False Allegations: Innovation of Justice Speech

Text of the speech delivered by Simon Warr at the Innovation of Justice Conference, University of Manchester, Saturday 24th November 2018

False Allegations

I want you to form a picture in your mind - you have devoted the best part of 35 years to school mastering - and when I use the verb 'school mastering', as opposed to merely teaching - I refer to a career not just imparting knowledge in a classroom, but also coaching over 70 senior sports' teams, producing and directing over 30 major school plays and musicals, and being a Housemaster to over 70 adolescent boys; i.e. totally immersing yourself in educating teenage children. Then, in the blink of an eye, everything you have built up over more than three decades is, for no good reason, smashed to pieces by agents of the state.

Photo courtesy of Innovation of Justice

It was an immensely rewarding career in so many ways and, still only in my 50s, I felt, as I went to bed on the 17th of December 2012, at the start of the Christmas holidays, as fresh as ever. Apart from attending the funeral of my adoptive mother in 1999, I'd not missed a single day of school in all that time. That night in December 2012, I slept as soundly as ever, knowing that, after another busy term, I didn't need to wake up to the alarm clock the following day, I could sleep in for as long as I wished.

As it turned out, I was awoken the following morning at 7.15am by a loud wrapping on my kitchen door. Who could this be at such an unearthly hour? As I quickly descended the stairs, I presumed it was the property services department coming to service my kitchen boiler. 

'Who is it?'
'The Suffolk police - open the door.'

Unsurprisingly, this announcement came as a shock. I struggled to find the kitchen door key, in spite of the fact it was in its usual place.

'Open the door, now!' The message was clear and uncompromising. I thought momentarily they were going to smash their way in.

As soon as I had opened the door, four police officers barged past me and the fifth one read me my rights. I was being arrested for the alleged historical abuse of a former pupil at St. George's School, where I had spent teaching for two years during the early 80s. I had absolutely no recollection of the name they gave me. I can't mention his name to you now because he has the luxury of lifelong anonymity, even though it was subsequently proven beyond any reasonable doubt that, when he accused me of touching him inappropriately in a shower room 30 years previously, he was lying through his teeth. More of him and his mendacious ways to come.

The police were ruthless in their m.o. at my home that morning - cold/efficient/clinical/harsh. They had absolutely no regard for the trauma they were putting me through. I can't imagine their approach would have been much different had I been accused of plotting to blow up number 10 Downing Street.

As they were tossing my possessions onto the floor, in a desperate attempt to find anything incriminating to support their case - and be in no doubt when the police decide to raid a suspect's home, they have absolutely no intention of carrying out their perceived duties in a fair, balanced manner - all they are concerned with is 'evidence to support the guilt of their target.' As they were rummaging through every book/magazine/DVD/photo/piece of private correspondence, a mobile phone belonging to one of the officers rang:

'I'll ask him. Where is the key to the small bedroom in your flat?'

I then realised they were simultaneously raiding my private accommodation in London. I was told to wash and dress and was escorted to an awaiting car by two officers as the rest of the team continued their search.

If I can draw a parallel, my feelings of shock were, at that time, akin to being told a member of one's close family had suddenly died or that you had just been diagnosed with a serious illness. I felt total despair because I knew immediately just to be arrested for alleged child abuse is the end of one's life as you'd known it.

At Ipswich police station, finger prints and DNA were taken and I was put into a cell. And that is where I languished for the next five hours, sitting on an excuse for a bed, staring at a blank wall, wondering how on earth this nightmare had come about. I kept repeating the name of my accuser over and over in my head but I was none the wiser. (Ultimately, this was of no surprise when it became clear I had had little, if anything, to do with the liar). Around about lunchtime, I was escorted to a police interview room and the allegation was put to me and I was asked to comment.

