evidence against this couple. So what on earth was going on?

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
Daily Mail October 15th 2005
by Fiona Barton and Rosie Waterhouse

THE scene is horrifying. A group of weeping children are forced to witness orgiastic sex scenes between masked and chanting men and women before they are raped and abused.

There is bestiality enacted while chickens and rams are ritually slaughtered and their blood drunk by one of the celebrants. The children’s limbs are thrust into a fire, cigarettes are stubbed out on their arms and they are compelled to watch videos of people being tortured and murdered. This was the shocking ‘eye-witness’ account that persuaded police and social workers that the Devil was at work on the God-fearing Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

Two years ago, the authorities arrested those named by the ‘witness’, Mrs A. In all, nine people, including a 75-year-old grandmother, were charged with rape, and lewd and indecent practices.
The shockwaves created in the tiny island community reverberated all across Britain and saw those caught up in the scandal treated as pariahs. Yet now, it appears that the satanic sex ring was all the figment of a woman’s troubled mind. This week an official report showed that although there was evidence of abuse within one family, there was no wider network of devil worshippers. The nightmare scenario described in such graphic detail appears to have had no basis in fact.

A special investigation by the Daily Mail, drawing on official documents and interviews, can now show how flawed the case was and how lives were destroyed by gossip and gullible authorities

A decade after similarly flawed allegations in the Orkneys, Rochdale and Nottingham led to an official report concluding that ritual abuse was largely a myth, how could this have happened again?
Such dark and disturbing matters were a world away from the simple good life that Ian and Penny Campbell sought when they came to Lewis. The couple brought their two eldest children to live on the island when the crime and yobbery of inner-city Birmingham became too much.

‘We wanted a better life,’ Penny says. ‘Our eldest had just started school and he was coming home with swear words he had picked up in the playground. Our flat was robbed and my handbag stolen from my car and we decided this was not where we wanted our children to grow up.’
In November 1997, they organised a council-house exchange with a family on Lewis without even visiting the island. To start with, they were delighted with their new surroundings.

Penny, 33, who was born in Dundee, says: ‘We heard it was remote and quiet, which suited us. We liked life on the island. It was a much safer environment for the children. We didn’t have to watch them all the time and they made friends quickly.’ The couple, who now have five children aged two to 14, bought their own home — a dilapidated two-bedroom stone house in the village of South Dell — and started to restore it, while Ian worked at a fish factory. ‘Everything was fine until that morning,’ says Ian, a 40-year-old originally from Guernsey.
That morning was October 3, 2003, when a team of plain clothes police officers and social workers raided the house at 6am with a warrant for the arrest of both adults.

Penny, a dark-haired, motherly figure in a long skirt and sweatshirt, still breaks down and weeps at the memory. ‘They came to the door and Ian answered it,’ she says. ‘They showed him a piece of paper and said he was being arrested for child abuse. It was weird, it was like everything stopped — you were frozen in time with all this going on around you.

‘The children were still asleep and I had to get them up and dressed. Ian was taken out in handcuffs and I was told not to cry because I was upsetting the children, but I couldn’t help it. ‘They wouldn’t tell the children what was happening, just that they had to go with them to town. They say I fed the baby but I don’t remember and then the children were taken out. They were still asking what was going on, they were really upset. I said it would be OK and I would see them later. I was telling them that, but at the time I didn’t know if I was going to see them again. I was trying not to worry them.’ She didn’t see them again for two days and was not allowed to speak to them on the phone. She could only write them a letter, which the authorities read before passing on.
Ian, meanwhile, was being interrogated for four hours at Stornoway police station. He is a tall man with striking eyes and a soft voice.

He is also a pagan and believes in celebrating the cycles of nature and cherishing the Earth’s resources. While such believers may seem strange, they are peace-loving and certainly have no links whatsoever with devil worship.

It might have been easier for him to deny his faith, but Ian is quite open about his beliefs and points out there are no altars or shrines in the house because, he says, he doesn’t feel comfortable with that aspect of paganism.
When Ian was told he had been arrested for abusing two young girls, the daughters of a couple he and Penny had met a couple of times when they arrived, he was appalled.

As transcripts of the police interviews show, he protested his innocence from the start with a mixture of astonishment and confusion. The interviews began with questions about wife-swopping and whether he was sexually attracted to children, but quickly turned to his religion. Ian said his beliefs were a personal matter because he was not sure what he believed himself. But whether through honesty or naiveté, he did admit being curious about the occult. The transcript of the interview goes as follows:

‘Police Officer: Do you know anyone else who — or have you ever heard of anybody else who — practises the occult?
Ian Campbell: No, I don’t, I don’t know of anyone else who actually practises that kind of religion.
PO: Have you any knowledge of the use of statues in practising the occult? What about the ritualistic killing of animals? Ritualistic dress, as in gowns that type of thing? Do you have any books about witchcraft?
IC: Umm, Wicca witches and things like that? Yes, in the kitchen.
PO: Wicca witches? What’s that?
IC: Well, paganism, you don’t know about paganism?
PO: I don’t
IC: It is not against the law. Paganism is basically people who believe in Mother Earth. It’s not witchcraft as in, you know, flaming voodoo sort of things.’
Ian was then told that the abused children had identified him as a man known as ‘Tommy’ — a
name he has never used — and had accused him of raping and indecently assaulting them.
Their mother also accused Penny of sexually abusing the girls and assisting in the rapes. Even on paper, Ian’s distress is palpable as the allegations become more lurid. He even tries to turn off the tape.
But the questioning continues: ‘Ian, I have information that you were involved in devil-worshipping ceremonies. Have you ever been into devil worship?
IC: No, not at all!
PO: The information we have is that this has taken place and that you did use to dress up in a long white gown and wore masks, as did your wife Penny, and that you carried out some form of ceremony during which there was dancing, and that your children were dressed up in a similar manner to yourselves and there was music being played, described as Indian music.

