This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T website on 17th March 2005
Richard Websters long awaited book the Secret of Bryn Estyn was pre-launched on the 10th Match at a packed meeting at Portcullis House. Earl (Freddie) Howe announced that the book would be launched shortly and praised Richard for his courage and achievement.
Text of Earl Howe's Speech
The first thing I’d like to do is to congratulate Richard on what is by any standards a most impressive achievement.
You were kind enough, Richard, to send me a prepublication copy of the book some weeks ago; and let me say to you that I believe you have written something that is of national importance, not just as a history – though it is a very good and most compelling history - but, much more significantly, as a lesson and a warning for the future.
I was one of those people who until I read your book believed what the Press had told me about the North Wales children’s home scandal. I remember responding to the Government statement in the House of Lords when the Waterhouse report was published five years ago. We were all shocked and ashamed at what that report contained.
What you have done – it seems to me triumphantly – in this book is to take us carefully and rationally and calmly through that whole story and the people who comprise it; and anyone who reads your book cannot help but come away from it with two overriding feelings: admiration at the way in which you have written it and deep gloom about the state of our police and criminal justice systems.
A person accused of having committed physical or sexual abuse against a child, 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years ago, is immediately placed at a disadvantage. There is no objective evidence to which he can turn after such a lapse of time. Effectively the burden of proof is reversed, because a plausible witness making allegations is treated by the investigating authorities as a victim. Then, the police quite naturally look for corroborating evidence from other possible victims. The techniques of enquiry which you describe are exactly those which Claire [Curtis-Thomas] and the all-party group brought to the notice of the Home Affairs Select committee in 2002. Chief among these is the trawling of witnesses who are often highly damaged individuals as well as suggestible in the face of leading questions. They are often people for whom the offer of financial compensation is temptation enough to assent to the propositions being put to them about the nature and detail of past events. The result is “corroboration by volume”.
The process of investigation through which the book takes us involves an element of fanaticism and collective insanity. That is why Richard is so right to say, as he does, that it is a book that is not only about a series of terrible events but also about human nature. People’s irrationality and gullibility; the demonisation of a group of professionals – care workers – which drives and fuels the process; the suspension of critical judgement.
But the part of the book which I found most disturbing of all – indeed shocking - was the account of the Waterhouse tribunal. I had fondly imagined that the processes by which Waterhouse reached his conclusions would be above reproach. I will not spoil the book by telling you the ways in which Richard has succeeded in removing the scales from my eyes. The flawed nature of the Waterhouse tribunal is not just of significance to those who were almost certainly accused falsely. It is of deep significance to us now, because for the modern child protection movement – police and social services and NSPCC – it has acquired the status of canonical scripture.
That is why I hope that this book will be widely read. It deserves to be. I thought of saying to you that it is a book of great depth and insight – which it is – but when people say that it is usually a euphemism for boring. This book is a compulsive page turner. It is riveting. So in paying tribute to your achievement, Richard, it is your skill as a writer as much as your skill as a teller of the truth which I believe we should all now warmly applaud.