Gordon ANGLESEA was a protected member of two powerful organisations
the UK State Police and the Masons. Both these groups protect their own
and function to enrich their own members at the expense of none members. That’s
the rest of us.
So when children abused in State Funded Children’s Homes complained
ANGLESEA had buggered and abused them the State system and the Masonic brotherhood came in with
bottomless pockets to protect him. In fact the POLICE FEDERATION funded all his civil
legal costs
Superintendant ANGLESEA was a North Wales Police Officer who regularly
visited Bryn Estyn Children Home where children were raped and tortured
mentally and physically for decades and the abuse was covered-up by the Council,
The North Wales Police and the supporting Justice System
By 1995 the abuse was so
widespread and so prolific that in the end it could no-longer be merely
covered-up. The then Welsh Minister
William Hauge was forced to order a public Inquiry. This was named the Waterhouse Inquiry after the High Court Judge who headed it. The Inquiry was to examine the abuse of children in North Wales
Care homes.
In 2012 the Government was forced
yet again to order an Inquiry into the Inquiry when it became clear the
Waterhouse inquiry had been just another cover-up mechanism.
The Waterhouse Inquiry also took testimony from Gordon ANGLESEA about the allegations of his paedophile activities but he was not
questioned about the child porn network or
boys for sale!
ANGLESEA’S LEGAL COSTS WERE FUNDED BY THE POLICE FEDERATION
This was how ANGELSEA could afford
Queens Council Gareth Williams QC who would badger and terrorise the
vulnerable witnesses with great expertise, He WILLIAMS accused the victims
of being liars and deceivers as he fought to cover-up the truth
about State paedophilia. By this deception he netted himself a
fat fee of 3 to 4 MILLION POUNDS. His guilty client was awarded huge damages by the jury. Later WILLIAMS QC was knighted and made Attorney General is honor of his
great gift for lies, obfuscation and deception. He was greatly admired for preventing the truth about the elite paedophile network being given credibility
Gareth
Williams, QC was a very expensive and
prestigious QC who was ennobled by Tony
Blair as Lord Williams of Mostyn, and later became Attorney General. He was
very well rewarded for lying to
the Court about his infamous client
ANGLESEA and for covering up State child abuse and linked criminal activities. You could not make this up!
HILLSBOROUGH
Gareth Williams QC as
Attorney General played an important part in covering up for the Police at
Hillsborough Lord Williams had provided a joint opinion in 1990,
following which the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute
anyone for any criminal offences arising from the Hillsborough Disaster despite all the evidence to the contrary. Relatives are still fighting to get to the truth. But making ordinary people fight for justice is a method these evil men use to keep the common people under control. http:/hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/CPS000002520001.html
THE
VICTIMS
ANGLESEA’s and WILLIAM’s
victims did not fair so well One Witness Mark
Humphries who had been sexually abused by Anglesea and others at Bryn
Estyn found the experience to traumatic
and loosing all hope of justice hanged himself a month after the trial He
had hanged himself from the banisters outside his bed-sit in Wrexham so they claim. Or was suicided as many are !
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/libel-case-witness-found-hanged-1571222.html and read http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/newsnight-and-the-bbc-might-have-screwed-up-but-the-real-victims-of-this-are-being-forgotten--again-8304858.html
PERJURY
The fact that ANGELSEA committed perjury by denying he knew infamous child abuser Howarth and denying he had abused children is
a matter even fellow mason the trial judge SIR MAURICE
DRAKE still feels disquiet about. The evidence given under Oath by
ANGELSEA was false and yet he continues to be protected.
No mention was made of the
enormous criminal proceeds ANGLESEA and his friends made from child
pornography and selling children to the rich and famous In Fact the whole public funded Justice System has been subverted to enrich protected
criminals like ANGLESEA and jail whistle-blowers and victims
THE ANGLESEA LIBEL
CASE
When, suddenly, retired police
superintendent Gordon Anglesea walked into Court 13 of the Royal Courts of
Justice in November 1994 he was entering one of the most dramatic rooms in
British justice.
