Judge blocked her attempt to keep her name secret during the hearing
A highly controversial senior coroner is facing serious allegations that she or her staff removed parts of a transcript and recording of her hearing into the death of a talented and hardworking ITV news editor Teresa McMahon who was found hanged at her home four years ago.
Mary Hassell found that she committed suicide and ruled out that she was subject to ” coercive control” by her ex boyfriend, Robert Chalmers, an NHS estates employee, who had previous convictions for violence. Mary Hassell believed the words of the pathologist ,Dr Mohammed Bashir, who examined the body but kept no photographic evidence and discounted domestic violence and Greater Manchester Police who decided from the start that no crime had been committed and never took any photographs either at the scene of her death.
Throughout the hearing this version was challenged by Teresa’s aunt, Lorna McMahon, who was frequently interrupted by Mary Hassell when she raised questions about the competence of Greater Manchester Police in handling the investigation into her niece’s death.
I was present at the hearing at the hearing with many other journalists. My report on it is here.
Yesterday’s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice was meant to decide whether the court could give her permission to bring a judicial review into Mary Hassell’s hearing claiming her conduct was irrational and procedurally unfair in coming to her verdict.
Teresa McMahon
But the hearing took a completely different turn under Mr Justice Stephen Morris when Lorna McMahon, having obtained both the transcript and audio recording of the hearing said parts of both, covering descriptions of previous violence against her niece by her ex boyfriend had been omitted.
It also emerged from correspondence I have seen from Mary Hassell’s lawyers and a public ruling by a previous judge Mr Justice Kerr, that the coroner had tried to get her name kept out of the public domain during the hearing.
Her lawyers claimed ” it was customary” to be not named. She wanted it done under ” the slip rule” which meant there would be no hearing about the application. The judge ruled this procedure could not used in this way and rejected her application because it raised issues of ” open justice”.
When Mr Justice Morris heard Lorna McMahon’s evidence he weighed up whether to continue the hearing or adjourn it to allow her complaint to be properly looked at and for her to provide evidence from other people at the original hearing – including members of the public and journalists – to back up her claim.
All sides in the case agreed it was an extremely serious allegation which could be viewed as a criminal case of perverting the cause of justice.
Her own lawyer, Jonathan Glasson KC, agreed as such and but added by adjourning the case until the late autumn it meant that the accusations against the coroner were left hanging over her for some weeks.
The judge also made it clear by adjourning the hearing it did not mean that he was convinced about Lorna’s case and said she would need more evidence.
The directions he gave are worth reporting in full:
IT IS ORDERED THAT
The application for permission to apply for judicial review is adjourned
2. By 4pm on 12 August 2025, the Claimant is to file and serve a witness statement, verified by statement of truth, identifying any and all parts of what was said at the hearing of the inquest by the Defendant on 5 December 2024 (“the Hearing”) which she contends have been omitted from the audio recording of the Hearing provided to the Court and the Claimant by email dated 14 July 2025 at 513pm and sent by Payne Hicks Beach LLP (“the Audio Recording”).
3. At the same time as filing and serving her witness statement pursuant to paragraph 2 above, the Claimant is to file and serve any and all witness statement evidence from others (including witnesses called at the Hearing and/or members of the press and/or members of the public) in support of her contention that parts of what was said at the Hearing have been omitted from the Audio Recording.
4 By 4pm on 9 September 2025, the Defendant is to file and serve a witness statement, verified by statement of truth, in response to the evidence filed and served pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3 above, to include an explanation as to how the Audio Recording was produced.
5.By 4pm on 23 September 2025, the Claimant, if she so wishes, is to file and serve a written statement stating whether, and if so, why, she seeks a further oral hearing for directions in respect of the matters covered by paragraphs 2 to 4 above.
6.As soon as possible thereafter, the matter is to be placed before a judge (if possible, Mr Justice Morris) on the papers to consider directions for the progress of the case, and in particular whether there should be a further oral hearing dealing with the matters covered by paragraphs 2 to 4 above, taking account of all necessary reasonable adjustments.
7 The case to be reserved to Mr Justice Morris, if possible.
8. Costs of the adjournment and of the matters raised above reserved
This is the second recent case where there has been controversy about Mary Hassell’s handling of inquests.
Earlier that year she held an inquest into the tragic death of Gaia Young,25, who was rushed to accident and emergency at University College Hospital with severe headaches only to die of an unexplained brain condition and doctors have yet to correctly diagnose what was wrong with her.
Again Mary Hassell patronised and showed no empathy for her bereaved mother, Lady Dorit Young, who had lost her only child ,Gaia, and failed to properly investigate her death. The full story is on the Truth for Gaia website. She even blocked her from making a statement at the inquest. I reported that hearing and you can read about it here.
The treatment of both relatives led to a protest outside the coroner’s court during Teresa’s inquest. Pictures are below.
Sue in the pink dress joining the demonstration on July 5. She later was holding a placard when she was arrested. Pic Credit: London Evening Standard.
My view about the Government’s hasty decision to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was disproportionate and unwarranted.
It is saying the people who damage property to protest about Britain’s armed support for Israel are equivalent to the Manchester Arena concert bomber who set out to kill and maim as many people he could enjoying a pop concert. This is plainly a ridiculous comparison. If the authorities want to take action against people who damage planes there are already plenty of laws in this country from criminal trespass to criminal damage that could be used. And it is absurd to say anybody peacefully demonstrating in favour of this organisation should go to jail for 14 years.
So unusually I have given space to one of our local people to describe her feelings about being arrested and bailed for demonstrating in front of Ghandi’s statute in Parliament Square last week. She has distributed this to Quakers and I thought it deserved a wider audience. She has not been charged with anything yet so it is reasonable to report this. Journalists who follow the law more closely than me say the fact she hasn’t been charged is because it will have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider what to do as there are lesser charges that can be brought. Many of the people arrested were elderly and likely to die in prison if the full terrorism sentence was served.
