It all started with Sir Jimmy Savile.
The platinum-blond disc jockey with a taste for shell-suits needs no introduction to British readers. To others it is enough to record that when he died in 2011 he was at first treated to obituaries that would have made St Theresa of Calcutta blush. He had been a television institution for decades, and when he had not been on television he had been visiting the sick in hospitals or raising huge sums of money, including according to some estimate up to 90% of his own earnings, to charity.
Then, within a few months of his death allegations started to emerge that he had abused children and women on a vast scale. Because he was dead, none of the allegations were ever tried in court but the press, so adoring of him while he was alive, now turned on him with the vehemence of a betrayed lover. The Guardian spoke, unusually, for the majority when it ran an extraordinary editorial comparing him not altogether favourably with Pol Pot, and calling for a public ceremony of commination, as “a ritual expression of public condemnation and disgust.”
The institutions with which he had been associated – mainly hospitals and the BBC – fell over themselves to apologise for his behaviour. Accounts of Savile’s wickedness were collated in various official reports and they were all accepted, without question, by a press that was now as indignant about his criminality as it had been fulsome in his adoration. Anyone – and there were a few – who dared to question so much as a single individual account was considered beyond the pale, even though some of the allegations against him bordered on the incredible.
And of course there was the money. Lots of money, millions of pounds, was paid out in compensation, first from Savile’s relatively modest personal estate, then from the BBC and the NHS. For those that could not ascribe blame to either the BBC or the NHS there was always the option of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, a fickle and imperfect quango which awards or refuses government compensation to the victims of crime. It virtually always gets it wrong: it pays far too little to those genuinely injured, it often refuses to pay anything at all for quixotic reasons, and it sometimes fails to identify fraudsters.
Carl Beech had lived a quiet, even a rather dull, life. After a brief career as an estate agent he worked as a nurse, specialising – somewhat creepily in the light of subsequent events – in paediatrics. He obviously impressed his employer, and rose to become a Staff Nurse, working (amongst other places) in Brighton, Swindon Birmingham and Hereford before moving into hospital management. He married, had children and settled down in a village near Gloucester. He became an inspector for the Care Quality Commission, earning a respectable £55,000 salary.
His first literary venture, Nurse Nurse, was self-published in 2006 under the pseudonym Lucy Samuels. Readers were promised “a hilarious account of what it is like to work as a nurse in the NHS,” and came with the reassuring guarantee: “everything (yes everything) in this book is true.” Sadly it was neither a critical nor a commercial success, and what we now know about the author makes even his personal guarantee ring hollow.
Then came the death of Jimmy Savile.
October 2012 saw the broadcast of a documentary accusing Savile of serious sex crimes. Three weeks later Mr Beech complained to Wiltshire Police that he and a childhood friend of his from Bicester, called “Aubrey” had been abused as a child by a number of people, none of whom he was prepared to name apart from his dead step-father, Major Raymond Beech, and Savile. He called them “The Group.”
His explanation for making the complaint was that “if other people can, I can.” In that, at least, he was undoubtedly correct, but it was one of the few true things he was to utter over the course of the next 6 years as he led the police, politicians, journalists, and an internet attack mob headed by the VIP-paedophile-obsessed online “news” organisation Exaro News.
Wiltshire Police treated the investigation into his claims as “an off-shoot of Operation Yewtree,” the huge investigation into Savile’s associates that ultimately yielded very few convictions of any sort, even fewer safe convictions, and a number of demonstrably false allegations against public figures such as the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and the singer Sir Cliff Richard.
Even though the only two people Beech had named were dead, the Wiltshire Police did their best to corroborate his claims. They failed to do so and the inquiry was dropped. No action was taken against Beech. No doubt the allegations were filed away in 2014 as “unsolved child sexual abuse” in the Wiltshire police archives.
(A few years later Wiltshire Police was to draw upon this experience of investigating dead men with a far more high profile and expensive investigation into the still more comprehensively dead Sir Edward Heath, with exactly the same result.)
The conclusion of the Wiltshire Police inquiry did not bring Beech’s activities to an end. Quite the opposite.
