Category Archives: justice

The mad waste of public money by UK’s leading nuclear giants to pursue costs against a whistleblower at your expense

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Sellafield

One aspect of the second recent cost hearing against whistleblower and human resources consultant Alison McDermott by Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which was not covered is the cost to the public and us the taxpayer.

During the hearing Deshpal Panesar, KC Sellafield’s lawyer from Old Square Chambers, rather pompously told the hearing that the fact Sellafield was claiming £20,000 off Alison was ” to protect the public purse”. He and the Nuclear Commissioning Authority which was also claiming £20,000 made a huge point that her “unreasonable behaviour” by pursing them at a tribunal meant she should pay a penalty.

What is now emerging from Freedom of Information requests is that the cost to bring this action far outweighs the money they will receive even if they are 100 per cent successful.

Both nuclear giants have already spent a huge sum – nearly £700,000 of taxpayer’s money – fighting Alison, whose consultancy was terminated, after her report revealed bullying and fear among staff at the nuclear site in Sellafield.

Alison McDermott

Now it is known from FOI that both organisations have spent £59,000 between them on preparing the case for the second hearing on top of money they had already spent for the first costs hearing. This doesn’t include the cost of hearing itself which is about another £20,000 considering Sellafield’s lawyers Deshpal Paneser. KC charges £5500 a day for the hearing and Emma Mills, from DLA Piper, who charges £3000 a day . The NDA employed another barrister, Rachel Levene and solicitors Pinsent Mason. Plus there were paralegals at the hearing.

Now one would think that after a High Court judge had ruled that the first costs decision was ” unsafe” and said his view should be taken into account by judge Stuart Robertson, who has heard the second hearing, there would be pause for thought. Both nuclear organisations are also lucky they will not face an appeal. So any sane organisation would decide to leave it there.

Instead we have the economic madness, which no commercial company conducting a risk assessment would follow, of throwing more money at bringing a second case when there is not the slightest chance of getting their money back. Indeed even if they were 100 per cent successful they stand to lose £40,000 and that is by no means certain they will get that. It is only that it is our money from the taxpayer they can throw it around like confetti.

So why are they doing it? The decision must have been endorsed by Euan Hutton, the new chief executive.

Despite previously serving as a Mental Health Champion alongside Ms. McDermott to foster a kinder and more supportive work environment, Mr. Hutton is now relentlessly pursuing costs against her.

In various YouTube videos, Mr. Hutton espouses the importance of treating people with kindness, yet his actions towards Ms. McDermott are anything but.  He actually says that “kindness is putting in the time to think about how different people act differently, that’s what kindness is all about”  [second video from 20 seconds onwards].    By hounding her for costs related to her whistleblowing for the second time, he has subjected her to immense stress and anguish, betraying the values he once claimed to champion.

See https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1938802916244720

Euan Hutton’s video.

Now Sellafield receives £6.7 million daily from taxpayers. Mr. Hutton’s decision to waste these funds on a vindictive legal battle against a whistleblower is an egregious misuse of public money. It is a slap in the face to taxpayers who trust Sellafield to use their contributions responsibly.

The Guardian has reported that the National Audit Office will investigate Sellafield’s substantial expenditure.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/15/spending-watchdog-launches-investigation-into-sellafieldI intend to make the National Audit Office aware of this blog post, as it highlights the unethical and hypocritical behaviour of Mr. Hutton. I think the public would strongly disapprove of their money being used to persecute a brave individual who spoke out against wrongdoing.

Mr. Hutton should be held accountable for his actions, which have caused harm to Ms. McDermott and undermined Sellafield’s commitment to employee wellbeing and to a culture of openness.

But perhaps this is the real reason for using public money in this way is to silence anybody else who might be thinking of exposing the dark secrets inside Sellafield. She is not the only whistleblower.

I approached Sellafield and the NDA about this waste of money but both said

“These issues are still subject to legal proceedings. We cannot comment further at this stage.”

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Guest blog: Sellafield deploys reverse glasnost

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by Philip Whiteley

Sellafield site

As reported on this blog earlier this week, the confrontational, five-and-a-half-year whistleblowing litigation between equalities adviser Alison McDermott and Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority last week featured a one-day costs hearing at Leeds Employment Tribunal, even though an earlier costs award against Ms McDermott had been ruled as unsafe by the appeal court in London.
The aim of this article is to point to the public interest in matters at the heart of this case that have been treated lightly by the presiding Tribunal judges, and ignored by the two defending organizations (Respondents).

Alison McDermott


There have been strong, conflicting claims on both sides throughout the case, many of which related to the way in which litigation was conducted. These were the subject of last week’s hearing. The two Respondents were represented by KC Deshpal Panesar, for Sellafield, and Rachael Levene, for the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority, hired by the law firms DLA Piper and Pinsent Masons respectively.

Deshpal Panesar KC

In her address to the court, Ms McDermott reminded us of the public interest in her original report from 2018: the workplace culture at Sellafield. In her address, Ms McDermott reported that just 11% of people on the site strongly agreed that they could speak out without fear of reprisal.
I have seen employee opinion surveys from the site. The scores for the prioritization of safety as an issue are significantly higher than the scores for ability to speak out, indicating a serious gap between formal policy and managerial practices. This matters especially on a nuclear site.

Mikhael Gorbachev. Pic credit:BBC

Nearly 40 years ago, following the accident at the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine, the then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev recognized that a climate of fear both made such accidents more likely
and delayed a proportionate response. He instigated a policy of glasnost – freedom to speak up – as a direct consequence. This intuitive conclusion by Mr Gorbachev has since been vindicated by numerous workplace studies, which show that workplaces with low engagement and higher levels of fear are statistically more prone to accidents (the Gallup survey cited in this report, for example. the link is  Engaged Workplaces Are Safer for Employees (gallup.com)).
When I was talking with a press officer from the Office for Nuclear Regulation three years ago, in relation to the Ms McDermott case, he was unaware of this link, and assumed workplace culture and safety issues to be separate categories.