Here is Sue Hampton’s tale:
I was arrested on July 5 at the feet of Gandi’s statute
I was arrested on Saturday 5th July at the feet of the Gandhi statue in Parliament Square, along with three Christian Climate Action friends, among more than twenty others. We were arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, within hours of the proscription of Palestine Action, for holding a placard that read I OPPOSE GENOCIDE (and) I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION. When interviewed at a police station I told the solicitor that I would like, in answer to each question, to say, “I am a lifelong pacifist, a Quaker and follower of Jesus.” Emotionally I regret to say I took his advice and stuck with “No Comment”. After being kept twelve hours I wasn’t charged but given bail conditions and told to report back to Wandsworth Police Station on October 2nd. In my cell I experienced unusually deep peace as well as profound grief.
Palestine Action is a nonviolent direct action group. The Filton 18, still on remand many months after blockading an arms factory, and those who recently disabled a fighter jet with paint, believe in peace and justice. Many Friends will remember Sam Waldron taking a similar action at an RAF base and being acquitted, and before that, the Ploughshares women who damaged a plane destined for East Timor. My own first arrest some years back was for locking on with two other Quakers to block the road to the London Arms Fair. UNICEF says that 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza, yet our government continues to support Israel by supplying parts for missiles, by sharing military intelligence and training Israeli soldiers – while refusing to condemn the war crimes of Netanyahu’s government as genocide. Incredibly, thirteen members of the UK Cabinet, including Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and David Lammy, have received gifts from that government.
By lumping Palestine Action together with two violent organisations in the proscription bill, our own government skewed the vote. I seriously believe that the outcome would have been different had our MPs been voting separately on each group. Indeed, my own MP has implied that under those circumstances she would have made a different decision. This is not justice. It isn’t honourable. Like the BBC’s biased new coverage and their decision not to show the documentary they commissioned on medics being targeted in Gaza, it’s wrong.
That’s why I took a spare placard on Saturday and sat with my principled activist friends. I hadn’t been allocated one, and if asked in advance I might, or might not, have been daunted by the potential custodial sentence (up to 14 years) but I wanted to support the protest with a badge. Will people be arrested for wearing badges or T-shirts in support of Palestine Action, for sharing posts on social media, for using any public platform to speak the truth that proscribing a nonviolent protest group is unjust? Although an immediate appeal failed to prevent the law being passed, I do believe that the proscription will eventually be declared unlawful. More importantly, a peaceful resolution to the conflict may yet be found, and the real terror will end.
Last week I attended a conference which aims to unite diverse groups fighting racism to form a national campaign to stop the rising tide of prejudice, harassment and ideological views that portray black and brown people ( especially immigrants) as a threat.
The conference was organised by the law firm Equal Justice Solicitors whose chief executive Lawrence Davies made an impassioned speech at the end saying “no ” to all these traits and go on the offensive to get real integration in this multi racial country.
The response is opportune as the forces backing discrimination are rising high here and in the United States. Donald Trump is abolishing any approach that backs diversity, equality and inclusivity and Reform, who are expected to do well in the local elections this week, are committed to abolish the Equality Act, leave the European Court of Human Rights and will need to leave the UN Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, which Margaret Thatcher agreed to join in 1986.
Lawrence Davies put up a blog on his newsletter The Intercessor and it very much reflects what he said at the conference so I am reproducing most of it here as it covers a lot of issues and has good examples.
He wrote:”Obviously, at present we are in the midst of an invisible war. The “culture wars” were quietly declared by the Conservative government in 2020. Their aim was to prevent black people empowering themselves by mobilising and using the energy from the #BlackLivesMatter movement to become a political force, such as that which helped the Democrats win the November 2020 election.
“It is an ideological war. Those who do not accept the alleged British way of life (“white is right”) are to be humiliated, made to feel unwelcome, harassed and invited to leave Britian. DEI is to be ended. Unconscious bias training is to stop in the civil service. White (northern working class) people are to be viewed as the real victims, not black people or women. Diversity (and equality) has gone too far. The term “Institutional Racism” is unhelpful and must not be used by the EHRC in any report findings. Black ministers (NB: who ideologically see no racism) were deployed to implement the war tactics to deflect from and provide deniability from their innate racist motivation.
One chess move in that war was the decision by the institutionally racist Home Office (which oversees the institutionally racist Met Police) to implement the Hostile Environment – a policy of deliberately seeking to make the Windrush generation uncomfortable and unwelcome living in the Britain.
Another was to label all illegal immigrants as criminally minded threats to our way of life and culture.
It started in 2016, although ideologically decades before that. The anti-foreigner element to the Brexit campaign was a rallying call to lone wolf social media racists and incels alike.
Racial harassment at work rose from 16% to 31% in the period of 2016 to 2020. It has become much worse since then.
We had race riots in the summer of 2024. Every alleged crime committed by a black person was taken as a justification to visit personal injury on the whole black community, be it in Southport or anywhere else, due to racist stereotypes about aggressive black people. They are all the same. They have it coming etc.
By contrast, every heinous crime committed by white people of course did not lead to any attacks on the majority white community. The ideologically motivated, Andrew Tate loving, Kyle Clifford was not stereotyped as the danger that white people pose to others.
Reform UK promised in its manifesto to abolish the Equality Act 2010, removing all legal protection against racism at work, in education and in health services. They believe, like Jeremy Clarkson, in the white man’s right to call a black person a “N…” at work or in a hospital, without accountability, or liability.
In any non-racist, civilised country, the Law should of course protect the black community from such racism. However, our Law does not. 30% of black people suffer racism at work but only 1% feel sufficiently safe and empowered to utilise their rights under the Equality Act 2010. 99% of racist incidents therefore are simply suffered and not formally complained of. Any Law that 99% of victims are too afraid to use is NOT fit for purpose.
No incentive for organisations or corporations to change
Of the 4% (within that 1%) who exercise their rights and win, they win small and the employer does not change. It is statistically more likely that the racist co-worker or manager will be promoted rather than sacked. Awards for racism which would attract $10 million compensation in the USA attract an award of less than £12,000 in the UK. There is no economic incentive for corporations and organisations to change culturally over a £12,000 award.
