Tuesday 29 November 2016

Soper 2nd hearing

Soper's case has been transferred to the Central Criminal Court. There was a plea and case management hearing on 25th November.

He has been charged with two counts of buggery, one of gross indecency and six of indecent assault.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A provisional trial date has been set for 13th February.

Monday 21 November 2016

The secrecy of the IICSA and the damage it has caused

Back in November 2014 I wrote an article for the Guardian. "The child abuse inquiry needs to start again with transparency and trust". The first two paragraphs said this.
Trust. That’s the issue. Child abuse survivors, particularly those abused in institutional settings, are often highly mistrustful and obsessively motivated. It’s hard for those not abused in childhood to understand how devastating it is to be so thoroughly betrayed by the very adults and authorities on whom you depend for your care, and how profoundly that affects your ability to trust anybody in later life.

The home secretary Theresa May’s conduct in setting up the inquiry falls far short of building the trust necessary to gain the confidence of these extremely and justifiably mistrustful people. It is clear from her statement in parliament on Monday that she isn’t close to understanding how much transparency is really needed.
The most important point I made at the time was that the inquiry needed to be put on a full statutory footing with the power to take testimony under oath and to compel the production of documents.

At that stage, the inquiry in its non-statutory form was manifestly unfit for purpose because it had no powers to get any information out of anybody who didn't want to co-operate.

Moreoever we had just lost two chairs. Baroness Butler Sloss resigned the day after it was revealed that she had suppressed the name of an abusive (and since convicted) bishop from a report she had prepared into abuse in the Church of England. Fiona Woolf was a inexplicable selection, a commercial solicitor who specialised in electricity deregulation. How that qualified her to run a child abuse inquiry was and remains a mystery to me.

But after that, some things did improve. Theresa May decided to restart the inquiry as a full statutory inquiry, and a much more comprehensive process of due diligence went into the selection of the third chair, New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard. On the face of it she seemed a much more fitting choice. That it didn't work out and that she resigned this summer doesn't mean that the choice was originally a bad one, that the process for choosing her was flawed or that her subsequent resignation could reasonably have been predicted. Sometimes good decisions turn out badly.


But I think lack of transparency is still a major problem. Since it was set up, the IICSA has produced just one progress report. It is 15 pages of PowerPoint-style layout. Only a page and a half (less than 500 words) actually includes any description of progress. It amounts to half a page on each of pages 12, 13 and 15. The foreword from the Chair and the introduction from the Secretary between them are longer than that.


500 words describing 18 months of progress is really not enough. It is quite frankly an insult to the intelligence of the public and especially survivors. I can understand that it takes a while to get an inquiry to the point where public hearings can take place. It is a far more complex undertaking than an individual criminal trial. For instance Laurence Soper (former Abbot of Ealing) was arrested in August this year on suspicion of child abuse, and his trial probably will not start until February or so. That's the trial of one man. Looking into the alleged failings of multiple institutions is more complex and takes more preparation. People will get that if you explain it and regularly describe how far you've got.

I don't expect a running commentary on what evidence is being looked at prior to the public hearings. I don't expect the anonymity of complainants to be breached. But surely can't be hard to produce a regular update (fortnightly or so) describing what has been achieved and what is the schedule for the next events, and stating what has caused the change where the schedule is changing.

Because this sort of information has not been released, there is a widespread perception that absolutely nothing has happened in the last 18 months, that all the money spent has been wasted and that we will have to start again from scratch with the new chair. This plays into the hands of those who think the inquiry should never have been started and should be stopped. The publicity that such people whip up deepens the despair of those survivors who wonder if they will ever be heard, and deepens the cynicism of a minority of survivors who see this as the establishment scheming to find ways of protecting itself. It was all so avoidable just by being serious about transparency and letting people know on a regular basis what progress is being made.

The perception further exists that having achieved nothing in 18 months, the inquiry is going to be hard-pressed to complete 13 investigations, whatever additional investigations will also be needed but not yet scheduled, reach its conclusion and write its report within the remaining three and a half years of the original five year estimated timescale.

