SPEECH TO Innocent 2003

speech given at the Third National Miscarriage of Justice Day public meeting, Conway Hall, London WC1, 9 October 2004

For most people, the realisation that we are living in a regime that can be as harsh as anything behind the iron curtain begins with a knock on the door at 6 o clock in the morning.

BEGINS, because the odd thoughts that runs through your brain on the way to the source of the noise puts you on edge but does not prepare you for what the will find. And it doesn't always sink in even as half a dozen thugs in blue, ('thugs' because that's how they behave), start telling you what to do while others start ripping your home apart. The initial reaction is usually shock.

It's still not quite sinking in while - handcuffed more often than not - you're whisked off to the station; or even when you sit there alone waiting and waiting in a cell. Shock plays funny games with your mind.

It's certainly not during the so called interview. At first, as they seek the background details, then a move towards the allegation, most people still believe they will clear it up; but they have been watched too many cop shows on TV.

Then it begins to dawn on them. There's something wrong. The inquisitor doesn't seem interested in anything you have to say at all. If it's a sex crime - as more and more miscarriages are, they will simply 'put the allegations to you', and now you know the inquisitor is not interested in any reply. Shock returns, as you are then charged, finger printed, and DNAed. "Didnt they listen?" "Aren't they going to investigate what I just said?" No: you're now a rapist or a Ped.[1]

If you are not in a daze, and have some wit left, it gets worse: what if the press are around. Most don't realise, that's no accident.

BUT that's OK. If you can handle the fear, and only hold out they'll realise the mistake, the solicitor will sort it out, it will all come out in court. Its amazing how one can delude oneself in such circumstances.

For many; you have to think this way. It's the only way through the nightmare. Take Lewis.[2] The mob: burns your caravan, fire bombs your car, daubs your walls or the road, trashes your garden, kids chant Ped when you walk by, slogans daubed across you windows. You can count yourself lucky if the neighbours don't speak to you

You draw up lists of answers, information and details, and hand them to your solicitor. You find dozens of things wrong in the statements against you. You make yourself believe it's going to work out; you can put it behind you.

Men accused of assaulting their daughters can't think like that. The medical says it's happened, so they're preoccupied with 'who really did it'.

Then you get to court. It doesn't go well at all. The barrister doesn't even ask the questions you though the barrister would. They don't even call the witnesses you thought they should. Isn't it obvious the witnesses are lying?

NOW, it's beginning to sink in. And the reassuring noises don't quite convince. For those in divorce proceedings, custody disputes, or just in family conflict, up pops the paediatrician. They have found signs of abuse. Don't they always? And even on the rare occasion they don't; they'll have a reason why that doesn't mean you're innocent, but even more devious and dangerous, and must be guilty.

Shock returns at sentencing. You can not take it in. That comes when you're behind bars, and have to address your 'offending behaviour' or you remain a risk while psychiatrists and psychologists prove they can't tell the innocent from the guilty.

7 if it's a member of your own family who suddenly remembers things that never happened?

You can not have a miscarriage of justice without being fitted up; because that would be a mistake. I have heard they do happen; but I haven't seen one yet.

I have been in this game a long time now, and had a couple of hundred cases behind me before they smashed my door down having ensured I was out of town, and I can not escape the conclusion, that its time to face up to one unpleasant conclusion: you can not have a miscarriage of justice without being fitted up, because that would be a mistake, and a justice system would not make mistakes

When someone makes a false allegation against you, there can not be any evidence you committed a crime, so in order to prosecute and convict you, you have to be fitted up. As more and more people are being sent to prison when they are innocent that must mean that rather than have a justice system, we have a fit up system.

And that's what unites everyone who has been falsely accused and convicted in this room, or your relatives enjoying that 'subsidised living accommodation', which if they ever get justice, they will have to pay for.

A Justice system would ensure that those who work in it would be able to tell a false allegation from a real one. We don't have one investigative branch of the system that can tell the difference between true and false allegations, or between true and false confessions, so I don't hold up any hope for the Justice System which never bothers to check, despite month after month someone else walking free, and demonstrating once again, that nothing has been done to stop it happening.

I must be mistaken. Don't we have a CCRC? Yes, we do; but while it makes it easier - for some, the national fit up service hasn't stopped, and it's not going to stop, unless we do something about it.

It was bad enough, when you could be fitted up for a crime that you didnt commit; but the fit up system was not satisfied with that. That's boring. So to make life even more exciting, and meet their targets, they now do a nice line in fitting people up for crimes that never happened.

When a customer of Patrick Nichols died of natural causes, the police lost the video of the post mortem, and the mortuary book disappeared. Already in dispute with the local constabulary over missing money from a fire investigation, Nichols was blamed. The PM report was changed, a cell mate confession was thrown in, and we had a 23 year miscarriage of justice. No we didnt: we had a 23 year fit up.

As Michael Naughton pointed out; there's many more: Downing[3], Brown[4], Clark[5], Bowler[6], and Callan[7].

