Don Francisco is a Christian songwriter with a heaing ministry for helping the spiritually wounded find their way back to God.
I turned down a free ticket to one of his concerts in the 1980's, because I was so smashed up emotionally and spiritually at the time, and hardly trusted anyone any more. It's one of the regrets of my life that I didn't go to that concert.
This is Don Francisco, singing one of his beautiful healing songs:
SO WHY WAS HE TREATED LIKE THIS BY BRITISH CUSTOMS?
Customs Confusion
New visa rules trip up traveling religious workers.
Bobby Ross Jr. / May 14, 2009
After an overnight flight from Denver, Christian singer Don Francisco arrived at London's Heathrow Airport intending to perform in an Easter music program in the English port town of Poole.
Instead, the 63-year-old American said, he was photographed, fingerprinted, and taken to a small detention room with a seatless toilet bolted to the wall.
Hours later, Francisco said, armed guards led him to a van parked on the tarmac, where he was ordered inside a cage and driven to a British Airways jet.
"They escorted me on board, where they handed the stewardess an envelope containing my passport, boarding passes, and other paperwork," he said.
Just like that, Francisco was sent back home. His crime: listing his occupation as "gospel singer" and failing to obtain a religious worker visa—something he had never needed on previous visits to the country.
Over the last year, the United Kingdom has phased in a points-based immigration system designed to regulate the labor market and help prevent terrorism.
However, the new system has thrown Christian workers and organizations into confusion because the U.K. Border Agency has not taken into account the complexity of religious activities, the Evangelical Alliance said.
The London-based advocacy group for the nation's estimated two million evangelicals cites a number of cases in which groups or individuals were refused entry after traveling to the U.K. to speak or volunteer.
Alliance leaders have drawn up guidelines to help Christians navigate the system and posted them online (eauk.org).
"Some of the problems we have seen are due to churches not being fully aware of their new responsibilities, while on other occasions, immigration officials have wrongly banned people from the country because they haven't understood their own rules," said Daniel Webster, parliamentary officer for the Evangelical Alliance.
Amid fears of terrorism, religious worker visas have come under heightened scrutiny in the United States as well.
"I can't say that the government is particularly easy on any occupation," said Peter Cramer, an immigration attorney in Boston. "However, in the last few years, religious workers have come under increased scrutiny because of a fraud audit … which found one-third of the cases to be tainted by fraud."
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services implemented new anti-fraud measures last November, including on-site visits and investigations of religious organizations before a U.S. consulate overseas can grant a religious worker visa.
"It has been my experience that religious organizations, in an effort to assist the 'needy,' sometimes view it as a greater good to help someone and stretch the truth about what the immigrant will do for the organization," said Elaine Witty, an immigration attorney in Memphis, Tennessee.
To that extent, Witty said, "It is arguable that this 'crackdown' is something that religious organizations brought on themselves."
On the other hand, she said, government attempts to root out fraud in the religious arena raise First Amendment questions. Daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Witty cited a case in which the U.S. government determined that one of her clients, wanting to do religious work in America, could not be a Christian because he was born in India.
"In fact, his family's ties to Christianity dated back to Thomas the Apostle!" she wrote in an e-mail. "I won on appeal, but it was a costly and unnecessary litigation."
A longstanding government policy makes it tougher for foreign religious workers (compared with those of other occupations) to remain in the United States. However, in a class-action case in March, a federal judge in Seattle struck down that policy.
Monday, 26 May 2014
Thursday, 22 May 2014
THEY'VE FINALLY MADE THE STAFFORDSHIRE PINDOWN REPORT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQFjAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.staffordshire.gov.uk%2Fyourcouncil%2Fdataprotectionandfreedomofinformation%2Fpublicationsscheme%2FThe-Pindown-Experience-and-the-Protection-of-Children.pdf&ei=CKx9U4_8Jeed7gbg_oGADQ&usg=AFQjCNFzW4Os3__QwIHbjNZzldcpKS8bWg&sig2=Na4x91ARIjXFli-9mH5tLQ&bvm=bv.67229260,d.ZGU
Its a great pity they had to be frogmarched into doing the right thing, they should have had this report made available online years ago.
They should also have given all us Pindown victims copies of it years ago, and not subjected us to years of reabuse from the military secret services, who have been using their surveillance powers inappropriatly, by stalking victims of these crimes, making sure we Pindown child abuse victims had our characters well blackened, getting some of us put into prison and squashing the ones they couldn't deliberatly criminalise into nervous wrecks and allowing disgusting creeps like Nigel Oldfield to prey on us and call us "Nut jobs".