The perception that it will take longer the the original 5-year estimate may well be true. The inquiry has not released any schedule so we don't know what they think about it. The precedent of the delays to the Chilcot inquiry is not encouraging. People fear that Professor Jay's promised but as yet unpublished review will cut down the scope of the public hearings in order to stick to the schedule, and instead encourage more papers-only reviews and more people to go to the Truth Project instead.

I think that would be a mistake. There are things that can be done to speed up the process without sacrificing public hearings. It is my understanding that Goddard intended chairing every public hearing for all five "strands" of the inquiry. As a result, all the hearings would have had to be conducted consecutively. Given the amount of evidence that will need to be heard, that seems unwieldy. Instead, we could have multiple public hearings going on in parallel. Each investigation could have its own panel member chairing it, its own lead counsel asking the questions, its own legal and secretariat team supporting it. The panel members would meet regularly to swap experiences (and would of course read the transcripts of each other's hearings).

The panel should also point out that its terms of reference don't require it to investigate every institution that ever failed children. For instance we don't need to look in detail at the failings of every local authority social services department. It should be enough look at a sample sufficient to detect patterns of failure that are likely to be replicated nationwide, and to make recommendations for change accordingly. Similarly, for example it's probably not necessary to look in detail at every parish of the Roman Catholic Church. They inquiry is currently scheduled to look at the English Benedictine Congregation (who run a number of schools) and the diocese of Birmingham (where several abuses are known to have happened). It is likely that we will learn enough about the failings of the Catholic Church from those two investigations to be able to make recommendations that are applicable to the church in general. A combination of parallel hearings and wise choices concerning which institutions to investigate in detail should keep progress moving while not sacrificing thoroughness.

Parallel hearings would not necessarily be simple to achieve. Parallel hearings means evidence needs to be collated more quickly, lines of inquiry decided on sooner, more buildings and rooms found in which the hearings can be conducted (including facilities for press and witnesses). The panel members recently mentioned in evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee the problems they have been having finding suitable premises for hearings.

The panel's recent appearance before the HASC was rather a car-crash. Just about every question met with a what appeared to be a pretty belligerent intention to provide little or no answer. That's not the way to win friends and influence people, in Parliament or outside. While the work can proceed in the absence of friends, it's a whole lot easier with them. Quite frankly the HASC members mostly aren't lawyers, they were asking fairly soft questions and could easily have been treated with more friendliness. That they weren't suggests that the inquiry has acquired a siege mentality where the press and parliament and even the public are regarded as enemies trying to break down the gates. If true, that has to be changed and quickly.

When the inquiry has been asked for comment on various issues, it has usually not been the Chair or any of the other panel members who have come forward. It has been members of the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel, most frequently Peter Saunders, Lucy Duckworth or Chris Tuck.

There are a number of serious problems with this policy. First, speaking to the media on behalf of the inquiry is not within the VSCP's terms of reference (unless they have been secretly changed, which itself would be a most nontransparent thing to do).

Second, the VSCP members are (according to the terms of reference) supposed to "bring a representative cross­-section of experience and opinion to the Inquiry's work". In other words they are supposed to be representing survivors to the inquiry, not the inquiry to the survivors. I get the impression that neither the inquiry panel members nor the VSCP members realise how damaging it is to the reputations both of the VSCP and the inquiry as a whole for the VSCP members to be straying from their role in this way. In a particularly bad example, on the Victoria Derbyshire programme Peter Saunders got into a quite unseemly row with Raymond Stevenson of the Shirley Oaks Survivors' Association. It took the fallout from that and the sense that the story might be careering out of control for Dru Sharpling of the panel itself to give interviews later that day.

The third problem with VSCP members being the public face of the inquiry is that they are quite peripheral to the inquiry's operations. They will take no part in any investigations and are in no position to say what progress is being made or to say whether or to what extent this or that event or resignation will affect the inquiry as a whole. There are plenty of people in the press and among the survivors who realise this, and every time VSCP members appear in the press the more trust in the inquiry drains away, because press and survivors know that the people who do have the answers are keeping quiet.