‘And also that during this, some form of chanting or praying took place. Further to that, there was information given to us that whilst this was being conducted, it was being videoed on a camcorder.
‘Have you been in a position of seeing any videos which would depict serious sexual abuse? People being killed, and I’m not talking acting here? Have you ever drunk the blood of a chicken? Have you ever witnessed anybody else doing that? Ever drunk the blood of any other animal?’

The interview ends in a howl from Ian, who repeats: ‘I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you’ as the officers start to charge him with rape. Penny was freed without charge but faced similar questions. And at the same time, other suspects from the island were being interrogated. John Sellwood, a 67-year-old former lorry driver, was arrested, together with his wife Sue. Today, he says: ‘It was completely mad. I was supposed to have had sex with eight women at one of these ceremonies and then had sex with the girls afterwards.
‘I run a cat rescue centre and spend hundreds on vet’s bills having sick animals put down, and they accused me of slaughtering animals. I am a Mormon and they asked me if I wore a cape or a mask. I have no idea where this thing came from.’

Therein lies the key to this complex and profoundly troubling story. How did police ever come to believe a host of Lewis islanders were part of a satanic circle? Where did the lurid suggestion come from?
Astonishingly, the Mail can now reveal that it is probable that the issue of devil worship was introduced by a police officer during an interview with an emotionally troubled and traumatised woman.
Mrs A has learning difficulties and epilepsy and was sexually abused by her own father during her teens.
Her daughters, now 16, 14 and 12, had been taken into care after making allegations that they had been sexually abused. Their mother, who they said witnessed some of the assaults, denied it but later changed her story as names of possible suspects were put to her.

In August 2003, the police interviewed the mother over 11 days and the allegations began to come thick and fast. She claimed she had witnessed her husband and two men raping and sexually assaulting one of their daughters. Then she said the wife of one of the abusers and her own mother were also joining in. It is clear from records seen by the accused that PC Andrew Blakey, the 30-year-old investigating officer who had been with the force for six years, was becoming worried about the mother’s credibility as a witness.
In statements disclosed to the accused, he said: ‘We were very conscious everyone the father had an association with was being named by the mother as a suspect, and at that stage these were not names that the girls had mentioned.’

He continues: ‘By this stage I was wondering who would be next. It was getting more fantastical each day. These names came out because we were starting to mention associates of the father, i.e. ones who had been in and around the house.

‘We would say: “Do you know X? Tell me what you know. Was he involved in this?”’
Then on August 28, Satan made his entrance. During an interview with PC Blakey, the mother accused a couple she called ‘Tommy and Penny’ of abusing her daughters. According to notes, PC Blakey said: ‘When I asked the mother if she knew anything about the Devil, she stated that Tommy and Penny were involved in devil worshipping and stated that this was involved in the abuse of the girls.
‘The reason Tommy and Penny were mentioned was because (one of the girls) had given a list of ten names and they were on it. We had done a check on who we thought “Tommy” was and one of his antecedents was about devil worship.’

This ‘antecedent’ reference is not explained — there is certainly nothing in Ian’s past to link him with Satanism. The Campbells suspect the officer, their local policeman, had heard about Ian’s paganism on the grapevine and leapt to the wrong conclusions about the faith. In his notes, PC Blakey says he deliberately had not briefed himself on the details of devil worship so he would not have preconceived ideas. But the mother soon educated him.

She claimed the 13 abusers wore robes and masks, drawing pictures of them. She said animals were involved in the abuse and she and the girls were forced to watch videos of ‘sexual acts and real deaths’ during ceremonies and they were all made to put their arms into flames.

Astonishingly, all of this, which appears from legal statements to have been uncorroborated by any other witness, formed a central plank in the questioning. Ian says: ‘As soon as I said I was a pagan, I was sunk. Pagan meant devil worshipper in their books so I was guilty. It is absolute nonsense. Pagans don’t even believe the Devil exists — it is a Christian invention.’ Murdo Fraser, Chief Inspector of the Western Isles Northern Constabulary claimed the investigation was of a high standard and his force had ‘a sufficiency of evidence to charge a number of people, and we did.’ But the Crown Counsel disagreed and dropped the case.
Now the girls, who are in foster care, are planning a private prosecution of their alleged abusers. It is the final straw for the Campbells and Sellwoods.

Sue Sellwood, who was freed after questioning when one girl changed her story and said Sue didn’t know about the abuse, says: ‘We have lost everything. We used to run markets and the Santa’s Grotto but we can’t now. As far as everyone is concerned, we are paedophiles.

‘We want to move away as soon as we can.’

Ian adds: ‘The atmosphere in the house has changed. It is no longer a home. We don’t want to stay on the island. We are looking to go anywhere as long as it is off here. ‘We need to move on. We waited for the report so people wouldn’t think we were running away but the feeling in the village is very hostile despite the charges being dropped. ‘Here, they believe there is a devil somewhere. I suppose they think it is us.’

Daily Mail October 15th 2005

FAAS comment

is coaching children a form of torture we claim it is planting lies into their lives is real evil, and those who use this method to get the results they want should be locked up for child abuse. Our hope is that social workers, NCH, and the police should take note!!!!..