Armed now with a crime number, Mr Beech made an application to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. It was of course entirely fraudulent, and although that was no bar to him receiving £22,000 compensation two years later, the delay annoyed him, and led him to write petulant letters. He said he needed it to pay his counselling fees, another lie since when the compensation eventually arrived he spent it all on a long-coveted white Ford Mustang.
Meanwhile, Beech started to promote himself on social media. He gained followers on twitter as @carl_survivor, and posted regular blogs about his abuse by “The Group.” His “true” stories of nursing had not been well received. His “true” stories of child abuse were lapped up. He even contributed – as “Stephen” – to a TV documentary about Jimmy Savile. Mr Savile, he told the credulous reporter:
“… was just sadistic in what he wanted to do and what he wanted other people to do. Yeah. Just evil and enjoyed seeing pain inflicted and humiliation I suppose. It was hard to comprehend because you know who it is when you’re sat watching TV and he’s on the TV and, you know, it’s just a really strange feeling. I think all of us were just objects, the best way I can describe it is like sweets in a bag that you hand round and share. We meant nothing, nothing at all.”
This is not the place to go into the florid detail of Mr Beech’s allegations as they eventually developed. The confusing snowstorm of false names – “John,” “Aubrey,” “Fred” and others – his own smörgåsbord of confusing pseudonyms (as well as Lucy Samuels, Mr Beech has variously styled himself Carl Survivor, Nick, Stephen, David, Stephen Anderson, Sam Williams, Carl Andersson, Oskar Andersson and Samuel Karlsson), the numerous platforms on which he publicised them himself, his blog, his whiny tweeting as @carl_survivor and his execrable poetry, over-generously described by Richard Bartholomew as “misery memoir blurb channelled through William McGonagall:”
“They came in the night and they came in the day
Myself and my friend were always their prey.
(One of the few successes, albeit unintended, of the subsequent Metropolitan Police investigation into his claims was that it silenced Mr Beech’s muse, one hopes for good).
Mr Beech might have remained just another internet conspiracist. He could have enjoyed his Ford Mustang and lived out his days in anonymity, sustained by an online community constantly telling him how brave he was, were it not for his involvement with what has been described as the “odd” website ExaroNews.com (the domain now has new owners, but remains rather odd).
His blogs and tweets were seen by journalists from Exaro, at a time when the newly created website was trying to make money by charging subscribers a monthly fee for news about corporate bankruptcies. With that unexciting business model failing, a complete change of tone was needed, and Beech’s lies were what it hit upon to propel it – and Beech himself – into prominence.
Exaro journalist Mark Conrad saw Beech’s blog, contacted Beech and started to write up his stories. Soon Exaro was publishing almost nothing except a string of salacious lies about paedophile rings in high places. “Nick,” as Beech was named by Exaro, was the shiny, gleaming thoroughbred in the Exaro stable of “survivors,” although they also promoted a number of other equally, or if that is possible, even more implausible eccentrics and chancers. Although no names of living people were published in the early stages, enough clues were left to make it relatively easy to understand against whom at least some of the allegations were being made. Later on, after Exaro and others published details of police raids, the names were out in public anyway.
According to Mark Watts, Exaro’s Editor, Beech was the “bravest and most genial of men”. Others who had dealings with him – Beech, that is, not Watts – disagreed.
One of Beech’s methods was to expand upon internet rumours and to pretend the same thing had happened to him. At other times he appropriated the real suffering of others for his own ends. Andi Lavery, for example, who had been appallingly abused at a Catholic boarding school, was telephoned by Beech, who tried, as Lavery put it:
“to access my memories and try to use my truth and the horrors of my childhood to further his own malodorous ends.”
His impression of Beech was blunt:
“He is a psychopath, he reminds me of Harold Shipman.”
For his refusal to join the cult of #IbelieveNick, Lavery was then subjected, like others who publicly doubted him, to a barrage of abuse.