There appear also to be some significant oddities about the way the inquiry was set up. According to the Inquiry Rules 2006, the only people appointed to the inquiry by the sponsoring minister (in this case the Home Secretary) are the chair and other panel members. The other senior posts, including the Secretary, Counsel and Solicitor to the inquiry are for the chair to appoint. And yet all three posts were appointed before Goddard, and it would appear the Home Office didn't make it clear that they were in fact people she had the power to appoint rather than the Home Office.

Goddard in her statement to the Home Affairs Select Committee alluded to the frustrations of not being able to start fresh with her own team. The IICSA has claimed that only a small proportion of the inquiry secretariat has been drawn from Home Office civil servants, but to the best of my knowledge they are predominantly in senior positions, including John O'Brien, who is Secretary to the Inquiry.

I don't know and have never met John O'Brien. What I do know is that the Home Office is a notoriously secretive department, and that secretiveness contributed to the early missteps which I described in my Guardian article. This secretiveness is the opposite of what is needed in order to reassure the survivors who have been let down so many times that they are justifiably very mistrustful. It is a secretiveness the inquiry seems to have inherited and it is doing huge damage.

So here is my plea to Professor Jay:
  • Start producing frequent and regular progress updates so as to reassure survivors and others that progress is being made.
  • Don't cut down on public hearings, run them in parallel and delegate them to your fellow panel members in order to make faster progress.
  • Keep VSCP members away from the press and have panel members more frequently available for interview.
  • Be friendly to the Home Affairs Select Committee
  • Think of ways of increasing transparency wherever possible in everything you do.

Monday 19 September 2016

Soper hearing

There was a brief hearing today at Isleworth Crown Court. No plea was entered and the case was adjourned until 28th November for a plea and case management hearing.

Tuesday 23 August 2016

Core participant

Earlier this year I applied for core participant status in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, specifically for the investigation "Child Sexual Abuse in the Roman Catholic Church". My initial application was provisionally rejected, but I re-applied, and my renewed application was addressed at the inquiry's preliminary hearing on July 28.

One of the criteria for core participant status is if "the person may be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in the report, or in any interim report." Ealing Abbey & St Benedict's School are of course both core participants, they conceivably might come in for quite a bit of criticism. But I was able also to demonstrate that I should be a core particpant on this point (among others.) I put before the inquiry the headmaster's prizegiving day speech in September 2011 which contained the following passage.
I absolutely refute that anyone associated with St Benedict’s School has misled the Inspectors or protected offenders - such allegations are at best misguided and at worst deliberately malicious. Recent media and blog coverage seem hell-bent on trying to discredit the School and, at the same time, destroy the excellent relationship between School and Monastery. Is this part of an anti-Catholic movement linked to the papal visit? I do not know, but it feels very much as if we are being targeted.
In the chair's determination, this was stated as one of the grounds on which my core participant status was granted.

By the way, a little earlier in Cleugh's speech, he praised the monks.
Could any of you here tonight imagine the School without the spiritual and pastoral guidance of Fr Thomas, Fr Alexander here and Fr Andrew in the Junior School? And so it has been with generations of Priorians before you - Fr Bernard, Fr George and Fr Kevin to name but a few.
The mention of Fr Kevin was perhaps a little unfortunate. A school building had been named after Fr Kevin Horsey, who died in 2006. It subsequently emerged that he had abused, and the building was renamed.

Soper in court

Soper appeared at Ealing Magistrates Court yesterday to hear the charges against him. Nine charges relating to five different  children. The charges include buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault. He has been remanded in custody until 19 September when he will appear at Isleworth Crown Court.

(NOTE: Just a reminder to those commenting. I won't publish any comments which speculate as to Soper's guilt or innocence. That's for the courts to decide and I don't want anything done that would interfere with the workings of justice.)