Rachel Levene

Rachael Levene, barrister for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, appointed by Pinsent Masons, last week claimed that Ms McDermott was not a whistleblower, and not entitled to protection from detriment under Section 47(B) of the relevant legislation. This was a narrow legal argument, while members of the press and the public can observe that Ms McDermott’s central claim of a bullying and toxic culture and an HR leadership that was not on top of the issues, have been the conclusions separately made by several authoritative sources:
 A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, commissioned by the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority,
 The BBC, in an investigation reported in March 2021 (as a declaration of
interest, I referred this story to the BBC), Link:Sellafield nuclear site a ‘toxic mix of bullying and harassment’ – BBC News:
 The Guardian, in a report in December 2023, link  Sellafield nuclear site workers claim ‘toxic culture’ of bullying, sexual harassment and drugs could put safety at risk | Energy industry | The Guardian
 The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s own representatives, speaking under oath at the main hearing on 29 June 2021, agreeing with the PwC report’s conclusions that the HR function was ‘not fit for purpose’’, praising Ms McDermott’s contribution and expressing surprise at her sudden departure, as
reported on this blog at the time. Link: Nuclear industry leaders contradict each other in landmark whistleblowing case | Westminster Confidential (davidhencke.com)

This evidence was missing from the 2021 Tribunal ruling that found against Ms McDermott. There is no transcript available at an Employment Tribunal, which hampered her appeal. I attended that day and have short-hand notes.
There is a significant public safety risk attended to last week’s hearing. Sellafield’s management were making a very public declaration that if someone dares criticize them, even if they have a strong case, sufficiently well founded to reach the appeal court which reached a balanced verdict, they risk having their professional reputation trashed and suffering the threat of a life-altering financial penalty (the Respondents have bid to claim a total of £40,000 from the Claimant). It is likely that those low levels of freedom to speak out will have fallen even further following last week’s hearing.
The principal tactic of the Respondents has been to promote a pejorative narrative about the claimant, largely based on her response to their own legal tactics. For example, from Mr Panesar we heard him say that Ms McDermott had made a false complaint of fabricated evidence being used against her, in a claim that was then dropped on the eve of a hearing, and that this was unreasonable behaviour.

Sellafield letters unlawfully processed on personal computers – ICO

From Ms McDermott, we learned that the evidence in question consisted of three letters purporting to complain about her conduct while working at the Sellafield site. This evidence was not presented at the beginning of litigation. At the point of her dismissal, she was informed that the sole reason for termination of her contract was financial – an explanation also given to the governing body. After Ms McDermott discovered that some £17 million had been allocated to work of a similar nature, the
Respondents switched to one of competence, admitting it had lied about the initial reason. The three letters only appeared one year later. The letters were produced on personal PCs, contrary to company policy. They were later found by the Information Commissioner’s Office to have been unlawfully
processed, in contravention of data protection law (Judge Lancaster wrongly described the ICO ruling as mere criticism in the 2021 tribunal ruling.)

As reported on this blog before, the metadata was wiped on one of the letters while in possession of DLA Piper. Link Sellafield Broke Data Rules in Whistleblower Case – Byline Times

When restored, the metadata showed that the document had been open for three hours at the point of its creation, during which time phone records showed that the author took a long phone call from the HR director Heather Roberts, the third Respondent in the case.
The focus by Sellafield’s lawyers last week on the style of whistleblowing or protests made by Ms McDermott, ignoring or downplaying their substance, is straight from the anti-whistleblower playbook. It has been used by several NHS trusts to discredit medical professionals raising safety concerns – several of whom were watching last week’s proceedings in Leeds, either in person or by remote link.

In NHS cases such as the case of Dr Usha Prasad (link Unfit for Purpose: The NHS appeal panel that upheld the sacking of Dr Usha Prasad | Westminster Confidential (davidhencke.com)and of Martyn Pitman, the narrative concerns relations with colleagues and associated allegations; again, a highly personal attack on the style of reporting used by the whistleblower, ignoring the substance of their reports.(link

 Whistleblowing ‘cost Hampshire doctor dearly’ after he loses tribunal | Employment tribunals | The Guardian

Quite how such tactics have come to be regarded as acceptable by Tribunal judges is a matter of concern, and is likely to come under scrutiny now that the NHS Whistleblowers’ Group, numbering some 1,600 individuals, has been invited to assist the Thirlwall Inquiry into the Lucy Letby case.
Sellafield’s lawyers and press officers will point to the 2021 ruling which found in their favour – a judgement that got the ICO ruling wrong, ignored swathes of evidence and multiple failures of disclosure by the Respondents. There is a term in football: the ugly win. Sellafield et al won ugly. But this is not football, and the ugliness is a much bigger story than the win.

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Sellafield whistleblower fights nuclear giants to avoid a £40,000 costs order for the second time around

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Alison McDermott

Alison McDermott, a human resources and diversity consultant, was back at a tribunal last week fighting a second attempt by Sellafield waste facility and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to demand costs after she brought a whistleblowing case against both of them.

The consultant was sacked by Sellafield after she compiled a report at their request which revealed bullying at the plant and since then has faced a tribunal and an appeal tribunal before this fresh action bought by both nuclear bodies. She lost the first tribunal heard by judge Lancaster who originally ordered she should pay the £40,000 costs. But an appeal judge Auerbach overturned the costs order as ” unsafe”,

This week both bodies decided to spend more taxpayers’ money and appeal the judge’s order to ditch the costs. If Sellafield succeeds it will recover just six per cent of the huge lawyers fees both bodies had paid to pursue her for years.

The hearing opened with a blistering attack on her by Sellafield’s lawyer, Deshpal Panesar KC, Of Old Square Chambers who is paid £5.500 a day, effectively said that everything Alison McDermott said , including her whistleblowing detriments was a ” baseless lie”.

He told the tribunal she had made  “baseless claims of the most damaging sort, representing an existential threat to the careers of multiple public servants, based on multiple untruths”. Indeed so strong was his attack that a person who overhead part of the proceedings thought I had tuned into the Old Bailey and was hearing the denunciation of a convicted criminal.

Rachel Levene

Rachael Levene, representing the NDA, said Ms McDermott had “acted unreasonably”  by involving the nuclear body in the case at all. She claimed that the body, which works closely with Sellafield, was not involved and Ms McDermott should have known that because of all the evidence it produced. Given that the body had failed to extradite itself from the tribunal in the first place, this seemed to me rather a chilling attitude to take as it suggests that claimants should be blamed if they bring a case at all.

The NDA then raised that it had offered £160,000 to settle the case – even though it was arguing at the same time it should not have been involved in the first place – but this had been rejected by her. Ms McDermott has said that she did not settle the case over the money but over a point of principle to raise the issue in a tribunal. She also said that judge Lancaster had refused herself and her husband’s request to contest the NDA’s version of what happened at the meeting when the offer was made.

