Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Kent Police ACCURATELY record rape: the problem is the Home Office and the media
Contrary to media reports, Kent Police ACCURATELY recorded 30% of rape complaints as false.
They provided a full breakdown after a Freedom of Information request.
Total rape complaints: 425
Of these, 134 were 'no crimed'.
Of the 'no crimed', 46 were admitted false allegation, 74 were 'sufficient evidence to disprove allegation', and 3 were a 'genuine mistake' by the complainant.
A remaining 10 included 6 which were rapes that took place outside Kent and therefore not dealt with.
Subtracting the miscellaneous 10 from the 134 'no crime' total, you get 124, which divided by the rape complaints total of 425 gives you 29%: the accurate proportion of 'false rape' which is proven or provable as such.
They provided a full breakdown after a Freedom of Information request.
Total rape complaints: 425
Of these, 134 were 'no crimed'.
Of the 'no crimed', 46 were admitted false allegation, 74 were 'sufficient evidence to disprove allegation', and 3 were a 'genuine mistake' by the complainant.
A remaining 10 included 6 which were rapes that took place outside Kent and therefore not dealt with.
Subtracting the miscellaneous 10 from the 134 'no crime' total, you get 124, which divided by the rape complaints total of 425 gives you 29%: the accurate proportion of 'false rape' which is proven or provable as such.
With this being only the 'false rape' which is known about, then to this must be added an estimate of the proportion of cases recorded under 'no further action' that would also be 'false rape', but which the police missed as such.
Even conservatively, then, 40% of formal rape complaints to police are bogus, but it is likely much higher -- more in line with (Sir) Ian Blair's own study of the estimates by rape investigators in England and Wales: 50% to 70%. And even this may be an under-estimate, of course (research showing that even the most seasoned rape investigators are regularly taken in by women making wholly false allegations).
Of course, the Home Office has long insisted that ONLY complaints where the complainant herself admits fabrication can be 'no crimed'; so Kent Police have put up a brave two fingers (er, one finger if you're in the USA) to the Gnome Office, by also including those cases in which they are sure they have enough evidence against the complainant to disprove her claim.
Self-evidently, Kent Police are accurately recording 'false rape', whereas the Home Office is fervently trying to disguise the scale of it.
-- As the researcher Belinda Brookes-Gordon commented: the commissioning and interpretation of research at the Home Office is by "a separatist-feminist cabal".
Self-evidently, Kent Police are accurately recording 'false rape', whereas the Home Office is fervently trying to disguise the scale of it.
-- As the researcher Belinda Brookes-Gordon commented: the commissioning and interpretation of research at the Home Office is by "a separatist-feminist cabal".
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
BBC Woman's Hour reprimanded but also unfairly let off, re my complaint of serious misrepresentation
BBC Woman's Hour – Woman Sour as its affectionately known in some circles – deliberately misrepresented me, the BBC Trust today concedes. Instead of describing me accurately as an independent (non-affiliated) researcher/writer (into the biological roots of human sociality), Woman's Hour presenter Jane Garvey on air stated that I was a 'self-described academic', when of course I have never thus described myself.
More seriously, she also deliberately and maliciously misrepresented my written submission and oral presentation to a House of Commons select committee in their inquiry into 'women in the workplace', as an explanation, she claimed, of why no women get 'to the top'; when of course it is an explanation of why it is a low proportion of those 'at the top' are women. But the Trust made the amazing unfounded claim that listeners somehow would have understood that she meant not why no woman would ever thus achieve, but merely that most would not!
Do BBC Trust members not read internet discussion board comments – even of their own programmes?! Are they wilfully oblivious to current totalitarian politics and the stupid opinions this drives?!
It seems that the BBC is afraid of any criticism of it not honouring its public service remit. No criticism of the BBC's 'identity politics' mantra is permissible, despite this stance being scientifically, culturally and historically illiterate, and clearly inimical to a public service ethos.
OFFCOM is of course suffused with the same dread lurgi, but I will progress my complaint there in any case.