The Pindown report is a damage limitation excercise, it doesn't go back far enough, and it doesn't go into the rapes of children that were happening at Chadswell Assessment Centre in the 70's, but at least them publishing this digitally is a small step in the right direction.
Its a great pity they had to be frogmarched into doing the right thing, they should have had this report made available online years ago.
They should also have given all us Pindown victims copies of it years ago, and not subjected us to years of reabuse from the military secret services, who have been using their surveillance powers inappropriatly, by stalking victims of these crimes, making sure we Pindown child abuse victims had our characters well blackened, getting some of us put into prison and squashing the ones they couldn't deliberatly criminalise into nervous wrecks and allowing disgusting creeps like Nigel Oldfield to prey on us and call us "Nut jobs".
The Pindown report is a damage limitation excercise, it doesn't go back far enough, and it doesn't go into the rapes of children that were happening at Chadswell Assessment Centre in the 70's, but at least them publishing this digitally is a small step in the right direction.
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
THE MILLION POUND QUESTION: WHO IS ROLF'S LAWYER?
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEYQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuknews%2F1424473%2FThe-million-pound-question-is-who-can-stump-Chris.html&ei=aRR7U5eZHMiUOO2pgdAG&usg=AFQjCNH8CRnzCkUVh9nVAz4_FzAvWHPpMg&sig2=F88EFG1gHTvD74vuEfsBBQ
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The million pound question is: who can stump Chris?
Quizzer becomes the quizzed - and fails final round, writes Sean O'Neill
12:00AM GMT 13 Mar 2003
Christopher Tarrant, 56, a radio DJ and television presenter from Surrey - married with six children - won through to the hotseat at the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? trial yesterday.
Better known as Chris - only his mother still calls him Christopher - he presents Britain's most popular quiz show and has given the nation the catchphrase "Is that your final answer?"
Chris has been in showbusiness for 31 years, finds it hard to stop talking and is definitely more used to asking the questions than answering them.
But at Southwark Crown Court the quizmaster was to be quizzed by four of the finest that the English Bar has to offer. If he didn't know the answer there would be no opportunity to phone a friend or ask the jury.
The £1 million question on everyone's lips was - which of the four eminent barristers (if any) would leave this professional talker lost for words?
Would it be:
A: Nicholas Hilliard, senior Treasury counsel, the prosecutor, who has been painstakingly building up, layer by layer, a picture of the extraordinary events at Elstree Studios during the recording of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on Sept 10, 2001.
B: Sonia Woodley, QC, the tall, headmistress-like counsel for Major Charles Ingram - a woman whose disapproval one would not wish to incur.
C: Adrian Redgrave, QC, for Diana Ingram, a stern-faced man who uses words economically and quietly but with firm authority.
D: David Aubrey, QC, a broad-chested, red-haired Welshman who represents Tecwen Whittock and can be quite withering in cross-examination - the day before, he questioned a television executive on whether he had frisked Ingram's "private parts".
The audience was small, but intensely interested. None more so than the three people in the glass-fronted dock - the Ingrams and Whittock - all of whom had previously faced Chris in the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? studio.
On this occasion Whittock, who won £1,000, Mrs Ingram, who collected £32,000, and Ingram, winner of the disputed £1 million at the centre of the trial, faced Chris across a courtroom.
The presenter, wearing a dark suit and a red shirt with no tie, appeared tense as he took his seat in the witness box. His first answers were little more than "yes" or "that's correct".
As on Chris's quiz show, those early questions were pretty straightforward. They came from Mr Hilliard who is, after all, on the same side as Chris.
It was Chris who had allegedly been deceived into signing a cheque for £1 million and Mr Hilliard's job to prove that the deception was criminal.
The presenter's mood lightened visibly and he was soon ready for Miss Woodley's questions. He batted one away rather curtly but quickly found humour a better method.
Asked if he had hugged an emotional Ingram after his big win, Chris quipped: "In a manly way."
The austere Mr Redgrave fared little better. He recalled a question about the name of the gang in West Side Story that rivalled the Jets - did Chris remember it?
Chris replied instantly: "The Sharks."
Mr Redgrave: "That is the answer, but . . ."
Chris: "Have I won?"
The jury liked the jokes, so they flowed readily. Mr Redgrave asked about the "daft questions" at the beginning of each edition of the quiz.
Chris: "Because they are at a fairly low level of general knowledge we tend to speed through them."