Monday 22 August 2016

Soper arrested

The Metropolitan Police have had some trouble getting Laurence Soper back from Kosovo. Two extradition hearings both decided that Soper could not be extradited because in Kosovo there is a statute of limitations on the crimes of which he has been accused, and the time period had expired.

However it appears that the Kosovo authorities have nonetheless decided he was an undesirable alien and deported him. He arrived at Luton airport yesterday and was arrested on arrival. He will appear before Ealing magistrates today on charges including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

Thursday 23 June 2016

The Spectator on Mandatory Reporting

The Spectator has weighed into the debate on mandatory reporting saying that ‘Mandatory reporting’ of suspected child abuse is a mad, bad idea. I saw the article and commented "below the line" on the Spectator website.

====

Oh dear! What an ill-informed and misleading article.

1. Cameron hasn't spoken in favour of mandatory reporting with a penalty of 5 years for non-reporting, he spoke in favour of a law on "wilful neglect" which is something quite different and almost impossible to prove which won't change child protection culture in any way at all. It was just Cameron deciding to have a pop at another group of public sector staff, in this case social workers.

2. Mandatory reporting in countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia hasn't resulted in thousands of ill-founded or-unverifiable reports. The most recent research from Australia confirms that the introduction of mandatory reporting there has significantly increased the number of substantiated reports from mandated reporters. The conclusion of author Ben Mathews of Queensland University of Technology was “The results of this research suggest a mandatory reporting law for CSA is associated with a substantial and sustained increase in identification of cases of CSA. Societies which are considering the introduction of a mandatory reporting law for CSA should find support for this policy intervention from these findings, while recognizing the associated needs for reporter education, investment in agency capacity and service provision, and the need to implement responses to reports with sensitivity.”

3. Without proper support it is really hard to summon the courage to report. The natural thing to do is ask "What if I'm wrong?" So people tend to be on the side of the alleged abuser rather than the vulnerable child. The author has piled on the pressure in that direction with her talk of "the harm done to families and-professionals by thousands of unfounded accusations". It is a pity that no mention is made of the devastating and often lifelong harm to children that results from abuse going unreported and undetected. Non-reporting is far more common that you might think, and results in prolific serial abusers such as William Vahey getting away with their crimes for decades, or of Nigel Leat, where other staff noticed concerning behaviour on over 30 occasions and none of those concerns were forwarded to children's services

3. Actually Michael Gove is on record as having had a change of heart in favour of mandatory reporting.

4. It isn't a myth that there is an epidemic of hidden abuse. Research by the Children's Commissioner for England concludes that only 1 in 8 cases of child sex abuse comes to the attention of the authorities. That's a awful lot of unreported abuse. Yes, I'd call it an epidemic.

5. The tight, closed institutions that carried out the abuse-cover-ups of the past do still exist. As an example one school, knowing that a member of staff had abused, instead of reporting it consulted the school's solicitors to see if they had to report. The lawyers said no.

6. The Rochdale scandal had very little to do with the mandatory reporting question. Although under-reporting probably happened, the key problem was that local authority social services and the police simply didn't believe the children when they came forward with horrific takes of abuse. Professor Jay didn't conclude that the primary problem was fear of pointing fingers at the Pakistani community, but rather that the children, often from troubled backgrounds, were thought not worth trying to help.

So, an error of fact in almost every paragraph. Apart from that, the article is wonderful.

====

The editors of the Spectator can't take criticism. The comment was moderated and not published.

Saturday 4 June 2016

The Goddard Inquiry

The Goddard Inquiry (also known as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) has issued a call for applications for "core participant" status in its investigation into abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. The inquiry website states:
"The first case study will examine the English Benedictine Congregation which has been the subject of numerous allegations of child sexual abuse, including at schools run by the Congregation. The Inquiry will examine the relationship between Orders such as the Benedictines and the Catholic Church in England and Wales and consider how that relationship impacts on child protection. In this way the Inquiry will evaluate whether any failings identified within the English Benedictine Congregation, and within any other case studies identified as part of the investigation, are representative of wider failings within the Catholic Church."
It is important that as many survivors of abuse as possible come forward to participate. This is a chance not merely to hold to account abusers within the church, but also to hold to account those people in the church who were complicit, in that they had knowledge or suspicions of abuse but didn't take effective steps either to prevent it from continuing or to ensure that it was reported to the civil authorities.