The Trust mischievously also chose to rule on something not part of my complaint per se. I'd pointed out in support of my complaint that Woman's Hour is demonstrably scientifically illiterate with respect to anything re how the sexes inter-relate; and the programme had replied illustrating my point by citing nothing it its defence – merely alluding to women cancer topics and such, which apply to just one sex. Notwithstanding that evidence on BBC scientific illiteracy was not material to my complaint -- which was purely about Woman's Hour's misrepresentation of me -- and no such evidence was requested; the Trust nevertheless included in its decision that Woman's Hour was not scientifically illiterate! A raw nerve touched, evidently; and one which I will be properly torturing in due course.
More widely, the answer to the BBC's wholesale capitulation to PC-fascism is for everyone to refuse to pay the TV licence fee until the BBC stops perpetrating hatred of ordinary people en mass, and ditches it's totalitarian political contempt for them.
I have not paid for 20 years, and I've written to them several times stating ten reasons why: high up the list being the EU directive that member governments must not interfere with the receipt of free broadcast media -- which the BBC necessarily does re C4, ITC, etc, in demanding the licence fee without providing any option of eschewing its own broadcasting. Given the support for the EU by the BBC then it's strange it refuses to abide by this.
My principal objection, though, is that if the BBC wishes to persistently and systematically broadcast PC-fascist propaganda in direct contravention of its public service remit, then it should pay US for the offensive intrusion, and not demand a regressive inflated poll tax to fund out own oppression.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
stevemoxon.co.uk website now fully sorted
The website (stevemoxon.co.uk) is now fully sorted, with the science journal papers up there and in decent format; more to add shortly.
Here's the text of the front page:
Steve Moxon. Independent researcher/writer re the biological roots of human sociality with a special interest in the sexes
Not sex difference but sex dichotomy: in fundamental motivation, not ability; and it's sex, not gender [sic].
* The biological roots of human sociality with a special interest in the sexes (cross-disciplinary research centred in evolutionary psychology / biological anthropology). There is no such thing anywhere in biology as cross-sex dominance; all being intra-sexual. The human sexes have separate and entirely different social structure and dynamics, with males forming relatively loose ties within a web-like dominance hierarchy, whereas females are closely bonded within a chain-line personal-network. Mate-value (attractiveness) is also sex-dichotomous: female fertility (youth/beauty), and male rank (status) indicating 'good genes'. All stems from the complementary core function according to sex, that for the female is to accurately assess male 'good genes', and for the male is to mutually compete to express them; in the 'genetic filter' mechanism to deal with accumulated gene-replication error (the fundamental problem for all biological systems, and the foundation of social system).
* PC-fascism ('political correctness'): it's origin, development and manifestation as a major, all-encompassing backlash against ordinary people in general by the 'progressive project' (political-Left) mindset; as a means of salving the 'cognitive-dissonance' caused by the longstanding failure to effect any change according to any 'Marxist' theory, which is now thoroughly discredited by overwhelming counter evidence. The fall-guy being 'the workers', then anyone who fits as the stereotypical 'worker' of old -- male, 'white' (and/or heterosexual) -- is demonised with bogus charges of 'misogyny', 'racism' or 'homophobia' [sic], simply for not being female, non-'white' (and/or homosexual). These ever emptier faux accusations are the hallmark of the PC-fascist -- and are themselves truly misandric, (anti-'white') racist, and heterophobic (as it were) -- with their ubiquity revealing the full mutual co-option of PC-fascism by and of the establishment. It's the ultimate expression of perennial elitist-separatism in the denial that this is what it is and instead pretending egalitarianism; the greatest fraud in history.
Here (below) is a list of some of my science journal review papers and other publications putting forward new evidence-based theory (most available in full text from the row of buttons at the top of this page). These are major composite papers which in due course will generate multiple separate papers according to more specific topic.
BRAND NEW. Moxon SP (2013) Human pair-bonding as primarily a service to the female [in excluding other males of lower (but not higher) mate-value, and a buffer against her own age-related mate-value decline]. New Male Studies 2 (2) 24-38
Moxon SP (2012) The origin of the sexual divide in the 'genetic filter' function: Male disadvantage and why it is not perceived. New Male Studies 1(3) 96-124
NEWLY ADDED. Moxon SP (2012) Submission to the inquiry 'Women in the Workplace', for The Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee, House of Commons. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmbis/writev/womeninworkplace/m22.htmo [Find under the button, above, 'Why few women at the top'.]