This is the
cockpit where some of the country’s most celebrated libel trials have been
played out.
They include
the Jonathan Aitken who was later
convicted and jailed for his perjury and Jeffrey Archer who also perjured himself and obtained
huge libel damages just like ANGLESEA.
The
57-year-old Anglesea was in Court 13 because he had sued two national
newspapers, The Observer and the Independent on Sunday, the
magazine Private Eye and HTV, the holder of the ITV franchise in Wales.
Anglesea
claimed the four defendants had accused him of being a child abuser during
visits he made to the Bryn Estyn children’s home just outside Wrexham.
The judge, Sir
Maurice Drake, was a veteran of many libel actions.
Like Gordon
Anglesea, he was a Freemason, and decided to declare that he and Anglesey were members of the
same organisation at the start of the trial.
Drake retired in
1995, the year after the trial.
He told
Rebecca Television about his memories of the case.
“For
about five years as the Judge in charge of the civil jury list,” he said, “I
tried a very, very large number of defamation cases. Many of them did not make
any lasting impression on me; but others did and none more so than that of Supt
Anglesea.”
Sir Maurice
Drake, the judge in Anglesea’s dramatic libel action, unusually answered
questions about the case when Rebecca Television wrote to him.
HOW DID IT START
It had all
started three years earlier.
In December
1991 — eight months after Anglesea retired from the North Wales Police — the Independent
On Sunday wrote about the police investigation into allegations of
child abuse at the Bryn Estyn children’s home in North Wales.
The front page
article stated:
“According to
former residents of Bryn Estyn, Gordon Anglesea, a former senior North Wales
police officer, was a regular visitor there."
"He
recently retired suddenly without explanation.”
Anglesea
immediately went to his solicitor who wrote to the paper demanding an apology
with damages.
The Independent
On Sunday refused.
As a result of
this article, the North Wales Police decided to investigate Gordon Anglesea as
part of its broad-ranging inquiry into child abuse in North Wales headed by
Superintendent Peter Ackerley.
The journalist
Dean Nelson was sent back to North Wales to see if there were any witnesses who
would testify against Anglesea.
Next into the
frame was The Observer.
In September
1992 the paper stated:
“A former
police chief has been named as a prime suspect in the North Wales sexual abuse
scandal, police sources in the region confirmed last night…"
"The
ex-police chief is due to be questioned this week as evidence emerges that
staff in some children’s homes ‘lent’ children to convicted paedophiles for
week-ends.”
When the North
Wales child abuse inquiry investigated the latter claim, in the late 1990s, it
concluded there was no evidence of children being farmed out to abusers.
The
Observer did not
name Anglesea but it was clear from the context that the reference could only
refer to him.
The paper made
similar comments in subsequent editions.
By this time
Dean Nelson had found two more former Bryn Estyn children who were prepared to
testify in Court they had been abused by the police officer.
BRYN ESTYN
This building just outside Wrexham used to be the Bryn Estyn children’s home
where Gordon Anglesea was accused of abusing residents. Bryn Estyn closed in
1984.
In September 1992 the HTV programme Wales This Week broadcast interviews with the two men, one identified, the other unnamed and filmed in silhouette.
The programme
was watched by another former Bryn Estyn resident.
He told a BBC
researcher that Anglesea had abused him and later agreed to give evidence against
the former superintendent.
Finally, Private
Eye entered the fray in January 1993 with an article based on research from
the freelance journalist Brian Johnson-Thomas.
This article
claimed Anglesea had investigated allegations against the son of the North
Wales politician Lord Kenyon.
Lord Kenyon
was a magistrate, a member of the North Wales Police Authority and the Grand
Master of the North Wales Province of freemasonry. And a Paedophile.
Anglesea was
also a freemason.
The
allegations were made by one of the three men who claimed Anglesea had abused
them.