Public inquiries into the worst racist cases from the Lawrence Report to Casey Report in 2023 have uncovered the obvious Institutional Racism but led to no real or structural change. In fact, matters are regressing. Doreen Lawrence told me that the police are as bad now as they were in 1993.
In any event “landmark” Employment Tribunal cases do not effect structural change. They just enthuse the claimant and the lawyers who believe that such case do lead to change. But 99% of victims of the new rights won’t exercise them. Metaphorically successfully sailing a boat across a hostile ocean, and against the constant current, to land somewhere (hopefully) safe does not change the presiding structural current, or get close to freezing the Moon – that invisible power, wealth, influence controller.
Meanwhile, Racists are becoming emboldened. That’s exactly what happens when the Law does not work to protect people at work, or outside work.
Wayne Hammond (white) called John J Campbell (black, Union official) a “fucking monkey” at work (Sheffield Teaching North Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) in a heated discussion about union subscription deductions from wages. The Employment Tribunal found that the remark at work was not made by Hammond in the course of his employment and that the Trust had taken all reasonable steps to prevent such remarks being made (even though it is clear that the steps had not prevented the racist abuse), so neither the Trust nor Hammond were liable.
On 20 March 2025 the Employment Appeal Tribunal rejected the union (UNISON) backed appeal. The union failed to challenge the ET Decision on the grounds that it was perverse.
So the current Law permits a black worker to be called a “fucking monkey” at work provided the conversation is about union matters and the Trust has carried out all reasonably practicable preventative steps to prevent such racist conduct.
The current Law also says that if you are called an “N” at work and pinned to the wall by your manager in front of witnesses it is not perverse (legally wrong) for you to receive only £2,500 in compensation. Nor is it perverse for the appeal court to opine that awarding more than £20,000 in punitive damages would bring UK Law into disrepute, whereas in fact the opposite is true.
The current Law says I can (randomly) scream at you at work and cause you to have a mental breakdown and you have 3 years to sue me but if I (deliberately) scream racist abuse at you causing the same injury you only have 3 months less a day to sue me. Of course, the Law says you have 6 years to sue me if I sell you a defective television…..
Betty Knight posted a post on LinkedIn which tagged a former colleague and effectively stated that the senior team at the college was racist (having previously won a claim at the ET that her constructive dismissal was an act of racial harassment). One white employer (then the head of HR) said she felt harassed by that posting and rather than blocking Betty, instead, chose to report her to the police for criminal harassment. The aggressor said that she did so on her own phone, from her car in the car park, and her employer knew nothing about it and had not authorised the reporting. The ET found that extremely aggressive conduct was not done in the course of the perpetrator’s employment. The matter is on appeal. Either the EAT will find that (allegedly) popping out of the office to report a black person to the police for a LinkedIn post, that LinkedIn itself had no issue with, is part of the employer’s responsibility under the current Law or it will not. In either case, the current Equality Act 2010 is not fit for purpose. No Law that 99% of race victims fail to utilise protects the race victim. The fear of retaliation and the knowledge that Justice will be very expensive and unlikely to be achieved (4%) means that we have only cosmetic rights.
We need a new Inequality Act to be implemented as soon as possible to tackle the rising and ideologically driven racial harassment and tackle the underlying and long-standing structural racism.
In the last year, a black man shopping in an ASDA in London, with a black elderly friend who had had a stroke, was surrounded by plain-clothed security staff and asked about their intentions, being the only black customers in the store. He was then asked if he knew how to lift a voodoo curse from a white person.
Similarly, a black women made her way around Tescos with her daughter only to be surrounded by security staff and asked about her intentions, again being the only black customers in the store. When she complained a manager/supervisor apologised for the matter and offered her “a “bunch of bananas”, smirking at her.
None of the racist white Tesco or ASDA staff concerned were dismissed.
So reading this post, you may feel that won’t happen to me, and as only 25% of British people admit to be very or a little racist, you may (hopefully) avoid being targeted and harassed at work, but know if unfortunately you end up working with or for a racist colleague, once you complain you will be retaliated against because the current Law does not prevent retaliation, or the original racist act, any more than the training the Sheffield Trust did. In fact it permits and encourages it.
Anyone telling you that you have rights not to be racially discriminated against is lying. Yes, there are rights but almost all are unable and/or too afraid to exercise them. A right is not a right unless it is enforceable, and can be exercised safely.
Further, 95% of black school children face racist banter and harassment at school. So the next generation, will face a far more racist world than you did. Racist banter is becoming normalised. It is destroying black lives, and people’s sense of safety and damaging their mental health.
As our society becomes more intolerant under the hate-mongering by Reform UK and BRUV (Andrew Tate’s political vehicle to become PM – NB: 27% of men under 40 years of age believe his misogynistic views of women are correct and kids are 5 times more likely to view violence against women as legitimate having viewed his literature).
So do YOU feel safe at work, in education, in the NHS, when contacting the police, online and offline?
What more can WE do to ensure black people, women and the community as a whole are safe from racist sexist (RaX) people?
Finally, if 25% of British people remain admittedly racist, hopefully that means than more than 50% are not racist and therefore in fact that being British no longer means being racist. Because cultures evolve. So being British no longer means being slave-owners or profiting from the slave trade. Or where the rape of an unmarried girl or women is seen as a criminal rape and no longer viewed as damage to property. Our culture did evolve into a fair and more tolerant (ie: less racist), diverse community but war has been declared on that evolved culture and they want to drag us back to the 1970s culture (and some want to drag us back into chains).
It is time to say NO.
NO more.
Be safe, and prosper, “
Professor Patrick Vernon
Among those who spoke at the conference were Professor Patrick Vernon, pro chancellor at the University of Wolverhampton and board chair of the Birmingham and Solihull Trust; Professor Miranda K Brawn Ahmed who is chair of People, Culture and Education Committee on Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, veteran race discrimination campaigner Lee Jasper, Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association; Roger Kline, research fellow at Middlesex University; Hira Ali, an author and Ritka Wadhwa, founder of Cultural Intelligence. All were determined to make a big change so expect some strong action soon.
Three were good examples from the audience notably at Waltham Forest council where the executives and managers were being held to account over cuts and redundancies to make sure black people were not unfairly treated.