Moxon SP (2011) Beyond staged retreat behind virtual 'gender paradigm' barricades: The rise and fall of the misrepresentation of partner-violence and its eclipse by an understanding of mate-guarding. Journal of Aggression, Conflict & Peace Research 3(1) 45-54 [Find under the button above, 'domestic violence'.]
Moxon SP (2010) Culture is biology: Why we cannot 'transcend' our genes -- or ourselves. Politics & Culture (journal). Symposium, 'How Is Culture Biological?' http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/04/29/symposium-on-the-question-how-is-culture-biological-six-essays-and-discussions-essay-1-by-steve-moxon-culture-is-biology-why-we-cannot-transcend-our-genes%E2%80%94or-ourselves/
Moxon SP (2009) Dominance as adaptive stressing and ranking of males, serving to allocate reproduction by differential self-suppressed fertility: Towards a fully biological understanding of social systems. Medical Hypotheses 73(1) 5-14
Moxon SP (2008) The Woman Racket: The new science explaining how the sexes relate at work, at play and in society. Imprint Academic. [Book]
Moxon SP (2012) The origin and nature of warfare is not explained but obscured by cultural-anthropological and feminist perspectives, that generate implausible notions of how warfare can be subdued [This paper was in journal peer review but was politically 'spiked' by the cultural anthropologist Douglas Fry, whose position, shared with his protogé, Judith Hand, this paper counters. It is to Hand's political, non-scientific paper that originally this was in reply.] [Find under the button, above, 'Why woman won't whack war'.]
Further review papers and a new book are in preparation. Next will be an overview of ostensible inter-sexual competition, revealing it to be intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual sexual display. There has been so much development in the science that a major cross-disciplinary overview is needed rather than an update of The Woman Racket.
Unrelated to any of the science is research into mythology:
Robin UnHooded is the first-ever etymological investigation into the origin of Robin Hood mythology -- RH obviously not being a real personage. The conclusion is that it is clearly ancient and not medieval: 'Celtic'; specifically (Scottish) Gaelic rodaidh, diminutive of ruadhrí, 'red king'; the mythic figure who sacrifices himself because his regal blood is required to be shed on to the land to ensure its fertility. This etymology seems to have become conflated with the construction denoting the deity to whom the sacrifice is made: rìbhinn (rìgh-beann), 'king-wife', meaning 'maiden-queen', denoting the Celtic deity Bríd (Bríg, Brighid). This was later qualified by hood from Welsh hud, 'magic', 'fairy', in the sense of 'devil' -- 'the old religion'.
The Dragon of Wantley overturns the longstanding theory of the origin of what was England's most famous dragon legend. The early-modern ballad was not to do with the Wortley Lords but the Counter-Reformation, involving a law suit initiated and conducted solely by George More of Sheffield. There are localised mythological roots in 'Celtic' serpent and, it seems, 'water-monster' place-namings, with a medieval 'dragon v knight' overlay through the local presence of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem. [An expanded version of an article in the June-September Stirrings Magazine will appear here some time after June 1.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Oxford convictions: Cross-group disinhibition is behind ethnic-minority perpetrated 'rape-prostitution'
The convictions today of a number of Oxford men for systematic gang 'rape-prostitution' (as it might be termed) of early-teen and even pre-teen girls, is a clear example of the necessary though not sufficient condition for rape (that is, obvious rape, as commonly understood) possibly to occur of psychologically crossing a major in-group/out-group boundary.
As before, in cases such as in Rochdale, the gang is wholly of ethnic-minority individuals; but it is not down to Pakistani or African culture per se (nor anything else about being Pakistani or African), but is an artefact of ethnic-minorities constituting but a very small proportion of the UK population. For the reason that the great majority of girls likely to be encountered are 'white', then there is often evoked in ethnic-minority males a disinhibiting effect. [This is pronounced in those ethnic-minority communities that, irrespective of the nature of differences from the 'host' or other communities, are most inward-looking and not integrating. Hence the lack of representation in these cases of Indian males in comparison to Pakistanis. This fact also undermines the putative explanation of sexual repression within Asian ethnic minority groups; as if sexual repression however profound could ever explain gang 'rape-prostitution'.]