As Ann Widdecombe wrote in her Daily Express column in March 2017: 'I have just finished reading a book called 'Presumed Guilty', by Simon Warr, a teacher falsely accused of child abuse. He was acquitted by a jury in under 40 minutes - during which time, as he points out, the jurors had to go to the loo, settle in their jury room and elect a foreman. By the end of the book I was shaking with outrage because all the evidence which acquitted him was there from the very start of the police investigation.'

The allegation was that, after teaching this former pupil of St. George's P.E., when he was just 11 years of age, I had checked to see he was dry in a shower room in an inappropriate manner by asking him to bend over and inspect his bottom. When he had first made the complaint, just after he had been awarded a hefty payout having accused another member of staff of sexual abuse, he made no mention of my having touched him. At that point the police informed him the allegation was insufficient to have me arrested. No arrest meant no compensation, of course.

Six months later, after Jimmy Savile's alleged exploits exploded into the media, my accuser decided he now remembered, yes, I did touch his genitals. He had put it back to the deep recesses of his mind but, seeing and hearing me in the media repeatedly during 2012 had jolted his memory. Now the police had enough for my arrest.

I explained to the police that afternoon in the interview room, a) I had never taught a lesson of P.E. in my entire career and b) I am a secondary school teacher and, at the age of 11, he would have been in the junior part of the school. I gave them the names of the members of the discrete St. George's P.E. department and presumed they would locate these people to confirm if I were telling the truth.

They didn't bother. The ironic thing is most of these P.E. teachers were still living and working in Suffolk. I repeat, they didn't bother to follow up the leads. Why? One can only assume they WANTED me to be guilty.

I was on bail for the next nine months as, what I now know, the police tried desperately to find other former pupils to come forward. One ex-pupil of St. George's did but he happened to be a close friend of my initial accuser! They had both waived their anonymity after the outcome of the previous court case against another teacher, when both secured tens of thousands of pounds in compensation. In fact, they were so close that, immediately after that case, they both gave an interview to a tabloid newspaper (still no mention of me, of course) about all the awful things which had happened to them at St. George's. This friend who now came forward made no allegation of touching - he just confirmed my checking after P.E. lessons. 

Needless to state, even though the police had access to my mobile and computer records, to every email and letter I had ever written and received, to every photo I had taken or been sent, to every personal card I had received, my accusers had conveniently no internet history for the eventual defence team to access because it had all been supposedly lost. Wasn't that handy?

After months of trawling, the police finally managed to get hold of a person who had been a pupil in my boarding house in the school where I had been teaching for the previous 30 years, who, after much encouragement, alleged that,, in 1991, I had chased him a round the house day room (in full view of every other pupil), trying to pinch his bottom. This was the allegation that the police and the CPS needed to charge me. After all, it would have been difficult for anyone to believe I would act inappropriately at a school 30 years previously and then nothing at all at the school where I had taught for the past three decades. It wasn't much for the police officers but at least it was some reward for their months of trawling.

I'll just say a few words about trawling: trawling is the method used by the police to search and, in some cases, advertise for fresh complainants. Advertise, I hear you shout, NEVER. Yes, advertise - in my case a businessman in Newbury volunteered himself to act as an agent for the police. The police reckon, quite correctly as it happens, that the more complainants who step forward, even if those complaints are weak and/or unlikely, the more chance the police and CPS have of convincing the jury that the person in the dock is a dirty old man. What's more, any allegations which emerge as a result of trawling are presented to juries as if they were entirely spontaneous when, in point of fact, they are anything but.  

Is it not obvious to anyone with an I.Q. above the day's temperature that there is an enormous difference between spontaneous complaints made by individuals who have no connection with each other, and who have not read about the accused online or in a newspaper, and those manufactured through collusion? Is anyone really surprised that people make allegations when the police fish for complaints and, of course, there is a chance of an ultimate hefty compensation payout, often more money than many of these accusers have had access to in their entire lives. 