Coroner Mary Hassell now facing bereaved members of two families unhappy about the way she conducts inquests
Teresa McMahon was a well liked news editor for ITV’s Granada Reports who had a first class honours degree in journalism and was based in Salford. From humble beginnings she was rated by colleagues as ” a highly competent news editor, who had worked on and overseen – some of the biggest news stories including the Manchester Arena terror attack, the coronavirus outbreak and Tyson Fury’s world heavyweight championship win.”
Over three years ago she was found hanged at her home in Little Holten, Salford and it took until last week for an inquest to be held. What emerged is that the police “investigation” into her death, the pathologist’s report and the conduct of the coroner who heard the case, Mary Hassell, fell well short of the professionalism and unbiased news values Teresa McMahon had practised during her life.
The hearing itself did not start for an hour after lawyers for Lorna McMahon requested an adjournment because she had not received all the documentation she needed, had no confidence in the robustness of the process and thought her rights to participate compromised procedures under Section 2 of the European Court of Human Rights legislation particularly in relation to domestic abuse.
Michael Etienne Pic credit: Garden Court Chambers
Her lawyer, Michael Etienne, from Garden Court Chambers, who acted pro bono, highlighted concerns that coroners did not pay enough attention as to whether domestic abuse by a partner or ex partner led to suicide and cited previous cases. He told the coroner ” the inquest will (or at else is very likely to) fall short in its primary duty to provide a full and fearless inquiry into these important matters.”
All this was rejected by Mary Hassell, the coroner who insisted she would conduct a frank and fearless inquiry.
The hearing had already been moved from Manchester West coroner’s court to Inner London because of a conflict of interest and concern about the involvement of Greater Manchester Police. A senior coroner had recused himself from hearing – hence the delay in hearing the case.
Mary Hassell ” suicide verdict” Pic credit: Archant
Mary Hassell decided that it was a suicide and ruled that there was no coercion or control by her ex partner Robert Chalmers that led to her death.
Mohammed Bashir – no ” Silent Witness” material
For her the star witness was Pathologist Dr Mohammed Bashir. He insisted that the ligature around her neck was consistent with hanging and not strangulation but he knew nothing about her complaint about domestic abuse and said there were no other marks on her body. Extraordinarily he had taken no photos when he examined the body and his evidence was partly contradicted by the policeman who went to the scene who noted bruises on her breast and biceps. Certainly Dr Bashir would not have qualified for a star role in ” Silent Witness.” He was no Dr Nikki Alexander and Lorna McMahon complained that the body had not been examined by a forensic pathologist.
This lax approach was compounded by the so called investigation by Greater Manchester Police. Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Humphries who arrived on the scene and immediately ruled out murder. She was already dead and it was Robert Chalmers, who snapped the cord. Her brother Bernard, who was also there, confirmed that Chalmers had done it by himself,
No pictures taken by pathologist or police
Extraordinarily again he did not take any pictures either and apologised to the coroner for not doing so. “Policy at the time was to take photos if you think there’s a crime. I did not think there was a crime at the time. I could have accessed the digital camera and I did not. I wish I had. If I had, you would have got photos for the answers you seek and I apologise that I did not.”
Instead he read her journal which he found in the bedroom where she expressed her loneliness, lack of contact with her daughter, and a list of complaints about the way her ex Robert Chalmers had treated her.
But only three weeks before this she made a complaint about domestic abuse to a police constable under Clare’s Law and was wrongly told that she had no right to find out whether he ex had convictions for violence. She then withdrew the complaint and police found that they had given her the wrong advice but could not contact her to tell her.
A lot of this came out during the hearing because of persistent questioning by Lorna McMahon not the coroner. She ended up being told off because the coroner did not think her hearing should be an inquiry into the police.
Her ex, Robert Chalmers, was supposed to give evidence but did not turn up. Mary Hassell issued an arrest warrant and he was taken by the police from his home to Bolton Coroner’s Court where he had to give evidence. He is a NHS estates manager working for the trust in Salford.
Her ex was nervous and unprepossessing
He emerged as a nervous, unprepossessing character, replying with monosyllabic answers and denying he was in any way responsible for her death. His only concession was that their relationship was ” volatile” – an under statement given neighbours had witnessed shouting, him being thrown out of her flat, and she tearfully sitting outside her house with her head in her hands. He also denied that he alone had snapped the cord contradicting her father’s statement.
Her father did not give evidence in person either but the coroner accepted a statement from him as he said he was to ill to attend. He painted a sad picture of his daughter being caught up in an alcohol fueled relationship with a man was not good enough for her. But it was also revealed that this man had been his best man at his wedding and he had known him for 25 years.
When his sister, Lorna, complained she could not question him, Mary Hassell accused her of preventing him coming because she had damaged his health by her attitude towards him. It was clear brother and sister did not get on but a coroner should be above that.
The final indignity was a decision by the coroner to first vet Lorna’s statement to the hearing and then ban most of its contents. Her reason was that coroner’s hearings were not a place where either side could try to influence a coroner’s verdict. To my mind this was preposterous. It was obvious that Mary Hassell was a very strong minded woman and the idea that anybody could influence her in any way was absurd. She may even have made up her mind before the full hearing.
I suspect the real reason is that she did not want any more criticism of Greater Manchester Police in public or more details about the behaviour of Teresa’s ex including his past, particularly as this hearing was well covered by the press and TV.
Lorna McMahon (far left) and Dorit Young ( second from right) demonstrate outside the coroner’s court
And it is not the first time she has silenced a bereaved relative. Lady Dorit Young was similarly treated over the death of her only daughter, Gaia. That is why there was a small demonstration outside the coroner’s court whereby Lady Young and her supporters and Lorna combined to protest. You can read about their case on https://truthforgaia.com/ and an earlier blog by me here.
An alleged horse murder, police protection at a parish meeting and council office and notice board defaced with hated filled graffiti
You could not imagine a more bucolic English scene. Beautiful rolling Sussex countryside, white painted country cottages, a heritage steam railway running by the village and Bodiam Castle, an imposing moated medieval ruin dominating the valley.