Mr Redgrave: "A fairly low level? Has anyone ever got that first question wrong?"
Chris: "It happened in America."
Mr Aubrey was next to try his hand and combined his questions with flattery for the programme and its presenter. It was he who finally stumped Chris with a question wholly unrelated to the case.
"Tell me," said Mr Aubrey, "why do they call it the Green Room?"
"I can't remember," Chris confessed.
But the question did not go unanswered. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin piped up from the bench that, because his wife is a musician, he knew the answer. "I'll tell you later," he informed Mr Aubrey - provoking a theatrical groan from the courtroom that forced him to relent.
The Green Room, said the judge, is so called because all such facilities used to be decorated with "a strange green paint which was very cheap" and also because it was where performers gathered just before going on stage "when they all turn green".
A new kind of lifeline had been invented: Ask The Judge.
Home»
News»
UK News
The million pound question is: who can stump Chris?
Quizzer becomes the quizzed - and fails final round, writes Sean O'Neill
12:00AM GMT 13 Mar 2003
Christopher Tarrant, 56, a radio DJ and television presenter from Surrey - married with six children - won through to the hotseat at the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? trial yesterday.
Better known as Chris - only his mother still calls him Christopher - he presents Britain's most popular quiz show and has given the nation the catchphrase "Is that your final answer?"
Chris has been in showbusiness for 31 years, finds it hard to stop talking and is definitely more used to asking the questions than answering them.
But at Southwark Crown Court the quizmaster was to be quizzed by four of the finest that the English Bar has to offer. If he didn't know the answer there would be no opportunity to phone a friend or ask the jury.
The £1 million question on everyone's lips was - which of the four eminent barristers (if any) would leave this professional talker lost for words?
Would it be:
A: Nicholas Hilliard, senior Treasury counsel, the prosecutor, who has been painstakingly building up, layer by layer, a picture of the extraordinary events at Elstree Studios during the recording of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on Sept 10, 2001.
B: Sonia Woodley, QC, the tall, headmistress-like counsel for Major Charles Ingram - a woman whose disapproval one would not wish to incur.
C: Adrian Redgrave, QC, for Diana Ingram, a stern-faced man who uses words economically and quietly but with firm authority.
D: David Aubrey, QC, a broad-chested, red-haired Welshman who represents Tecwen Whittock and can be quite withering in cross-examination - the day before, he questioned a television executive on whether he had frisked Ingram's "private parts".
The audience was small, but intensely interested. None more so than the three people in the glass-fronted dock - the Ingrams and Whittock - all of whom had previously faced Chris in the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? studio.
On this occasion Whittock, who won £1,000, Mrs Ingram, who collected £32,000, and Ingram, winner of the disputed £1 million at the centre of the trial, faced Chris across a courtroom.
The presenter, wearing a dark suit and a red shirt with no tie, appeared tense as he took his seat in the witness box. His first answers were little more than "yes" or "that's correct".
As on Chris's quiz show, those early questions were pretty straightforward. They came from Mr Hilliard who is, after all, on the same side as Chris.
It was Chris who had allegedly been deceived into signing a cheque for £1 million and Mr Hilliard's job to prove that the deception was criminal.
The presenter's mood lightened visibly and he was soon ready for Miss Woodley's questions. He batted one away rather curtly but quickly found humour a better method.
Asked if he had hugged an emotional Ingram after his big win, Chris quipped: "In a manly way."
The austere Mr Redgrave fared little better. He recalled a question about the name of the gang in West Side Story that rivalled the Jets - did Chris remember it?
Chris replied instantly: "The Sharks."
Mr Redgrave: "That is the answer, but . . ."
Chris: "Have I won?"
The jury liked the jokes, so they flowed readily. Mr Redgrave asked about the "daft questions" at the beginning of each edition of the quiz.
Chris: "Because they are at a fairly low level of general knowledge we tend to speed through them."
Mr Redgrave: "A fairly low level? Has anyone ever got that first question wrong?"
Chris: "It happened in America."
Mr Aubrey was next to try his hand and combined his questions with flattery for the programme and its presenter. It was he who finally stumped Chris with a question wholly unrelated to the case.
"Tell me," said Mr Aubrey, "why do they call it the Green Room?"
"I can't remember," Chris confessed.
But the question did not go unanswered. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin piped up from the bench that, because his wife is a musician, he knew the answer. "I'll tell you later," he informed Mr Aubrey - provoking a theatrical groan from the courtroom that forced him to relent.
