Historical Child Sex Abuse

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue. Many noble Lords will be aware that I was a police officer for more than 30 years. It is important to remind the House of that. I am also a confirmed member of the Church of England, which might come as a surprise to some people. I have not been excommunicated as far as I know, although I may have given the Church just cause to do so. However, I am a reasonably high-profile gay man and noble Lords might think that I would therefore be a prime target for the sort of unfounded allegation that has been made against some others who have been mentioned today.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, talked about the impact on people who are wrongly accused of this sort of offence, and the real danger of a reversal of burden of proof. It is very important to stress that. He also mentioned the case of Sir Cliff Richard, where a decision was taken not to take any further action after a period of two years. The absolutely appalling collaboration between the police and the BBC, which involved a BBC helicopter filming the invasion of Sir Cliff’s home while he was abroad—the first he knew of it was when he saw it broadcast—was a terrible way to carry on. I agree that the conclusion of insufficient evidence, which is always cited in these sorts of cases, is not enough. I will come back to that.

The difficulty is that the public perception, encouraged by many people in the media, is that if an allegation is made or somebody is arrested, there is no smoke without fire. Having reasonable cause to suspect, which is the level that is necessary for a police officer to arrest somebody—it is a very low level—does not mean that that person is guilty, even though that appears to be implied by some of the media coverage. That important issue needs to be addressed.

Many have talked about the case of Bishop George Bell. I confess my ignorance in that I know nothing about the bishop or his character. All I would say is that my experience is that, despite somebody’s apparently impeccable character, that individual could have one flaw that is kept secret but could undermine all the other evidence of their good character. A police colleague with whom I shared a section house—a police barracks—was a very dedicated, quiet and pleasant individual. During a firemen’s strike we could not understand why he was the first officer on the scene in many cases until he was discovered with a can of petrol and some matches. That is an example of how somebody can do something completely out of character. We should not ignore that fact either.

The noble Lord, Lord Dear, talked about what he considers to be the mishandling of the investigation of Lord Bramall. There is a case to which I shall refer in a moment of which I have personal knowledge. My professional judgment is that that police investigation was also mishandled. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, made particular reference to marked police cars going to an address and people carrying out a forensic examination over an allegation that had been made 10 or 20 years before. In terms of proportionality, what sort of forensic evidence did the police expect to get from that search, compared with what they were likely to actually get from it?

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made an extremely important point—if I may say such a thing to the noble and learned Baroness—about the difference between allegations against people who are deceased and those against people who are alive, and the fact that it would be very difficult for the other side of the case to be put in those circumstances. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey of Clifton, put it very succinctly: clearly, it is far more difficult when the person accused has passed away and cannot defend themselves, particularly against a civil action that is decided on the balance of probabilities. That is something that really needs to be addressed.

The important issue for me, which I want to concentrate on, is where the accused is still alive. This is a very complex issue—far more complex than perhaps some of today’s debate has indicated. The care of victims of child abuse has to be paramount and they have to be believed and supported. Someone who honestly believes that they have been the victim of child abuse, albeit they are now an adult and it happened many decades ago, needs help and support. However, what also needs to be taken into account is that they might be mistaken in the identification of the perpetrator or even about whether the thing happened at all. But that should not make any difference to the care that is given to that victim, unless the allegation subsequently proves to be deliberate or malicious.

However, we must change the way that we deal with the accused. The police are in a difficult position, partly of their own making and partly, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, because of the historic way in which the criminal justice system as a whole has tended to disbelieve child victims in particular. It is not that long ago that there was a fly-on-the-wall documentary of Thames Valley Police, investigating rape allegations when the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, was the chief constable. Those rape survivors were generally not believed by the police in the same way that child victims were not believed. That resulted in the now noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, and a female colleague, Thelma Wagstaff, producing a book which revolutionised the way that the police dealt with rape investigations. It has not been universally applied, according to the accounts of some rape victims, but it has certainly made a significant difference.

One of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Blair, asked me to do when he was first appointed Commissioner of the Met was to carry out a review of rape investigation in the Metropolitan Police. We looked only at adult victims because at that time there were few allegations of the rape of children. We identified, for example, victims who had learning difficulties or who were sex workers, who the police officers investigating thought might not make good witnesses or might not stand up very well to cross-examination, so they tended to be disbelieved because the police thought that their evidence could be challenged in court. This was something that clearly needed to be addressed and I think there are parallels here with the situation of the victims of historic child abuse.

This is partly a result of the adversarial judicial system that we have, where the legitimate role of a defence counsel is to cast doubt on the testimony of the prosecution witness. The problem is that perpetrators also know that people with learning difficulties, and perhaps children and sex workers, may not be as believed as other victims—and that makes them even more vulnerable to such attacks. The police must recognise this. We must believe victims and do everything we can to protect and care for them, whatever their abilities as witnesses. One of the main conclusions that we came to in that investigation of rape was that it was not the desire of every victim of rape for there to be an investigation. They wanted to be believed and cared for, while the thought of going through the ordeal again in court was too much for some. We have to bear that in mind and, again, there are parallels with these sorts of cases.

Perpetrators must know now that they will be arrested and questioned and their conduct gone into because, whatever the credibility of an individual witness, if there is more than one allegation of this kind, the situation is different. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, talked about a case where five young people all made a similar allegation but, in those days, none of them was believed. The difficulty for the police service has become how to find other survivors of the same perpetrator. The Savile case lifted the lid on this practice when it became apparent that, because of the perpetrator’s position relative to that of the survivors, the survivors had not been believed. They had not been cared for or protected. That has made the police acutely sensitive to the accusation that they do not take seriously the victims or survivors of child exploitation. I believe that it has resulted in a situation where they feel that they need ruthlessly and relentlessly to pursue allegations of historic child abuse, particularly where the alleged perpetrator has a high public profile.

I was involved throughout the case of Paul Gambaccini, from shortly after his arrest until its conclusion. I would say that that case, too, was mishandled. It was apparent from what Paul Gambaccini told me, right from the word go, that the allegations were incredible, for want of a better word. Yet it took months and months of his being bailed and re-bailed before the police were able to say that they would not take the case any further. The welfare of those accused must also be taken into account.

There is of course a temptation for the police to publicise it when they arrest somebody, if there is no other corroborating evidence, in order to get other people to make similar allegations against the same individual. But surely the way for the police to do that is to encourage every victim of child sexual abuse to come forward and for them to maintain those allegations on a database that is accessible by all forces. If the survivors are in different parts of the country but make similar allegations against an individual, the dots can be joined up—rather than conducting the sort of fishing expedition with dynamite that has been referred to and happens now.

Guidelines are given to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service about these sorts of cases and those guidelines clearly need to change. Unless and until somebody has been charged, the identity of the perpetrator should remain confidential. If the police want other victims or survivors to come forward once the person has been charged, that is fair enough. It may be that no further action is taken. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, talked about a far-ranging investigation where the identity of the perpetrator might come out in public before a charge. The term “insufficient evidence” is not enough: we need to have a form of words around the fact that there was no supporting evidence for the allegation that was made, if that is the case. This is more complex than some noble Lords have said, but clearly there is a need for change. Both the College of Policing and the Crown Prosecution Service need to look at this very carefully.