Sellafield

Alison McDermott countered arguments by Deshpal Panesar by pointing out that the appeal judge had ruled that the costs had been ” unjustly awarded ” and questioned his assertion that she was not a whistleblower by pointing out that the appeal judge decided she was and that judge Lancaster’s tribunal had erred in its judgement on two disclosures.

She also pointed out that she had pressed repeatedly for mediation to solve the dispute but this had been rejected and also that both sides had decided to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on expensive lawyers when they had big human resources and legal departments, over 100 at Sellafield, which could have handled the case.

Moral obligation to scared staff at Sellafield- Alison McDermott

She told the judge :”I was brought in to do a job and I did my job. I felt a deep moral obligation to the people I was speaking to who were telling me how scared and stressed they were by the culture at Sellafield.”

She said she was told by Lesley Bowen, a senior HR Manager, at Sellafield that she was let go for financial reasons.  Ms McDermott asked if there were any other reasons and Lesley Bowen confirmed  in writing that it was purely down to financial constraints. But after Ms McDermott found out they had spent £17 million awarding HR contracts they changed their tune and said they had lied to her and that they were really letting her go due to performance concerns. Which is odd as they had just rehired her, according to Ms Bowen, due to her excellent past performance working across Sellafield and the NDA.

At an earlier tribunal she had felt she had been treated by Mr Panesar equally badly during cross examination

She told me:” I found he transgressed professional boundaries and went further and took no account that I was vulnerable to such criticism.
“Over many days he accused me of being “motivated by spite,” “self-serving,” “self-absorbed, “wholly intent on chasing a windfall”, “seeking to ruin the reputations of HR staff at Sellafield” and even “acting out of revenge” .

She also disputed any idea by submitting a Freedom of Information request to obtain information that had been withheld by Sellafield and the NDA amounted to ” unreasonable behaviour.” These included information that both Sellafield and the NDA has spent £670,000 between them on lawyers and the NDA has just spent another £45,00 on prelimary legal work to recover £20,000 from her.

She pointed out that she and a witness on her behalf, another whistleblower at Sellafield, Karl Connor, had experienced ” unremitting stress” from the management at Sellafield.

She concluded: “The Tribunal is implored to recognise the substantial challenges the Claimant has faced in bringing this whistleblowing claim which has now been ongoing for 5.5 years.  The Claimant asks the Tribunal to affirm whistleblowers’ vital role and prevent further harm or costs to the Claimant. The significance of not penalising whistleblowers is particularly acute in the context of Sellafield Ltd, a nuclear facility where the potential consequences of unchecked wrongdoing could be catastrophic.”

Judge Stuart Robertson reserved judgement which will announced later.

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Judge holds hearing to decide whether Dr Usha Prasad unfair dismissal case can go ahead

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Dr Usha Prasad

Dr Usha Prasad, the whistleblower cardiologist sacked by the Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust, was back at an employment tribunal yesterday to fight for a hearing that she had been unfairly dismissed.

The public hearing was delayed for nearly two hours because 400 pages of legal papers from the trust could not be immediately accessed to be read by the judge. So both sides spent three hours presenting oral evidence instead.

The successor trust, St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospital Group, is seeking to strike out her case saying a decision at a previous tribunal by Judge Hyams-Parish, which came down in favour of the trust over her claims of discrimination, victimisation, harassment and whistleblowing meant it should be the end of the matter.

Miss Rehana Azib, QC, for the trust argued that her dismissal was the consequence of the failure of her claims and there was no need for a further hearing.

To add to the confusion in the day Dr Prasad said a decision that the case should go ahead had already been taken in September 2022 – more than 18 months ago. . She said Judge Balogun had already rejected an attempt by the trust to strike out this further hearing and ordered that the case will be listed for a case management hearing for 2 hours and a separate full hearing listed for 3 days. “

She was told by the present judge that this ruling had been reconsidered by the judge. However it is extraordinary that Miss Azib excluded the letter saying the trust’s first strike out was unsuccessful from the trust’s bundle for the hearing. Dr Prasad had received no notice that this had been changed but yesterday’s hearing still went ahead.

Rehana Azib KC: Pic credit: Keble College, Oxford

Miss Azib, KC from 2, Temple Gardens Chambers, based nearly all her entire case against Dr Prasad on Judge Tony Hyams-Parish’s judgement. She also tried to extricate Jacqueline Totterdell, group chief executive of the trust, from the case brought by Dr Prasad by arguing she was not chief executive at the time at the time of her dismissal. She has however continued to authorise lawyers to pursue Dr Prasad. There followed an argument that her post represented the main body of the trust. Ms Azib told the judge that to bring a case against her personally rather than the trust would cause her stress and be time consuming from her other duties.

I covered the Hyams- Parish judgement at the time. My blog on his judgement is here.

Judge Christina Morton

The most dramatic part of the hearing came when Dr Prasad, challenged by Miss Azib’s statement that none of actions by the trust were judged by Hyams-Parish to have been connected to her whistleblowing claims, produced a stream of examples.

This included an attempt by Dr. James Marsh, now group deputy group chief executive, to water down her whistleblowing report on the ” avoidable death ” of heart patient, Mr P, which the trust confirmed at the Hyams-Parish hearing had never been reported by Richard Bogle, head of cardiology to the coroner or the Care Quality Commission. Her refusal to do seemed to lead to her internal disciplinary hearing..

She pointed out that there was no independent expert at the hearing to examine the case against her, all the people were colleagues of Dr Marsh and his wife in both NHS and private practice. A list of what turned out to be vexatious cases of her failures sent to the General Medical Council by the trust was compiled by Dr Marsh’s close colleague. They were thrown out by the GMC who exonerated and revalidated her to work anywhere in the UK. Judge Hyams-Parish did not want to see their report.

The most telling example was an email from the then chief executive of the trust Daniel Elkeles, offering to abandon the internal disciplinary proceedings against her if she dropped the tribunal case against the trust which contained the whistleblowing claim. He would help to revalidate her so long as she left the trust.

She also pointed out that she was banned from any clinical duty and told to stay in the office for 28 months before the disciplinary hearing and her dismissal. Since she saw 2,000 cardiology patients a year, this meant that the NHS – which was also hit by the pandemic- was depriving thousands of patients seeing a consultant whom the GMC had judged was perfectly competent to do her job.