The Green Room, said the judge, is so called because all such facilities used to be decorated with "a strange green paint which was very cheap" and also because it was where performers gathered just before going on stage "when they all turn green".
A new kind of lifeline had been invented: Ask The Judge.
Saturday, 17 May 2014
ROY WALMSLEY AND KAREN WHITE, NOTE 37, CHAPTER 2 OF TOM O CARROLLS BOOK PAEDOPHILIA THE RADICAL CASE
https://www.ipce.info/host/radicase/chap02.htm
Even a Home Office research report has recently given an important measure of official recognition to the fact that children over ten (this being the age of criminal responsibility: no attempt was made to assess consent in younger children) can and do consent in sexual acts with adults. The report refers to child 'partners' in such sexual acts, rather than 'victims'. 37
37. R. Walmsley and K. White, Sexual Offences, Consent and Sentencing, Home Office Research Study No. 54, 'HMSO, London, 1979, Chapter 2.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/sexual-offences-consent-and-sentencing/oclc/877026434?referer=di&ht=edition
Sexual offences, consent and sentencing
Author:
Roy Walmsley; Karen White
Publisher:
London H.M.S.O. 1979.
Series:
Research studies (Great Britain. Home Office), no.54.; Reports (Great Britain. Home Office. Research Unit)
Edition/Format:
Book : Government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database:
WorldCat
Rating:
(not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.
Subjects
Sex crimes -- England.
More like this
Similar Items
Details
Material Type:
Government publication
Document Type:
Book
All Authors / Contributors:
Roy Walmsley; Karen White
Find more information about:Roy WalmsleyKaren White
ISBN:
0113406940 9780113406944
OCLC Number:
877026434
Description:
vi,73p ill 25cm sd
Series Title:
Research studies (Great Britain. Home Office), no.54.; Reports (Great Britain. Home Office. Research Unit)
Responsibility:
by Roy Walmsley and Karen White.
Even a Home Office research report has recently given an important measure of official recognition to the fact that children over ten (this being the age of criminal responsibility: no attempt was made to assess consent in younger children) can and do consent in sexual acts with adults. The report refers to child 'partners' in such sexual acts, rather than 'victims'. 37
37. R. Walmsley and K. White, Sexual Offences, Consent and Sentencing, Home Office Research Study No. 54, 'HMSO, London, 1979, Chapter 2.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/sexual-offences-consent-and-sentencing/oclc/877026434?referer=di&ht=edition
Sexual offences, consent and sentencing
Author:
Roy Walmsley; Karen White
Publisher:
London H.M.S.O. 1979.
Series:
Research studies (Great Britain. Home Office), no.54.; Reports (Great Britain. Home Office. Research Unit)
Edition/Format:
Book : Government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database:
WorldCat
Rating:
(not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.
Subjects
Sex crimes -- England.
More like this
Similar Items
Details
Material Type:
Government publication
Document Type:
Book
All Authors / Contributors:
Roy Walmsley; Karen White
Find more information about:Roy WalmsleyKaren White
ISBN:
0113406940 9780113406944
OCLC Number:
877026434
Description:
vi,73p ill 25cm sd
Series Title:
Research studies (Great Britain. Home Office), no.54.; Reports (Great Britain. Home Office. Research Unit)
Responsibility:
by Roy Walmsley and Karen White.
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
I'M NOT HILDA MURRELL AND I'M NOT PRINCESS DIANA EITHER
Just found out about the new plot the paedogangsters are planning to do away with me.
They are trying to get me arrested for some non crime, MSBP to be precise, so they can get me in a police cell and suicided.
They've roped in all sorts of people who don't really understand what they are up to, as usual.
Well, if it just so happens that I do get arrested for this non crime, I will not be reacting as they would like me to react, and so any bruises on my body will be from people beating up a non resisting person trying to protect herself. So anyone will be able to see straight away that it was murder, not suicide, and not a case of self defence as an excuse for brutality against me either.
Plus, I have asked God to protect me, quoting psalms 35, 36 and 37. I have asked God to let me live, and not to be a martyr. I have told God I don't lay down my life for any of these wicked devils, and neither am I suicidal.
I want a quiet life, I want MI5 to stop hacking my computer, putting double clicks on it and reading and even stealing some of my private communications, I want to be allowed to live in peace, with my family, including my son who is being spied on even now, the son who was illegally taken to Drake Hall prison for PE lessons from his school without my permission. I want my daughter and her partner to be left alone as well. Its not too much to ask, but apparently some people think it is.
