Wednesday 3 August 2011

RICHARD WEBSTER IS DEAD


GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Richard Webster obituaryWriter who suggested hysteria lay behind some abuse scandals
Bob Woffinden guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 July 2011 18.08 BST

Richard Webster, who has died suddenly of heart failure aged 60, was a cultural historian and campaigning author who carried out forensic work suggesting that certain abuse scares were unfounded. He may be best remembered for the book Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (1995), in which he asserted that Freud's "relentless and reductive scientism ... harnessed to his need for fame, led him deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of error". Richard's scepticism of Freud's seduction theory (that patients had been sexually traumatised in childhood) led him to believe that "recovered memories" could be implanted by psychotherapists or social workers and police officers.

In The Secret of Bryn Estyn (2005), Richard's compelling account of the lengthy investigations into suspected abuse in care homes in north Wales, he argued that abuse scandals could be phenomena conjured from an atmosphere of public hysteria, fuelled by credulous journalists and ratified through inefficient police investigative techniques. The real secret of Bryn Estyn, he concluded, was that there was no secret at all; it was just an ordinary community home where staff did their best to look after difficult adolescents.

His investigation of such cases was not a departure from his theory of cultural history, but an attempt to put that theory into practice. "If we allow ourselves to be guided by a view of cultural history which denies the very possibility of a witch-hunt taking place in our midst," he wrote, "we have created the ideal conditions for one to take place without our even noticing."

Richard was born in Newington, Kent, the son of a subpostmaster, and brought up in a strict Methodist family. His parents' work ethic meant he had much time to himself, leading to independence of thought and intellectual rebellion. He attended Sir Roger Manwood's school in Sandwich, Kent, and, in 1972, graduated in English and American studies from the University of East Anglia. He returned there briefly to teach during 1974-75 and to start a PhD, which he never completed. When his father became ill, he ran the family post office, which was by then in Cambridge. Richard married Bod in 1977, and together they set up the Orwell Bookshop in Southwold, Suffolk, which was extremely successful. They eventually sold it, as Richard's other interests demanded too much of his time.

The thornier the intellectual dispute, the more Richard rejoiced in the challenge. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, he produced A Brief History of Blasphemy (1990), in which he argued that "liberalism" is culturally determined and can be as illiberal and offensive as the behaviour – such as burning books – it condemns. Much praised at the time, the book was recently described by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, as "immensely intelligent".

In the mid-1990s Richard and I wrote a lengthy article for the Guardian about police trawling operations among former residents of care homes, which, we argued, resulted in scores of miscarriages of justice. As a result, both of us, together with the journalist David Rose, were invited to give evidence to the home affairs select committee.

In 1999, Richard and I were alarmed by the case of two nursery nurses in Newcastle, Dawn Reed and Chris Lillie, who had been found not guilty of child abuse charges at trial, only for a social services inquiry to declare them guilty of all they had been acquitted of and much more besides. In fear for their lives, they went into hiding. We drove to Newcastle and knocked on doors until we found Reed's frightened family. Then, one afternoon, we met Dawn who, with tears down her face, told us her astonishing story.

With the assistance of Sir Geoffrey Bindman and then the barristers Adrienne Page QC and Adam Speker, we helped them to take an action for defamation against the report's authors, which led to a triumphant vindication at the Royal Courts of Justice. There could have been a book, but Dawn and Chris wanted their privacy restored, so Richard, whose moral integrity would brook no compromise, would not then countenance it.

When The Secret of Bryn Estyn came out, Tony Garnett, the producer of television dramas such as Cathy Come Home, bought the rights. "Richard wrote with grace and clarity," said Garnett, "and I wanted to put on screen this monumental work about these injustices." A three-hour drama was developed for Channel 4 but budget cuts scuppered the project.

Richard did not write for profit, but to set down a scrupulously accurate record. So, with the exception of the Freud book, he published his work through his own Orwell Press. He financed this through running a small postcard business and by renting out his Suffolk cottage. He made his writings available to all through his densely packed website.

I learned to think of him as Badger in The Wind in the Willows, dispensing wisdom from the middle of the Wild Wood or, in his case, Oxford, where he settled after the break-up of his marriage. With the Oxford canal at the bottom of his garden, regular canoeing excursions gave him enormous pleasure. Richard had a profound concern for the wellbeing of those around him. His generosity and big-heartedness were extraordinary. When he found money in a long-forgotten account, he gave it to a neighbour's children to alleviate their student debts.