Conrad’s technique was simple: he showed Beech pictures of famous people, Beech then announced whether they had abused him or not. Exaro described this ludicrous procedure as “a picture test.” Conrad then wrote up whatever nonsense Beech told him, although Exaro toned down the most egregiously ridiculous parts – such as Beech’s story that former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath had intervened to prevent Harvey Proctor castrating him with what turned out to be a fruit knife. It was an extraordinary way to operate, and had Beech been a genuine victim – as we must assume Conrad believed him to be – his contamination of any resultant identifications would have caused immense difficulties for any prosecution.
Having trampled all over the evidence in this way, Exaro then introduced Beech to the Metropolitan Police who named their inquiry into his allegations “Operation Midland.”
Almost immediately the Met went out of its way not, as one might have expected, to investigate but to promote Beech’s claims. One of its top detectives, DS Kenny Macdonald, notoriously described them as “credible and true.” Whether he actually thought this, or whether he was simply parroting the official policy that “victims must be believed” was never entirely clear, but he never faced any censure for making one of the most irresponsible public statements ever made by a senior police officer, and his boss, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, was subsequently rewarded with a peerage.
Beech happily repeated and expanded his stories to Operation Midland. “The Group” had now expanded to take in swathes of people with nothing in common except that his internet searches revealed that they had been part of “the establishment.” Conservative Party politicians from the left wing of the Party (like Sir Edward Heath) were said to have conspired with their bitter political foes from the right, such as Harvey Proctor. Generals and Field Marshals had tortured him. He had been tied up and had his bones broken. Doctors were employed to patch him up after abuse sessions. He had had wasps and spiders set on him. He had been orally and anally raped and subjected to near drowning. Worst of all he had witnessed the murder of three boys, two of them by Harvey Proctor.
The list of innocent people he traduced is very long. Some were dead, like Sir Edward Heath, and the former heads of respectively MI5 and MI6, Michael Hanley and Maurice Oldfield. One or two were hounded into an early grave: former Home Secretary Leon Brittan and Labour MP Greville Janner both died after learning of his allegations but before they knew he had been discredited (although Janner’s dementia was probably too far advanced for him to understand what was happening). Two were distinguished D-Day veterans in their 90s: Field Marshall Lord Bramall and General Hugh Beach (Bramall was caring for his dying wife when police conducting what was very possibly an unlawful raid burst into his house). Harvey Proctor, was young enough still to be working, and as a result of the raid on his house lost his job and with it his home.
The more absurd his allegations became, the more ready people were to believe, and indeed to encourage him.
The list of enablers and encouragers is also a long one, and includes many of the least distinguished men in British public life.
Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, took Mr Beech very seriously from the moment they met in 2014. He described his allegations as “truly shocking” and was, as Beech was to say in court, “part of the little group supporting me and putting my information out there to encourage other people to come forward.” In this he was successful. He encouraged other fantasists and chancers to “come forward” and lie, while using his Parliamentary voice and privilege to promote Beech’s claims into the mainstream of political debate. Speaking specifically of Leon Brittan a few weeks after his death, and showing no concern for his bereaved wife, Mr Watson tweeted:
“I think I have made my position on Leon Brittan perfectly clear. I believe the people who say he raped them.”
One such person was Beech.
Other MPs, including the Conservative Zac Goldsmith, were also prominent in promoting Beech’s lies, at least by talking about a conspiracy of child abusers as though it were an established fact. Quite what such people hoped to gain by hitching themselves to a man like Beech it is hard to know, but perhaps they hoped to enhance their reputation as people who would be tough on child abuse. Mr Watson now believes that he was one of Beech’s victims, although this seems to stretch the concept of victimhood some way beyond breaking point.
Nor was Exaro News alone amongst news organisations in treating Beech’s allegations seriously. Tom Symonds of the BBC conferred a degree of respectability on him by interviewing him uncritically, although to its credit the BBC as a whole quickly backed off. James O’Brien, a popular presenter on the London radio station LBC, gave a great deal of publicity to his allegations, over a much longer period. O’Brien has not apologised, and still believes that “telling abuse survivors they will be believed” is the right thing to do, even though telling Beech he would be believed was patently the wrong thing to do.