As a consequence, notwithstanding that the facility to be disinhibited in this way applies equally to the 'host' non-ethnic population; for the reason that 'whites' are in very large majority in the UK, and therefore male 'whites' usually encounter girls who likewise are 'white'; then gang 'rape-prostitution' of very young girls is a phenomenon heavily disproportionately perpetrated by ethnic-minorities, just as the pattern of conviction reveals.
This hits a very raw nerve with the now ubiquitous PC-fascist administration of social services and police (as with every other form of administration in the UK and 'Western' nations in recent years). PC-fascism is the pathological blaming of those that in a political-Left framework are viewed stereotypically as 'the workers' – males, 'whites', heterosexuals – for the failure of any sort of 'Marxist' 'revolution' to take place. As a consequence, non-'whites' abusing 'white' girls, notwithstanding that the abusers are male, has been for 'brushing under the carpet', relatively speaking – in great contrast to the absurd witch-hunt as we see with Operation Yewtree, to police/media trawl for allegations against celebrities, that even when not bogus or heavily inflated and merely mild misdemeanour are pursued regardless.
It is stupid and insulting to everyone for the Children's Commissioner, Sue Berelowitz, to claim on Channel4 News tonight that it is police targeting Asians that has led to Pakistanis and Africans disproportionately being convicted. PC-fascism had led to the very opposite, until the seriousness of the problem became so obvious it could no longer be ignored even from a PC-fascist perspective.
Police in the end are obliged to seek culprits where evidence shows they are most likely to be found. Hence stop-and-search re street-crime will always disproportionately target ethnic-minority males – and males of certain ethnic-minorities in particular. The Home Office some time ago for PC-fascist political reasons prevented breakdown of crime figures re 'mugging' according to ethnicity because of the very large 'over-representation' of Afro-Caribbean perpetrators. The crime figures were no artefact of 'racism' by the police: they were the result, again, of disinhibition through psychologically crossing an in-group/out-group boundary; what PC-fascism would term 'racism' if it were in the other direction. Gang 'rape-prostitution' most certainly would be considered serious 'racism' -- and would be prosecuted as a 'racially-aggravated' crime -- if Pakistani girls were being targeted by 'white' men. Everybody realises this, and it's an accurate perception. The more the political-class pretends otherwise, the greater will mount a popular revulsion towards PC-fascism already evident.
Friday, May 10, 2013
'Yewtree' outed as an obscenity completely undermining law
At last, voices are being heard (more powerful than mine) against the deeply obscene idiocy of 'Operation Yewtree'. I urge anyone who has not already done so to read the excellent article by leading barrister Barbara Hewson on the Spiked! website (along with several by others arguing on similar lines on this subject). http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13604/
This follows the hideous spectacle of the police forcing an ill and confused man in his 80s into a 'plea bargain' over incidents from ancient history as trivial as kissing, breast-fondling and a hand up clothing. I'm referring to Stuart Hall, of course. And the others blighted by the police/media trawl have not even been charged.
Hewson's recommendations are exactly right, and as I have long argued:
- Remove anonymity for complainants -- to tackle the high incidence of frivolous, attention-seeking or vexatious false allegation.
- Lower the age of consent to 13 -- to reflect the fall in the average age of female puberty from 17 to 10.
- Introduce a time-limit to avoid making legal cases out of allegations re the distant past that are impossible to evaluate.
The BBC continues to show appalling bias in all this. On the Tuesday BBC1 Six O'clock News a pressure-group spokesman arguing that putting a name of an accused man in the media brought forward other complainants, was not balanced with any expert to point out the research showing that this is precisely what leads to multiple bogus allegation.
Friday, May 03, 2013
What the UKIP breakthrough represents.
The political class of course wish to mis-portray the UKIP breakthrough as 'protest vote' and/or specific voter concern re immigration, but they're wrong. It's neither (albeit additionally a bit of both). It's permanent disaffection from PC-fascist mainstream politics – not that too many folk even understand what PC-fascism is and where it came from: they just have an instinctive nous that it's nasty, elitist and separatist. They could not be more right.
The BBC's Nick Robinson asked the question as to the permanency of the UKIP phenomenon, failing to point out that there are plenty more most-likely UKIP voters amongst the large majority who are so utterly disillusioned with the 'big three' PC-fascist dinosaur parties of the elective dictatorship that they didn't bother to vote at all.
