Archive for investigative journalism
Chris Jefferries who was wrongly accused of murdering Joanna Yeates informs the Levenson Inquiry that he was falsely accused of being a pervert, gay, bisexual and of being friend of a pedophile
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The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, will begin court action on Thursday against two tabloid newspapers over the way they covered the hunt for the killer of Joanna Yeates, the landscape architect whose body was found dumped on Christmas Day in a country lane near Bristol.
Grieve has instructed his team to launch contempt of court proceedings against the publishers of the Daily Mirror and the Sun because of the way they reported the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Chris Jefferies, Yeates’s landlord, before the arrest of Vincent Tabak, who later admitted manslaughter but denies murder.
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When Michigan psychologist Demosthenes Lorandos first met former kindergarten teacher Tonya Renee Craft, he was brutally frank about her chances of beating the 22 counts of child abuse and molestation brought against her by a Georgia prosecutor.
“I told her that she was a dead woman,” he recalled. “That things were over for her, that she was going to lose.”
According to prosecutors, Craft had molested or assaulted three little girls, including her now-eight-year-old daughter, over a period of years, in the small town of Chickamauga, Georgia, where Craft had been working as a kindergarten ...
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Jim Watts, 57, a former disability bus driver, is serving a 12-and-a-half year jail sentence for sexually assaulting four severely mentally and physically disabled women.But there are serious concerns, raised by his legal team, that Watts, a married father of two, has been the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, and that his case could serve as a significant deterrent to people thinking of working with severely disabled people.
Watts’s trial last October was described throughout by the judge as “highly unusual”. None of the women could give evidence in court. Two ...
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BBC Panorama is expected to broadcast a programme on the Government’s Vetting and Barring Scheme which features FACT cases. The programme is expected to be broadcast on Monday 8th Feb commencing 8:30 pm and will also be available on the BBC I player
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A three-month investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed: David Rose reports:
The main witness behind Harper’s decision to begin the search for bodies was a woman with a known history of psychotic fantasy and alcoholism. She named children she said she had seen jumping to their deaths from Haut de la Garenne windows and hanging from trees in the garden, where she said she also found a severed hand. None of these claims were true.
Eddie the sniffer dog – the animal that had supposedly found the ‘scent of death’ in the Portuguese flat where Madeleine McCann disappeared – no ...
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The following report by Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor appeared in the TIMES on 28th February
The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed the authenticity of police notes discovered by The Times which a force had said never existed. They show that a doctor calculated that Paula Gilfoyle died at home at a time when her husband Eddie was at work. Gilfoyle has served 17 years in jail for murdering her.
Mrs Gilfoyle was found hanged in the garage at the couple’s home in the Wirral in June 1992. She was eight months pregnant.
Her husband was found guilty of murder at Liverpool Crown Court ...
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The 15th of February 2009 marks the 9th anniversary of the publication of Lost In Care (The Waterhouse Report) report of the North Wales Tribunal of Inquiry into [allegations of] abuse in North Wales Children’s Homes sees the publication in paperback of the much acclaimed The Secret of Bryn Estyn – the making of a modern witch hunt by cultural historian Richard Webster. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
In 1991 journalists on broadsheet newspapers began to publish stories claiming that Bryn Estyn, a home for adolescent boys on the outskirts of Wrexham, lay at the centre of a network of evil – a paedophile ...
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When a deputy police chief announced that children had been killed and buried at a Jersey home, the media were satisfied. But was it true?
Throwing a miniature rugby ball around his cramped office in Broadcasting House, the run-down former BBC centre that now serves as a police HQ in Jersey’s capital, St Helier, Detective Superintendent Mick Gradwell is one policeman whose lot is not a happy one. A self-styled “Lancashire Bobby” with a track record of dealing with multiple deaths such as those of the Chinese cocklers who drowned in Morecambe Bay four years ago, the DSI was appointed to ...
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For some of the journalists assembled for a Press conference at Jersey’s police headquarters last Wednesday morning, the shock was almost palpable.
Since February 23 this year, when the island’s then deputy chief officer, Lenny Harper, first addressed them outside the granite walls of the Haut de la Garenne former children’s home, they had been led to believe it had been a house of horror – a place where children were tortured and abused in a labyrinth of cellars, and that possibly as many as seven were murdered.
Now, a bluff, straightforward and extremely experienced Lancashire detective, Det Supt Mick Gradwell, who ...
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Jersey’s police chief was suspended today after confirmation that suspicious bone fragments found at Haut de la Garenne were up to 500 years old, and that there was no evidence to back up claims of murder at a former children’s home dubbed the island’s “house of horrors”. Graham Power, Chief Officer of the States of Jersey Police, was relieved of his duties pending an inquiry into his role in the high-profile investigation into events at the hostel, which closed in 1986.
Frank Walker, the island’s Chief Minister, said that he was concerned about the damage done to Jersey’s reputation by the ...
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There have been two reports on the Bichard Report which may be of interest to the fasely accused.
The lessons of Soham inspired by the spirit of Salem
Published by the Times
Soham inquiry changes ‘not made’
Published by BBC
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There is an excellent article in the Times (29th Jan 2008) concerning the decision of two jurors to speak out against the conviction of child minder Keran Henderson for killing a baby in her care.
In an unprecedented move, two jurors recently spoke out to condemn the conviction of Keran Henderson, a childminder, for the murder of 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard while in her care. Their comments, revealed by The Times, were made anonymously. Now, in an exclusive article, the foreman, a lecturer living in Berkshire, questions the practical workings of the jury system …… (more)
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How should abuse stories be reported – balancing the rights of complainants and the accused.
Guardian
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Key figures in the 1998 Newcastle city council inquiry team investigating the Shieldfield Nursery child abuse allegations SocietyGuardian.co.uk staffWednesday July 31, 2002 Jacqui Saradjian is a consultant clinical psychologist, and head of the city-wide forensic service for Leeds community and mental health teaching trust, where she works with people who are considered to be mentally disordered offenders. She has a first class psychology degree a masters in clinical psychology. Ms Saradjian’s specialist area of research involves women who sexually abuse children and the effects of that abuse on their child victims. She teaches regularly on the postgraduate doctorate training course ...
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Dawn Reed
Christopher Lillie
Mr Justice Eady
Newcastle City Council
Richard Barker
Judith Jones
Jacqui Saradjian
Roy Wardel
Court Service
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Newcastle City Council claim they acted properly in publishing Independent Inquiry Report…The Council is pleased that Mr Justice Eady has upheld the Council’s defence of qualified privilege, which means he has confirmed that the Council acted properly in publishing the Independent Review Team’s report. We suspect, however, that many of the parents and families who have been affected by this long-running matter will struggle to understand this judgment and will be upset by the outcome of this very unusual case. As the Council’s defence was successful in this action, it will not be appropriate for us to appeal against this ...
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For decades, children in care have suffered the horror of sexual abuse. Police investigations to catch sex abusers in care homes have spread throughout Britain, with 90 separate inquiries currently underway, and more than 2,000 care workers under suspicion. The size and scale of inquiries is producing concern amongst some MP’s. As the police try to bring the guilty to justice, David Rose asks whether some innocent men are being falsely accused and imprisoned.
BBC
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This transcript of the Panorama’s programme on false allegations made in respect of staff who worked at Greystone Heath should be read by all those concerned about police investigative methods
BBC
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