Beech’s targets were mainly “establishment” figures. Only one, the former Labour MP Greville Janner, was from the Labour Party, and his prominent position within the British Jewish community and support for Israel made him, like Lord Brittan, a perfect target for some disgusting anti-semitic agitators who gleefully jumped on Beech’s bandwagon.
For a Russian government actively promoting “anti-establishment” movements all over Europe, this was an opportunity not to be missed. George Galloway, used his platform as a presenter on the Russian state broadcaster RT.com to promote Beech’s claims. Galloway’s purpose, and that of RT, was obviously to promote the idea that British politicians – apart from himself, of course – were debauched chancers with the morality of feral cats, in contrast to the fine upstanding family men and women running democracies like Russia, perhaps, and maybe Syria.
Exaro was funded by Jerome Booth, a successful investor in emerging markets; and supported by Tim Pendry a Tunbridge Wells “reputation management” expert with an interest in transhumanism, who provides advice “primarily … for family offices and high net worth individuals.” One such high net worth individual whose reputation he had once been paid to enhance was Asma Al-Assad, wife of the Syrian dictator (had Bashir Al-Assad been sensible enough to employ Mr Pendry to manage his own reputation it is quite possible that it would by now be almost as high as that of his wife).
They could have pulled the plug on Exaro, as they eventually did, but neither Pendry nor Booth seemed to care when Mark Watts started to become a regular guest on Sputnik, RT’s little sister, where he would gleefully promote and publicise Beech’s hogwash as evidence of an evil British establishment. The Iranian propagandists who run Press TV also enjoyed promoting Beech’s allegations.
Whether he realised it or not, in this way Beech helped contribute to a general cynicism about British politicians that, amongst other things probably assisted the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum and has left its mark in British politics in many other ways.
Conrad’s involvement was not limited to writing up Beech’s lies and introducing him to the police. According to Beech’s evidence at his trial, he showed him how to access TOR browsing – a useful skill for anyone wanting to buy guns, drugs or child pornography discretely – and told him how to set up a Proton email account, to facilitate secure communication.
As it happened, Beech had no need of a TOR browser. He wasn’t interested in guns or drugs and although he was very interested in sexual images of children he was able to amass his own library of these, partly by the more straightforward method of installing a hidden camera in his toilet. The Proton account, however, did come in handy to produce a fictitious series of email communications from someone he claimed was a fellow victim, known as “John.” John was purely imaginary but Beech was cunning enough to compose both sides of the email exchange, although not clever enough to prevent that fact becoming known to the Northumbrian Police – who investigated Beech once Operation Midland, seventeen months later, drew to its lame conclusion that there would be no prosecutions.
Egged on by Exaro the Metropolitan Police dug itself deeper and deeper into ignominy. Raids on the homes of Lord Bramall, Lady Brittan and Harvey Proctor were carried out with improperly obtained search warrants, and then publicised almost immediately, either through Exaro, or their media partners who happily promulgated their stories.
Lord Bramall – a nonagenarian D Day veteran and the carer for his dying wife – had to face a police interrogation while the police turned his house upside down.
Proctor, for his part, lost his home and his job as a direct result of the publicity.
It was Proctor, though, who finally turned the tables on Beech, by the simple expedient of holding a news conference, declaring himself innocent, and revealing the full absurdity of Beech’s allegations. Once exposed to the sunlight of publicity, Operation Midland started to wither. A brilliant BBC Panorama documentary a few weeks later revealed more of the inconsistencies. Mark Watts desperately tried to prevent the Panorama broadcast, claiming that “survivors” might commit suicide as a result. The BBC, to its great credit, refused to back down.
Finally, with the collapse of Operation Midland, and in response at least in part to demands from Mr Proctor, Northumbria Police were brought in to investigate Beech himself.
His library of 350 sexual images of children was quickly discovered. His first response was – as ever – to lie, and to blame other members of his family. Then his other claims began to unravel, as the Northumbrian Police did what the Met had conspicuously failed to do, and started to investigate Beech more closely.