The Waterhouse
Tribunal also investigated this issue — and said it could find no evidence that
Anglesea had ever been involved in the investigation of the allegation. But all evidence was in the hands of the North Wales Police.
In 1993 or
1994 Superintendent Peter Ackerley, the officer heading the police
investigation into child abuse at Bryn Estyn and other children’s homes across
North Wales, sent a report about Anglesea to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Ackerley
recommended prosecution on the grounds that there was more than one witness
claiming Anglesea had abused them.
His decision
was to remain secret for many years.
The CPS
decided not to charge the retired superintendent. No Surprise there!
When Sir Maurice Drake started proceedings in Court 13 on 14 November
1994, neither he nor the defendants were aware Ackerley had recommended that
Anglesea be prosecuted.
Anglesea was
the plaintiff, the defendants were the four media organisations who pleaded
justification, that is that their reports were true.
Libel actions
are unusual.
Normally
whoever brings a case – the state in criminal prosecutions or the plaintiff in
civil actions – has to prove their case.
The burden of
proof does not lie with the defendants.
In libel it’s
the other way round — all the plaintiff, in this case Anglesea, has to do is to
prove that his reputation has suffered as a result of the coverage.
He does not
have to prove his innocence.
Since the
defendants pleaded justification, they had to prove that he was guilty of
sexually assaulting young boys.
Gordon
Anglesea gave his evidence at the start of the case.
He was easily
able to demonstrate the damage that had been done to his life and reputation by
the accusations of being a child abuser.
His wife
Sandra also gave evidence. She said that up to the media reports she and her
husband had enjoyed a normal sex life.
At the time
when the sexual assaults were alleged to have taken place their sex life was
normal.
The defendants
brought the three witnesses who had been abused by Anglesea into the
witness-box.
One of them
was a resident of Bryn Estyn in 1980 and 1981.
He claimed to
have been indecently assaulted by Anglesea on one occasion and then buggered by
him on another.
He also
claimed to have been assaulted frequently by Peter Howarth who, he said, knew
Anglesea well.
(Howarth
had been the home's deputy principal.
Five months
before Anglesea's libel action started, he was gaoled for ten years for abusing
boys at Bryn Estyn.)
Lord Williams
was able to do considerable damage to the credibility of this witness by
pointing out inconsistencies between several of his statements and variations
in his accounts of the assaults.
Another
witness was a resident of Bryn Estyn in the late 1970s.
He said he had
anal and oral sex with Anglesea on several occasions.
He also
claimed to have been buggered by Howarth between a dozen and two dozen times.
He too
insisted that Anglesea and Howarth knew one another.
This witness
was allowed to take tranquillisers while he was giving evidence and the jury were
informed.
However, he
collapsed in the dock and proceedings had to be halted for him to be given
medical treatment.
The final
witness was a resident at Bryn Estyn in 1981 and 1982.
He claimed
that he had caddied for Howarth about half a dozen times and had been
introduced to Anglesea.
He alleged
that Howarth and Anglesea played with his private parts while he was in
Howarth’s flat at Bryn Estyn.
Lord Williams
pointed out that he did not name Anglesea in his police statements.
He also made
much of the fact that the witness had a serious drink and drug problem.
Lord Williams
challenged all three witnesses to admit that they had fabricated their
accounts.
All three
insisted they were telling the truth.
Trial Judge Sir Maurice Drake, told Rebecca Television about his memories of what happened
during the fifteen days of hearings.
He started by
saying “the trial took place many years
ago and without refreshing my memory with the full transcript of evidence I am
cautious about making comments about the case.”
But he added:
“One thing which I still have a very clear
recollection of is the splendid advocacy of George Carman for the defence and
Lord Williams of Mostyn for the plaintiff.”
“Although George Carman displayed all his
usual skills with the jury he was, on this occasion, outshone by Gareth
Williams.”
“Without Lord Williams’ advocacy I think
it very possible indeed that the jury would have found for the defendants — and
meeting both of them socially I told each of them that view.”