I state here and now that trawling operations are the most dangerous development in the history of police investigations. They have been allowed to become more and more widespread to the point of becoming standard practice, despite Parliament having legislated to put a stop to such investigative procedures through the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

One thing is for certain: trawling is a sure method of destroying the presumption of innocence. What's more, because of the particular characteristics of trawling operations, potential witnesses might be pressurised into making exaggerated or even false statements. I want to read a section from a statement written by the ex- Head boy from St. George's, now a successful teacher and child protection officer at a school in Hampshire, after he had been visited by the Suffolk police in 2014:-

'I was approached by the police earlier this year; they visited my home and took a statement. I was asked repeatedly by the police about his supervision of post P.E. showers and I told them repeatedly he never did this. In my entire time at St. George's, I never heard any rumours regarding Mr. Warr and of any improper conduct on his part.'. 

He goes on to state: 'The police were not impartial. They made it clear that Mr. Warr was guilty of abusing children and that he would be convicted without question.'  The person states finally, 'As you can imagine, I was very upset  by this visit and had to take some time off work to get things right in my head.'

Now, just suppose, this successful professional man had been someone quite different... down on his luck or perhaps a certain antipathy towards his former teachers due to having been disciplined unfairly as he viewed it… the police come to visit and that person is soon left in no doubt what they want him to say. The likelihood, of course, is he will give the police what they want, particularly as he will be well aware that a fat wad of cash will be coming his way if there is a guilty verdict.

Another ex-pupil of mine, now a City high flyer, who was interviewed over the phone about me, was very direct when he emailed the police after being told he would not be required to give a statement:-

'You don't seem to be at all interested that, in my experience, Simon never acted in a way that these allegations could be true... it is pretty clear that you are not interested in actually investigating whether these allegations are indeed true, you are just searching for any old scrap to assassinate his character. Very worrying, and in light of current high profile cases falling down, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.' Bold words from a bold man.

Despite the absence of any evidence, other than the suspect claims of a pair of palpable chancers, I was charged with seven counts of historical abuse on the 10th of September, 2013. The story was given a large spread in one of the daily nationals, the same newspaper making absolutely no mention of my case when I was acquitted at Ipswich Crown Court 13 months later. Surprised? Thought not.

I quickly learned that I was basically on my own in preparing my defence and I was up against the generous resources of a police incident room team. As police budgets were being cut, alleged historical abuse inquiry teams seemed free to spend money like there was no tomorrow. The trial date was set for March 2014 but, as the date approached, the prosecution seemed unable to get their house in order in time and the date was put back to October 2014, nearly two years after I had been originally arrested (672 days, to be precise). As soon as news hit the net of the postponement, the Newbury businessman was appealing on behalf of the police for others to come forward... oh, so this is why the trial has been postponed, I thought.

Eventually the time arrived and in October 2014, I was put into that glass cage where all defendants have to sit and I was forced to sit through two days of the prosecution case, two days of the most preposterous, the most absurd lies I have ever had to endure. The two main complainants came across as damaged individuals but the fact which was most clear to all in the court was they were both lying through their teeth.

How on earth did we arrive at a situation in which the police decide at the outset that a suspect, an accused person, is guilty and they then proceed to so-called 'investigate' in a totally biased, unjust manner? How is it the CPS and the police work so closely on cases, when the CPS itself was introduced in 1986 as an independent body as a result of public disquiet about the police railroading suspects into court?

When the platinum-haired DJ Jimmy Savile died in 2011 and subsequent allegations about his conduct came to the fore, I believe a collective insanity gripped sections of our society here in the UK. The police were embarrassed by the revelations because they had ignored repeated disquiet about his conduct around young women. Operation Yewtree was duly set up and the CPS and police set out on a path of revenge. 