He realised the game was up and whilst on bail he secretly planned an escape to the remote town of Överkalix in Northern Sweden. He bought a bed and breakfast which he planned to run with his elderly mother, while catering for tourists visiting the town’s famous Traktor Museum and Arctic Moose Farm. Having run up sizeable debts with various local craftsmen (including nearly £4,500 for a new bath) his luck finally ran out when, several months later, he was caught, sporting a luxuriant beard and yet another false name, at Gothenburg Station.
What wider lessons can we possibly draw from this extraordinary story?
The first is that liars and fraudsters do exist, and sometimes they pretend that they have been victims of sexual abuse. It is obviously absurd to have a presumption that anyone alleging sexual abuse is telling the truth.
Secondly, although Beech’s motives were obviously in part financial, that was not his only, and possibly not even his main motive. After receiving his payout from CICA, he continued with his activity, even though – unless he was being funded by Exaro, which would add another dimension to the scandal – he was not paid for doing so. Perhaps he gained some sort of sexual thrill from relating stories of child abuse, but it seems likely that he also simply enjoyed the adulation that he received for being a poster boy for abused children (in fact, he became almost literally a poster boy by helping to organise “The Wall of Silence,” an exhibition of pictures drawn by abused children which was shown in Bristol and Cardiff, and very nearly shown at the House of Commons).
Thirdly, detecting liars is remarkably difficult. It is quite impossible to just listen to someone and tell whether they are lying or not. No-one should be better at spotting liars than senior detectives and journalists, yet many of these believed Beech, possibly in part because his stories played to their prejudices: either that “virtually no-one lies about sexual abuse”, or that “the establishment” is made up of wicked people who are capable, as a class, of just about anything. In the police videos Beech, a man with no known acting experience, did a splendid job of sobbing, speaking softly, appearing to struggle over the more traumatic aspects of his story and generally looking and sounding for all the world as you would expect a victim of appalling abuse to look and sound. His internet research enabled him to “remember” seemingly telling details, and to draw – as if from memory – the places where he said abuse had taken place. It was only after meticulous investigation of Beech’s story, speaking to his schoolmates and family, examining such school records as still existed, forensic examination of his computers, and even medically examining him for signs of past injuries or broken bones (there were none), that it could be conclusively proved that he was a liar.
Finally, what of Exaro and Mark Watts? The original Exaro has long since collapsed amidst mutual recriminations amongst its former owners and journalists. As for Watts, even now this strange and obsessive man is refusing to apologise, or even to accept that Exaro did anything wrong in promoting Beech. Notwithstanding the undeniable fact that the man on whom he staked his reputation has been proven beyond any doubt to be a cunning and compulsive liar and an admitted paedophile, Watts appears to believe that his conviction is unsafe. There is an irony that he will probably not see in the fact that that a man who did more than anyone to create the most monstrously unfair trial by internet that this country has ever seen, who was happy to be used as a tool of Russian propaganda on RT.com, who promoted the character assassination of not one but two distinguished veterans of D-Day, who caused an innocent man to lose his job and his home and who actively trashed the good name and reputations of so many others both dead and alive, should now claim to be concerned about the fairness of Beech’s trial, which was conducted in front of a judge and jury according to well-understood rules of evidence and procedure.
This is a slightly altered version of an article which first appeared in Quillette on 25th July 2019
I was at school with a girl who was being abused, on a regular basis, by Jimmy Savile. She was 13 at the time,and looked about 11 or 12. She left school without an explanation after there had been speculation that she was pregnant. We never heard from her again. At the time, she would recount details of the night before. I remember the details quite clearly. They included a description of his home.
I also saw Jimmy Savile, in his E-type Jag, on several occasions, in my neighbourhood. He was driving a young woman home from work. She was believed to be 16 years old, and working as a receptionist or secretary at BBC Manchester. I also saw him, once, without a passenger, driving towards her house. When he took her home from work, he would always drop her off several houses away from her house and parked for a while with her in the car. One night, I saw her anxious father waiting for her at the end of the driveway.
“I was at school with a girl who was being abused, on a regular basis, by Jimmy Savile… I remember the details quite clearly.”
Ok then, what was her name and where did she live? Did you ever mention this to anyone before now?
“I also saw Jimmy Savile… driving a young woman home from work. She was believed to be 16 years old”
Yeah, and?
