Innocent until proven

guilty? Not in cases of

alleged child abuse

John MacLeod

 

Kenneth Roy (4 August) does well to address the issue of what befell Jim Fairlie. Few other than those who have, like Jim Fairlie, been falsely accused of abuse of one form or another, have any idea of how different the manner in which the law treats allegations of child abuse is, as compared to the way in which other allegations are dealt with.
     Kenneth Roy rightly makes the point that Mr Fairlie would welcome a civil case against him – he would then be able to conduct a robust defence of the truth of his own statements which in turn would presumably give a practical demonstration of the false nature of the allegations against him.
     At the heart of the problem are several fundamental inequities which lead to injustice again and again:
     1. The status of 'professional opinion' – a suspicion or an allegation once it has been through the hands of a 'professional' – be that a social worker, a  school teacher, a school nurse, a GP, a hospital consultant, a police officer or whatever – is, for child protection purposes, ascribed a status little (if any) different from proven fact.
     2. The collaboration and joint action of the 'professionals' involved: before a case even gets near a child protection case conference, far less a court, they'll all have met together and mapped out a plan of action. Of course their stories will dovetail nicely – they've arranged it that way.
     3. In some situations, at the lower levels of the system – 'child protection case conferences' – you can find the same individuals acting as accusers, prosecutors, judge, jury and executive agency. Even at that level, a child can be removed from its parents. Something's far wrong with such a system, especially when at that level the accused is denied legal representation.
     4. The system proceeds on the assumption of guilt and it is exceedingly difficult for an accused to get the opportunity to present a meaningful defence of which there is any likelihood of acceptance.
     I write from personal experience. I am aghast at what we experienced in terms of a web of lies and deceit on the part of teachers, social workers, doctors and police. I am aghast that the regulatory authorities should support the action of a GP in providing the procurator fiscal with information from his files edited to imply that an injury, which actually occurred to a child in school, occurred at home. 
     I am aghast that hospital medical records have disappeared for a period of time and that the precise record which disappeared should have been demonstrably tampered with (unaltered copies existed in the records of other bodies and were called in under data protection legislation).

 

     I am aghast that a chief constable should give to an employer information which was contradictory to the records of his own office. I am further aghast that the same chief constable should admit that it was probably a police officer who leaked the story to a Sunday newspaper which proceeded to identify the child in question – needless to say no action to identify the police officer in question and no action by the Press Complaints Commission either.
     We were probably much more fortunate than Mr Fairlie. We had wonderful professional assistance from medical and legal friends of high status and ability. We had, if not financial resources, the human resources to requisition, scrutinise and collate the content of tens of thousands of pages of documents and thus expose some of the demonstrable falsities of the case against us and the clear breaches of procedure by those involved in bringing a case against us. We had an MSP and an MP who were both extremely supportive. And we had a community who, watching with I'm sure a mixture of fascination and horror, were almost to an individual extremely supportive and unbelievably kind. 
     After a year the case collapsed completely – but did even one of the professional accusers admit that they were fundamentally wrong?  Of course they didn't. The social worker who was called in to investigate our official complaint about  malpractice of other social workers in the case, and who generally found in our favour, has been fired. Need we be surprised?
     Now, to be fair, it wasn't all bad. I believe that two hospital consultants (of several) acted honestly. I believe that two police officers (of many) did likewise, as did the procurator fiscal and the children's reporter. Those were, however, the exception rather than the rule in our experience.
     Even more frightening is that in the past seven years I've had the sad experience of two friends, at different ends of the country, being prosecuted under 'Child Protection' legislation on the basis of utterly false allegations so ridiculous that in each instance the verdict was no case to answer.
     There is a fundamental problem in this area of law – it is possible for accusers, professional or otherwise, to make false allegations with apparent impunity and the system does not afford to the accused either the assumption of innocence until guilt be proven or a reasonable opportunity to provide, or means of providing, a defence.  
     Justice without equity is hardly worth having.

 

John MacLeod has been principal clerk of assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) since 2000