'The Cunards story’. Their miserable story goes back forty years. It concerns many people and several different Court Actions. I have highlighted two separate episodes to illustrate the problems faced by people who are false accused of sexual abuse of children as my late husband & his eldest son were.

The Cunard children had been In Care for six years. At a Children’s Hearing in March 1998 the Panel agreed with the Social Workers’ recommendation to continue the Supervision Requirement and to let access be at the discretion of the children (instead of being offered every six weeks).

Shortly after the Hearing, Safeguarders were appointed to discover the whether the children wished contact with their parents or not. Mr Cunard was delighted when one of them, Solicitor Eileen MJ Paterson, reported that his youngest child had clearly asked to see both him and the eldest member of the family, her 18 year old brother. The wee girl had been removed from her parents only a few weeks after birth because of alleged “failure to thrive”. She had spent her whole six and a half years with foster parents, yet she still wanted to see her Dad & brother! The two men waited to hear from Social Work Services when access would be arranged.

Weeks passed and nothing happened. When Mr Cunard wrote to the SWS at Ruchazie, he was told by Ann Anderson that she was aware of what the wee girl had said to the Safeguarders. He was assured that contact would be arranged “when the children request this”. Needless to say the youngster never managed to ask in the approved manner (whatever that was). She never saw her father again, and had to wait until his funeral in January 2002 before she had any contact with her grown-up brother.

It seemed to us that the whole expensive exercise of appointing independent Safeguarders and having them speak to the children was a complete waste of time,

because SWS had no intention of allowing access and the parents were unable to enforce their daughter’s wishes. Even at the tender age of six, the child would understand that her carers did not want her to see her father or brother, because her explicit request to Ms Paterson had been ignored.

Susan Watson Glasgow 4 June 2005.

‘Should falsely accused people talk to the Police before consulting a
lawyer?’
Many people who have contacted FAAS have complained that the statements they freely gave to the Police in the hope of clearing their names were distorted. In these cases, once a lawyer was eventually found, he or she would have to refute the material which the Police already had on file.

The eldest of the Cunard family (25) had had little or no contact with his siblings In Care for about seven years. He had spoken to four of them briefly at their father’s funeral, and had chatted to his 18 year old sister after recognising her in the City Centre store where she worked. Early in 2005 he was horrified to receive a visit from the Police, who told him that his 16 year old sister had made a formal complaint that he had assaulted her some ten years earlier. Such historic complaints are a nightmare because there is no medical evidence available after so many years. Also it is impossible for the accused man to use an alibi defence, eg claiming that he was in a different part of the country at the time of the alleged crime, because the complainer never specifies WHEN she was supposed to have been assaulted. It is really just his word against that of the Complainer.

Mr Cunard Jnr has his faults, but being bashful is not one of them. He and his eldest sister (24) promptly arranged to call at the Police Station, and the two of them talked and talked and talked for hours until they had convinced the investigating officers to bin their previous six months work on the case. Brother & sister are both sales professionals with the gift of the gab; perhaps things would have ended differently if either of them had been introverted or tongue-tied….

We guessed that the 16 year old, who had spent the past 3 ½ years in a residential herapeutic unit, had been brainwashed into believing that she had been interfered with by someone, somewhere, sometime. If not, then the £1/4 million spent on her treatment had been a terrible waste of public money!

Despite the happy outcome in this instance, FAAS would advise anyone wrongfully accused to obtain specialised legal advice before co-operating with the Police.

Cunard Jnr is not out of the woods yet. His 15 year old sister has also spent years in a special unit; she too may be persuaded to make a complaint to justify the “therapy” she had received.

Susan (Smith) June 2005’