You seem to have been omnipresent, Mary Smith.
I wonder what it is that makes you an obvious liar
You know an awful lot of detail. He was driving a young woman home from work – how do you know that? She was a receptionist or secretary – how do you know that? You saw him driving towards her house – how do you know where he was going? He would always drop her off several houses away fro her house – you’ve got X-ray eyes. One night you saw her anxious father waiting for her at the end of the driveway – how do you know what he was doing?
So she lived in your road then!
And…..she was working, she had a job so she was a grown woman and of consenting age. And…..it is perfectly normal to give lifts to people from work.
And……I don’t believe a word of it!
Very good article, Matthew. This whole sordid affair, also highlights how we have moved from ‘Evidential Policing’ to some random ‘Beria’ style of ‘Show me a man and I’ll show you the crime’. For me, there was never any evidence produced before my arrest, during my bail period or after my release. The Police worked on ‘assumption’ and their own profiling, exploiting their right to arrest on suspicion. I lost my career, I lost my income and I lost my friends, colleagues and family, but mostly I lost my emotional security. I’m just one of the little guys who will be forgotten in all of this madness.
What a pity. An excellent 4000-word summary of the Beech case, apparently a model of accuracy and good sense, spoilt, as by an inky fingerprint on an illuminated manuscript, by one 44-word paragraph (beginning ‘Whether he realised it or not..’) where Matthew couldn’t resist having his say about Brexit.
I don’t see Matthew making a value judgement about Brexit. As I read the paragraph, he’s including it as a salient example of the kind of backlash against the establishment or status quo that’s fomented by the cynicism and mistrust that allegations such as Beech’s fuel.
No he’s really taking a swipe against politicians who he believes helped the leave campaign as he’s a remainer with a platform.
Whether she realised it or not, in this way Brenda helped contribute to a general cynicism about the British Establishment that, amongst other things, probably assisted the “winning” Leave campaigns in the 2020, 21, 23, 25, and all the later referendums, and has left its mark in British politics and “justice” in many other ways.
Excellent! The best ‘summary’ of this case I have read. I hope it will be circulated to the victims of Beech, as well as to those who showed lamentable judgement through their unquestioning support and advertising of his lies.
I should like to add one name: Barbara Hewson. This barrister has made herself difficult to like at times, but has been a rottweiler in her pursuit of the truth regarding ‘Nick,’ Exaro and the others. She has received littke thanks and a lot of scorn. Shame on her detractors who now have egg on their faces…. ostrich egg!
The voice of intelligence and sanity is often lost in abuse cases. You always show both , Matthew.
I wrote a number of articles about these historical scams at the time, and I wasn’t the only one. Lies, lies, nothing but lies from the sexual grievance industry.
And Savile was innocent.
R.I.P. Susan Cameron-Blackie
I don’t have too much to say about this and can say only two things.
1 I didn’t believe ‘Nick’ from the outset. I always believed the police were playing the ‘Nick’ card. The police wanted to ‘Nick’ pedophiles because that was their brief. Somebody upstairs was pulling the strings. Hence the NICKname.
The police didn’t care who they NICKED.
2 The allegations were ridiculous and the people accused were ridiculous people to choose. Edward Heath and Edwin Bramall are not peadophiles. Don’t be ridiculous!
Coupled with the ridiculous list of names were the Lewis Carrol fantasies and ramblings of a nutcase.
I questioned it from day one and so did many people. The police didn’t?
“What wider lessons can we possibly draw from this extraordinary story?
The first is that liars and fraudsters do exist, and sometimes they pretend that they have been victims of sexual abuse. It is obviously absurd to have a presumption that anyone alleging sexual abuse is telling the truth. ”
Perhaps that was one of the objectives all along.
The entire case smells very badly.
Your attempts to inveigle, Russia, Syria and Brexit leavers, only reveal your prejudices. You do not frame your comments about UK police and media in the same way…
Sentenced to 18 years !!!