A magnum opus, The Natural History of Human Beings, is unfinished. For much of this year he had been assisting Portuguese contacts to expose what he considered to be the most significant paedophile-ring scare in Europe. He had been due to publish a history of the affair, Casa Pia, in the week of his death.

He is survived by his sister, Sue.

• Richard Webster, writer, born 17 December 1950; died 24 June 2011

19 comments:

Zoompad said...

I won't be publishing any of the comments left on my blog by mourning paedophiles. Yes, it is sad that Richard Webster has died, apparently without having repented of his sins against God and the people who were abused as children that he did his utmost to destroy by covering up institutional child abuse.

Its a sharp lesson to all paedophiles and wicked people. None of us are above Gods laws, no matter how many powerful friends we think we might have. If we don't get right with our Creator before we meet him we will be spending eternity in a dreadful place.

Repent, and beg forgiveness of God and those you have persecuted.

Zoompad said...

The Great Children’s

Home Panic



by RICHARD WEBSTER

_________________________________




The Orwell Press,

Paperback Original, pp. 70, 1998







DURING THE LAST TEN years an entirely new kind of police investigation has evolved. Conducted on a massive scale at huge public expense, its main aim has been to gather retrospective allegations of sexual abuse against care workers. Thousands of such allegations have now been collected and slowly but surely our prisons are filling up with care workers who have been convicted as a result.



Have we at last faced up to a horrifying reality? Or have we unleashed a witch-hunt which is unable to discriminate between those who are guilty and those who are innocent, and which is, because of the huge power of individual police forces, already out of control?



*



Published in 1998, The Great Children’s Home Panic was the first book to raise serious questions about a kind of police operation which has used up hundreds of millions of pounds of public money and resulted in allegations being trawled by the police against thousands of former care workers and teachers.



To mark its publication I wrote, together with the investigative journalist Bob Woffinden, an article for Guardian Weekend, ‘Abuse in the balance’, which focused on the cases of four innocent victims of trawling – Terry Hoskin, Brian Hudson, Danny Smith and Roy Shuttleworth. In this article we wrote that ‘The evidence now emerging suggests that retrospective investigations into care homes have led to the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in modern British history.’
Bob Woffinden has since written about police trawling in other articles, including Unsafe convictions and Trawling goes on trial, but who pays the price?

Zoompad said...

Some two years ago, after reading The Great Children's Home Panic, the journalist David Rose became interested in the problem of police trawling. Together with producer Gary Horne, he mounted a full scale investigation into the case of Roy Shuttleworth. This led to the making of a BBC Panorama film, In the name of the children, shown in November 2000, which established beyond reasonable doubt that Shuttleworth could not have committed the offences he was convicted of and that all eight of the men who made allegations against him in his criminal trial had fabricated their complaints. The transcript of this programme, the responses of viewers , and the Observer article which David Rose and Gary Horne wrote about the case are all available online.





David Rose has since written an Observer­­ news story about trawling and an in-depth investigation of the case of Brian Ely.




Following the transmission of the Panorama programme, and the acquittal of former Southampton football manager David Jones, who had faced a number of trawled allegations, Merseyside MP Claire Curtis-Thomas took a special interest in the problem of police trawling. She eventually became chair of an all-party committee looking into false allegations. Among the members of this committee are former Crosby MP Baroness Shirley Williams, and Earl Howe, who initiated a House of Lords debate on false allegations which took place in October 2001.


As a result of gathering pressure, including that exerted by the grass-roots campaigning organisation F.A.C.T. (False Allegations Against Carers and Teachers), the issue of police trawling was, after twelve long years, placed on a real political agenda.

In January 2002 the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, under the chairmanship of Chris Mullin MP, announced a full-scale inquiry into the practice of police trawling. David Rose, Bob Woffinden and I were invited to give evidence to the first session of this inquiry which took place on 14 May 2002. Details of subsequent sessions can be found on the Home Affairs Committee website.

At the beginning of April 2002 the spectacular collapse of Operation Rose, the massive trawling operation conducted by police in the north east, added to the growing disquiet about such investigations.

Some observers, including lawyers, believe that nationally as many as a hundred completely innocent men, and at least two women, have been convicted in the last ten years and are serving sentences of up to fifteen years. These miscarriages of justice are the result of police methods which have themselves evolved in response to a number of highly dangerous developments in the law.