I am not Hilda Murrell and I am not Princess Diana either, I am Barbara Richards, a mum who got abused as a child and who has had one hell of a fight with the vermin who are running an international paedophile/human trafficking ring who have done their level best to destroy me (against the wishes of the Lord my God, who they despise)
I would like them to leave me alone, well alone, stop the stupid spying, stop the stupid plotting, just leave my family alone!!!
They are trying to get me arrested for some non crime, MSBP to be precise, so they can get me in a police cell and suicided.
They've roped in all sorts of people who don't really understand what they are up to, as usual.
Well, if it just so happens that I do get arrested for this non crime, I will not be reacting as they would like me to react, and so any bruises on my body will be from people beating up a non resisting person trying to protect herself. So anyone will be able to see straight away that it was murder, not suicide, and not a case of self defence as an excuse for brutality against me either.
Plus, I have asked God to protect me, quoting psalms 35, 36 and 37. I have asked God to let me live, and not to be a martyr. I have told God I don't lay down my life for any of these wicked devils, and neither am I suicidal.
I want a quiet life, I want MI5 to stop hacking my computer, putting double clicks on it and reading and even stealing some of my private communications, I want to be allowed to live in peace, with my family, including my son who is being spied on even now, the son who was illegally taken to Drake Hall prison for PE lessons from his school without my permission. I want my daughter and her partner to be left alone as well. Its not too much to ask, but apparently some people think it is.
I am not Hilda Murrell and I am not Princess Diana either, I am Barbara Richards, a mum who got abused as a child and who has had one hell of a fight with the vermin who are running an international paedophile/human trafficking ring who have done their level best to destroy me (against the wishes of the Lord my God, who they despise)
I would like them to leave me alone, well alone, stop the stupid spying, stop the stupid plotting, just leave my family alone!!!
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
AN INTERESTING PIECE OF INFORMATION FROM WINDOWS HELP
What is the last part of a URL?
The last part of a URL is called a top-level domain name (TLD). TLDs identify different types of websites. Here are some common TLDs and what they stand for:
Top-level domain
Stands for
.com
commercial (business) site
.net
Internet administrative site
.org
nonprofit organization
.gov
U.S. government agency
.edu
educational institution
In addition to the TLDs listed above, individual countries or regions have their own TLDs. For example, .ca is the TLD for Canada.
The last part of a URL is called a top-level domain name (TLD). TLDs identify different types of websites. Here are some common TLDs and what they stand for:
Top-level domain
Stands for
.com
commercial (business) site
.net
Internet administrative site
.org
nonprofit organization
.gov
U.S. government agency
.edu
educational institution
In addition to the TLDs listed above, individual countries or regions have their own TLDs. For example, .ca is the TLD for Canada.
Thursday, 17 April 2014
RICHARD WISE THE MAN WHO EXPOSED PINDOWN CHILD ABUSE AND SUDDENLY DIED (BUT NOT OF TERMINAL CANCER)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Flife-style%2Fif-he-cant-spring-you-nobody-can-1347699.html&ei=3ZBPU4eJCIiPOPL6gbAM&usg=AFQjCNFMhmHR6mbCnjQM8zkyoJx4ORZhLQ&sig2=kQHkUKWXVB-J7kLA2VMWZw&bvm=bv.64764171,d.ZWU
If he can't spring you, nobody can
Richard Wise is a human hurricane. He can get a woman imprisoned for debt out of jail within six hours and look after his two children at the same time.
Emma Brooker Friday 17 May 1996
Richard Wise is tousled, verging on dishevelled. Mobile phone in one hand, bright red kids' shoe bag in the other, this afternoon he is ferrying his two small children around Stoke-on-Trent in his battered blue Nissan estate. Lawyer and single parent, Wise combines the two roles to become a sort of human hurricane. Starey-eyed and intense, one minute he is fielding calls from prisons and magistrates courts all over England, the next minute he is grilling his six-year-old daughter about the whereabouts of her packed lunch.
rate Wise as the most dynamic radical lawyer in the country. Detractors suggest that this soft-spoken 38-year-old is a menace to society. But there is one thing about him on which everyone can agree. Richard Wise is the man who gets women out of prison. He has "sprung" several hundred of them from jail within the past year. Inmates of Holloway, Risley and Drake Hall, the main women's prisons in the UK, whisper the name Richard Wise to new arrivals as though it were the key to the prison gates. If he can't get you out, nobody can.