Although Lord Williams had damaged the defendants’ witnesses this was not
fatal.
Anyone who had
been abused as a child and who never received a proper education was likely to
be a witness with many difficulties.
Unless
clear-cut forensic evidence is available, an allegation of child abuse is
normally a closed issue and only the accuser and the accused can know what the
truth is.
This means
that other circumstantial evidence, which can be tested, becomes important. But weather the jury were told this is not clear.
In Anglesea’s
action, there were two categories of these.
The first was
the number of times he’d been to Bryn Estyn, the children’s home near Wrexham
where the abuse is alleged to have taken place.
The second was
whether he knew Peter Howarth, the deputy principal of Bryn Estyn, who had been
convicted of child abuse at the home five months before the libel action began.
The
defendants’ case was that Anglesea had been at the home on more occasions than
he admitted to and that he was on friendly terms with Peter Howarth.
PETER HOWARTH
Peter Howarth, the deputy principal of Bryn Estyn, was convicted of abusing children at the home five months before the libel action began. He was given a ten-year gaol sentence for abusing seven Bryn Estyn boys over a decade. He later died in prison.
Peter Howarth, the deputy principal of Bryn Estyn, was convicted of abusing children at the home five months before the libel action began. He was given a ten-year gaol sentence for abusing seven Bryn Estyn boys over a decade. He later died in prison.
Anglesea insisted he did not know Howarth and that the number of visits he listed were the only occasions he’d been to the home.
Anglesea was a
uniform police inspector in Wrexham and came into contact with Bryn Estyn boys
in 1979 when he was appointed to run the Wrexham Attendance Centre.
This was a
Home Office initiative where magistrates could sentence boys to spend a couple
of hours on a Saturday.
Then in 1980
he took over the area which included Bryn Estyn.
He was still
in charge when Bryn Estyn closed in 1984.
When he was
contacted by the Independent on Sunday journalist Dean Nelson, Anglesea
said he had only ever been to Bryn Estyn twice for Christmas dinners.
When his
solicitors wrote to the newspaper a few days later, they said that he’d been to
the home on one other occasion, making three in all.
By the time he
was interviewed by police in January 1992, a month after the Independent on
Sunday article, the number of visits had grown to four.
As well as the
two Christmas dinners and one in connection with the non-attendance at the
Wrexham Attendance Centre of a boy from the home, he now remembered another.
“I can only
recall visiting Bryn Estyn to caution a boy on one occasion at the request of
the principal because of staffing difficulties.”
“Normally boys
would attend at the police station and cautioning duties were shared with other
Inspectors.”
By the time he
submitted his Proof of Evidence for the libel action, in March 1994, he had
been allowed to inspect his pocket books.
These dated
from September 1980 — earlier ones had been destroyed in line with force
policy.
He said: “I do
not recall having any contact at all with Bryn Estyn before September 1980 and
indeed I can think of no reason why I should have done so.”
He said his
pocketbooks showed that he had given seven cautions at Bryn Estyn.
In addition,
he said he had also visited the home on two other occasions on official police
business.
He was always
in uniform and he had never gone upstairs where Howarth’s flat was located.
With the two
Christmas dinners, when he was not in uniform, that made a total of 11 visits
to Bryn Estyn.
However,
defence lawyers noticed that from March 1983 to February 1984 Anglesea’s
notebook entries became brief with little detail beyond the times he was on
duty.
The SECOND area of circumstantial evidence was whether he had known Peter
Howarth, the deputy principal of Bryn Estyn.
One of the men
who claimed he had been abused by Anglesea, gave evidence that Howarth had
introduced him to Anglesea on a golf course in Wrexham.
In July 1994,
five months before the libel trial started, Howarth was sentenced to 10 years
in gaol at Chester Crown Court.
He was found
guilty of one count of buggery and seven offences of indecent assault on seven
Bryn Estyn boys between 1974 and 1984.
One of these
boys, Simon Birley, hanged himself from a tree in May the following year.