As you will see in my contemporary blog on the Hyams-Parish judgement I noticed the judged ignored the plight of Patient P and the evidence of the letter from the chief executive to her at the time

She also accused lawyers for the trust of witholding information and misleading previous court hearings – particularly not revealing that when she could not attend a hearing the text of a doctor’s letter explaining why. The respondent’s lawyer also told the judge that Dr Prasad hadn’t submitted ” any particulars of her claIm” over this case yet she had submitted them to the respondent last April. She also didn’t tell the judge Usha’s detriment case had been listed for an appeal.

The accusations led Miss Azib to remind the judge that serious allegations had been raised in ” an open hearing.”

I got the impression that the lawyer and the judge would have much preferred this hearing to have been held without the public and the press being present. It is a good example of why there ought to be more coverage of what happens at employment tribunals.. The judge is reserving judgement.

Facts surrounding the case

The trust has engaged and paid 33 lawyers to pursue Dr Prasad over the last six years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer.

Nearly 10,000 NHS cardiology patients in South London and Surrey have been deprived of being treated by Dr Prasad while she was restricted from doing any clinical work.

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Whistleblower Dr Chris Day’s appeal: Has Judge Andrew Burns KC ruling made it impossible for him to get open justice?

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Andrew Burns KC

UPDATE: In a further twist in this long saga, High Court judge Dame Jennifer Eady, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal initially took a decision not to read Dr Day’s letter complaining about the injustices in the procedure of his tribunal case against Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Health Trust . Now it has been decided that another judge will rule whether she should read the letter. Such a move has been opposed by the trust, who are represented by Old Square Chambers.

Superficially the ruling by Deputy High Court judge Andrew Burns looked like a victory for the long campaigning whistleblower Dr Chris Day to get a fair hearing at his forthcoming Employment Appeal Tribunal. He was granted an appeal on six of the ten grounds presented to the hearing and he was publicly commended by the judge for restoring the employment rights of 54,000 doctors which had been taken away in a sleight of hand by the now merged Health Education England.

But a closer look at the judgement gives a rather different picture. Instead of allowing a full appeal of employment judge Ann Martin’s flawed hearing he introduced caveats and blocked the re-examining of crucial issues. These include examining whether MPs and the press have been misled by the NHS and their lawyers, whether deliberate concealment has occurred and such startling behaviour as a Lewisham and Greenwich health trust communications director destroying mid hearing 90,000 emails that could have helped Dr Day’s defence and subsequently declining to appear as a witness.. It also allowed the health trust’s lawyers to to traduce Dr Day’s public reputation and misrepresent his motives without fear of being dragged before the libel courts or even being properly cross examined about this at the tribunal.

Three Wise Monkeys – a rather good print by Swedish musician and artist Andreas Magnusson see https://printler.com/en/poster/167372/

In short Andrew Burns judgement is a ruling equivalent to the infamous “three wise monkeys” carving at a Japanese shrine. He ” sees no evil, he hears no evil and speaks no evil” at that flawed tribunal. And he has been given by Dr Day a chance to review his findings to take account of these omissions.

Dr Day’s points requesting a review are here.

To put it simply he is blind to Ann Martin’s mishandling of that tribunal, he is deaf to Dr Day’s arguments to put this right, and he is silent about the outrageous behaviour of the trust’s employees and their lawyers, particularly Ben Cooper, KC on traducing Dr Day’s reputation and it being broadcast to MPs, the public and other trusts.

As Dr Day puts in an email accompanying his crowd justice website ” which goes into all the legal details “The Judge has allowed me to have an appeal but taken all my weapons and has blocked key issues being explored.”

Ben Cooper KC

The language used against Dr Day by Old Square chambers lawyer Ben Cooper would be defamatory outside a court room. He is described as ” having an obsessive belief in his victimhood”, accused of an “elaborate rewriting of history by him to fit in with his narrative” and condemned his evidence as ” dishonest and underhand.”

When pressed on this by Dr Day’s barrister Andrew Allen KC at the June 2022 Mr Cooper conceded he had no example of what he meant from Dr Day’s witness statement and Mr Allen was then prevented from cross examining Mr Cooper on Dr Day’s supplementary statement rebutting Mr Cooper’s insults and allegations.

My Statement on Ben Cooper KC – DrChrisDay

To make matters worse Ben Cooper’s attack on Dr Day’s character has been picked up by a lawyer defending lawyers Hill Dickinson against Dr Day in another case. Dijen Basu, KC from Sergeants Inn Chambers, in a skeleton argument in a case still to be heard said of Dr Day ” The diagnosis of whistleblowitis is a pithy way of describing a man who had developed an obsessive belief in his own victimhood to the point of being prepared to dishonest and underhand in pursuit of what he saw as the virtue of his cause as Mr Cooper described him.”

The irony of this attack is the case revolves around Hill Dickinson depriving 54,000 junior doctors of their whistleblowing rights whilst not revealing key commissioning contracts  in disclosure the firm were paid to draft. Now who was really being dishonest and underhand!

As Dr Day purchased the transcript of Ann Martin’s tribunal he has been able to point out that cross examination of Ben Cooper’s claims was halted by the judge but she went on to allude to Ben Cooper’s argument against Dr Day in her public judgement. Dr Day argued that this a breach of court procedure but the judge did not agree.

Judge Andrew Burns did agree he had made a mistake in describing Dr Day’s withdrawal in a previous hearing in this long dispute as being caused by duress rather than misrepresentation.. This was when his lawyer Chris Milson, without his instructions, tried to negotiate a settlement which included a confidentiality clause. Dr Day was able to get Judge Burns to accept that his case was not one of duress but one of serious allegations of misrepresentation from a number of lawyers whose accounts of the infamous settlement of the Day Case in 2018 do not add up.

Dr Day has now written to Judge Dame Jennifer Eady, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunals, asking her to intervene.

Dr Chris Day

Letter to Dame Eady President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal – DrChrisDay

He writes: “It may come as no surprise that I and large numbers of doctors feel deeply let down by the way the EAT has handled my case over the last 10 years. I believe its decisions have not been logical and have ignored evidence, pleadings and important appeal points. I believe the most likely explanation for
this is the EAT’s failure to manage properly the conflicts of interests and human factors that have come into play when Judges have dealt with certain issues in my case affecting their legal colleagues.”

He goes on: “The destruction, concealment and ignoring of large amounts of evidence at the June 2022 ET hearing of my case and the obstruction of 2 of our proposed cross examinations was widely reported and shocked people. Many were expecting these obvious issues to be dealt with decisively by the appeal tribunal. Instead, I have had to get into an argument with the EAT about whether such extraordinary conduct is enough for me to advance procedural unfairness as a ground of appeal”

He adds: “I am seriously considering whether I can proceed with an appeal in this court whilst the EAT refuses to answer” these points.

