This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T. website on 19th March 2005
Orwell Press have announced the publication of a new book by Richard Webster. The Secret of Bryn Estyn tells the story of the greatest series of miscarriages of justice in recent British history – how innocent lives have been destroyed, the public deceived and millions of pounds wasted in a witch-hunt against innocent people. The book is essentially a story of false accusations, judicial blindness, bad journalism and innocent lives destroyed.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn is a richly documented account of the development of a modern witch-hunt. It focuses initially on a small number of key players in the North Wales story and shows how their actions helped to shape an unprecedented police investigation (which would eventually spread to the whole of the United Kingdom) and a judicial inquiry set up under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Waterhouse. The book poses the question of whether Waterhouse was right to find there had been wholesale abuse in North Wales? Or did his inquiry, and the investigations that led up to it, form part of a modern witch-hunt?
It tells the extraordinary story of what really happened in North Wales. It is a story with disturbing implications not only for the modern child protection movement but for the way we understand our history and ourselves. It is also very instructive and will be of immense help to those who have been falsely accused of child abuse and are still fighting to clear their names.
The book traces the origins of the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in modern British history, as a result of which thousands of people have been falsely accused and as many as a hundred wrongly imprisoned. The book records these continuing injustices and sets them in the context of earlier historical witch-hunts. And, in chapters interspersed through the narrative, The Secret of Bryn Estyn offers an illuminating analysis of the development of the modern child protection movement, tracing its roots back to Victorian London.
This is a must read book for any one who is concerned about justice, investigative practice in child protection case, and the truth of what really happens when the State investigates allegations of historical abuse in children's homes or in residential schools
The Secret of Bryn Estyn - the making of a modern witch hunt.
Published by Orwell Press
Author: Richard Webster
ISBN 0 9515922 4 6
Price £25 inc p&p in the UK
Available direct from the publishers and from good book stores