Hanging seems to be common which is strange becase it is a painful way to take
your own life.
Howarth was to
die in prison of a heart attack in April 1997.
In his Proof
of Evidence for the libel action Anglesea was categorical about his knowledge
of Howarth.
“He was not
personally known to me. I have never played golf with him."
"Indeed I
last played golf in about 1968 when I disposed of my clubs."
"I may
have spoken to him on the telephone relating to the Attendance Centre."
"If I
ever met him, it has not registered, and I cannot recall him in any way.”
The defendants
called two witnesses about this issue.
The first was
Joyce Bailey, a part-time house-mother at Bryn Estyn between 1981 and 1984, and
the wife of a police constable who had served in Wrexham.
She said
Anglesea was a regular visitor to the home in an official capacity.
She remembered
seeing him in casual clothes only once when he arrived in his own car.
He got out,
took some golf clubs from the back of the car and gave them to Howarth.
The second was
Michael Bradley, a senior probation officer, who had spent three months at Bryn
Estyn in the late summer of 1980 while on a course.
He was the
ex-husband of an executive at HTV who was not involved in the libel action.
He gave
evidence that he was at the home one night around nine in the evening when he
saw Howarth and Anglesea enter the building.
Howarth
introduced him to Anglesea as a good friend of Bryn Estyn and the two men then
climbed the stairs.
He said that
he did not know Anglesea but recognised him when he saw pictures of him in the
early 1990s.
But there is
one witness who did not give evidence.
He was Ian
Kelman, a retired police inspector who served in Wrexham at the same time as
Anglesea.
In a signed
statement, a copy of which Rebecca Television has obtained, he said that between 1975 and 1980 he was
a detective sergeant at Wrexham and regularly visited Bryn Estyn in the course
of his duties.
He says he saw
Anglesea on at least two occasions, once in a corridor when Kelman was
interviewing one of the boys.
This was
during a period for most of which Anglesea claimed he’d never been anywhere
near Bryn Estyn.
Kelman
remembered the first incident well:
“A member of
staff opened the door into the room where I was and I saw Gordon with him in
the corridor."
"It did
not strike me as unusual. I got the feeling that the man was looking for
somewhere to talk to him."
"I didn’t
speak to Gordon. He was in uniform.”
“The other
time I saw him was in the car park outside the home."
"He was
either getting in or out of a car. It was as I was leaving."
"At this
time Gordon was a town Inspector.”
Kelman also
says that Anglesea must have known Howarth:
“Any police
officer who had contact with Bryn Estyn would know him."
"Howarth
always seemed to be around.”
“Any police
officer going there would be there for a reason. You couldn’t just walk into
the home."
"A senior
member of staff would want to know the reason for your being there."
"More
often than not, that senior member of staff would be Peter Howarth.”
But Kelman did
not give evidence.
Rebecca Television spoke
to him and he said he "was suffering from severe mental depression at the
time."
So his
statement was never subjected to cross-examination at the libel trial.
Kelman was not
invited to appear as a witness at the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal and so
his evidence was not tested there either.
THE DEFENDANTS also tried to undermine Anglesea’s credibility about the
reason for his sudden decision to resign early in 1991.
In his Proof
of Evidence he stated that he retired in April 1991 even though he could have
gone on his full pension much earlier.
“I eventually
retired after 34.5 years."
"I had
been diagnosed as a diabetic and had lost the sight in one eye. I therefore
decided to take my pension.”
During
cross-examination George Carman QC asked him if he had been interviewed by the
then Chief Constable David Owen on 13 March 1991.
“No, sir,”
replied Anglesea.
Carman asked
if he’d gone to the chief’s office that day and Anglesea again said “No, sir.”
“Well,” said Carman,
“I am suggesting to you that on the 13th March 1991 you were interviewed by the
chief constable about your travelling expenses.”
“No, sir,”
replied Anglesea.
Carman then
asked if he had been interviewed by anyone else.
“Well, yes, by
the assistant chief constable.”