Zoompad said...

ANOTHER ARTICLE FROM WEBSTERS WEBSITE:

A change of course for the Home Office?

One of the most significant aspects of the recent Home Affairs Committee report (see below) is that its recommendations point in exactly the opposite direction from those contained in the Government white paper Justice for All. In a brief piece in the New Statesman (which appears in an even briefer form in the magazine due to a last-minute crisis of space) I explore this question.

It may be noted that, although it has played a significant role in bringing the dangers of police trawling to the attention of a wider public, the Observer has not carried any coverage at all of the Home Affairs Committee Report. Instead, the edition of 10 November devoted massive and almost entirely uncritical coverage to the Government's determination to rebalance the criminal justice system 'in favour of victims'. In particular it carried a long, self-serving comment piece by Tony Blair. Dissent from the government's view by those who point out that the proposed 'reforms' will , if enacted, almost inevitably lead to more miscarriages of justice, was relegated to the online edition of the paper. Only there do we discover a joint statement by Liberty, Legal Action Group, the Criminal Bar Association and The Bar Council opposing the government reforms. Only there do we find an excellent article about miscarriages of justice by postgraduate researcher Michael Naughton, which was put online in July, but which was never published in the main print edition of the newspaper.

Zoompad said...

'A new genre of miscarriages of justice'

On Thursday 31 October a long campaign, fought by hundreds of former care workers and their supporters to expose what has been described as 'the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in British legal history', was finally vindicated by a House of Commons report.

After conducting a three-month inquiry, in which it took oral and written evidence from many individuals and organisations, the Home Affairs Select Committee has concluded that what it calls 'a new genre of miscarriages of justice' has arisen from 'the over-enthusiastic pursuit' of allegations of abuse relating to children's homes. 'I am in no doubt,' said the Chairman of the Committee, Chris Mullin, 'that a number of innocent people have been convicted and that many other innocent people, who have not been convicted, have had their lives ruined.' During the inquiry it was suggested by witnesses that as many as a hundred former care workers had been wrongly convicted as direct result of police trawling operations and the loop-holes in the laws of evidence which these exploited.

The Committee's strong report, which robustly questions many received views, recommends a series of safeguards to protect people who are investigated during the course of trawling operations. It calls for the compulsory audio or video recording of police interviews with alleged victims, anonymity for the accused and wider powers for the Criminal Cases Review Commission to enable alleged miscarriages of justice to be reviewed. In a vital section of its report which will be widely welcomed by the wrongly accused (though it may be opposed by others) it calls for the rules on 'similar fact evidence' to be tightened.

One of the principal difficulties faced by those accused during trawling operations is that over the last ten years, in a series of ill-considered judgments, the House of Lords has progressively removed restrictions on the admission of dangerous and highly prejudicial evidence. As a result innocent defendants in trawling cases frequently find themselves facing large numbers of horrific sexual allegations made by as many as ten or even twenty complainants, all of which are false. No jury can overcome the sheer emotional power of this evidence without climbing a mountain of prejudice and few juries succeed in the attempt. It is principally because of the relaxation of the rules of evidence in this respect that increasing numbers of innocent care workers have been convicted and given long prison sentences.

In a radical proposal, which has far-reaching implications, the Home Affairs Committee has now accepted the view that the law on similar fact evidence should be reformed. It has recommended to the Home Office that multiple allegations made by different complainants should not be admitted into a trial before a jury unless there are 'striking similarities' which justify their being heard together. This would restore the cautious approach adopted by the House of Lords in 1975 in the case of Boardman and undo the dangerous relaxation of the evidence rules which was introduced in 1991. What makes the Home Affairs Comittee recommendation even more important is that has simultaneously urged that the presumption favouring severance in sexual abuse cases should be restored. In other words, where there are no striking similarities between allegations these should be 'severed' and heard in separate trials in order to avoid prejudicing juries.

In a passage of the report which will be welcomed by those innocent people who have already been convicted, the Committee acknowledges that 'many of these recommendations are simply 'closing the door after the horse has bolted.' It is, says the Committee, 'all the more important, therefore, that the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the appeal court take a robust approach to the review of suspected wrongful convictions.'

Zoompad said...