A check on social media of Judge Burns X account by 54,000 doctors, a group who campaign for the whistleblowing rights of junior doctors reveals how closely 3 of the lawyers involved on both sides of the Day settlement are connected socially.

Judge Andrew Burns, a former lawyer at Devereux follows and is followed by Chris Milsom – Dr Day’s lawyer in a previous 2018 case that settled ; he follows Old Square Chambers, which has a leading role in pursuing whistleblowers; Martin Hamilton, managing partner, Capsticks who Dr Day alleges misled MPs and the Board of Lewisham and Greenwich about his case and settlement. Other followers include Nadia Motraghi, KC, another Old Square Chambers that was against Dr Day, who also pursued Dr Usha Prasad, a whistleblower cardiologist at Georges and Epsom St Helier NHS trust.

Dame Jennifer Eady

Finally it turns out that judge Dame Jennifer Eady – whom Dr Day is relying on to adjudicate about this – is a former lawyer at Old Square Chambers from 1990 to 2013. During her time at Old Square Chambers, for 13 years from 2000, Ben Cooper KC, and from 2004 Nadia Motraghi were colleagues. It would be amazing if they don’t know each other very well as they practised in the same field.

So how will Dr Day get a fair hearing when three of the lawyers he is accusing of misleading on the settlement are so closely linked to the judge and the final arbiter is their former colleague now in an all powerful position to control the entire employment appeal tribunal system.

My final point from covering a number of whistleblower tribunals is that I am disgusted at the way very senior professional lawyers seem to enjoy denigrating, insulting, and belittling the careers of eminent doctors whose main concerns are to protect the public from bad medical practices which endanger lives.

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Exclusive: New mediation demanded for 50s women as judicial review is postponed

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CEDAWinLAW takes the fight to the UN in Geneva

Former judgeJocelynne Scutt (middle) with Professor Natasha Despoja, a CEDAW committee member ((left) and Dr Elgun Safarov ( deputy chairman ( Right)

CEDAWinLAW, the successor organisation to Backto60, has decided to postpone its legal action on behalf of all 1950s women to force Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, to go to mediation over the long standing fight over the six year delay in paying out women’s pensions.

A statement from the organisation emphasises that this is a postponement not a total withdrawal of the case since preliminary work by their lawyers has found that Mell Stride did act unlawfully by not agreeing to mediation. Effectively it leaves a Sword of Damocles hanging over Mr Stride and Liz Kendall, his potential Labour successor as work and pensions secretary, should the party win the next general election.

The statement reads:

CEDAWinLAW has decided to postpone its action against the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions. Whilst its case is clear that the Secretary of State refused unlawfully, reasonable invitations to mediate made by Garden Court, it has decided to wait upon further developments before proceeding with its judicial review which it will now withdraw. Funds generously donated have been used in launching the judicial review and taking advice. Those funds fell short in timing of providing funds for a full-blown fight in front to the court. Our counsel said of the fight; “This is an important challenge for so many 1950’s Women in this country. The weight of the evidence indicates a grave injustice to them, and we will robustly represent their interests as we move forward with the assistance of our legal team.”. Whilst in the short term we have not achieved our goal for 1950s women’s pension rights, we have brought further notice to their plight and increased the political pressure which continues to build. We shall succeed for all those women

The decision will be disappointing for the women as an early court hearing on mediation was seen as better bet than the compensation likely to be awarded by the Parliamentary Ombudsman which is in the region of £1000 to £2900. The Department of Work and Pensions opposes compensation to any of the women either via the Ombudsman’s guidelines or through mediation.

CEDAWinLAW was able to raise money easily for the first stage to allow lawyers to prepare a case but lack of further wider publicity meant there was not enough money to continue to a full hearing.

WASPI did not help either. It expressed interest in becoming a party to the case and their lawyers demanded access to the all the papers. They also threatened CEDAWinLAW with costs unless they handed them. When they got access to the papers they decided not to proceed and instead their board sided with the Department of Work and Pensions case against CEDAWinLAW . The WASPI board quote the DWP’s contention that Australian judge Jocelynne Scutt’s report which found discrimination against all 3.8 million had no standing. Unfortunately for them this is not the view of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, whose deputy chairman, Dr Elgun Safarov, gave evidence to the people’s tribunal run by Jocelynne Scutt, who regard the findings as very important.

This continual divide between the organisations which includes banning WASPI women seeing any of my articles on their sites has been a gift to the DWP who don’t want to see the women get a penny.

However other developments mean that is not the end of the story. The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women , has already received from Jocelynne Scutt a paper to on discrimination in women’s pensions in the UK. This can form the basis for an inquiry which would put the UK in the dock.

CEDAW are already not pleased that after 40 years membership of CEDAW, the UK has not passed all the legislation to comply with the convention, and has written to the UK about this. The UK at the moment is trying to ignore this but cannot stop the body setting up an inquiry.

Mel Stride

Other developments will happen when Parliament returns on April 15. Mel Stride has already met a senior politician and, fresh from his universal roasting by MPs from all parties on the Ombudsman’s report, is beginning to think he will have to offer something.

The SNP is also active. Patricia Gibson, the SNP’s Attorney General spokesman and MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, is planning to put up a backbench motion calling on Mel Stride to agree to WASPI’s demand for compensation and wants to press it to a vote. But given the different political rivalries in the Commons, there could be a danger it could be lost.

CEDAWinLAW is also drawing up a strategy to continue to press for mediation. More news on this is likely to be announced soon.

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MPs call again for reform of the antiquated Parliamentary Ombudsman – but ignore the plight of 50swomen

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William Wragg MP: official Portrait

Also ” Ombudsman friend “of Rob Behrens facing a corruption hearing in Australia

MPs today publish their official annual scrutiny of the work of the Parliamentary Ombudsman but what it doesn’t say is more important than what it says.

The committee call again – this time for a manifesto commitment from all political parties – to reform the 57 year old Ombudsman legislation – to give the Ombudsman and Health Service Commissioner more clout and powers to ensure his or her recommendations are implemented This follows the blank refusal of this government to take any action to do so. Michael Gove when he was in the Cabinet Office ruled out even a draft bill.

In a desperate plea the chairman, Tory William Wragg, who is also quitting at the election, says:

“As we have done annually for many years now to no avail, we are once again calling on the Government to bring forward what is now very long-overdue legislative reform of the PHSO, so that it can provide the level of service the public requires from it.

