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Report from the Guardian
16/07/04
It was pitch black outside, misty and bitterly cold,
when Ian Campbell rose at 6am on October 3 2003 to get ready for
work on a fish farm on the remote island of Lewis in the outer Hebrides.
As his wife and five children slept, he made a cup of coffee and
sat down in the kitchen of their cottage on the edge of the peat
moors of Ness, north of Lewis, when there was a knock at the door.
"There was a plain-clothes officer standing there who identified
himself as being the police," Campbell recalls. "Suddenly
there were police everywhere. They said, 'We've got a warrant to
search your house.' They said something about child abuse."
Shocked and confused, Campbell went to wake his wife, Penny, asleep
on the sofabed in the lounge. In the chaos that ensued, plain-clothes
and uniformed officers and social workers from Western Isles council
seemed to fill up every room in the cramped, two-bedroom home, a
converted traditional stone "black house" dating from
1840. Campbell, 39, was handcuffed and driven off in an unmarked
car. Penny, 32, was asked if she wanted to help dress the children,
aged between eight months and 11 years, then she too was taken away
- leaving her children behind - to be questioned at Stornoway police
station, 28 miles away. The couple were interviewed separately -
Ian for more than four hours, Penny for three. The allegations they
both faced were devastating - child sexual abuse involving three
young girls on the island .The Campbell's were among 11 people arrested
that October morning in dawn raids on homes on Lewis, Leicestershire,
West Yorkshire and Dorset. Three people, including Penny, were released
without charge later that day. Eight others, including Ian, and
a 75-year-old grandmother, were charged with sexual offences against
children over a period of six years between 1995 and 2001. The charges
were said to involve three girls under 16 who had been in the care
of the Western Isles social services department. It is understood
that the investigation began after one of the girls said something
to a carer that caused her concern. This was relayed to a social
worker and, over several months, allegations of abuse followed.
The arrests, in what police code-named Operation Haven, soon made
headlines on local and national radio, television and newspapers.
The more lurid referred to a "child sex abuse network"
and a suspected "paedophile ring". All eight accused denied
the charges and a trial was expected soon after. But two weeks ago,
on Friday July 2, the case suddenly collapsed. In a statement, Northern
Constabulary said the Scottish Crown Office had instructed that
no proceedings would be taken. The Crown Office confirmed that all
charges had been dropped. No explanation was given. The next day,
determined to clear her husband's name, Penny Campbell wrote a long
and impassioned statement which she emailed to the press. In it
she revealed publicly, for the first time, the bizarre nature of
the allegations that Ian and the others had faced - Satanic ritual
child abuse. Transcripts of police interviews, seen by the Guardian,
reveal that those charged were accused of being devil worshippers,
of raping and sexually abusing children in black magic rituals and
wife-swapping orgies during which they dressed in ceremonial robes
and masks, sacrificed animals and drank their blood.
The charges were redolent of similar cases in Orkney, Rochdale and
Nottingham - among many others that occurred in the early 1990s
- all of which were dismissed due to lack of evidence. The so-called
Satanic abuse was exposed as a myth; how could this happen again?
Research into a series of similar ritual abuse investigations in
Britain, conducted by Professor Jean la Fontaine and published by
the Department of Health in 1994, concluded that although there
might have been sexual abuse of children in some of the cases, there
was no forensic evidence that Satanic ritual abuse existed. Further
investigations revealed the "Satanic panic" had originated
in the United States and been spread there and here by evangelical
born-again Christians, and police, social workers and therapists
who attended conferences and seminars on this apparently newly discovered
and most depraved form of child abuse.
Last Tuesday (July 13) Western Isles council announced it would
be conducting a review of events on Lewis and invited the Social
Work Services Inspectorate to analyse their involvement. The inquiry
is expected to examine methods used by social workers to conduct
"disclosure interviews" and therapy sessions with the
children whose allegations led to the charges of sexual abuse. The
review will start immediately. It is also expected to investigate
how the allegations of "Satanic ritual abuse" first arose
and how they developed. An earlier statement from the council, after
the charges were dropped, said its employees were to be "commended
for their professionalism and commitment in difficult and complex
circumstances."
The Guardian has interviewed three of the accused men who remain
on Lewis, and also members of their families who were originally
suspected of being perpetrators, to piece together accounts of their
nine-month ordeal. We also talked to local people in a community
that has been shattered by allegations that there was a paedophile
ring in their midst. Peter Nelson, 59, and his daughter Mary-Anne,
37, had also been asleep at their home in Lochs, on the west of
Lewis, when they were woken by their dogs barking and the police
banging on the door. It was the same routine as with the Campbells
- a search warrant was produced and they were invited to the station.
"When they raided this house I don't think the detectives realised
I am disabled," Nelson says. "I have spinal injuries and
my daughter is my carer. But one of them asked me: 'Is it an unnatural
relationship with your daughter? Do you share the same bed?' The
next thing he said I was being accused of the rape of three children.
And my daughter was being accused as well."