Wise specialises in obtaining the release of women imprisoned for non- payment of television licences, council tax, small debts and petty fines. Britain is the only country in Western Europe that still jails people for civil debt. Magistrates imprison up to 500 debtors daily, with figures running to around 30,000 a year. About a third of all women sent down are jailed for debt, often unlawfully. Magistrates are supposed to have exhausted all other measures and use custody only as a last resort.
But just as quickly as magistrates put women behind bars for so-called "crimes of poverty", Wise is working round the clock to get them out again. It is hardly the most glamorous area of civil rights work, but Wise's commitment to his clients, whom he rarely meets or even hears from after their release, is total and passionate. And his work has a huge practical impact on the hundreds of women whose freedom he secures and their dependants.
Wise seems to make no distinction between work and personal life. Both areas are equally demanding as, since the breakdown of his marriage last year, he has full-time care of his children every other week. His home is linked umbilically to his office with fax and computer, and the usual office/home boundaries are further blurred by the fact that Wise works mainly with his younger brother Ian, a barrister at Helena Kennedy QC's Doughty Street chambers.
"His office is right next to the High Court, and because he's my brother I can bully him into doing judicial reviews for me. We don't have to be polite to each other either, and that saves a lot of time," says Richard.
The Wise brothers spend, on average, an hour each night talking through cases on the phone, Richard often talking on his mobile while he supervises his children's bath time. On Sunday afternoons, the two brothers thrash out business further while jogging along the canal towpaths of Stoke, their home town.
Both are outsiders to the legal establishment. Richard describes his experience as a working-class child attending a "stuffy" middle-class school as being formative in shaping his attitude towards the class-ridden legal hierarchy. To this day, he takes institutional injustice towards vulnerable individuals personally, which partly explains his commitment to his clients.
"I felt like an outsider," explains Richard, who had learning difficulties and left school at 16 with two O-levels and not much self-confidence. "My mum and dad saw no value in further education."
Richard started out in his father's trade as an apprentice "slabber" , making fireplace surrounds from tile and plaster. Ian left school at 18 and worked as a labourer in a Crewe tea factory for 10 years while studying for an Open University degree.
Maverick to the last, Richard prides himself on not fitting into a comfortable "alternative" bracket either. "The trendy, radical lawyers down in London don't know what to make of me, because I work from an old-fashioned small- town firm of solicitors up north." He seems to delight in challenging, confusing and annoying the sort of people who wrote him off as a child, and clearly identifies far more with his clients than his colleagues.
During a five-year stint as a case worker with the Citizens' Advice Bureau, Richard worked extensively with people on benefits and in debt, and seems to be fired by a desire to redress the balance of power in their favour. In 1989 he joined a radical firm of solicitors in the Midlands, and started doing ground-breaking para-legal work with imprisoned poll-tax defaulters. Repeatedly challenging magistrates through the High Court, he went on successfully to sue several magistrates for unlawful imprisonment, and in so doing he believes he brought about a sharp drop in the jailing of poll-tax defaulters.
Last year, when the female prison population swelled to a record of nearly 2,000, several governors, desperate to free places by getting non-criminals out of jail, called Wise and asked him to help. "The prisons needed the space, and they were also observing that a lot of the women in for debt were assimilating the behaviour of the serious criminals they were alongside," says Wise.
The motivating factor for Wise in getting involved was the thought of the "collateral damage" that the jailing of debtors can do to dependants. When women are jailed, their children are often taken into local authority care.
The bail officer at Holloway prison in London now refers the handful of debtors who arrive at the prison every day directly to Wise. Today they fax through papers for a new inmate called Sandra (not her real name) who has been sent down for 14 days for outstanding fines for soliciting totalling nearly pounds 500.
Richard springs into action. "Every new case is important and exciting," he says. "Not because of the legal principles, but because each one of these clients has got a personal tragedy to tell."
Within minutes he has Sandra on the phone and is coaxing her life story out of her. It turns out that she is a 25-year-old single parent with three small children, all of them suffering from sickle cell anaemia and in need of weekly hospital treatment. "You'll be out by tonight," he murmurs to her before hanging up.
Bristling with indignation, Wise is operating on full throttle. "I work on a different timescale to most solicitors," he says. "If I don't get her out within six hours, I've failed."
Within minutes he has e-mailed his brother, faxed the magistrates' court that sentenced Sandra, and is on the phone to the court clerk threatening a High Court action.
Wise's methods amount to a kind of bureaucratic terrorism. He has won plenty of enemies with his take-no-prisoners tactics, including Rosemary Thomson, chairman of the Magistrates Association.