“Given the necessity of PHSO reform, we urge all political parties to include a commitment to reforming the legislation relating to the PHSO in their election manifestos ahead of the next General Election.”

Whether the Tories will commit to this must be unlikely since it suits the present government, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, and to some extent the NHS, to have a weak Ombudsman who can be safely ignored if they don’t like what he says.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office has welcomed the committee’s statement:

“We are pleased to see the Committee’s support for reform of our outdated legislative framework and their call for Government to reconsider its position and consult with stakeholders ahead of the General Election. We agree with their sentiment that reform has been ‘neglected’, is ‘long overdue’, and that ‘further delay is no longer tenable’. 

The rest of the report seems a mixture of praise and criticism over the Ombudsman’s performance. He is praised for dealing with a backlog of complaints that followed the Covid 19 pandemic but criticised for the way he didn’t handle well complaints affecting the elderly and the disabled.

Rob Behrens, retiring Parliamentary Ombudsman

But there were two huge elephants in the room missing in the report. Retiring Ombudsman Robert Behrens when he faced MPs had to spend a good part of the session facing criticism from MPs of the huge and unprecedented delay in publishing his report on the plight of 50swomen – some of them WASPI supporters – and recommending compensation for maladminstration in the six year delay in getting their state pension. Indeed his report is taking longer than the actual delay in getting their pensions.

Yet from today’s report you would think this never happened. There is not one word in the report acknowledging this. All there is a footnote referring to the WASPI evidence while the evidence from CEDAWinLAW does not even merit that.

Yet any reader of this blog knows the present draft recommends NO compensation for the women leaving it up to MPs in Parliament to debate whether women should get a penny.

This is more outrageous given that over 500 people know what it says and practically every sitting MP knows the outcome but most are happy to participate in a conspiracy of silence hoping it will go away. WASPI is playing the same game and one is beginning to wonder whether they want to get any money at all.

The other missing information is who is going to be new Ombudsman. The committee inadvertently published the letter sent to the Cabinet Office from Sir Alex Allen, once adviser to David Cameron and Boris Johnson until he resigned, and now a member of the Parliamentary Ombudsman Board – see my blog here– asking for a speedy decision from Rishi Sunak to replace Rob Behrens. Now it is nearly a month since I wrote about this and nothing has happened. The Cabinet Office appears not to have replied.

Yet they have only until March 27 – when Parliament goes into Easter recess – to fix up a meeting to approve the appointment of a successor. Even if the board appoints an acting ombudsman under the 1967 legislation it would still need Parliamentary approval by the committee, I am told.

Rob Behrens also had strong links with the various international organisations – a couple of which have been hit by scandals.

A war crime and a corruption scandal

Josef Ziegele, the European Ombudsman Institute ‘s general secretary, was behind the alleged deportation of two Ukrainian refugee children from Austria to Russia which could be a war crime according to the Kyiv Independent which led to other Ombudsmen, including Rob Behrens resigning from it last April.

The president of the International Ombudsman Institute, Chris Field, who is the Western Australia state Parliamentary ombudsman, is apparently a good friend of Rob Behrens. But at the moment Field is at the centre of corruption hearings in Western Australia over his huge annual travel expenses of $266,000 Australian dollars (£136,840) and for subsidising his organisation through money allocated from Australian taxpayers.

At a visit to Ukraine in 2022 Mr Field heaped praise on Mr Behrens saying “I am deeply grateful to my good friend and colleague Rob Behrens CBE, IOI Vice President Europe, who joined me on this visit. He is a person of utter integrity, searching intellect and profoundly good values. He came to Ukraine. He lives his values” .

He also put a submission to the PACAC saying: ” He is counted as a wise mentor and friend by me and so many of his colleagues around the world. Ombudsman Behrens has not just transformed the office of the PHSO into one of the world’s leading Ombudsman offices, he has made a contribution to the IOI and the institution of the Ombudsman globally of inestimable value. It is of some note that I was accompanied by only one Ombudsman on my visit to Ukraine in December in 2022, namely Ombudsman Behrens. He distinguished his office and his country during this visit.”

The annual report of his Ombudsman’s report for West Australia revealed Field had visited Taiwan, China, Ukraine, Britain, the US, Slovenia, Thailand, Austria, Morocco, France, Russia, Poland and Hungary.  Just prior to his visit to Ukraine, the IOI president met with the Australian Ambassador to Poland Lloyd Brodrick, and the Australian Ambassador to Ukraine Bruce Edwards in Poland. 

Chris Field, Western Australia Ombudsman

During the first tranche of the corruption hearings against him ( they resume mid March) it was revealed that he decided to end rules disclosing gifts he had received on foreign trips by raising the disclosure limit from around £25 to £125. It was revealed that he planned to give the OECD in Paris from Australian taxpayers funds , over $213,000 (about £107,000) for a project concerning, ‘the role of Ombudsman institutions in building a culture of open government for stronger and more resilient communities.’ The first invoice from OECD of half the cash was blocked by the Ombudsman’s chief finance officer.

He also ordered his office to pay for a private limousine to take him from the Paris Hilton to the OECD headquarters because he said taxis were difficult to find in Paris.

It was said he was only in the office for two days out of ten because of all these world trips and he designated other people to take operational decisions.

Behrens stands with Israel

MPs in today’s report praise the Ombudsman for seeking co-operation with international organisations. It also discloses that the Parliamentary Ombudsman is working closely to co-operate with Israel’s Ombudsman.

So closely that Matanyahu Englman, Israel’s Ombudsman requested both Chris Field and Rob Behrens to issue a statement by the International Ombudsman Institute giving unqualified support to Israel to fight HAMAS.

Chris Field obliged saying: “There can be no false moral equivalences in the lawful and correct response of Israel to those who came to slaughter the Jewish people,” in a letter to Israel’s State Comptroller and Ombudsman Matanyahu Englman. “No international body should be allowed to falter in their resolve to eradicate a body that actually pays their members to kill Jews. There can be no peace in the Middle East while terrorism and undemocratic representation of the peoples of Gaza seek to eliminate the Jewish people.”

See the Jerusalem Post article here for the full story.

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Whistleblower Dr Chris Day wins right to appeal in his ten year patient safety battle against Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust

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Dr Chris Day

Whistleblower Dr Chris Day won the right to appeal today when a a Deputy High Court Judge Andrew Burns of the Employment Appeal Tribunal granted permission to appeal the November 2022 decision of the London South Employment Tribunal on six out of ten grounds at a hearing in London.