But this quintessential sleepy English village hides some of the most vicious in fighting by former and sitting parish councillors and their friends involving hate filled Facebook posts, false allegations, dodgy contracts, one sided council investigations, favours for friends, while Sussex police and the Rother District Council try to pretend nothing is happening here.
If this was inner city London or Birmingham such battles would be factional or party political. But here it is not politics but rival personalities who either want to control events or who are convinced dirty business is afoot in secret meetings.
A Midsomer Murders village?
If there is a script for this story it could either be an Agatha Christie novel or an episode of Midsomer Murders. So far only a grazing horse has died, but given the tensions here one wonders whatever will happen next.
So how has this happened? The trigger for all this is a remarkable pot of gold given to this little village by the former Tory Cabinet minister Michael Gove. As levelling up secretary he approved a massive £1.4 million loan in 2019 to enable the parish council to purchase a former Blue Cross animal rescue centre so the village could use its ample green acres for community use.
There had been much consternation in the village when the Blue Cross decided to close and sell the site as the original land had been donated by a local farmer and it was a valued part of the village as well as providing much employment.
The parish council was united in wanting this centre. Before they bid to buy it former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney came to the village with the chief executive of the Blue X centre to see if it could be saved. He even offered to underwrite the cost but the organisation was determined to close it.
His earlier letter of support for the Blue X Centre before it closed is here:
The purchase of this 34 acre greenfield site has meant that all the residents face an extra parish council precept on top of their council tax to pay back a Public Loans Work Board loan backed by the Treasury for the next 50 years.
Horses looked after by Lauren Sapsted graze on the former Blue X site – known as St Francis Fields
The row emerged about what to do with the land once it was owned by the council. At the time when all was sweetness and light a proposal was drawn up by then councillor Penny Farmer with the aim of providing local facilities for local people with talk of a riding school, workshops and local people being allowed to graze their own horses and allowing a small number of new houses to rent to local people who couldn’t afford Sussex’s rocketing house prices. These would have been built on an ‘exception site’ basis and was limited to an initial build of six.
Then councillor Penny Farmer, who has an equine background was also asked to provide costings of how the stabling and grazing could be made to work so that government loan would be affordable while allowing public use and her costings were included in the proposal to the government, to help convince them to grant the loan. The proposal and map of the huge site is here–https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PJLomhPMtDrIGl3yNsnQofsjlJDopvPcRQcYpiIW_24/edit?pli=1
The first sign of things going wrong was when it was decided to hand over the running of the site to a non profit making Community Interest Company with a clause saying the directors could take profits from developments on the site and it was allowed to keep all the revenue from the site to spend as it saw fit.
The big issue with the CIC is that as a corporate body, it has cost the parish council more money than they have created or put back into the project. The Parish Council “grants” them £1500 a year, they use an office and storage space as well as land owned by the Parish Council rent free which the council could otherwise rent out and they have not achieved anything the Parish Council couldn’t have done itself despite not having “power of competence”. Last financial year – they got double the grant -two tranches of £1500. They also rent unknown land/buildings on the site to unknown people for £1460 a year – there is no record as to who or what this is all about at the Parish Council; it has never voted or agreed to this use. The latest accounts are here.
Pete Sargent
When it was set up it soon emerged that other councillors had different ideas and one in particular Pete Sargant, who chaired the council at the time and is still a member, was seen by opponents as the ” village Godfather figure”. He is a smooth talking man with a lot of friends in the village but rather like Macavity in the musical Cats it is his friends who do a lot of the arrangements. Macavity is not there.
Pete Sargent said: “Several of them stated that they would be interested in helping set up the CIC and so I called them all together and asked them if they would like to set up the company, which they duly did. They chose themselves.”
This is not entirely true. Judith O’ Connor, the chair was tipped for the post in advance while Carolyn Pierce, previously a councillor, who had worked on the Blue X rescue centre for 20 years, was denied a post when she requested one. It is said by Jon Streatfeild. a former chairman of the council ,that Sargent kept the book with the directorships to himself for six months until all the posts were filled, mainly to members and friends of his in the local Bonfire Society and the Village Hall Trust.
Later when one councillor, Ben Dallimore, in 2022 demanded to see the minutes kept at the parish council office, the then clerk to the council, Nicola Ideson, threatened to call the police, started messing up files and tried to make out she was being physically threatened and harassed and pushed him out of the office. He had the foresight to have recorded the conversation and when she complained he made it clear he had recorded it. In February 2023, she contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office to say that as a Parish Councillor, he had recorded her at work and she wanted a copy of the data. After some arguing back and forth with the ICO about the nature and purpose of the recording, he gave her an edited copy of the recording which only contained her information..
It soon emerged there was a reason for this secrecy. For instead of planning new community facilities the first thing that happened was an approach to a housing developer suggested by retired architect, Julian Luckett, partner of Judith O’Connor, who chairs the CIC and an administrator of the Northiam Facebook page.
Jennifer Owen Construction Ltd, a local firm, had already built expensive £500,000 four bedroomed detached homes in the village, and was contacted by Pete Sargent’. He said: “I contacted Mr Malcolm Edmonds, the MD of Jennifer Owen Construction Ltd to discuss possible options on part of a field to which they owned the access. This plot was less than one acre in size, so 3% of the total site rather than 33% as suggested. Initial contact was by email due to lockdown and so a site meeting was impossible. A year later when I was no longer a Councillor he made contact again. I forwarded their email to the new Chair of the Council and the Chair of the CIC, both of whom decided that they did not want to follow it up at that time.”
This turns out not be quite true. A memo from Georgina Jackson, a later parish clerk, reveals there was a secret meeting with the firm to develop one field where there was access and it was not to build cheaper rented homes for ordinary local people but expensive new homes.
Sargent had also written an internal report where other areas of the site could be considered as ‘brown field’ and therefore considered for development. This was in spite that he had given assurances, including in TV interviews and in emails to the government, that the proposed purchase of the site was to save it from development, as well as providing a community asset.