If they had realised that a UKIP vote is no longer a 'wasted' one, then very many more would have ventured to the polling stations -- easily increasing the quarter-share of the turnout to eclipse Labour's share, which anyway was only 5% o 6% ahead of UKIP's. People won't make that mistake in future, and in any case next year UKIP will easily top the poll in the Euro elections, providing huge momentum.
What's so refreshing to everyone is that in Nigel Farage for once there's a politician who isn't just yet another jumped-up parliamentary researcher so full of esoteric but out-dated political bullshit as to be clueless about the world, with a totally on-the-make attitude to live-or-die as a political animal; but who is instead a complete non-careerist genuine bloke. Boris with sense. And the one-man-band jibe falls flat with Paul Nuttall – a compelling working-class Liverpudlian – as the deputy leader, and the woman who so convincingly contested the Eastleigh by-election, Diane James.
The next few years surely will see the death of respectability for PC-fascism in mainstream politics as the three dinosaur political parties continue their remorseless haemorrhaging of members and funding to the point where they simply cannot mount decent campaigning.
Voting for 'none of the bastards' will come to mean something else than staying at home instead of voting, or deliberately spoiling the ballot paper.
The only risk is that in trying to avoid the usual 'triangulation' by PC-fascists to bogusly accuse anyone and everyone of being an 'extremist', that UKIP does not itself let in PC-fascism by the back door. The Party needs to focus on outing PC for what it is -- indeed, to take on board what is after all the accepted scholarship on PC that I have cited and to which I've myself contributed; and, as I pointed out, in being cited by Anders Breivik is not somehow poisoned in guilt-by-association as the political-Left want us all to emote.
Feuerstein Insistute Invitation to the Worls Conference
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The Feuerstein Institute ( formerly the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential -ICELP),
invites you to participate in a World Conference on the integration of cognitive modifiability and neural plasticity.
Join now the
Jerusalem International conference
(June 2013)
on
Neuro-plasticity and Cognitive Modifiabilty
"The role of Cognitive Intervention in the Shaping of the Wo/Man"
Link for details:
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Monday, April 29, 2013
BBC STILL persisting with the Welsh childen's homes nonsense
Having screwed up totally TWICE ALREADY (most recently falsely accusing Lord McAlpine) in persisting with bogus kids' homes 'paedophile' rings when there is either no truth whatsoever or just a kernel of it, the BBC has yet again today run with this 'story'. The only basis there has ever been to the whole saga is just the one member of staff: no other staff members, and nobody on the 'outside'; famous or otherwise. All the rest is non-proven, non-provable and very likely complete fabrication.
This (below) is an exposé of the BBC on the saga up to 1999, from the website of the late Richard Webster -- the brilliant author of Why Freud Was Wrong and of exposés of bogus 'false memory', 'satanic' and child sex abuse scandals: an article he wrote for The New Statesman which appeared on 19 February 1999.
What the BBC did not tell us
ON MONDAY 25 January 1999, immediately after Newsnight, BBC2 broadcast a documentary, A Place of Safety, about sexual and physical abuse in children's homes in North Wales. Many who saw it found it one of the most harrowing programmes about abuse they had ever watched.
As the North Wales Tribunal, the longest and most costly public inquiry in British legal history, gets nearer to publishing its report, the BBC had lined up a succession of witnesses who were prepared to speak about the years and years of child abuse they said they had experienced. All of them were adults. Almost all of them were men. With one exception they spoke full-face to the camera and allowed their names to appear on screen. They spoke of beatings and of bullying by the staff who were employed to care for them, of habitual sexual assaults and of cruelty and neglect on a scale that, ten years ago, would have been beyond belief.
As the programme went on, it became clear why North Wales has now become almost a synonym for abuse. Sir William Utting, chairman of the National Institute of Social Work, said on the programme: 'I think this is one of the names that will continue to resonate through childcare over the coming decades because it establishes a kind of benchmark for the combination of things that can go wrong in residential childcare . . . It will be the name that's used to terrify future generations of childcare workers.'