For the full Home Affairs Comittee press release, click here. Various stories have appeared about the report including those of John Carvel in the Guardian, Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph and John Silverman on the BBC website.

The full report, 'The Conduct of Investigations into Past Cases of Abuse in Children's Homes', is now available online. The online version includes a selection of the written submissions and full transcripts of the oral evidence, including the evidence given by the following witnesses: falsely accused teachers/care workers (Rory O'Brien, Robin Reeves, Phil Fiddler and Phil Craig), defence solicitors (scroll down page to Neil O'May, Chris Saltrese and Linzi McDonald), personal injury compensation solicitors (including the remarkable evidence of Peter Garsden), 'experts' (Andrew Parker, Gisli Gudjonsson, Janet Boakes, Bill Thompson), senior police officers (including Terence Grange and Gareth Tinnuche), journalists/authors (David Rose, Richard Webster and Bob Woffinden) and the evidence of Claire Curtis-Thomas MP.

MPs speak out against trawling

On Wednesday 16 October, Claire Curtis-Thomas, the Member of Parliament for Crosby, won an adjournment debate in the House of Commons on an issue in which she has campaigned courageously and tenaciously over the last three years - police trawling operations. The full Hansard report of her speech and of the ensuing debate includes the very powerful contribution made by Edward Garnier, a QC who is Conservative Member of Parliament for Harborough, and a former shadow Attorney General.

In his speech he related how two of his constituents, a man and a woman who were both former care workers, were arrested by the Leicestershire police during the course of Operation Magnolia. They were then 'put in police cells, questioned and given the firm impression by the police that they were guilty of heinous crimes':

'They were not told who their alleged victims were and were not given sufficient detail to enable them to refute the allegations coherently. Furthermore, they were both summarily suspended by their employers, and it was only earlier this year that they were both, almost casually, informed by the police that they were not to be charged or prosecuted, and that they no longer needed to answer to police bail. There was, they were told, insufficient evidence for their cases to proceed.

'Of course, by then the damage had been done. Those people had become pariahs. For more than 18 months they were unable to go to work, to explain to their friends and families why they were not going to work, to socialise and to go about their daily lives as they had in the past. They were prisoners in their own homes, terrified that the day would soon come when they would again be summoned by the police to be interviewed, and on that occasion charged and imprisoned on remand while the investigations against them were slowly pursued.

Zoompad said...

'One of them became so traumatised by the experience that he became suicidal and is still under the care of a psychiatrist. The other had to receive professional counselling for the stress she has endured. Both of them have had their faith in British justice and in the police undermined, if not totally destroyed. Both are incapable of offering their employers, the social services department, and their line managers the respect that they once had for the institution and for the people managing it.

'. . . My two constituents are like priests who have lost their faith. They are ruined people contemplating ruined lives and a future without hope.'

These two constituents, Edward Garnier said, had provided him with stark and immediate examples of the problem highlighted by Claire Curtis-Thomas. He went on to offer a powerful and succinct view of the harm which is currently being done by police trawling:It is interesting that Operation Magnolia took place in Leicestershire, where the effect of the Beck investigation is still felt. It might be noted, however, that the view expressed by Edward Garnier about Mark D'Arcy and Paul Gosling's account of the Beck case in their 1998 book Abuse of Trust is very different from the view I expressed in my TLS review of the same book.

The full Hansard record of the recent House of Commons debate makes for interesting reading. But it also clearly demonstrates the reluctance of the present government to face up to the problem. The complaint made by Home Office minister John Denham that he had not been given details of any case where people had been induced to give evidence by the offer of compensation is particularly odd. One case where compensation was clearly a motive was that involving the former Southampton football manager David Jones. Another was described by Claire Curtis-Thomas herself in the course of her speech, when she referred to a remarkable incident where one complainant actually confessed in the witness box that his evidence was 'a pack of lies' which he had made up in order to get compsensation.

If, however, John Denham was seeking an example where there is evidence that the police themselves persuaded a witness to make false allegations by explicitly referring to compensation, he is asking for something which is indeed difficult to supply. For obvious reasons most evidence of such offers comes from people who declined them and therefore did not go into the witness box to make false allegations.

It remains to be seen whether Denham will continue to stonewall in this manner when Home Affairs Select Commitee produce their report on trawling. The report is now expected on 31 October.

……………………………………………………………………

© Richard Webster, 2002

www.richardwebster.net

Zoompad said...

