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Police Trawling Shortly before Christmas 2005, a 71-year-old man named Brian Ely lost an appeal against his conviction on more than two-dozen sex abuse charges against boys at approved schools. The judges found nothing to raise doubts about the former housemaster’s guilt, although they reduced his sentence by three years to twelve. Ely’s family, they noted, had stood by him. The support given to Ely by his wife and son is far from unusual in these cases of so-called ‘historic abuse’. Wives have not only stood by their men, despite the heinous nature of the crimes of which they are accused, but been at the forefront of campaigns to prove the convictions are wrong. Ely is one of an estimated 100-150 men serving jail sentences
after police ‘trawling’ inquiries into allegations
of abuse at children’s homes and approved schools. The inquiries
have been described as witch-hunts leading to ‘a new genre
of miscarriages of justice’. Now, lawyers are predicting
a leap forward in the campaign to prove that analysis correct.
Over the next few months, 10 cases will be prepared for a special
Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) pilot that will help test
the safety of all the trawling convictions. Meanwhile, intense
political lobbying by people such as Crosby MP Claire Curtis-Thomas
has opened up the possibility that the Home Affairs Select Committee
(HASC) will follow its 2001-02 inquiry into ‘trawls’
with a Ely’s case, and that of another man which went to appeal last year, illustrate some of these points. Ely had been convicted at Exeter Crown Court in June 2001 on 26 charges of buggery and indecent assault relating to offences against nine boys at two schools between 1962 and 1977. His appeal barrister, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, said his conviction had arisen from an unfair system of investigation and that Ely’s was the twentieth ‘historical abuse’ case to come before the Court of Appeal in the past decade. Sir Ivan highlighted the issue of compensation made available to victims of abuse. He said the payouts could run into five figures – one complainant had actually received £100,000 – and might provide a motive for witnesses coming forward to make false allegations. The other case – that of Tony Burke, who was jailed for eight-and-a-half years in December 2001 for abusing three boys at a former assessment centre in Cardiff - reveals the problems in trying to prove the allegations incorrect. Burke’s offences were alleged to have happened in 1970 and 1971 but did not emerge until detectives tracked down those who had been in care and asked if they had been abused. At both his trial and appeal, his lawyers argued that the passage of time meant that he could not get a fair trial. Crucial documentary evidence - such as staff rotas, which might provide him with an alibi - had disappeared or been destroyed. Key witnesses, other members of staff, were dead. Although the appeal judges found that the absence of ‘crucial documents’ on one charge prevented Burke, a father-of-three with no previous convictions, from having a fair trial, they ruled that the loss of staff rotas did not have the same importance in relation to the other charges. They also dismissed Burke’s claim about the lack of witnesses. However, according to David Woods, Burke’s solicitor at appeal, both may have supported Burke’s defence that he rarely worked at night when the offences were alleged to have occurred. “The difficulty in these cases is that it is very easy to make such allegations but very difficult to refute them,” Woods told me after the appeal last spring for an article in Private Eye. “Public sympathy is with the complainant, who is termed ‘victim’ before the issue of guilt is even determined. Also the cases rely on force of numbers because not one of these allegations in themselves can really stand up because there is no independent corroboration.” The difficulty for appellants who ‘go it alone’ is that they must rely on basic appeal points and do not get to challenge the nature of the inquiries on which the evidence against them was formed or collected. That is why a group of around 15 legal firms got together under the banner of the Historical Abuse Appeal Panel (HAAP). The panel, in agreement with the Legal Services Commission and the CCRC, is preparing 10 of the 85 men on its books as test cases. Doncaster-based lawyer Mark Newby said this would allow lawyers to investigate police practice, issues of contamination and collusion, and to identify links between complainants, institutions and inquiries. “What we are doing is effectively acting as a police force carrying out a re-inquiry,” he stated. Mr Newby said there had been considerable political progress, which he could not discuss publicly but he was ‘pretty confident’ that the HASC would be returning to the issue. “All I can say is that there are very deep concerns about the way in which these cases occurred,” he said. “I’ve never been one to say that police officers have acted with bad faith. I think they have often behaved in an exuberant way and got carried away with the investigation and the allegations that are being given to them. “But the allegations the people have faced have been terrible. Even if they are lucky enough to get their conviction quashed, they can never walk back into their normal existence.” * Greg Lewis is a freelance journalist whose work has featured in a number of publications including Private Eye, The Observer, The Big Issue and Wales on Sunday. He can be contacted at greg_lewis@hotmail.co.uk
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