Who can ever forget those words which fell from the mouth of the then Director of Public Prosecutions in 2013, Keir Starmer: 

'Complainants - only he used the word 'victims' - complainants who come forward to allege historical abuse will be believed.' He used the verb 'believe' - accept as true or conveying the truth! This was the message he was issuing to the police - believe complainants. Mr. Starmer, I shouted at the radio, it is not the police's job to believe or disbelieve either the complainant or the accused - it is their job, in any decent, civilised society, to investigate without fear or favour. So, it became clear, traditional safeguards which protect those who are accused were to be abandoned. The assumption that someone is innocent until proven guilty was to be thrown away and the police were being told to set about their work with a 'prosecute at all costs' mindset. The CPS would now be able to charge despite the case presented to them having being built upon weak, uncorroborated, disputed allegations. 

Soon afterwards, an official line was issued from above: 

'Using the lack of corroboration of a complainant's account to justify a decision to drop proceedings is flawed.'

The police were now in almost overdrive, as anyone accused of historical child abuse was akin to a lamb to the slaughter. The effective removal of the need for corroboration in cases of historical sexual charges (which, incidentally, is still required in Scottish law), in conjunction with the judges' failure to caution a jury as to this important issue, has made it much more likely that malicious false allegations can be placed before a jury in the guise of firm evidence. An unsupported allegation is now viewed as evidence in its own right - a perfect gift for any liar, fantasist or fraudster. The obvious collusion between my two complainants was not looked into by the police, who accepted what they had to say as the absolute truth. Indeed, one of the interviewing officers said to me: 'Here we have a similar allegation being made by another pupil in the changing room. What have you got to say about this?'  She seemed to be suggesting this suggested that both were telling the truth.

 Nor did the police make any effort to access the online and phone activity between the two friends just prior and just after my arrest. This is common practice. Service providers are happy to provide the police with a suspect's online activity in murder or financial fraud investigations but no such effort is made when an accuser's testimony is challenged by the defence in alleged sexual abuse cases. These so-called police investigations of alleged historical sexual abuse are so biased that officers are allowing complainants to hide their online history and to revise their statements once the police have interviewed the accused. Thus, even if the accused can demonstrate a firm alibi, dates and times can be altered by the prosecution team prior to any court trial. 

Further to this, it is now incumbent on the defence to serve a pre-trial statement, which has made it much easier for the police to alert complainants about any evidence that might otherwise undermine a prosecution case. And if anybody fighting for his reputation and career thinks the police will interview any potential witnesses mentioned by the defendant during initial interviews, you will be sorely disappointed. I learned this through first hand experience. I handed them names of those who could prove my innocence. They didn't bother to pursue any line of inquiry which might cast doubt upon their complainants' allegations. And I use the possessive adjective 'THEIR' pointedly. The police manacled themselves to the allegations - the complainants were offered succour, total police support throughout. 

And it wasn't just the police who were keen to have me hung, drawn and quartered in a court of law, so too were the Personal Injury lawyers, those 'No Win, No Fee' solicitors, those heroes riding on their white chargers to save the abused; they were waiting in the wings throughout the initial stages, prompting and encouraging the complainants. In the motor industry, these people are referred to as 'ambulance chasers'. They and those whiplash claims have finally been sussed, so these self- appointed saviours have turned their attention to the sexual abuse allegation industry, realising they are on much safer ground because the whole topic is so sensitive, there is little chance of anyone calling them to account. They rarely tout for business within families, of course, because there's so little money to be made; they far prefer organisations, like schools, hospitals, the Church, where there is almost always an insurance policy from which to claim. 

One of the most dangerous trends for any society is when police investigations and prosecutors' charging decisions are based upon ideological notions, rather than following the law. And one of these symptoms is when the prosecution and police withhold evidence from the defence team.

Over the past year we have read about numerous court cases which have been abandoned on account of a failure by the CPS and the police to disclose key evidence, usually found on electronic equipment, to the defence. The recent experience of Liam Allen is known to us all, of course. But his is just one case among many. The excuse offered is the prosecution is usually overburdened and this has resulted in these gross errors, if they are indeed simply 'errors'. 