This is now the received view of North Wales, held alike by journalists, social workers and politicians. But there is a problem with the story of North Wales. It is a problem that the BBC programme illustrated repeatedly and disturbingly.
The first witness to appear on the programme was Brian Roberts. He had been sent to Bryn Estyn, the home said to have been at the centre of a web of abuse, in 1970 when it was still an approved school. Standing in front of the buildings he said: 'It was just like something out of a horror movie, the beatings, the abuse, the sexual abuse. It was disgusting.' As atmospheric music played and the camera cut to a shot of crows perching on nearby tree-tops, Roberts went on to say that a man (whom he did not name) had taken him into the gym and attempted to bugger him.
What the BBC did not tell us was that Brian Roberts only made his allegation of sexual abuse after watching a television programme about Bryn Estyn in 1997. This programme, which dealt with the setting up of the North Wales Tribunal, had mentioned the conviction of Peter Howarth, the deputy head of Bryn Estyn, for sexually abusing adolescents in his care. (It did not mention that Howarth, now dead, always protested his innocence, or that some of his former colleagues still believe he was wrongly convicted.)
Roberts immediately contacted the tribunal and told them that he, too, had been sexually abused by Howarth. He then made a formal statement to this effect. At this stage it was pointed out to him that Howarth had not begun working at the school until November 1973, three years after he had left. Far from being sexually abused by Howarth, Roberts had never met him.
The next witnesses to appear on the programme were Keith and Tony Gregory. Tony described a regime where physical abuse was commonplace. He said: 'You'd let it happen to you. You'd let the staff punch you in the face, or in the stomach, or throw things at you.' He went on to make even more serious claims, including that he had seen Peter Howarth sexually abusing one of the residents.
What the BBC did not tell us was that Tony Gregory had also given evidence to the North Wales Tribunal. One of the allegations he had made concerned a Mr Clutton who, he said, had thrown a leather football at his face so hard that it had almost broken his nose. During cross-examination it was pointed out that, although there had been a Mr Clutton on the staff of Bryn Estyn, he had left in 1974, three years before Tony Gregory had arrived.
The next witness to appear on the programme was Steven Messham. He said that on one occasion, when he had been in the sick-bay with blood pouring from his mouth, he had been buggered by Howarth as he lay in bed. He said that on another occasion he was asked to take a hamper of food to Howarth's flat, where he was buggered by Howarth over the kitchen table.
What the BBC did not tell us was that Messham claims he was sexually abused by no less than 49 different people. He also says he has been physically abused by 26 people. In 1994 the Crown Prosecution Service declined to bring his allegations against Howarth to court. None of his allegations has ever resulted in a conviction. In 1995 one of his most serious sexual allegations was rejected by a jury after barristers argued that it was a transparent fabrication.
The next witness was Andrew Teague. Teague said he had been beaten and sexually abused by one unnamed member of staff and that he had also been sexually abused by Howarth.
What the BBC did not tell us was that, although Teague had at one point agreed to appear as a witness at the North Wales Tribunal, he changed his mind at the last moment. The tribunal declined to use its powers to subpoena him. Counsel to the tribunal, however, did read out a statement which Teague had made to the North Wales police in 1992. In this statement he made allegations of physical abuse but clearly said: 'I never experienced any sort of sexual abuse by the staff.' His main allegation was of serious and repeated physical abuse by a care worker, Fred Rutter. It was later pointed out to the tribunal that Teague was at Bryn Estyn between 1977 and 1978. Rutter, however, did not start working there until 1982.
The next witness to appear was Andrew Treanor. He said that he had been abused at Ty'r Felin in Gwynedd, when a member of the care staff had punched him in the face.
What the BBC did not tell us was that in 1992 the North Wales police took a statement about a similar incident from a young woman who had been in care with Treanor. In her statement she recalled that Treanor had been arguing with a member of staff: 'Following the argument Treanor came to join us by the steps to the loft. He had a bruise on his face from an earlier incident . . . We were talking about it and Andrew decided to start hitting himself on his face by this bruise to cause a more serious injury. He then said he would make a false allegation against the ex-army member of staff to get him dismissed. We all agreed to go along with his story, although we all knew Andrew had not been assaulted at all.'
