The 3 Cs: Contamination, Collusion, Concoction

I was alerted to this topic during the two years (2013/14) I was under suspicion of having inappropriately touched a child in a school changing room back in the early 1980s. The allegation had absolutely no truth in it whatsoever but I was disturbed to learn that, during the so-called investigation, somebody, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the case, had appointed himself a sort of police helper and was actively touting for other complainants to come forward via postings on the internet.

In April 2014, he posted the following: 'Simon Warr's trial has been postponed until October 2014. The police have asked me to inform you all that they are still open for statements. You can DM me.' etc etc.

This seemed to be a clarion call for more former pupils to come forward. I decided to do some research into this sordid practice.

Allegations of institutional historical sexual and physical abuse have become an industry here in the UK, due to the prospect of generous compensation payments. Although the sums paid to alleged victims of sexual abuse are limited under the government’s 'Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority' (CICA), personal injury solicitors have realised that most institutions – particularly boarding schools and local authority children’s homes – have public liability insurance that offers far richer pickings for claimants. Individual claims can easily top £100,000 and many insurers prefer to settle these claims out of court, rather than incur the heavy costs of official legal proceedings and the risk of the associated negative publicity.

What I found particularly concerning is the role being played by private individuals in actively trawling online for, usually, historical allegations – true or fabricated – that can ultimately be used to claim compensation. In some cases the alleged target(s) may be deceased, but many others are still living and, in these cases, complaints can be passed onto the local police. In a few very troubling instances, the police themselves appear to be supporting these trawling operations by sharing intelligence with the private citizens who administer the web pages.

While bringing genuine sex offenders to justice is a laudable aim, there are serious problems when private, unaccountable individuals start to play a key role in identifying potential complainants, meeting them face to face privately, without witnesses or any official oversight, taking initial statements of ‘evidence’ and then coaching them prior to passing their details on to firms of personal injury solicitors and then to the local police force.

This practice raises three major concerns about the integrity of any evidence that may emerge via these ‘trawling’ operations – the 3 Cs:

• Contamination – where the individuals involved in trawling ‘implant’ (or even fabricate) memories of abuse, or make suggestions to often vulnerable or disturbed adults; or to those adults who are down on their financial luck.
• Collusion – by networking between complainants, either acting as 'a go-between' for information, or sharing unofficial statements made by other complainants from the same institution, thereby adding unmerited credibility to their allegations.
• Concoction – where completely fictitious, malicious allegations against innocent people are created and developed, before being presented to the police as spontaneous claims of sexual abuse.

Even when historical allegations of abuse may be grounded in fact, the processes of contamination and collusion – if proven – may well result in a complainant's evidence being treated as unreliable. In such cases, the intervention of online trawlers has the very real potential to do enormous harm to prosecutions. The end result may be that the guilty go free, due to the meddling of unqualified and irresponsible ‘enthusiasts’.

Moreover, there is also the inescapable fact that those who orchestrate such online trawling activities have no professional training or duty of care to anyone. Implanting or encouraging false memories can have devastating consequences, not only to an innocent target but also in cases where damaged or vulnerable people are effectively being manipulated to suit the trawler's own objectives. It isn’t unknown for this type of obsessive to publish personal details of those alleging sexual abuse, even against the wishes of the person who has disclosed highly sensitive information to him or her. In such cases, the clear goal of the online trawler is self-aggrandisement and the cultivation of a ‘saviour/hero’ figure. Any damage to those who have unwisely shared their real or fantasy experiences with such individuals is dismissed as collateral damage. In some cases, irreparable harm can be caused to families, including young children, due to irresponsible behaviour of this kind.

Of course, there are some who set themselves up as trawlers who may well have much darker motives. There are doubtless a number of individuals who find stories of sexual molestation – real or imaginary – stimulating and exciting. These voyeurs – for that is what they are in reality – enjoy listening to every salacious detail of what they are being told. Yet they would deny vehemently any such suggestion from puzzled observers, who might enquire why they are so fascinated by the sexual degradation and abuse of children. It would not be unfair to describe such obsessive characters as aural scopophiliacs… deriving their sexual pleasure from listening to other’s accounts of sexual abuse. Many of these perverts are very accomplished at hiding in plain sight.

Since private individuals – whether they be vigilantes or sexual abuse obsessives – who engage in these trawling operations are not bound by legal safeguards and rules which are designed to protect suspects from the contamination of evidence or collusion between accusers, any police investigation that has been launched as a result of information emerging from this type of trawling may well be compromised from the very beginning, especially if the role played by the trawler is actively concealed by detectives from the defence and the jury in criminal trials. There is a very real risk of miscarriages of justice and innocent people being wrongly convicted, due to the manipulation and even creation of bogus ‘evidence’, especially when prosecutors often rely on similar fact evidence to convince juries of a defendant’s guilt.

So we really do need to ask: how many wrongful convictions may have occurred as a direct result of this online trawling? All defence teams should be alert to possible contamination of evidence and active collusion between former pupils, as well as the concoction of completely false abuse claims by unscrupulous, malicious, mendacious adults, who are seeking substantial compensation payouts for historical institutional sexual abuse that may never have taken place outside of their own fetid, disturbed imaginations. Just like the two who accused me back in 2012.