Legacy of an island nightmare
DAVID BELCHER
"Accused" BBC2, 9pm 21st August 2006
Various things were clear by the time Accused concluded what was, for the most part, a thorough examination of the infamous case in which social workers and police removed nine Orkney children from their homes on the morning of February 27, 1991.
Principally, the programme substantiated the findings of a subsequent legal inquiry which established that the original social work investigation was deeply flawed in its conduct. None of the nine young residents of South Ronaldsay had suffered ritual sexual abuse from a satanic paedophile ring led by their parents which met at an island pond, led by the local minister in his flowing robes.
It was also evident, Accused explained, that the whole sorry event had proceeded from a false allegation which social workers had prompted from a genuine abuse victim from an entirely different household.
These social workers, led with myopic doggedness by Liz McLean – who the programme was unable to track down – were operating in apparent thrall to a then-fashionable quasi-feminist American theory of child-sex abuse which saw satanist perverts at every turn.
Another thing to emerge from Accused was that whenever you come up against official interference in your life, things will go much better for you if, like the four sets of Orkney parents whose children were removed, you're, broadly-speaking, middle-class, articulate and media-aware. As one social worker involved in the Orkney case ruefully told the programme, organisations such as his are always better at imposing their will on the inarticulate poor who can't rally near-instant support from newspapers and TV stations.
In times of travail, South Ronaldsay councillor Cyril Annal is a vital fellow to have in your corner, too. As we saw on Accused, Cyril is a decent, canny man whose judgments of people can't often have been wrong.
It would have been far easier in 1991 for the majority of local South Ronaldsay folk to have turned their backs on at least two of the families whose children were taken from them on the grounds that they were fiscal immigrants. Cyril's righteous performance – filmed for posterity by TV cameras at a public meeting staged two days after the children were taken from South Ronaldsay – must have done more to rally native support to their cause than anything else.
"I am absolutely shaking with rage," Cyril had stood up and said in response to the children's sudden removal from the island, his white beard a-quiver. A moment or two later, he sat down again. Never can so few words have had such resonance.
What Accused also stressed – although not quite so forcibly as its central declaration of the Orkney parents' innocence – was that the sexual abuse of children is something that does happen, occasionally requiring what can seem draconian measures: dawn raids, policemen, family break-ups.
Sadly, the programme may serve to reinforce the stereotype of the imperious social worker, a constant menace to innocent folk, forever whisking away children for no reason at all.
More alarmingly, perhaps, Accused revealed that at least two of the social workers involved in the case still believe the truth of its allegations. One, whose reliability was undermined by an unfortunate resemblance to Blackadder's dotty Nursey, hadn't read Catch-22: anyone who denies child sex abuse is obviously guilty of it, she said, because guilty folk always deny their guilt.
Glasgow-based Phil Greene was also seen expressing palpable pain and sorrow at having let the nine children down by returning them to their parents, further alleging that on their flight back to Orkney he had heard them employ sexually inappropriate language common to victims of abuse.
Accused should have asked him more about that – and the children. Above all, Accused should have found and questioned Liz McLean, a woman who made the thankless job of her fellow social work professionals even more impossible.
Acknowledgement