Here is another, note his attempts to gloss over the founder of False Memory Syndrome Ralph Underwager. Underwager invented False Memory Syndrome to cover up child abuse, to make out that when child abuse survivors spoke out about the abuse they had suffered as children they were unreliable witnesses, thereby allowing paedophiles to avoid being brought to justice.


Shieldfield: how did it happen?

THE SHIELDFIELD CASE, in which two Newcastle nursery nurses, falsely accused of horrendous sexual crimes, were finally vindicated in a libel trial after a nine-year ordeal, has already been extensively documented on this website. However, the full story of Shieldfield had, until recently, hardly begun to be told.

That situation, which has doubtless already led many people to discount Shieldfield as a terrible aberration, has now changed. A month or so ago, quietly and without fanfare, a very significant publication was distributed to a relatively small number of subscribers. It contains two substantial articles, both of which probe the roots of Shieldfield. These articles, because of the nature of the analysis which they present, ought to be compulsory reading for every director of social services, every child protection worker, every family court judge and every politician, police officer, lawyer and journalist with a professional interest in allegations of sexual abuse and the manner in which they are investigated.

The publication in question was the Autumn edition of the newsletter of the British False Memory Society. 'The BFMS,' writes director Madeline Greenhalgh, 'makes no apologies for making this issue of the newsletter into a special focus on the Shieldfield libel trial . . . [it] carries articles which take a comprehensive look behind the scenes to reveal strong links between the Shieldfield and Cleveland crises. We uncover the part played by the child welfare agencies which until now has escaped scrutiny.'

After reprinting Margaret Jervis's excellent piece on the libel judgment, which has already been commented on here, the newsletter breaks new ground with an article by Tania Hunter entitled Messages from Shieldfield. At the heart of her analysis of Shieldfield is her assessment of a judicial inquiry which has exercised enormous influence over the development of child-protection policies over the last fouteen years - the 1988 Butler-Sloss inquiry into Cleveland.

It might be said that the real problem with the Cleveland report has arisen as a direct result of its unusual strengths. The report has so many good qualities that, in some quarters at least, it has been treated almost as a sacred scripture which is beyond criticism. The judgment in the Shieldfield libel trial, however, has led Tania Hunter to question it openly . 'The Cleveland inquiry,' she writes, 'despite all its undisputed virtues, had one monumental and largely unrecognised flaw which has had a significant bearing on subsequent events.

'While it acknowledged the part played by doctors, social workers and therapists in the breakdown of child care services in Cleveland, the cause was attributed to the inexperience and the personalities of those involved. Expert witnesses had warned of the dangers of adopting North American therapeutic disclosure techniques, but the inquiry nonetheless concluded that the investigative techniques which had proved so disastrous in Cleveland were safe when used by experts such as Dr Arnon Bentovim and his Great Ormond Street Hospital colleagues.

Zoompad said...

'Based on this incomplete understanding, and without the benefit of later research into children's suggestibility, the Butler-Sloss inquiry recommended improved training and inter-agency "working together". The unintended outcome has been that the very people responsible for the Cleveland affair have been able to perpetuate their practices and are now established in universities and at the centre of the child protection system as experts, policy advisers and trainers' [italics added].

The view that Shieldfield happened not in spite of the Cleveland report but, in some respects at least, because of it, is a deeply disturbing one. But this view is, I believe, essentially correct. The problem in some respects is simply one of chronology. It is not only that the Cleveland inquiry took place before ground-breaking research into children's suggestibility had been conducted by psychologists such as Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck; it is also that the report was published well before any proper scientific assessment of the 'anal dilatation' test had ever been made. The assumption that reflex gaping of the anus in young children indicated sexual abuse lay at the very heart of Cleveland. By the time this 'diagnostic' test was finally discredited by medical research and shown to be without any empirical foundation, the Cleveland report had already been in circulation for some two or three years.

Through no fault of her own Justice Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (now Dame Butler-Sloss) had, in effect, been compelled to produce her report in the dark. She simply did not have the benefit of the very scientific research which would have revealed the true scale of the Cleveland scandal and the real dangers of the child protection ideology and the paediatric zealotry which had led to it. Tania Hunter's eloquent analysis of the unintended consequences of the Cleveland report, and in particular of the role played by untested forms of 'therapy', is disturbing precisely because of the large measure of truth it contains.