Very stinky indeed …
MG
The blog post I would like to read, and which I may write myself if I can manage to get all the source information together, would compare the sentencing remarks and sentences of three criminals now serving long (but unequal) prison terms: (1) Carl Beech; (2) Jemma Beale; (3) Sabine McNeill. I’d also include the record of any decisions that the police had not erred in their handling of Beech’s far-fetched claims in my coverage.
Beech’s and Beale’s crimes that perverted justice were similar. However, in my judgment Beale’s were more serious even that Beech’s, yet she only got ten years, compared to his fifteen.
McNeill’s crimes were similar to the official actions of the police and the journalism of Exaro, both of whom initially promoted Beech, and who are not being punished for this at all. McNeill was duped by Beech-like and Beale-like criminals Ella Draper and Abraham Christie, who seem to have escaped justice.
McNeill was convicted for harassment, in the form of continuing to promote a certain witch hunt after the courts had told her to drop it. She got nine years, nearly as long a sentence as Beale, who had made false rape allegations against fifteen innocent men and had committed perjury leading to one of her innocent victims spending several years in prison for rapes that had never happened (almost three years, perhaps as many as seven years, according to contradictory parts of a single report in The Sun).
I am not saying (a) that the judge who sentenced Beale and/or those who decided to no-crime the police’s and Exaro’s irresponsible enabling of Beech were too lenient. Nor am I complaining (b) that the sentences of Beech and and McNeill were too harsh. What I am observing is that there is a justified suspicion that one or other is true, either (a) or (b), and that I need to get hold of the sentencing remarks for Beale and McNeill in order to dispel this suspicion, or have it confirmed.
You and I have both identified the “believe victims” doctrine of a certain school of thought as a factor in Beech. I see it as factor in Beale too and in the downfall of McNeill, who has just lost her appeal against sentence as totally without merit.
If McNeill deserved 9 years and Beech deserved 15 (not counting the 3 years consecutive for fraud and indecent images), then when didn’t Beale deserve 20 years or more?
Beale made rather more fraudulent claims to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority than did Beech too.
Superb, Matthew! I’m almost left speechless at how succinctly and eloquently you’ve managed to put together this vastly complicated case. The behaviour of The Met Police (and other forces) beggars belief, as does the deep trauma caused to so many innocent people, not just those accused, but their families too.
All those who went along with this should be hanging their heads in shame, but sadly, many of them have NO shame at all, still intent on promoting themselves rather than apologizing publicly and owning up to their stupidity.
I think many of them may well have the same mental health condition, but that’s a whole other story.
As to Beech, I see NPD, his natural ability to lie, the ease with which he did it. He was cunning and calculating. I don’t believe he was a fantasist. I think he knew exactly what he was doing, all the way through..and…like so many other, nay, like ALL narcissists before him, he had the ability to get people to believe him in an instant, drawing them in, able to turn on the tears immediately…great actors are narcissists, able to ‘mirror’ exactly what they know people want to hear…and so many WANT to feel that child abuse is everywhere, that politicians have secret gangs, etc….
Back to strange brain patterns again…
Mark Watts….where do I even BEGIN! Probably best not to begin at all.
Savile….YES…that’s where it ALL began, of course, with Mark Wiliams-Thomas, who made the documentary, mysteriously being helped in it by a former lawyer of Slater & Gordon, which I found so unusual…I later found it mind-boggling when that same lawyer and MWT started turning up on my TV screen, often together, BOTH urging more ‘victims’ to come forward. (!!!)
Slater & Gordon, for those not aware, are an Australian legal firm, who ONLY came to UK when they knew the rules on historical abuse were changing. FOUR of their lawyers in Oz were on one of Aus. Top 10 Richest list…and one, of course, became Prime Minister of Australia.
Slater & Gordon shared the same offline media company as ITV, that being ‘MindShare’ and it was odd how ITVs ‘This Morning’ and ‘Good Morning Britain’ both saturated the public, in my view, with these two people and constant Savile Paedo Paranoia…
I found a VERY interesting article from MindShare recently, on The Power Of Influence (!!?!!), which is here: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/huddle-2018-mindshare-itv-dcm-power-influence/1519535
Anyway, as they continued on with creating Paedophile Paranoia, helped hugely by the press, it got worse, as The BBC and The NHS **advertized** that ‘victims’ of Savile could each get up to £60,000 in £compo, depending on the level of their abuse. The fact Savile was dead didn’t seem to matter at all….just ‘roll up and make yer claim’.