My blog on this judgement is here: Tribunal of the Absurd: My Verdict on the Dr Chris Day whistleblower case | Westminster Confidential (davidhencke.com)

The saga which has now being going on for almost ten years began when Dr Day  raised patient safety issues in intensive care unit at Woolwich Hospital in London. The Judge said today this was of the “utmost seriousness” and were linked to two avoidable deaths but their status as reasonable beliefs were contested by the NHS for 4 years using public money.

Deputy High Court judge Andrew Burns

In a series of twists and turns at various tribunals investigating his claims Dr Day has been vilified by the trust not only in court but in a press release sent out by the trust and correspondence with four neighbouring trust chief executives and the head of NHS England, Dr Amanda Pritchard and local MPs.

This specific hearing followed a judgement in favour of the trust by employment judge Anne Martin at a hearing which revealed that David Cocke, a director of communications at the trust, who was due to be a witness but never turned up, destroyed 90,000 emails overnight during the hearing. A huge amount of evidence and correspondence that should have been released to Dr Day was suddenly discovered. The new evidence showed that the trust’s chief executive, Ben Travis, had misled the tribunal when he said that a board meeting which discussed Dr Day’s case did not exist and that he had not informed any other chief executive about the case other than the documents that were eventually disclosed to the court..

The hearing went on for an extra week because of all these disclosures and the British Medical Association, who are representing Dr Day, asked for their costs to be repaid yesterday because of the additional expense at the hearing. The judge agreed that a separate appeal to recover the  BMA costs should also be granted permission to be heard.

Instead of a decision to allow an appeal this hearing was held today to decide whether there was an ” arguable case ” for an appeal.

Dr Chris Day won the right to appeal that some of the findings of the judgement were perverse, that the judgement failed to draw any inferences from the destruction of 90,000 emails and the failure to provide documents that would have helped Dr Day’s case. This in particular followed the disclosure in documents that under oath the chief executive, Ben Travis gave an untrue account about a board meeting and had hidden he had contacted other trust chief executives about Dr Day.

The judge seemed exercised that the trust despite the Care Quality Commission expressing concern about a press release which attacked Dr Day decided to do nothing about it and the judgement appeared to ignore this.

Andrew Allen KC

The judge also allowed the right of appeal for Dr Day about the way he had been treated as an employee and how events had unfolded at the trust.

What was not allowed was the right of Andrew Allen, the BMA’s funded lawyer, to cross examine the trust’s lawyer, Ben Cooper, about remarks he had made about Dr Day during the hearing. some of which he was forced to concede were not accurate. Mr Cooper was rescued By Judge Anne Martin from having to respond to Dr Day’s supplementary statement on this point and was further rescued by the EAT today. Coincidently today Mr Cooper was representing the retail giant Asda in a case next door to today’s hearing.

My Statement on Ben Cooper KC – DrChrisDay

 The Judge also blocked a ground of appeal relating to factual findings being made on whether MPs and the Press has been misled on Dr Day’s protected disclosures. Also blocked was Dr Day’s and his legal team’s clear request for a formal finding on whether deliberate concealment had occurred as part of Dr Day’s protected disclosures. It was made clear to the Judge these points were what the case was about.

Ben Cooper QC

Despite this the decision of a senior judge does call into question the judgement made by Anne Martin who it is now arguable made some poor calls -particularly avoiding the issue of the destruction of emails and withholding documents that should have been disclosed to Dr Day’s lawyers.

The judge also paid Dr Day a compliment saying by raising the dangers for patient safety caused by staff shortages in 2014 he was ” way ahead of his time.” This might suggest that judiciary is becoming increasingly aware about the state of the NHS and its effect on patient safety. Perhaps judges are seeing too many scandals reported in NHS trusts.

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London borough of Richmond and the Met Police deny historic child sex abuse after survivor’s predator gets jailed for six years

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Keith Hinchliffe

Met Police says it was not a crime for council staff to proposition children for sex in 1984

Keith Hinchliffe, the child sex abuse survivor, who got his predator sentenced to six years in jail 40 years after he abused him for three years , is facing an uphill battle with the Met Police and the London borough of Richmond to get compensation or even recognition there was a problem.

The Met Police are describing his allegation that he was propositioned for sex by a member of staff at Grafton Close Children’s home as ” not a crime” and the council have employed lawyers and insurers to say it did not fail in its duty of care to look after him.

Keith’s abuser, Phillip Saunders, had open access to the children’s home where he took him out to sexually abuse him and the member of staff propositioned him when she invited him to her flat in return for saying she would help him leave the home early.

Documents show the Met Police has reviewed the allegations he made in 1984 which resulted in ” no further action” but came to the same conclusion again. The documents show that at first Richmond Council tried to say there was no evidence that he was at the home and then because he was not certain whether her name was Christine or Linda they could not trace anybody.

But the most damning finding was that the Met concluded that no crime existed in the first place.

The report said: “You stated ..that you had been propositioned but that the suspect had not touched you or physically sexually abused you. You stated that it was verbal comments only. I agree that crimes of such nature are fully within the public interest, however, there has to have been a crime committed for that interest to exist.”

Detective Sergeant Alex Woolley of the Met Police Child Sex Abuse Investigations Team, wrote to him saying: ”

“In relation to what happened you at Grafton Close, this report has been closed and classified as a “no crime”.
“Clearly the conduct of the member of staff is entirely unacceptable. However, we have to apply the law as it was at the time that the incidents happened. This happened before the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and so we have to consider what legislation is available to us in the 1980s.”
Keith Hinchliffe was very dissatisfied by the decision and has appealed to the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) for a review of the case at the end of October when Saunders was convicted. The office has accepted his complaint but warned him it could take 8 months to get a reply because of a backlog of complaints against the Met.

Richmond’s response has been even more negative. First they questioned whether he had ever been at Grafton and said there were no records showing he was there. Then by pursuing the issue with his local MP and a Freedom of Information request the South London Legal Partnership found a log confirming he had been admitted to Grafton Close and discharged six weeks later. But it said all the social work records at that time had been destroyed. It refused to release any documents on the Fernbridge investigation by the Met into child sexual abuse at Grafton Close home in 2015 which the authority did confirm it had co-operated with the police on the grounds that they were too sensitive because they contained details of third parties involved.

When he persisted in pursuing Richmond over this the council turned the case over to lawyers in Nottingham, Browne Jacobson, an Anglo-Irish firm, who cover business, government and health issues.