It then
emerged that he was told he would have to be suspended while an investigation
took place into his expenses.
George Carman, who
represented the London media in the case, was the most famous libel barrister
of his day. He cross-examined Gordon Anglesea.
Anglesea
claimed the amount involved was trivial and that he decided to resign
immediately rather than be suspended in a manner which he felt was unjust.
In his final
address to the jury Carman said:
“Well that
took a long time to come out, didn’t it?"
"That’s
hiding it, trying to avoid it, that shows he’s not quite the frank man he would
have you believe.”
In his summing
up, Sir Maurice Drake told the jury about the difference between libel actions
and criminal cases.
In criminal cases,
a jury has to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before a guilty verdict can
be reached.
In a libel
action, the verdict is based on the balance of probabilities.
However, he
added that the balance of the scales depended on the gravity of the alleged
libel.
“The more
serious the charge, the further down the scales have to go."
"So in
this case, where the charge against Gordon Anglesea is just about as serious as
you could consider, the evidence required to prove the Defendants’ case must be
that much stronger.”
After nine
hours of deliberations, the jury found for Anglesea by 10 votes to 2.
Looking back
on the case, Sir Maurice told Said
“In my view
the evidence was very finely balanced."
"My
summing up was, I believe, absolutely free of any indication of what I felt the
verdict should be.”
“I would not
have been surprised if the jury had found for the defendants."
"I
believe that it was the evidence of Mrs Anglesea which tipped the scales in
favour of the plaintiff.”
“Many jurors
would find it difficult to believe that a married man could have a full sexual
relationship with his wife at the same time as he was committing buggery
..."
The jury never
got to decide what the damages should be.
The two sides
agreed that Anglesea should receive £375,000 in damages together with his
costs.
The Independent
on Sunday and HTV each agreed to pay £107,500 in damages.
Private Eye and The Observer each agreed to
pay £80,000.
The final bill
for the four defendants, including legal bills, would have been somewhere
between £3-4m.
In February
1995 one of the three witnesses in the case was found dead.
He had hanged
himself from the banisters outside his bed-sit in Wrexham.
Later, Gordon
Anglesea was also to sue the magazine Take A Break and the magazine Scallywag,
edited by the journalist Simon Regan.
The cases were
settled in his favour for undisclosed damages.
Anglesea’s
libel victory was one of the most successful actions ever brought by a former
police officer and all funded by the public purse. Of Course many people wanted to close Scallywag down including the Police Federatio
But Anglesea was much richer from the proceeds of his crimes but still not in the clear.
Two years
after the libel action, the Secretary of State for Wales, William Hague, was forced to order a full-scale inquiry into the extent of child abuse
in North Wales. This actually neatly fitted into the cover-up agenda Waterhouse could close down all reporting by journalists and speculation by the public
Once again Gordon Anglesea stepped in center stage
By the time he
gave evidence before it, the Tribunal team had acquired statements from a
further two witnesses who claimed they’d been abused by Anglesea.
However, the
Tribunal decided that they were not credible witnesses in that they had been at
Bryn Estyn before Anglesea had any known connection with the home. Once again the children were not believed.
The Tribunal
also obtained records from Bryn Estyn.
These showed
that Anglesea’s first visit took place in 1979, not 1980 as he had originally
stated in his Proof of Evidence for the libel trial.
The records
also revealed that he had visited the home on more occasions than he had told
the libel trial.
Instead of the
11 he claimed, there were, in fact, 15.
Anglesea gave
evidence at the Tribunal in January 1997.
He was asked
why he had claimed in the period just after the Independent on Sunday
article that he had visited Bryn Estyn on just a couple of occasions.
He told the
Tribunal that he had assumed the newspaper’s reporter Dean Nelson was asking
about the Wrexham Attendance Centre.
Nicholas
Booth, who represented one of the men who'd accused him of abusing him, asked
him to examine his own transcript of his conversation with the paper’s Dean
Nelson.