The same must be said of the article by Margaret Jervis which accompanies it, The road to Shieldfield (Part 1). (To download a PDF version of entire October BFMS newsletter, click here.)

Having been a close observer of the development of child-protection ideology since her days as a staff journalist working for Social Work Today, Margaret Jervis is unusually well-qualified to piece together the story behind the story of Shieldfield. In its own way, the account she gives of the background to the Shieldfield scandal is just as disturbing - and just as revealing - as that of Tania Hunter.

No doubt the extent to which the 'strategy' followed by child protection campaigners in the north east was consciously planned, and the extent to which it was simply an 'accident of zeal', will be contested. What can scarcely be disputed is that the complex alliance between anxious parents and zealous professionals which eventually came about at Shieldfield was extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily dangerous.

Zoompad said...

In their two articles, which complement one another so well, Tania Hunter and Margaret Jervis have shed an immense amount of light on the origins of the entire Shieldfield case. For this reason their articles should be widely read by all those who work in the field of child protection. One of the great tragedies of the current polarised state of the debate, however, is that there will in some quarters be resistance to the insights now made available by the British False Memory Society precisely because of their provenance.

As Margaret Jervis herself notes in the first of her two recent articles, there has been a concerted campaign to blacken the name of the British False Memory Society. The campaign has been conducted over a number of years and Judith Jones and her fellow Newcastle activist Bea Campbell have played prominent parts in it. The effect has been to smear the entire false memory movement with the misjudgments made by a few - especially by the psychologist Ralph Underwager.

Zoompad said...

It was Underwager (who is also a Lutheran minister), who in 1993 gave a disturbing interview to the Dutch magazine Paidika in which he appeared to endorse paedophilia as part of God's will. His wife, the psychologist Hollida Wakefield, also made remarks which were unhelpful to the cause of those attempting to oppose the tide of false allegations then running strongly not only in the United States but also in much of the English-speaking world.

Although Underwager was immediately asked to resign from the American False Memory Syndrome Foundation Board, his extraordinary and ill-considered words inflicted lasting damage on the movement which he had helped to found. They have been used by some extreme supporters of recovered memory therapy ever since in an attempt to demonise their opponents and to misrepresent them as belonging to a paedophile lobby. (Some insight into the ferocity of the lesser battles that ensued may be gleaned from an American website, run by journalist Moira Johnston, which documents, in its references the Columbia Journalism Review, one of the many clashes there have been in recent years between those who support the idea of 'massive' repression and those who oppose it.)

In fact the British False Memory Society has, like its American counterpart, attracted support from some of the most distinguished psychologists and psychiatrists in the country. The credulous acceptance by some professionals, including some child protection workers, of what amounts to a black propaganda campaign against this valuable organisation, has already done great harm. If the lessons of Shieldfield are now to be learned (and it is essential for everyone that they are) then demonology must now be displaced by facts and evidence - and by genuine debate.

4 December, 2002

……………………………………………………………………

© Richard Webster, 2002

www.richardwebster.net

Zoompad said...

YOU PAEDOPHILES WHO KEEP TRYING TO POST MESSAGES ON MY BLOG ARE WASTING YOUR TIME.

YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN BLOG OF DOOM TO POST ABUSE AND RUBBISH FROM SUNSET TO SUNRISE, YOU'RE NOT USING MY BLOG AS A MOUTHPIECE ANY MORE.

THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO STOPPING PAEDOPHILIA, HAVEN'T YOU NOTICED? SO BUZZ OFF, YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE.

Zoompad said...

"In fact the British False Memory Society has, like its American counterpart, attracted support from some of the most distinguished psychologists and psychiatrists in the country."

That is a frightening thought. Psychologists and psychiatrists hold enormous power, to detain people, to lock people up, and have done for many decades. You can understand why people are so scared to report child abuse, if there are so many people in these professions that are upholding Ralph Underwager's twisted psuedoscience lifework.

Zoompad said...

I have just found this on Stuart Syvrets blog posting YOU DIRTY OLD MAN 17th July 2008

jim browne said...
Hi Guys.

I myself have spoken to Alison Taylor a number of times by email and by phone. She is a good woman who still fight for victims of abuse. The Socail Services treated that woman like shit, she complained to everyone about what she had seen and what she had been told, the Social Services 'Black Balled' her from working for them ever again. She like Stuart never gave in and she won in the end.