The next witness did not appear under his real name, and was filmed in shadow. He told of how, some ten years ago, he had been sexually abused by Stephen Norris, the officer in charge of Cartrefle children's home. His testimony was detailed and convincing. There is a wealth of evidence to indicate that the sexual abuse he described (and which he complained of at the time) did indeed happen. Norris, who had previously worked at Bryn Estyn, subsequently pleaded guilty to offences against boys in his care and has served two prison sentences.
Partly because of Norris's conviction there can be no question at all that some sexual abuse and some physical abuse did take place in care homes in North Wales during the 1970s and 1980s. But equally, after all the evidence which has now emerged, there should be no doubt that a substantial number of false allegations have also been made. If the selection of witnesses who appeared on A Place of Safety is in any way representative, then the programme itself would seem to indicate that the proportion of false allegations may be startlingly high.
By far the most disturbing feature of the programme, however, was that the journalists who worked on it failed utterly to discharge the most basic duty of all journalists - the duty to investigate.
The real question raised by the programme is not whether every detail of the complaints made in it was true or false. It is whether the witnesses it featured should have been relied on by responsible journalists. At least five of the first seven witnesses who appeared had in the past made serious allegations of abuse that were demonstrably false. In some cases they had tried to uphold their allegations even when the details of their complaints had been shown to be impossible. Brian Roberts, for example, after having learnt that he could not have been abused by Peter Howarth, said that he had mistaken the identity of the staff member involved. The trouble, he said, was that 'we never knew the staff directly by their names, it was either Sir or Miss'. According to those who knew Bryn Estyn at the time, Roberts' account of an institution whose staff had no names bears no relationship to reality.
In most cases the amount of research needed to uncover the unreliability of the witnesses who appeared on A Place of Safety was minimal. In the cases of Roberts, Gregory and Teague, for example, all the BBC needed to do was consult the relevant portions of the transcript of the North Wales Tribunal. Yet even this piece of elementary journalistic research, which would have taken hours rather than days, appears to have been too much for them. The result was a programme that undoubtedly shocked many who saw it but which is actually far more shocking as an example of the low level to which some television journalism has fallen.
The low standards of this BBC programme are all the more worrying in view of the planned publication, later this year, of the report of the North Wales Tribunal. This report was referred to in the programme. Steven Messham, the man who claims he has been abused by more than 70 different people (and who also frequently appears on Channel 4 News), spoke of the promise made by Gerard Elias QC that the tribunal would 'leave no stone unturned in its search for the truth'. Messham went on to suggest that this was not so because the tribunal had failed to give proper consideration to the idea that a paedophile ring had organised a network of abuse in North Wales care homes.
What the BBC did not tell us was that other observers have criticised the tribunal from a quite different point of view. In particular they point out that, although considerable doubt surrounds the conviction of Peter Howarth, the tribunal has explicitly declined to consider this question. The tribunal says that it is bound by the doctrine of res judicata, which prevents it from investigating matters that have already been brought before the courts. This may well have been a legally correct decision. But the effect of the ruling is to prevent Howarth's barristers from challenging the soundness of his conviction.
In other words, one stone must remain unturned. And since the stone in question is nothing less than the foundation stone on which the entire North Wales story has been built, there are those who hold the view that the tribunal has not been able to conduct a proper inquiry at all.
The North Wales Tribunal has cost the taxpayer an estimated £15 million, but if this expenditure is unprecedented, so too is the difficulty of the task it faces. No amount of money can buy access to the truth and we must hope that the tribunal will not end by wholly or partly endorsing a received view of the story of North Wales that is fundamentally false.
But in view of the doubts that surround the story of North Wales - doubts that A Place of Safety, by its choice of witnesses, inadvertently illustrated - it is extremely important that the report, when it eventually appears, is thoroughly examined. For that to happen it is essential that the report is scrutinised by journalists who have themselves researched the story in depth, and whose appetite for sex, sensation and scurrility does not overpower their capacity to judge between what is true and what is false.
On this front, the only reassuring news to have emerged since the broadcast of A Place of Safety is that the tribunal report is now unlikely to appear until the summer. This gives journalists both in the BBC and in other media throughout Britain at least three more months to research the story thoroughly themselves. If we are to judge by the quality of journalism apparent in the BBC's A Place of Safety, they will need all this time and more.