But that's not the half of it. I have worked on over 200 sex cases; and I found evidence to suggest that six were guilty. In every other case I have found evidence that they didnt do it, and I am pleased to say the majority were not convicted, but many were.

The worst case was Hewitt and Anderson, accused by a group of men who were sex offenders, and who sought financial and parole advantages, but claiming that they had been sexually assaulted when they were youths. Then the social workers helped some of the females in the care home to 'remember' they were also abused - by the same pair.

I am working on a murder conviction now, where the person blamed, was undoubtedly framed, by the real murderer. How can this happen, on such a scale, if it was a mistake?

It couldn't and it wouldn't; but it could and would happen if we had a fit up service.

And that's why [~~those~~ you are all] here: all of you have far more in common than what divides you.

It doesn't matter if your criminality stops at a couple of miles over the speed limit, or you've got form because you have broken the law before. Some very worthy groups will have nothing to do with those they see as 'fighting for criminals'. I can understand that stance. They have enough problems convincing people that they are not a front for child rapists and killers.

Some criminals are not too happy being associated with people who might be child rapists. I understand that a little less, especially when the falsely accused have no previous.

Coming from POMPEY I'll never forget George Davis; or I should say, his campaign. You could still see the graffiti down Whitechapel Rd. many years after the Lords cricket pitch was repaired. 'George Davis is Innocent' it said. And he was. George had nothing to do with that London diamond raid; because he was robbing a securicor van 70 miles away at the time. No wonder his original alibi didnt hold.

But what about the likes of Michael Stone. Now there's a name to worry everybody. He's done some crime; but is he really the psychopath the media insist he is. Did he really kill in the Kent Countryside? With a thread from a mass selling item and an alleged cell confession though stone walls as the evidence against him?

The public may believe that fit ups only happens to criminals 'who deserve it'. No one deserves to be fitted up for a crime committed by someone else; because that lets the real perpetrator off. No one deserves to be fitted up for a crime that didnt happen because that wastes police and court time, and puts our taxes in the pockets of the criminal who lied in the first place.

We currently live under a government that pays people thousands of pounds to lie about innocent people to massage the clear up rate; then pays millions more to lock up innocent people to provide employment for people who clearly can not tell the difference between the innocent and the guilty to conduct risk assessments to pretend they are making society safe; then cuts the legal aid bill to defendants because of a lack of funds, to prove its tough on crime.

But it clearly is not being touch on the causes of crime, because the official fit up service is the biggest single cause of crime in the UK, and none of the real criminals are being sought, let alone being punished. No: they are being feted as another 'survivor'; here's your CICB[8] cheque, come back with another name when it runs out.

So I don't care, if you're totally innocent, or if your form goes on for years; but I do care about the official way official fit ups replaces justice with politics. In the case of sex crimes, people are being fitted up all across the country just so the CPS can meet a target for more rape convictions.

I have no doubt that many rapists still go free, but the reasons they do are not solved by locking up the innocent, no more than the causes of cot deaths are found by locking up the innocent

Here's one list of common problems, and if we had more time, we could add many more.

False allegations start with a malicious accuser who has another reason for making the allegation; but a false allegation would not succeed without:

7 Using 'experts' who will testify exactly what is needed to secure convictions and explain away weakness in the case

We could say a lot about the police and their role, the obsession with getting 'a result' rather than the truth; but they are doing what they are paid to do: fit people up. They are so good at it even Amnesty International have yet to notice that if they refuse to do so, like the Yorkshire policemen who refused to fit up the so called Satanists in Hull, they will find themselves being 'investigated'.

We could say a lot more about the 'experts', living off the system too. Paediatricians have to be the worst. But we have to be clear not to make the same mistakes as them.

There has been a lot of talk about Munchausen by Proxy[9]; so let's make this clear. Meadows did us all a service by spotting it. Many critics of Meadows get it wrong. Munchausen by Proxy exists and is easy to spot. A child would never stop getting strange, rare diseases, one after the other. Worse; the known cure took longer than usual. Someone was poisoning the child. But that's not what was being diagnosed over the last ten years. Paediatricians were diagnosing Munchausen By Proxy when they could not work out what was wrong with a child the first time it turned up in the hospital. So there was a clear difference. The problem was that if an ideologically motivated paediatrician didnt know what was wrong with a child, they claimed it was being injured by the parents.

That's a fit up too because the accused was being blamed when no one knew what's wrong. And if they don't know what's wrong, how on earth can you someone and justify a crime has been committed without making up the 'evidence'. Far fetched, well they certainly make it up in sex cases.

When someone is being officially fitted up, you usually find pseudo evidence. It's amazing what forensics can do: they can offer up blood stains on your hacking jacket to prove you were involved in a murder without even testing whether it's animal or human blood! Just one of the many problems in a case I am involved with. But its worse when it comes to diagnosing sexual crime.

Almost 15 years ago now when I first got involved, people were sent to prison on the grounds they had raped their young children because of the 4mm rule. Backed by people like the Royal College of Surgeons, and taught to doctors too as if it was writ in stone, the rule said: if a female child's hymenal hole was larger than 4 mm they must have suffered penetration. On what grounds? None! Yes; None.