The firm in a letter this month set out to demolish Keith’s claims of negligence or breach of duty of care at Grafton Close. It cited case law to exonerate social workers who may be involved in his case and also said he had to meet stringent tests to bring any claim that the staff failed to protect him. One of them included he couldn’t produce documents to show the council’s policies at the time – since the council has destroyed all the records.

You can’t bring a negligence case if there was no duty of care -Richmond Council’s lawyers

The lawyers also said he was out of time to bring a case and they would challenge this in court. They were also sceptical of whether the conviction of Saunders would help. The lawyers wrote to him saying ” a claim in negligence cannot succeed if there is no duty of care in the first place”.

It goes on to say the council have neither admitted or denied the conviction of Mr Saunders but would need a certification of conviction or indictment.

The firm warned him they had agreed to represent Richmond if he brought a case and that he could incur substantial costs and he should take independent legal advice.

Since publication of the first blog I have been contacted by one other resident at Grafton Close suggesting there was a woman member of staff at Grafton Close who did sleep with at least one of the boys there. What Keith is exposing is a cess pit of behaviour which the Met and Richmond Council want to forget.

I don’t think Keith is going to give up on this so I expect there will be further developments. Watch this space.

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Exclusive: Child sex abuse survivor gets his predator jailed 40 years after he committed multiple sex acts against him in London and Buckinghamshire

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Keith Hinchliffe. He contacted me and gave me permission to use his name to encourage other survivors to come forward and get justice in the courts and compensation.

Judge described him as ” an immensely impressive witness, honest, reasonable and composed under pressure”

A child sex abuse survivor has got justice 40 years after he was groomed and sexually assaulted by a paedophile who went on to commit other offences against boys in Holland and a girl in Kent.

Philip Saunders, 67, was sentenced to six years in jail, with the judge saying only a rule that sentences had to reflect the law in the 1980s stopped him from giving him an even longer sentence.

Keith Hinchliffe, now 54, was abused at Saunders home, in his car, in his office at night, at Wembley Stadium and his predator was given open access to Grafton Close children’s home in the London borough of Richmond to take him out to abuse him when he was put in care.. The abuse continued for three years starting when he was 12 until he turned 16. Saunders was 27 at the time.

His case raises questions again about the role of Richmond Council under Liberal Democrat control and the Met Police in the 1980s who took no effective action to stop paedophiles abusing children in the borough. Grafton Close is the same home where a Roman Catholic priest, Tony McSweeney, was jailed for three years for indecent assault after escaping justice for 35 years following a fresh Met Police investigation in 2015. Like Saunders, McSweeney was able to take boys out of the home with the help of John Stingemore, then the deputy manager of the home, who was already a convicted paedophile. Stingemore died before the case got to court. See my blog on this here.

Richmond on Thames Council sign

Keith reported the incidents to the Met police when he was at Grafton Close care home in 1984 and allegations that he had been propositioned for sex as a 15 year old by a woman staff worker at the home. The Met interviewed him and decided to take no further action.

Keith plucked up courage in 2019 to report the abuse again after seeing the BBC investigation into paedophile Jimmy Saville and went to the NSPCC who reported it to Thames Valley Police.

Unlike the Met, Thames Valley Police took his claims seriously and the case went to Reading Crown Court where Saunders tried to deny everything but he was convicted last October and sentenced in December.

The judge, recorder John Ryder, in his sentencing remarks in court, told the whole grisly story. He revealed that Saunders, after abusing Keith, went over to the Hague and sexually abused two boys in his care and was sentenced to two years and six months in jail. In 2005 in Maidstone he was jailed for four years for three indecent acts with a young girl, the daughter of his current wife.

Saunders got access to Keith and his family because he was his sister’s boyfriend for about a year. The judge described how he got Keith to stay overnight at his home in Langley and then asked him to sleep in his bed because he claimed the spare bed was broken. The abuse began overnight and then he was given expensive gifts. This included a microcomputer – rare in 1982 – a Raleigh bike and a Michael Jackson DVD, Thriller. He also exploited the boy’s passion for fast cars taking him to test drives and shows.

” unusually expensive gifts were to groom him for sex abuse”

As the judge said: “giving unusually expensive gifts coveted by an adolescent boy and exploitation of his interests were a means of grooming him to sex abuse.”

He also took pictures of him with an Instamatic camera naked or dressed up at his home, in his car, at work and at Wembley Stadium where he took him to see an American football match.

Keith told the Judge if he didn’t comply Saunders , who is six foot four inches tall, became violent.

The judge says he said: “If I didn’t do things, he would let me know. Arm behind back- pain” .”Rebuffed once and pinned to floor and decanter of scotch all over my face as punishment and made to pleasure him again.”

Other times he was plied with drink, forced to watch pornography and forced to perform oral sex on him.
These events made Keith feel both fear and shame and he started skipping school. The judge summed up his evidence as finding “relationships hard. No friends. Initial abuse hard, aftermath is life changing. Did not finish education. Rebelled. Hated the world and everything around me. Navigated life without education guidance and to relive events in court and answer challenges again and again – had almost broken him.” His changed behaviour led him to be put into care by Richmond council.

He was too ashamed to tell his family and feared his father, an ex merchant navy man, would take it out on him if he knew. He has now told his mother, his present wife and has children of his own and has a job as a furniture maker. But he told the police he now regretted never taking exams at school and getting a good job because of the constant abuse from Saunders.

The judge said:

“I found Keith Hinchliffe an immensely impressive witness, honest, reasonable and composed under
pressure about [a] sensitive and damaging experience. Impressive man.” He described him as an ” insightful and measured in expression”. “Trauma and fear and shame shaped his personality and altered [his] outlook on the world.”

The judge was highly critical of Saunders for trying to deny the whole story and showing no remorse for what he had done.

” You continue to deny any sexual activity at all with him.{You] told PSR author only interested in adult female relationships. That assertion is completely contradicted by the facts in the Holland conviction. I have no doubt on the basis of evidence I heard from KH at trial – he suffered substantial and serious psychological harm as result of your actions. {You] abused a position of trust in relation to him.”

The police interview with Keith revealed he partly came forward because he had seen in the media that perpetrators of historic child sexual abuse were now being caught and jailed.

Despite securing a conviction against Saunders he is now having to fight the Met and Richmond Council to get redress. They won’t admit they did anything wrong in the 1980s or had a duty of care towards him. In the second part of this grisly story I will be revealing their responses to him.

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