Booth then
asked him:
“Mr Nelson
didn’t raise the attendance centre at all, did he?"
"He
simply asked you whether you were a visitor to Bryn Estyn School in Wrexham,
that’s right, isn’t it? … you were the person, the only person who brings in
the words ‘attendance centre’."
“That was what
I recorded from the telephone conversation,” replied Anglesea.
He also
explained why he started to give cautions, a formal procedure where a police
officer issues a warning instead of prosecuting, at Bryn Estyn in 1982.
“It was as a
result of a conversation with the principal [Matt Arnold] who was having staffing
difficulties … because it meant he would have to send a member of staff to the
police station for a boy to be cautioned … and he requested could we caution at
Bryn Estyn.”
In the
statement he gave the defendants in the libel action in May 1994 the former
retired police inspector Ian Kelman stated:
“In 1980 I was
promoted to Inspector. As part of my duties, I would administer cautions."
"Virtually
always, these cautions would be conducted at the Police Station.”
“I must have
given in excess of 1,000 cautions up until my retirement, and I can count on
one hand the number of times it was necessary to give cautions anywhere else
but in the Police Station.”
“In terms of
police practice, it is most unusual to give cautions outside a police
station."
"Children
residing in community homes would also be usually be cautioned at a police
station.”
Kelman's
evidence has never been tested, either in the libel action or the Tribunal.
Another aspect
of Gordon Anglesea's policy of giving cautions at children's homes was not
explored at the Tribunal.
Anglesea also
gave cautions at the private Bryn Alyn home owned by John Allen.
Allen was
gaoled in 1995 for six years for indecently assaulting boys at the home.
Anglesea told
the Tribunal that no-one at Bryn Alyn asked him to do so — he simply extended
the system of cautioning that had been introduced at Bryn Estyn.
Anglesea's
pocket-books say he visited Bryn Alyn on five separate occasions.
When he was
giving his evidence no-one asked him if any of the four visits that took place
before the first caution at Bryn Estyn was a caution.
If any of
these visits had been a caution, then Anglesea had been giving cautions at Bryn
Alyn before Matt Arnold at Bryn Estyn asked him to.
When it came
to Anglesea’s insistence that he didn’t remember Peter Howarth, the deputy head
convicted of child abuse, the Tribunal uncovered a letter written to Gordon
Anglesea by the Principal of Bryn Estyn Matt Arnold in March 1980.
Arnold, a
lapsed freemason, had gone back to work after an illness that had started the
previous summer.
“I received a
letter today from the assistant director of Social Services,” wrote Arnold,
“regarding the late attendance of boys at the attendance centre."
"I have
only just returned from a period of sick leave, so I’m unaware on a personal
basis of all the discussions that have gone on between you and Mr Howarth.”
The Tribunal
heard evidence from four former members of staff who supported Anglesea’s
testimony but its report doesn’t give any details.
The Tribunal
also heard evidence from “seven other witnesses, including four members of
staff who spoke of seeing Anglesea at Bryn Estyn, and most of them spoke of
seeing him there in the presence of Howarth.”
Anglesea said
all these witnesses were mistaken.
Anglesea was
also cross-examined about his golfing activities.
In his Proof
of Evidence for the libel action in 1994 he said that he last played golf in
“1968 when I disposed of my clubs.”
But when he
had been interviewed by police in December 1992 he was asked if he remembered
when he disposed of the clubs.
“I remember it
well, really I don’t know who I disposed of it to, because it was very shortly
after I got married, just couldn’t afford it, we had four children to look
after, five, six to look after.”
Anglesea had
divorced his first wife and married his second in 1976.
By the time he
prepared his Proof of Evidence for the libel case his recollection was
different.
“I have had
some difficulty in recollecting this."
"I
originally thought that I brought them with me when I left the matrimonial
home."
"In fact
they were left in the matrimonial home and I didn’t see them after that
occasion.”
This was the
version of events he stuck with at the Tribunal.