Richard Webster pulled both her and the victims to bits to sell a book, he used the word 'Witch Hunt' many times,he spoke about how the poor staff were all innocent of any crime and all the victims were liars and were just after money. That sounds strange considering that a lot of them pleaded guilty.

It was only through Alison that my case and many more have been before the courts and mine is still going on after 13 years, I won my appeal last month so I am now back to the High Court and maybe then justice.

As for being paid compensation, well that is another story. These cretins have tried to pay people off with a pittence of a payment for all their hurt and pain, not me, they can piss off the lot of them and I will see them in court, if I loose, well at least I tried.

jim browne (Survivor)

Tuesday, 22 July 2008 11:05:00 GMT+01:00

Zoompad said...

I remember Jim, he was one of the first Pindown survivors I managed to contact, lost touch with him since he joined up with the group of lawyers that are SUPPOSED to be helping all us child abuse survivors, I cant remember the chaps name that I spoke to a few months ago, I think it was Peter but will find it and post it up. Scoundrels are pretending to be helping us, but they dont do anything, they make damned sure that we dont get justice, its evil but they wont get away with it.

Zoompad said...

They also keep us as isolated as they possibly can, because they know by doing that they can "dissapear" us, its just so sick that it turns my stomach. How can anyone behave in such a depraved and cruel way to deliberatly crush people who have already gone through so much persecution and torment? And be getting charity money, legal aid and God knows what else for doing so? It is sick!

Anonymous said...

Well done Zoompad. I'm glad you are back on twitter. I was worried about you you. I'm glad that you speak out about the British False Memory Society and I think it may have been Webster who registered the society ( the one who's name they refused to release ).

From looking at their reports it would seem that the BFMS is hopefully in decline. They have survived because they get 46,500 punds a year from the Odin Charitable trust and it would seem that this will now hopefully be renewed on an anual basis rather than given automatically.

Jackie

Zoompad said...

Jackie, thank you for that info.

I got taken to St Georges Psychiatric Hospital, I was on my way to scrawling PINDOWN all over myself from head to foot and jumping off a bridge in London, I just got so ground down. I just thought, well, they're going to kill me anyway, so I might as well make damned sure they don't kill me off in a poky little corner, if I was going to be killed I wanted to make damned sure everyone know the reason why - and deliberatly driving someone to commit suicide is in my eyes murder.

But the police stopped me, and took me to St Georges. I'm glad they did, because I really do want to live, and I want to see all the paedophile gangsters in jail.

Zoompad said...

ODIN CHARITABLE TRUST THE TRUSTEES OPERATE A GRANT GIVING POLICY,PROVIDING FUNDS FOR SUCH CHARITABLE OBJECTS OR INSTITUTION AS THE TRUSTEES THINK FIT. Charity Number 1027521 Date Registered 1993-10-21 Contact Name MRS S G P SCOTFORD Address P O BOX 1898, BRADFORD ON AVON, WILTSHIRE, BA15 1YS Trustees MRS A H PALMER, MRS S G P SCOTFORD, MRS DONNA LOUISE KELLY, MRS PIA CELIN CHERRY Charity Commission Classifications GENERAL CHARITABLE PURPOSES, PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, THE ADVANCEMENT OF HEALTH OR SAVING OF LIVES, ARTS/CULTURE/HERITAGE/SCIENCE, ELDERLY/OLD PEOPLE, EDUCATION/TRAINING, ACCOMMODATION/HOUSING, MAKES GRANTS TO ORGANISATIONS, THE PREVENTION OR RELIEF OF POVERTY, OTHER CHARITIES OR VOLUNTARY BODIES, DISABILITY, CHILDREN/YOUNG PEOPLE Icnpo Classifications Grant-making foundations Governing Document TRUST DEED DATED 7 OCTOBER 1993; Basic accountsAccounts dateIncomeSpendingMore info05 Apr 2013£406,382£245,45905 Apr 2012£402,388£445,69905 Apr 2011£380,051£262,38605 Apr 2010£354,113£233,98205 Apr 2009£275,065£347,026see more Related links ODIN CHARITABLE TRUST on Charity Commission website Search Google for ODIN CHARITABLE TRUST - See more at: http://opencharities.org/charities/1027521#sthash.uKgaXe6h.dpuf