Welcome News from HAAP
Posted by News Editor
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Posted 30th January 2004

News from the Historic Abuse Appeal Panel

We have just received this news from Mark Newby, Director of the Solicitors Appeals Panel

Dear Friends,
Since we last met at the September Conferences in Dinas Powis and London a lot has been happening and I wanted to send you a brief note to let you know what is going on.

Firstly and most importantly I am delighted to tell you that the Panel has reached an agreement with the Legal Services Commission to provide funding for individual care home appeals.

We will be shortly launching a full professional panel office and as you can see we now have a professionally designed Logo which will appear on a new Website being launched on 5th February 2004 .

Look out for the first HAAP Conference in 2004

New offices are being put in place and staff recruited to provide a dedicated Panel Office which will enable cases to be driven forward and other cases with Panel Legal teams to be supported by the Panel office.

Its been a bit of a hard haul over the last few months but now we have a real opportunity to drive forward appeals significantly in the following few months with additional resources.

We have received many requests for assistance and again we thankyou for your patience, we are moving cases forward and over the next couple of months we shall put in place the infrastructure that will enable us to make a real difference.

Speaking of which please keep your eye on the media during the week commencing 2nd February. Brizz has his appeal and then on Thursday Anver Sheikh appears before LJ Kennedy . As you know from the Appealer Sheikh was the first appeal to attract significant support from the Legal Services Commission to prepare an Appeal and this led to leave being granted by LJ Rose on 14th July 2003 .

I am delighted therefore to say a little over 6 months later we are going back to the Court of Appeal with the Crown conceding the Appeal – because we have proved Anver was not a carer at the school at the time the first complainant alleged he was abused.

The decision is still in the hands of LJ Kennedy but we expect on the evidence that his Lordship will wish to bring Anver’s nightmare to an end.

We have achieved a lot in 12 months since Mark Barlow, Chris Saltrese, David Woods & I first had the idea of the Panel. But we need to follow next week’s events with many similar happy occasions.

More News Soon.

Regards.

Mark Newby
Director Historical Abuse Appeal Panel
Solicitor Advocate

We are particularly pleased to hear from the Panel as I am sure this week has probably been one of their busiest ever.