The development foundered because the firm discovered the homes would have to be marketed as leasehold because the parish owned the land and it would not get the best price. The firm was also worried it would have to go out to competitive tender and it could lose the contract. The company was not interested in developing the whole site, despite rumours to the contrary.
A fake Northiam Parish flyer was put out to worried residents about this when news leaked out.
The clerk took legal advice about this and was advised this would have been illegal if they had gone ahead and the parish council could have been prosecuted for breaking the terms of Gove’s loan.
But there was a much bigger row on the horizon that was to lead to nasty consequences for anyone who objected. During the pandemic a decision was made to lease 10 acres of the site to a horse trader, Lauren Sapsted, who would keep horses for wealthy owners, on the site, while at the same time blocking a local resident who wanted to graze her two horses on community owned land.Several other local horse owners were also turned away. The exclusivity clause in Sapsted’s lease meant that local residents were barred from using much of the site and none of the equine facilities including the sand schools, even though they were funding it through the council tax.
The deal only open to her was she would pay the parish £12,000 a year to lease the land and the parish council even agreed to pay half her £3000 legal costs and she would pay a small sum every month to repay the loan. It was renewable. The loan was not disclosed to the full council. It turned out that the deal could have been illegal because it broke procurement rules and a planning restriction by Rother District Council that forbade commercial activity on the land. Pete Sargent defends it as done during the pandemic and claims that 50:50 arrangement on legal fees is ” common practice”.
Events took an extraordinary turn when the lease came up for renewal . After her horse died Lauren Sapsted demanded the parish paid for security cameras to be put up on the land which costing £14,000 – more than the annual rent. The parish council demurred in drawing up such a contract but unknown to them Sue Schlesinger, chair of the parish council at that time and sister in law of the famous Hollywood director, John Schlesinger who made Midnight Cowboy, secretly made a separate contract granting this without telling the council after Lauren asked her to do it.
The security cameras never came and the shenanigans over the two contracts were too much for Lauren and she left 18 months later leaving the parish with no income and moved her business elsewhere. Sue Schlesinger resigned but has lately been re-elected to the council.
Entrance to Lauren’s Sapsted’s leased business
Lauren still claims her horse was murdered today and the two former councillors are to blame.
There was also a nasty consequence to all of this. When Lauren discovered Alice, a valuable pregnant horse, had been found dead, she was convinced it had been murdered in the night and blamed two councillors, Penny Farmer and Jon Streatfeild , a former chair of the council, for killing it because she had been erroneously told that they wanted to take over her business. Councillor Robert Maltby, a friend of Sargent, gave Lauren the report which he obtained from Sargent of Penny’s 2019 submission, which had originally been requested by Sargent, saying it was her current plan in 2022.
The murder allegation was not just village gossip it was put up on the Northiam and Nearby Facebook page by Lauren on the 16th May 2022.The site administrator, none other that CIC Director Judith O’Connor allowed this post to remain.
You can also see the shock of local people who now believed they were scumbags. Lauren called Sussex police asking them to open a murder investigation. They found no evidence. To do this the councillors -one of them a middle aged lady – would have got up in the dark middle of the night and tramped across fields. Two people questioned this. One, Ben Dallimore, a former councillor, was up in the middle of that night because he and his wife had a new baby. Their house is close to the field and they heard nothing. Another resident was surprised because if strangers were nearby, their dogs immediately start barking. They heard nothing either.
Jon Streatfeild – former chairman of Northiam Parish Council
Then the real harassment began. The parish managed to get sympathetic support from two top officials at Rother District Council to investigate then councillors Penny Farmer and Jon Streatfeild. Lorna Ford, chief executive, and Lisa Cooper, a monitoring officer, got a lawyer from Chichester District Council to prepare a report saying Streatfeild was guilty of leaking the confidential contract with Sapsted which revealed the arrangements for the lease and it was not in the public interest. They paid the lawyer £12,000 for the report but there are no records of their agreement or how much time was spent on the report which sounds highly irregular for a local authority. The finding contradicted later legal advice obtained by Jon Streatfeild that said the deal with Sapstead broke the law – so it was in the public interest for this to be released.
Separately when the police inquired about concerns brought by Jon Streatfeild about what was going on at Northiam, Lorna Ford sent emails to the police that everything was fine there.
Another report was commissioned by the parish council – at a cost of another £12,000 from an independent firm – which was skewed not to include any investigation into the relationship between the parish council and community interest company – which was central to the development and subject of concerns. This was prepared just before a public meeting in Northiam where Streatfeild and Farmer were treated as pariahs, including being spat at by people who believed they were horse murderers.
So bad was this meeting that at a future hustings meeting in the village last year Sussex Police arranged security to protect them – Penny Farmer , a former police officer, was so worried she did not attend.
Last year Streatfeild was defeated in the parish elections as most people believed the allegations. But he also had to put up with further stress. His front garden was sprayed with weedkiller, a parish noticeboard was covered in graffiti denouncing him, and two stalkers appeared to harass him at his place of work.
One, Michael Court was served with an adult ASBO by the police to keep good conduct for the next two years. Another Richard Smith, an ex policeman, came into the pub where he worked part time and denounced him in front of all the pub customers – obviously hoping he would get the sack. But this has not happened.
All these details of the harassment has been put to the police and the Rother District Council. The official statement from Sussex Police is completely defensive.
Rosie Ross, divisional commander at East Sussex police replied: “As a journalist you will know the rules around personal data and sharing of such data. This request is in the context of named individuals and actions we may have taken to either safeguard or sanctions used, as and such cannot be shared. Even if it were a Freedom of Information request, it would be exempt under s40 FOIA for these same reasons.”
We actually didn’t need to put in a request as we have seen the terms of the order against Michael Court and there were plenty of witnesses to the incidents.
Rother District Council was equally defensive.
A Rother District Council spokesperson said: “The district council has a duty to put in place arrangements to manage complaints against elected members for the town and parishes. We deal with all code of conduct complaints diligently and fairly in relation to all complainants, and we believe we have done so in this case.
“It would not be appropriate to comment in detail on individual code of conduct complaints as they are confidential.
