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Mr. Dawson: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I have been generous so far and I am afraid that I cannot give way now. I would simply add here the observation that Fire in Ice recommends not only "The Courage to Heal", but its male equivalent, "Victims No Longer" by Mike Lew. So far as Fire in Ice is concerned, the issue of recovered memory is one warning bell whose insistent tolling the Government should have heard but did not.
There is a second warning bell in the evidence actually submitted to the Committee by Fire in Ice, which the Government has either not heard or not attended to. In its written submission, Fire in Ice described a man they called "Survivor 8" in the following terms:
- "Survivor 8 is a 28-year-old man who was abused by his football coach in the 1980s. Operation Care found his name by trawling . . . While he was in prison he was asked to give evidence against his abuser, he agreed but when the other inmates found out that the accused man was a famous local player/coach they bullied him until he withdrew the allegation."
Hon. Members will perhaps recall that the trial of David Jones, surrounded as it was by intense media interest, collapsed almost before it had begun in December 2000. It is perhaps worth repeating the words that were spoken by Judge David Clarke to Mr. Jones at the time of his acquittal:
- "David Jones, not guilty verdicts have been entered in respect of all charges against you. I would just like to say this means you leave this court as you entered it—an innocent man."
In case those two warning bells are not loud enough to indicate to hon. Members how dangerous a course the Government are now steering, I want to sound a third warning bell about the organisation in which the Government have chosen to repose their trust. Before I do so, I will say once again that I do not seek for one moment to question the sincerity of those who run Fire in Ice. I do not doubt that those who lead that organisation generally believe in the truthfulness of the allegations that they bring forward. The problem is simply that some of those involved with the organisation have made allegations that cannot be true.
I rely on a little research of the kind that could easily have been conducted by the Home Office before the Government finalised their reply. The starting point of the research is the recognition that Fire in Ice is not a charity. It is, in fact, a limited company. As such, it has a number of directors whose names, addresses and dates of birth are, of necessity, lodged with Companies House. One of the directors of Fire in Ice is a man whose name is given as David Harold Walsh, and whose date of birth is given as 11 August 1967. I have available for the Minister a statement given to the police in 1994 by David Harold Walsh.
In November 1994, the police were investigating possible abuse at a home called Greystone Heath in Cheshire where David Walsh had been in residence some twelve years previously. One of their suspects was Dennis Grain, who was in fact an abuser and would eventually plead guilty to a number of counts of sexual abuse. When the police, who were engaged in a trawling operation and were seeking more allegations of abuse, came to see David Walsh, they were equipped with a photograph album. That album contained photographs of a number of former members of staff. From it, Walsh picked out a photograph of Dennis Grain. He went on to make an allegation of indecent assault against Grain, saying that this "big man"—Grain weighed, I believe, some 15 stone—had pinned him to the wall one day and started to play with his penis. That had happened, Walsh said, on two further occasions.
A week later, David Walsh made another statement to the police. He said that he had been thinking about what had happened and wished to say that, although his first statement was true, there were some details he had left out because they were embarrassing. He now wished to add those details. He went on to make an allegation of attempted buggery and also alleged that Grain had attempted to force him to engage in oral sex.
A month later, however, the Cheshire police visited Walsh again. By this time it would appear that they had consulted their records. What those clearly showed was that David Walsh had first entered Greystone Heath on 11 February 1982. Dennis Grain, however, had left on 31 May 1980, almost two years before Walsh had arrived. Far from being abused by Grain, Walsh had never even met him.
David Walsh now made a third statement, saying that he had been upset and confused when he had made his first statement. He later went on to make a fourth
statement in which he maintained that the abuse he had described had indeed happened, even though he had been mistaken about Grain. The person he had described in his first statement as "a big man", whose "heavy body" he had referred to in his second statement and who was "well built" according to his third statement, was now described, in his fourth and final statement, as having been of "medium to slim build".Let me say immediately that I do not know whether David Walsh was, when he first made his allegation against Dennis Grain, deliberately and consciously inventing an allegation that he knew to be false. What I do know, and what the Cheshire police eventually discovered, was that David Walsh made allegations that were in fact false. He may now believe sincerely that he was sexually abused at Greystone Heath by some person unknown. Once again, I stress that it is not the sincerity of the members—or, in this case, one of the directors—of Fire in Ice that I am seeking to question. It is their accuracy and reliability.
I respectfully suggest that if the Government, before compiling and publishing their reply to the Home Affairs Committee report, had conducted a little elementary research, they would not have ended up in the very difficult position they are now in.
Mr. Prosser: I pay tribute to the excellent work that my hon. Friend has done. She has become a veritable expert in this difficult subject. The evidence that she has given this afternoon has driven a coach and horses through nearly all the rebuttals and refusals that the Government have provided to the Committee. Does she agree that when one compares the weight of evidence that the Home Affairs Committee received, and the additional evidence that she has brought to us this afternoon, with the lukewarm, thin and unsubstantiated rebuttals of the Government, the Home Office appears complacent in saying that everything is okay on this issue?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: Yes, I am afraid that I have come to that conclusion.
I am conscious that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall bring my remarks to a close. However, I am desperately concerned that the work and views of the Home Affairs Committee have been rejected more or less completely by the Home Office. At the very least, I should have expected all the evidence, from both complainants and those accused, to have been tape-recorded. We must assume that all the people making the accusations have been abused. Many of them are interviewed in prison. In many cases they are interviewed repeatedly—up to 18 times—in order to get a statement that passes muster with the Crown Prosecution Service. That is totally unacceptable.
I cannot imagine anything worse, or more guaranteed to produce severe and adverse responses to episodes, than repeated interviewing. People who are believed to have been sexually abused must be treated like rape victims. Those who are in prison must not be treated like prisoners. We must afford them the respect that we have worked hard to gain for rape victims. The people involved must be taken out of the prison context and brought to rape suites, where their testimony can be
recorded. They must be adequately supported as they come to terms with the trauma that may become evident after they have made their declarations.
Ms Munn: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: No, I must continue.
At the very least, I would have hoped that the Home Office would recognise that many of the people involved are vulnerable, and that for all sorts of reasons they may well respond to what the police want them to say. More importantly, however, the Home Office should recognise that those people may genuinely have suffered the most appalling abuse. As such, they should be afforded the protection that is afforded to others.
The Home Office has failed to do that. It has failed to protect the accused, and it is guilty of failing to protect victims. Prisoners who are locked in prison are the most vulnerable of victims. I object to the Home Office's response. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider the matter. More than any other cases, cases of sexual abuse must be conducted and reviewed under a regime of tape recording. That is vital for everyone involved.
The allegations that I have made today require substantial proof that they are true. I want to be able to tell the House that I know what went on because tape-recorded evidence exists to prove it. That is what people who are accused of these acts want, and I am sure that that is what most victims want.
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