"Richard has decided that part of his career is to work with women defaulters," she says. "But men and women are equal before the law. How are we to say that we are not going to send women with young children to prison for fine default? People are responsible for their own finances. Why can't they pay?" She points out that there are "a lot of poor people who are paying up with great difficulty". Why, in that case, should anybody be let off?
Others gush praise for Wise. "He's saving the country a lot of money," says Chris Tchaikovsky of the charity Women in Prison. The cost of jailing a woman is about pounds 600 per week, a sum greater than most of the debts that people are imprisoned for. "It's not every solicitor who will work that far and go that extra mile to get women out," she says, "yet there's nothing self-important, stuffy, altruistic or smug about him."
Tchaikovsky and other campaigners object to the jailing of debtors because, they say, it criminalises the poor, punishes their children and betrays a "Dickensian" attitude towards poverty redolent of the Victorian workhouse and poor laws. But in the end, the most persuasive argument against the practise is cost. A Bill aimed at ending the jailing of debtors in all but the most extreme cases will be launched by MPs later this month. It has cross-party support and would cut the number of people jailed for debt by about 80 per cent, saving up to pounds 20m of public money each year.
Until the law is changed, Wise remains a lifeline for pressured prison governors and jailed debtors alike. Of the 360 cases he has handled in the past year and a half, only five have failed.
As Wise drives his children from the childminders' back to his office, where they will wait for him to finish some outstanding work, his mobile rings. His brother is calling with the news that magistrates have signed the bail order for Sandra's release. Happy in the knowledge that she will be back home tonight with her children, Wise will be able to relax and get stuck into the next case.
If he can't spring you, nobody can
Richard Wise is a human hurricane. He can get a woman imprisoned for debt out of jail within six hours and look after his two children at the same time.
Emma Brooker Friday 17 May 1996
Richard Wise is tousled, verging on dishevelled. Mobile phone in one hand, bright red kids' shoe bag in the other, this afternoon he is ferrying his two small children around Stoke-on-Trent in his battered blue Nissan estate. Lawyer and single parent, Wise combines the two roles to become a sort of human hurricane. Starey-eyed and intense, one minute he is fielding calls from prisons and magistrates courts all over England, the next minute he is grilling his six-year-old daughter about the whereabouts of her packed lunch.
rate Wise as the most dynamic radical lawyer in the country. Detractors suggest that this soft-spoken 38-year-old is a menace to society. But there is one thing about him on which everyone can agree. Richard Wise is the man who gets women out of prison. He has "sprung" several hundred of them from jail within the past year. Inmates of Holloway, Risley and Drake Hall, the main women's prisons in the UK, whisper the name Richard Wise to new arrivals as though it were the key to the prison gates. If he can't get you out, nobody can.
Wise specialises in obtaining the release of women imprisoned for non- payment of television licences, council tax, small debts and petty fines. Britain is the only country in Western Europe that still jails people for civil debt. Magistrates imprison up to 500 debtors daily, with figures running to around 30,000 a year. About a third of all women sent down are jailed for debt, often unlawfully. Magistrates are supposed to have exhausted all other measures and use custody only as a last resort.
But just as quickly as magistrates put women behind bars for so-called "crimes of poverty", Wise is working round the clock to get them out again. It is hardly the most glamorous area of civil rights work, but Wise's commitment to his clients, whom he rarely meets or even hears from after their release, is total and passionate. And his work has a huge practical impact on the hundreds of women whose freedom he secures and their dependants.
Wise seems to make no distinction between work and personal life. Both areas are equally demanding as, since the breakdown of his marriage last year, he has full-time care of his children every other week. His home is linked umbilically to his office with fax and computer, and the usual office/home boundaries are further blurred by the fact that Wise works mainly with his younger brother Ian, a barrister at Helena Kennedy QC's Doughty Street chambers.
"His office is right next to the High Court, and because he's my brother I can bully him into doing judicial reviews for me. We don't have to be polite to each other either, and that saves a lot of time," says Richard.
The Wise brothers spend, on average, an hour each night talking through cases on the phone, Richard often talking on his mobile while he supervises his children's bath time. On Sunday afternoons, the two brothers thrash out business further while jogging along the canal towpaths of Stoke, their home town.
Both are outsiders to the legal establishment. Richard describes his experience as a working-class child attending a "stuffy" middle-class school as being formative in shaping his attitude towards the class-ridden legal hierarchy. To this day, he takes institutional injustice towards vulnerable individuals personally, which partly explains his commitment to his clients.