“However, we have repeatedly advised Mr Streatfeild and others of the limited powers that Rother District Council has to become involved in matters relating to other councils, especially with regards to matters such as the Blue Cross Site. We have advised Mr Streatfeild how best to pursue those complaints via organisations which do have the power to intervene, including the police.”
Rother District Council have not investigated any complaints brought against Peter Sargent, even though he helped instigate the proposed development of the land after publicly stating that the loan was for a community asset, lent parish council money without the knowledge of other councillors to help cover Sapsted’s legal bills which is unlawful and brought a complaint for criminal damage on the site, on the very day that we visited it to research this article and witnessed no such criminal damage.
Again we have seen all the details involving the Rother District Council officers involved and have published this in the public interest.
One bizarre reaction from Sussex Police was to suggest the complaints went to the National Audit Office, the Parliamentary watchdog that scrutinises Whitehall. Since the abolition of the Audit Commission by the Tories, which did scrutinise parish councils as well as larger bodies, there is no body that has the power to regulate local government.
As a result the NAO said it could not conduct inquiries into parish councils like the now defunct Audit Commission. But Adeel Shah, the NAO’s FOI and Correspondence Officer gave Jon Streatfeild very useful advice. He said the answer was to go to the external auditor of the council and helpfully looked up who was responsible.
Now the external auditor, PKF Littlejohn LLP, based in London, is looking at Northiam Council following two separate complaints. One is from Penny Farmer, which is challenging the whole way the council is managing its budget and whether certain earmarked funds, such as for a sewer outlet, are being raided, and whether the parish could run out of money.
Ben Dallimore on holiday
Another is from Ben Dallimore, another former councillor, about how money has been promised to Wealden Traditional Construction Ltd for the design plans of the new Football Pavilion to be claimed back from S106 ( money given by builders Persimmon )held by Rother DC. The contract to build the new pavilion will be worth £300,000.
Now the main employee of this company is local villager John Cusden, who plays for Northiam Football Club. His application was supported by retired architect, Julian Luckett and Pete Sargent. Companies House records show that his own company, Wealden Design and Build Limited has just gone bust and is in the hands of a liquidator. The new company is registered at the same address in Rye that the old company recently moved to. It has one new director, Charles Dawson, but its website praises the work of John Cusden over the last 10 years when he was director of the bust company.
A letter from the external auditor has now raised 11 procedural issues that led to the granting of the money which the council must answer. It also discloses that the external auditors may have received more than two complaints.
Mr Dallimore is now facing the same treatment as meted out to Jon Streatfeild. He has been recording council meetings and did some filming after one was held in private. The council are now discussing with Rother District Council whether they can impose restrictions on his activities by imposing the equivalent of an adult ASBO.
Mr Sargent did not want to comment on these complaints. His case is that he is the victim of harassment not the other councillors. The only evidence we could find about this is that someone scratched on the council office that it was ” The Bank of Pete Sargent” – of which there is no evidence that he has ever taken money for himself.
We have done this long special report to illustrate what has happened to local government at parish pump level now there is no official scrutiny by national bodies and local media has disappeared in this part of East Sussex. The irony is the lack of scrutiny has led to people putting too much on the internet so there are a wealth of documents to stand up exactly what has been going on in Northiam.
Michael Gove has left the new Labour government plans to revive a smaller version of the Audit Commission to regulate local government again. The new government need to act not only to police the growing number of technical bankruptcies in big local councils but to ensure that smaller bodies don’t end up being run by cliques helping each other out. The police and bigger authorities are obviously not up to the job and the NAO has much bigger fish to fry in policing waste and dodgy deals in Whitehall.
Orgreave rally being held in Sheffield tomorrow by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign
Campaigners who have fought for years for justice following the infamous ” Battle of Orgreave” during the miners strike and the Hillsborough tragedy have convinced Labour to introduce a new law and hold a long demanded inquiry.
The decision, in the small print of the manifesto, to hold an inquiry into the 1984 “Battle of Orgreave ” where 6000 police fought striking miners picketing a coke plant, has been demanded for years by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and is now in Labour’s manifesto for the next Parliament.
The decision comes at a key moment when a new documentary on Orgreave will be screened at the Sheffield DocFest on Sunday. The director, Daniel Gordon of Strike: An Uncivil War, has wanted to make the film for a decade after seeing links between South Yorkshire Police handling of the strike and the treatment of families of the 97 Liverpool football fans who died when an overcrowded stand collapsed at Hillsborough in 1989. He gives an interview here to the BBC.
Any such inquiry is likely to be forensic into the police methods used against the miners. My own book on the miner’s strike, Marching to the Fault Line, written jointly with author and playwright Francis Beckett, points a finger at Peter Wright, then chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, who died in 2011, who after Orgreave, wrote a memo released to us under freedom of information, called for Arthur Scargill, to be prosecuted for conspiracy. The memo reached ministers but was blocked by the Director of Public Prosecutions for lack of evidence. Other very limited circulated memos, show that Thatcher, and Cabinet ministers Leon Brittan, Norman Tebbit and Peter Walker had drawn up a strategy in advance for this big confrontation with the pickets with Ian MacGregor , head of the Coal Board and Bob Haslam, chair of British Steel.
Labour’s decision to call for an inquiry has one extraordinary and unlikely precedent. Some nine years ago Theresa May, met with the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, to set up such an inquiry.
As my blogreported then: “Theresa May agreed to meet an extraordinary delegation of Labour MPs, lawyers, ex miners through the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign ( see their website here) at the end of July and has agreed to accept a detailed legal submission from Mike Mansfield and three other distinguished barristers arguing for the case to set up an independent inquiry.”
This never happened because Theresa May’s successor as home secretary, Amber Rudd, blocked the inquiry.
Bishop James Jones – who chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel Pic Credit: BBC
The other significant promise by Labour which could have wide ranging ramifications, is a long demanded implementation of the Hillsborough Law, sought after the independent panel inquiry by Right Revd James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, which forensically examined the tragedy.