Back then, I pointed out that as no controlled tests had ever been undertaken this claim was not scientific. Oh no, they said: doctors had seen hundreds of children and anything larger was extremely rare and dubious.

That's odd; because unbeknown to me, and obvious the medical establishment, someone had conducted controlled tests; and the man who did, McCann discovered even 15 mm was within the range of normality. What was more; the size of the opening was a function of the medical examination. It could all depend on how you put the child on the table. Looks like several hundred doctors had never noticed this. What on earth were they looking at? Once defences began to cite this research things changed; but how many innocents went to jail first on this bogus medical fact? And what was done once the mistake' was discovered to review the cases where 4 mm had been used. Nothing!

So that can't have been a mistake either could it? Because if it was a mistake wouldn't the system try to amend it? How come the truth didnt lead to release or pardons?

How on earth can you be pardoned for something you didnt do. What kind of system pardons innocents? A system that refuses to believe it was wrong. A system that covers up its official fit up service. And we laugh at what happened in Salem. The same thing happens here every day.

When experts don't work on the basis of scientific evidence, they have to be 'making it up', passing off an untruth as truth. That's a fit up. And so too are all those investigations that start with 'indicator lists'. You know the one's I mean:

OK. We know you don't need to be Einstein to join the social services, but this was being taught by people with PhDs; so much for the university that gave them one. But there was no respite when the child went to hospital. Because the first thing the paediatrician noted was how the child reacts to the medical? And guess what

In short: how ever the child behaved, it had been abused; and that's before the medical.

Given everything was pointing to abuse; physical signs have to be found to prove it.

Forget what it sounds like; Dr. San Lazaro was found to have made everything up in the Shieldfield case. No two ways about it.

But its the reason she got away with it that matters, because her bogus observations were the same as the 'signs' being used by all the others, the only difference was the claim see saw them when she did not. But many of those medical 'signs', irregularities and bumps on the hymenal wall, deemed to have been healed tears caused by abuse, are meaningless because they are common, normal and natural.

It hasn't happened; so it can not have been a mistake. Making up evidence that isn't there, or claiming the normal is abnormal, is, of course, another way of fitting people up.

Because when told abuse was suspected they saw their task as making sure the perpetrator didnt go free instead of say 'lets see if there is any evidence. And so determined to save the world, and play the hero, when they didnt find any signs, they were not going to say 'there is no evidence'. They said: 'This doesn't mean the alleged abuse didnt happen, because you don't always get physical signs'. That's true, in one off assaults; but not when the allegation is you have been doing it for years and years.

At least when you were accused of witchcraft, and drowned in the pond, the accusers would finally admit you were innocent. But under this regime, no one is deemed innocent. Once you have been accused, the medics like everyone else pull out all the stops to find 'evidence', any 'evidence', no matter what, to back up the conviction.

Am I being too hard? Not judging by their reaction. Every time one of their number is exposed as the crooks they are, what happens. On they come, on Radio 4 or 5, or a nice big feature in the guardian, telling us that any criticism will put back the cause of child protection.

No it won't. How do you protect children by exposing evidential fraud, and stop them fitting people up? There can only be one reason; for these people 'child protection' amounts to not reviewing their claims, threatening them as the 'expert', whose word should be enough to send someone to jail.

It is also an attempt to hide the fact that many of those complaining were using the same methods as those exposed, and that they are just as bad and that they have been sending innocents to jail too.

That's why they don't want any criticism allowed. It will expose the frauds and fit ups of decades; and reveal that most so called miscarriages of justice are really guilt by allegation.

Guilt by allegation where the evidence has been invented to fit the allegation and more often than not where the 'evidence' is no more scientific than finding the witches mark or making a mole the devil's teat.

All groups involved in fighting this inane system have to move beyond fighting the system case by case. They have to agree what the biggest problems are and start lobbying on government, legal bodies, and anyone else.

I know what I thing needs looking at and what I think would change everything, and our guide is the fact that the moment American health insurance companies stopped paying out for a diagnosis of multi personality disorder, no one got it any more.

I could go on, but it's for you to decide what to start lobbying in a coordinated fashion, as well as doing cases, about all the commonalties we find time and time again.

But the first thing we must do, as we need no more evidence, is to demand that everyone involved in the criminal justice system, and I mean everyone, must be given training in false allegations, and that no one employed to date does that training. The trainers must come from his side of the divide, those who have proven by their work on cases that we can tell the difference between true and false allegations, true and false convictions, true and false medical evidence. The police, courts, 'experts' and CPS have proven again and again that they can not - and do not want to. Its time our expertise proven again and again by the high courts was used to dismantle the British fit up system; the best in the world.

[1] Paedophile

[2] Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides

[3] Stephen Downing

[4] Robert Brown

[5] Sally Clark

[6] Sheila Bowler

[7] Kevin Callan

[8] Criminal Injuries Compensation Board

[9] Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy: when someone seeks attention by covertly injuring people in their care