"I felt like an outsider," explains Richard, who had learning difficulties and left school at 16 with two O-levels and not much self-confidence. "My mum and dad saw no value in further education."
Richard started out in his father's trade as an apprentice "slabber" , making fireplace surrounds from tile and plaster. Ian left school at 18 and worked as a labourer in a Crewe tea factory for 10 years while studying for an Open University degree.
Maverick to the last, Richard prides himself on not fitting into a comfortable "alternative" bracket either. "The trendy, radical lawyers down in London don't know what to make of me, because I work from an old-fashioned small- town firm of solicitors up north." He seems to delight in challenging, confusing and annoying the sort of people who wrote him off as a child, and clearly identifies far more with his clients than his colleagues.
During a five-year stint as a case worker with the Citizens' Advice Bureau, Richard worked extensively with people on benefits and in debt, and seems to be fired by a desire to redress the balance of power in their favour. In 1989 he joined a radical firm of solicitors in the Midlands, and started doing ground-breaking para-legal work with imprisoned poll-tax defaulters. Repeatedly challenging magistrates through the High Court, he went on successfully to sue several magistrates for unlawful imprisonment, and in so doing he believes he brought about a sharp drop in the jailing of poll-tax defaulters.
Last year, when the female prison population swelled to a record of nearly 2,000, several governors, desperate to free places by getting non-criminals out of jail, called Wise and asked him to help. "The prisons needed the space, and they were also observing that a lot of the women in for debt were assimilating the behaviour of the serious criminals they were alongside," says Wise.
The motivating factor for Wise in getting involved was the thought of the "collateral damage" that the jailing of debtors can do to dependants. When women are jailed, their children are often taken into local authority care.
The bail officer at Holloway prison in London now refers the handful of debtors who arrive at the prison every day directly to Wise. Today they fax through papers for a new inmate called Sandra (not her real name) who has been sent down for 14 days for outstanding fines for soliciting totalling nearly pounds 500.
Richard springs into action. "Every new case is important and exciting," he says. "Not because of the legal principles, but because each one of these clients has got a personal tragedy to tell."
Within minutes he has Sandra on the phone and is coaxing her life story out of her. It turns out that she is a 25-year-old single parent with three small children, all of them suffering from sickle cell anaemia and in need of weekly hospital treatment. "You'll be out by tonight," he murmurs to her before hanging up.
Bristling with indignation, Wise is operating on full throttle. "I work on a different timescale to most solicitors," he says. "If I don't get her out within six hours, I've failed."
Within minutes he has e-mailed his brother, faxed the magistrates' court that sentenced Sandra, and is on the phone to the court clerk threatening a High Court action.
Wise's methods amount to a kind of bureaucratic terrorism. He has won plenty of enemies with his take-no-prisoners tactics, including Rosemary Thomson, chairman of the Magistrates Association.
"Richard has decided that part of his career is to work with women defaulters," she says. "But men and women are equal before the law. How are we to say that we are not going to send women with young children to prison for fine default? People are responsible for their own finances. Why can't they pay?" She points out that there are "a lot of poor people who are paying up with great difficulty". Why, in that case, should anybody be let off?
Others gush praise for Wise. "He's saving the country a lot of money," says Chris Tchaikovsky of the charity Women in Prison. The cost of jailing a woman is about pounds 600 per week, a sum greater than most of the debts that people are imprisoned for. "It's not every solicitor who will work that far and go that extra mile to get women out," she says, "yet there's nothing self-important, stuffy, altruistic or smug about him."
Tchaikovsky and other campaigners object to the jailing of debtors because, they say, it criminalises the poor, punishes their children and betrays a "Dickensian" attitude towards poverty redolent of the Victorian workhouse and poor laws. But in the end, the most persuasive argument against the practise is cost. A Bill aimed at ending the jailing of debtors in all but the most extreme cases will be launched by MPs later this month. It has cross-party support and would cut the number of people jailed for debt by about 80 per cent, saving up to pounds 20m of public money each year.
Until the law is changed, Wise remains a lifeline for pressured prison governors and jailed debtors alike. Of the 360 cases he has handled in the past year and a half, only five have failed.
As Wise drives his children from the childminders' back to his office, where they will wait for him to finish some outstanding work, his mobile rings. His brother is calling with the news that magistrates have signed the bail order for Sandra's release. Happy in the knowledge that she will be back home tonight with her children, Wise will be able to relax and get stuck into the next case.
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