This would introduce a duty of candour for all public officials – similar to the professional duty for doctors in the NHS – and say they had to co-operate and assist any public inquiry investigation. It would also provide that taxpayers money will be available for the victims or the bereaved needing legal representation at any inquiry. Effectively this would provide a level playing field between the authorities – who are already funded by the taxpayer – and those who were affected by any future scandal. This has a widespread application – and would affect future inquiries into NHS failings and would have been extremely helpful to those at the Grenfell, Contaminated Blood, and Sub Postmasters inquiries.. Also it would make it very difficult for officials to try and conceal the truth as it would be against the law.
Given that Labour are under fire for producing a cautious and lacklustre manifesto in other areas I am surprised the party has not highlighted these changes. There are also plans to reform the House of Lords, strengthen the independence of the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, curb MPs having second jobs and set up an independent Ethics and Integrity Commission. Why have we not heard more of this from Sir Keir Starmer?
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.
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.
Convicted paedophile Carl Beech – who made the allegations that sparked the inquiry
The flawed £2 million Operation Midland investigation by the Met Police into alleged sexual abuse by VIPs and politicians which contained sensational false allegations of child murders from a man who turned out to be sex offender himself could be re-opened after four years.
Carl Beech was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2019 on 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud.
Police raided the homes of Harvey Proctor and Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan. .
New inquiry to be set up
Former judge Sir Richard Henriques did a highly critical investigation of how the Met Police handled the investigation and also suggested that two other people -known as Witness A and Witness B who both claimed to be victims of child sexual abuse – should also be investigated for perverting the course of justice.
West Midlands Police carried out a further inquiry and has recommended a further inquiry into all the evidence supplied by both witnesses to see if further action should be taken against them. The police force said there were reasonable grounds to think they had perverted the course of justice.
The Met is asking a second police force to decide now whether there is enough evidence to breing charges.
The Met Police also said that new evidence against them had been supplied by a third party.
After the statement Harvey Proctor claimed he was the person who had supplied fresh evidence. I do not know the identities of the two people
The full Met Police statement reads: “
“In 2016, Sir Richard Henriques was asked to carry out a review into the Met’s handling of Operation Midland which was an investigation into non-recent sexual offence allegations against persons of public prominence.
Sir Richard’s report recommended that “offences of attempting to pervert the course of justice be considered” in the cases of two individuals known as witnesses A and B. He added that “it would be appropriate for another police force to carry out such investigations”.
Earlier this year, following a third party referral which included new information, the Metropolitan Police arranged for West Midlands Police to consider all relevant material relating to witnesses A and B in order to advise on whether any further investigation should follow.
That work has now been completed, with West Midlands concluding that there are reasonable grounds to suspect witnesses A and B have committed an offence of perverting the course of justice and that it is in the public interest to open an investigation into whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution.
Acknowledging that in light of its previous involvement the Met would not be the most appropriate force to carry out this investigation, officers are in the process of agreeing terms of reference with an external force so that the matter can be taken forward.”
Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my reporting.
A serial killer haunts the streets of the Rhondda Valley. Bent Police who torture suspects and beat up a whistleblower colleague come to the Rhondda on a mission to get rid of evidence. In North Wales two children escape the clutches of a care home run by a paedophile only to be murdered later. And in London a far left group backing the miners strike is run by a control freak hypocrite with a penchant for sexually abusing young women.
This is a riveting and horrific tale and there is hardly a sympathetic character in the book. Only Terry Vaughan, a local policeman who joined the force to escape the Valleys and is described as a ” wet behind the ears sheep-shagger ” by his bent superiors emerges as a hero in the tale.
Roger Cottrell
The author, Roger Cottrell, is a former investigative crime reporter and was a young Trotsykite on the Central Committee of the Worker’s Revolutionary Party during the miner’s strike. Now a script writer for TV and film in Ireland and a university academic this is part of a ” work in progress” trilogy.
For those, like me, who love to frighten themselves watching edgy Scandi Noir on BBC 4 on a Saturday night this tale is a perfect fit. Indeed the author has already written a script.
Put together in the mix, an ambitious graduate local reporter nicknamed ” Clever Trevor” with a drug habit in the Rhondda; an ambitious woman hack on the Sun and News of the World and those senior bent police officers, all on the trail of a serial killer who murders paedo victims and young women who support the miner’s strike. It also a cover up of a paedophile ring involving Westminster politicians. To add a literary angle the mysterious killer who taunts the police goes by the name of Azazel, the fallen angel who joined Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno creeps into the story.
Azazel as portrayed by Gustav Dore in Paradise Lost
For those who remember this era the background of the miner’s strike with pickets stoning coaches bring in scabs, and police from the Met roughing up striking miners in the back of vans, is very familiar. Added spice comes when striking miners smash up Rhondda’s police station and the police wreck a miner’s club in retaliation.
Some references in the book are more than just fiction. There is the murder of a black social worker Americk Fraser for trying to expose a paedophile ring operating in the London borough of Lambeth. He was handcuffed to shopping trolley, doused in lighter fuel and set ablaze and dumped in the Thames. In real life Bulaq Forsythe a black social worker was murdered for trying to expose a paedophile ring in Lambeth. He didn’t die in such horrendous circumstances But he had notes linking the South Vale Care Home in South Norwood to paedophiles. The Met Police launched an investigation into his death but nothing came of it. Now we know from the official Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and a recent internal inquiry there was widespread child sexual abuse in Lambeth.
Similarly the North Wales care home where the boys absconded in the book had for years been part of a paedophile ring and its ring leaders in the 1980s included the late North Wales Police chief superintendent Gordon Angelsea. He was never exposed until a National Crime Agency investigation secured his conviction in 2016. All the stuff about Masonic links and the police co-operating with care homes is based on grim fact.
And Liam O’Leary, the head of the Workers Revolutionary League, is based on the now long dead Gerry Healy, the head of the WRP, who is said to have sexually abused 26 women and employed two thugs to impose discipline in the far left organisation.
This is indeed a very dark book but made more menacing because a lot of the fiction in the tale has a basis in reality. It has a very dramatic ending which I won’t spoil by revealing but it is very cinematic. Read it if you can stomach it.
Jaded Jerusalem by Roger Cottrell. Available from Amazon £12.99
Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my investigations.
Westminster Confidential 