If I might point out, with regard to being overburdened, I was left to conduct my own entire defence during 2013/14, without any help, financial or otherwise, from anywhere nor from anyone. I managed. Of course, we have to concede that, since 2010, there have been swingeing cuts within the CPS - 1/4 of its budget and 1/3 of its staff but this cannot, and must not, be an excuse for negligence or tampering with due, just process. The situation has got so bad that juries have now become wise to the prosecutors and police withholding vital evidence. If we do not address this disclosure issue urgently, palpably guilty defendants will be acquitted because jury members will be unsure whether or not they've heard the whole truth from the prosecuting team.

An admission that errors had been made have had to be ripped out of the chief prosecutors - only last year the recently retired Director of Public Prosecution (2013-2108), Alison Saunders, was asserting without equivocation that there were no innocent people in prison as a result of disclosure failures. Yet, recently the CPS Inspectorate Report stated that 'there has been a steady stream of miscarriages of justice.' It pains me to think of all those currently banged up who are completely innocent of the charges for which they were found guilty. Will they ever achieve proper justice? Highly unlikely.

And, what happens to those who lie and lie again for their own greedy, malicious and narcissistic reasons? When it is eventually obvious a complainant has been feeding the police and prosecutors a pile of lies, what happens? 

When I went to Bury St. Edmunds police station in November 2014, after the conclusion of my trial, to retrieve my possessions which the police had removed from my homes, I asked the chief investigative officer whether I would, at the very least, be receiving an apology from the two liars. Her immediate answer: 'That's not going to happen.' 

But they had been proven to be lying, what's more perjuring themselves in a court of law, for their own iniquitous ends, but I was being told that they were to face no repercussions. The main reason, of course, comes down, once again, to the fact that the police had offered them succour, had supported them throughout the process, even encouraged them, so they were now, after more than 672 days, unable to swap sides and carry out their duty. The police had, as they often do in this type of investigation, compromised themselves. 

My two accusers have lifelong anonymity despite having ruined my successful teaching career, having had me thrown out of my home and community of thirty years, having destroyed my reputation and made me the target of appalling online abuse, and they were being allowed to walk away unpunished. Had they invented a more plausible pack of lies, I could well have lost my freedom. So while they've walked away scot free, it is I who continue to suffer. Don't think for a moment that if you are found not guilty in a court of law, that's the end of the matter. These cases can destroy an accused person utterly, regardless of the outcome of any trial. A couple of hundred years ago a criminal would have been branded on his forehead - nowadays the internet does the branding but, unlike in yesteryear, you don't have to be found guilty of having committed a crime to be indelibly marked for life.

I repeat the present m.o. is so iniquitous that the two liars have continued their lives as if nothing had happened, yet they both lied and lied again. Is this a fair way of operating? Is this proper justice in action? 

When I went to see my local M.P. last year, her response was one of uninterest - there are no votes and public approbation for dealing with unscrupulous fantasists and liars who accuse innocent people of abuse, of course.  As I sat in front of this elected M.P., explaining the iniquities of it all, she looked almost bored. Needless to state, I've heard nothing back. 

To sum up, then, and I apologise if some of these points are blindingly obvious:-

1. The police must investigate all allegations of crime, regardless of the type of crime, without fear or favour.
2. Police trawling must cease forthwith.
3. We must put a stop to the handing out of large sums of money in compensation. Somebody who has been genuinely abused should be offered, at the state's expense, unfettered access to the best psychological treatment, knowing the perpetrator is locked up at Her Majesty's Pleasure for many years.
4. Because child abuse is a crimen exceptum, anyone accused of child abuse, whether historical or recent, should be granted anonymity until found guilty in a court of law. because once a suspect's name is made public, he/she will be tarnished forever.

What is vital is that we don't inadvertently bring about some kind of ethical collapse: in a bid to safeguard the lives of innocent children and to repair their own reputation, the police and CPS's approach to their investigations cannot continue to be a weapon for destroying the lives of innocent adults.

I finish with the words of that outstanding author, recently deceased, Richard Webster: 'In its zeal to believe ALL allegations, the police and CPS have betrayed the very people it seeks to protect.'