So if you are a survivor or abuse at Ealing Abbey or St Benedict's School, or of abuse at any of the other Benedictine monasteries or their schools, or for that matter anywhere else in the Catholic Church, I urge you to come forward without delay. If you're not sure what to do or how to go about it, feel free to email me and I will help as far as I can. We can maybe put together a group of Ealing Survivors who could have common representation.

Those who are central to the inquiry's subject are designated by the inquiry as "core participants". The rules for core participant status are described here. Those who are given core participant status will fall into one of these categories.
a. The person played, or may have played, a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the inquiry relates;
b. the person has a significant interest in an important aspect of the matters to which the inquiry relates; or
c. the person may be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in the report, or in any interim report.
The inquiry has already started a number of other investigations, including into the Anglican Church, into Rochdale and other places, and abuse survivors have been made core participants in each of these investigations.

If you're made a core participant, then in addition to giving evidence, you have certain additional rights.
Those designated as core participants will:
a. be provided with electronic disclosure of evidence relevant to the particular subject matter of the Inquiry in respect of which they are so designated, subject to any restrictions made under section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005;
b. have the right to make opening and closing statements at any hearing;
c. have the right to suggest lines of questioning to be pursued by Counsel;
d. have the right to apply to the Inquiry Panel to ask questions of witnesses during a hearing.
If you want a lawyer to represent you and ask questions on your behalf, the inquiry can provide funds for that purpose. I know several of the lawyers who have been representing survivors in the other investigations, and I have no doubt that they will also be acting for survivors in the Roman Catholic Church investigation.

I can't stress how important it is for survivors to come forward. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to expose the wrongdoings of those institutions which enabled abuse, and to make an effective call for changes that would prevent abuse from happening again on this scale.

If you are a victim of abuse you are entitled to remain anonymous. Even if you give evidence in public hearings, your name and other identifying details will not be published. As a victim of sexual abuse (whether proved or not) you have a legal right to lifelong anonymity in respect of those crimes. You can see how this is handled if you look at transcripts of the public hearings into the abuse inquiry going on in Australia at present. Australia provides very similar protections for abuse victims.

It doesn't matter whether your abuse has resulted in a conviction or not. Any details of alleged abusers will get passed to the police, but you aren't then obliged to cooperate with the police if you don't want to.

Some abuse survivors quite understandably feel that public hearings are too much for them to cope with. If you feel that way but nonetheless want to make some sort of contribution to the inquiry, you can contact the Truth Project, which is a part of the inquiry where you share your experience in private without been cross-questioned by anybody. If you feel up to it, your evidence will be more powerful in the public hearings, but it is entirely up to you which route you decide is best for you.

If you want to apply for core participant status, you need to get a move on. The closing date for applications is June 24th, less than 3 weeks away.

Sunday 15 May 2016

Abbot Laurence Soper

The Metropolitan Police have their man. Laurence Soper was arrested last Wednesday in the town of Peja (or Peć in Serbian) in western Kosovo. I have little doubt that he will be extradited to Britain to stand trial on one or more charges of child abuse. While I was out last night my phone went crazy with all the people phoning me and texting me with the news.

It has made it as a news item in most of the media including the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Express, the Telegraph, Sky, the Sun, ITV, and the BBC.

Just about all the articles have some minor inaccuracies in them, so here are the background facts as far as I know them and as far as they can be stated in public without prejudicing any future trial.