John and Susan Sellwood, were also arrested that cold morning and
driven in two cars to Stornoway police station, bewildered and afraid.
"They treated me as guilty from the start," says John.
"In the car on the way to the police station they accused me
of rape and said they had got me on a video so there was no point
me denying it. They said there were others involved so it would
be better if I got it off my chest, because if I stayed quiet and
the others spilled the beans I would be made to look worse. I didn't
know what they were talking about." Susan Sellwood was interviewed
for almost six hours by two male officers in plain clothes. "I
was crying and hysterical for most of the interview," she says.
"I suffer from panic attacks. At one point I thought I was
going to be physically sick. They stuck my head out of the window
and told me to get some fresh air. "I was accused of having
relationships, orgies, with all the men. I was accused of holding
the girls down while the men performed. I was accused of joining
in with a vibrator. They asked what I knew about the occult and
the sacrifice of animals. I was just totally hysterical by this
time." The Campbells, the Sellwoods and the Nelsons were interviewed
simultaneously at Stornoway that morning. The Campbells were quizzed
for longer and in more depth about the Satanic elements and their
interest in the occult. The Campbells are Pagans. They made no secret
of their religion when they moved to the island in 1997. New Agers
flock to Lewis at significant times such as the midsummer solstice
because of the famous standing stones of Callanish, monoliths considered
second only to Stonehenge as a mystical tourist attraction.
"As soon as I said I was a Pagan I knew I was sunk," says
Ian. "The police officers interviewing me didn't know what
a Pagan was. They equated being a Pagan with being a Satanist and
a devil worshipper. They had taken away two books on Paganism from
my house and saw them as evidence of Satanism. We also had a bible
and a book on Jehovah's witnesses but they didn't take those.
"When they raided the house again last February - after Penny
started writing letters of complaint to the police - they took away
some of her clothes including a purple velvet hooded top, a full-length
blue and gold Kaftan and a mauve and black lace tunic, which belonged
to one of my daughters. They obviously thought Penny was a witch."
There has been no explanation from the police or the Crown Office
as to why the charges were suddenly dropped. The Crown Office statement
merely said: "We can say that all the available evidence was
carefully examined before this decision was taken."
Last week, in the local pub and social club in Ness, where most
of the accused had lived at some time, feelings were still running
high. At the bar, a table of women on a girls' night out were shocked
the charges had been dropped. "There must have been something
in it; the police must have had evidence to make arrests,"
insists one, the mother of two small children.
All eight accused had moved from England to Lewis at some stage,
for a better, simpler life, and if there was one consolation for
the community it was that at least they were not islanders. A well-known
local figure, who agreed to be called Angus, who seems to know everyone
in Ness, believes the majority want those accused who remain to
leave.
"These charges of paedophilia and child sex rings have brought
the island into disrepute," he says. When asked what he thought
about the revelation that the allegations included Satanic rituals
he says: "I don't believe in that rubbish myself. But we all
knew the Campbells were white witches. We all heard this was what
the neighbours were saying before they moved to this part of Lewis."
In the nine months that followed the accusations, the effects on
the accused have been traumatic. Those in Lewis were subjected to
vigilante attacks, personal abuse and have been ostracised by many
in the community. Campbell, Nelson and Sellwood have all had the
word "paedo" daubed in paint on the walls, and in Sellwood's
case on the main road, outside their homes. While Nelson was in
prison, the garden that he and his daughter had cultivated over
seven years was raided and wrecked. He was so fearful for their
safety, that he installed CCTV cameras, which transmit views from
around his house and garden onto a massive TV screen in his lounge.
Last March, when he hit his lowest point, Nelson attempted suicide
by taking an overdose. "The stress of everything, the hatred
that was being shown to us, the damaging of the property and our
garden we had worked so hard to create; it was like living in a
nightmare," he admits. Mary-Anne found him unconscious on the
sofa and he recovered after four days in hospital. Nelson's mental
state is still fragile, and he breaks down often at the memory of
recent events, but he is stubbornly defiant and determined to stay
on Lewis. "I will probably become a hermit," he says,
"and just potter around my garden. But they will not drive
me out." The Sellwood's and the Campbell's are not so confident.
After mulling over their future in recent days, both couples have
decided they will probably leave the island to begin a new life.
For Ian Campbell, his world has been turned upside down. The way
we were as a family has changed," he says. "I find it
hard to be close to the kids like I used to be. I can't hug them
like I used to. Even now I worry that holding my daughter's hand
in the street is going to be interpreted as something different.
"To be called a paedophile, it's like a sickness inside. I
have lost control of my life and I have become very angry. I was
also very frightened. When the police were interviewing me about
devil worshipping, animal sacrifice and the satanic stuff, they
just believed it was true. It was like a 17th-century witch hunt.
If this had happened then, Penny and I would have been burned at
the stake."
· Rosie Waterhouse is a consultant on Newsnight's film, A
case of Satanic Panic?, which is on BBC2 at 11.30pm.
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