He insisted
that witnesses who had seen him at Bryn Estyn with Howarth handling golf clubs
weren’t telling the truth.
Gerard Elias,
QC, the counsel for the Tribunal asked him:
“So those
witnesses must, must they not, be lying about you?”
Anglesea
replied:
“The witnesses
are lying about me, sir.”
He also said
that some of the evidence of Roger Owen Griffiths, the owner of a residential
school called Gatewen Hall which Anglesea visited some half-dozen times between
1977 and 1983, was also wrong.
Griffiths told
the Tribunal that the visits usually took place in the evening.
Anglesea said
“That is incorrect.”
Griffiths said
Anglesea would sometimes have a glass of sherry or whisky with him, adding:
“I never
thought there was anything untoward about his visits since I was pleased that
an eminent police officer was visiting us at the school.”
“Totally and
utterly untrue,” Anglesea told the Tribunal.
At one point
during his evidence, Anglesea told the chairman, Sir Ronald Waterhouse:
“My memory
isn’t good, it hasn’t been good since about 1991.”
In February
2000 the report of the Tribunal was published.
It stated:
“We are unable
to find that the allegations of sexual abuse made against Gordon Anglesea have
been proved to our satisfaction or that the trial jury in the libel action
would have been likely to have reached a different conclusion if they had heard
the fuller evidence that has been placed before us.”
However, the
Tribunal noted:
“In the end we
have been left with a feeling of considerable disquiet about Anglesea’s
repeated denials of any recollection of Peter Howarth and the way in which his
evidence of his own presence at Bryn Estyn has emerged.”
“We agree with
the trial judge in the libel action, however, that such disquiet or even
disbelief of this part of Anglesea’s evidence would not justify a finding that
he has committed sexual abuse in the absence of reliable positive evidence.”
THE SECRET OF
BRYN ESTYN
The author Richard Webster believed that Gordon Anglesea and Peter Howarth were the victims of a media-orchestrated witch-hunt.
The author Richard Webster believed that Gordon Anglesea and Peter Howarth were the victims of a media-orchestrated witch-hunt.
One of
Anglesea’s champions is the author Richard Webster, the author of The Secret of Bryn Estyn which claims
that both Anglesea and Howarth were the innocent victims of an orchestrated
witch-hunt.
Webster says
that he talked to Howarth before he died and before he could give evidence to
the Tribunal.
“When I
interviewed Howarth in prison,” wrote Webster, “he recalled Anglesea very
clearly and gave the impression that he had dealt with him on a number of
occasions.”
“It would be
quite wrong, however, to conclude from this aspect of Anglesea’s testimony that
he was attempting to conceal some guilty secret.”
“It would be
entirely natural for anyone in his position, in danger of being damned by
association with a man who had been convicted of being a paedophile, to seek to
minimise his contact with such a figure.”
Rebecca Television
wrote to Gordon Anglesea and asked him to comment on the issues raised in an article they wrote about the circumstantial evidence.
He did not
reply.
In October
last year, Rebecca TV went to see the former police superintendent at his home in
Colwyn Bay.
He said he had
not answered the letter but had consulted his solicitors.
Rebecca Television sent
Sir Maurice Drake the sections of the Waterhouse Tribunal report which revealed
Gordon Anglesea's additional visits to Bryn Estyn and the new witnesses who
claimed they'd seen him with Peter Howarth.
Sir Maurice
wrote back to say:
“But because I think the jury were so impressed by the evidence of Mrs
Anglesea I think it more likely than not that they would have still have found
for the plaintiff."
As a defence
witness Mrs Anglesey had a considerable amount to loose if her husband lost and
a very considerable amount to gain if he won. Were the jury incapable of seeing
that?
As to Sir Ronald’s
feelings of ‘considerable disquiet’ about Anglesea’s repeated denials of any
recollection of Peter Howarth, he added,
“you ask me if I share that disquiet." "The answer is Yes.”
But ANGLESEA has
still not been investigated or charged with perjury.
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