Soper, now aged 72, was a pupil at St Benedict's School, run by the monks of Ealing Abbey. His original name is Andrew Charles Kingsdon Soper. Several former pupils who have since spoken to me remember him. After a short career in banking with Barclays he entered the monastery in 1964 and was ordained as a priest in 1970. He taught at St Benedict's School from 1973-84. When he retired from teaching he was Master of the Middle School (years 7-9). In 1984 he was appointed Prior and in 1991 was elected Abbot. He retired as Abbot in 2000 and immediately moved to the Benedictine headquarters at Collegio Sant'Anselmo in Rome where he became general treasurer of the International Benedictine Confederation in 2002 until his disappearance in 2011. His successor as Abbot of Ealing is the present Abbot, Martin Shipperlee.

In June 2010 a man, by now in his 40s, made a complaint to the police concerning alleged abuse by Soper during his time as a teacher, and in September Soper returned from Rome at the police's request to answer questions. He was arrested, released on police bail and allowed to return to Rome. He left Rome in March 2011 supposedly to attend a police bail appointment in London but instead disappeared. A European Arrest Warrant was issued for him in 2012.

In addition to his roles at Ealing Abbey and St Benedict's School, he was a visiting chaplain at Feltham Young Offenders Institution from 1988 to 2000 and was Roman Catholic chaplain at Harrow School from 1981 to 1991. There have been complaints about abuse of inmates at Feltham, and Ealing Abbey subsequently confirmed that the police interviewed Soper at the time in connection with those complaints.

There was a great deal of publicity following the conviction in 2009 of Father David Pearce (also a monk and priest at Ealing Abbey and the former head of the junior school at St Benedict's) for a series of sexual crimes against pupils spanning 36 years. As a result, Lord Carlile was commissioned by Ealing Abbey to write a report into abuse at the abbey and St. Benedict's School. Published in 2011, the Carlile report mentioned two complaints made against Soper, both dating from the 1970s. In his report Lord Carlile was seriously critical of the monastic community, describing "its lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing children at risk; and what at all times was a failure to recognise the sinful temptations that might attract some with monastic vocations."

According to news reports Soper was living under his own name of Andrew Soper at the time of his arrest. Laurence is the monastic name he took when he became a monk.

In addition to Father David Pearce, two former teachers at St. Benedict's (John Maestri and Stephen Skelton) have been convicted of sexual abuse of pupils, and the school's deputy headmaster Peter Allott was arrested in late 2015. He subsequently pleaded guilty to possessing, making and distributing child abuse images and was sentenced to 33 months in jail.

If you were a victim of or witness to abuses by Soper at St. Benedict's or anywhere else, I urge you to contact the police and tell them everything you know. Similarly, if you were a victim of abuses by anybody else at St. Benedict's, please also tell the police.

I have spoken to a number of victims of abuse at St. Benedict's and elsewhere. From speaking to them and from other learning about the subject, I have come to understand the huge amount of courage it takes for somebody who was abused as a child to come forward, even decades later. But the great majority who have done so say that the load has been lifted somewhat as a result of sharing. If you have been thinking that you might finally feel able to tell somebody, now is a good time.

Note: Although comments are open on this article, I will not publish anything which describes or speculates about what crimes Soper may or may not have committed. Please remember that there is an ongoing police investigation and it is important not to prejudice any trial that may occur if and when Soper is extradited from Kosovo to face justice in Britain.

Thursday 5 May 2016

Allott's sentence

I've just learned that today at Blackfriars Crown Court Peter Allott was sentenced to 33 months imprisonment. Will follow up with more details when I have them.

UPDATE.

The Evening Standard has an article on this, as does the Daily Telegraph.

Friday 1 April 2016

Allott pleads guilty

The Daily Mail has reported yesterday's hearing at Blackfriars Crown Court. So has the Evening Standard and getwestlondon.  Key points are:
  • The police acted on intelligence that somebody had been using videoconference facilities to share child abuse images.
  • Allott pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children, one count of distributing indecent images of children, one count of pessessing extreme pornography, and one of possessing a controlled class A drug MDMA (Ecstacy).
  • Police have no evidence that he abused his position of trust at work.
  • He will be sentenced on May 5.