And they did….OH, HOW they all did! Not just Beech, of course, but HUNDREDS more, who’d just remembered they’d been abused by a dead man…and off we went, into PaedoCrazyTime…
Exaro made it all so much worse, because The Crazy Ones flocked around them, as they did around MWT too, and all others who jumped on the £Sexual£Abuse£Bandwagon…and off went The WitchHunters, all over the internet, all over the press, accusing this person and that person….so many INNOCENT people having their lives torn apart forever…some, (I think MANY) being found wrongfully guilty of crimes they’d never committed, The Met wanting NO evidence other than the accuser’s word..
TERRIFYING TIMES….
Oh, did I mention that Slater & Gordon ended up with nearly ALL the Savile cases and ALL of the Operation Yewtree cases? And they are, or were, the lawyers for The Police Federation too…
It had become SO EASY to just throw your allegation into the ring and see what happened, for The System had become Tailor-Made for Liars, Narcissists, Chancers, Sociopaths, Psychopaths, Revengers and The Mentally Deranged….with The POLICE, of ALL people (!!!) assisting such people!
I’m still in shock, to be honest, all these years later, desite YEARS of trying to wake people up about the shocking miscarriage of justice in Rolf’s case, (in my view) ….perhaps because, in researching Rolf’s case, coming to know some of the private invesigation team who worked for him, and some of his friends too, I’ve heard the harrowing truth of what some of these people are capable of….
Beech has NO conscience…nor have those who supported him, I feel…and as to Watson and Danczuk…and The Rad Fems too, don’t even get me started on them all, else I’ll self-combust, along with all the other stuff above…
I sincerely hope that more and more people start to now research the Savile case, those attached to it…that they read the blogs of the late, but great, Anna Raccoon, here: https://annaraccoon.com /category/duncroftsavile/ ….and that people start to realize what a vast BUSINESS this has turned into for some.
MWT told The Sunday Times way back in 2012 that he could make £3,000 to £8,000 an HOUR for his talks on Child Protection. He also owned (still owns?) a Child Protection Agency too. Strange eh? WHY would someone who professes to want to help children seek to charge so much money to do that?
I’ve always found it abhorrent how Insurance Companies create Insecurities, then sell people ‘the solution’ ….
Finally, my heart goes out to all the men and the families so traumatically affected by Beech’s vile actions. I sincerely hope they get justice in being able to sue all those who allowed Beech to do what he did..and those who promoted his ghastly lies, bringing yet more deep stress upon them all.
Thank you for writing this blog.
Lizzie x
2. It seems Mark Williams-Thomas also knows about ‘Mindshare’.
See his talk at 10.00am, listed here:
https://www.mindshareworld.com/sites/default/files/Huddle%202017%20FINAL.pdf
So sad that your fellow blogger “Anna Racoon” didn’t live to see this man exposed.
So sad that your fellow blogger “Anna Raccoon” didn’t live to see this man exposed.”
Yes it is a great shame- especially as we are coming up to the 2nd anniversary of her death
However I see her husband on occasions and i expect that this last week he has been wearing a wry, if slightly rueful, smile when he walks past her ashes’ resting place several times a day. A rueful smile because her being right didn’t make her , or his, life easy and the toll on her when she needed her strength most was immense.
“According to Beech’s evidence at his trial, he showed him how to access TOR browsing – a useful skill for anyone wanting to buy guns, drugs or child pornography discretely ”
Given the general tenor of this piece, this is an unfortunate remark… TOR was invented by the US Navy and developed by DARPA and after it’s release has been funded by the US government. It’s an essential tool for those who live in authoritarian regimes. It has never been a tool used primarily by crooks and nonces.
“TOR..plays only a minor role in the online viewing and distribution of indecent images of children”
2015 Briefing Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
Do bad people use it yes, bad people use mobile phones and drive cars too, this does not make those things bad…
Less media Kool aid, more fact checking…
If there’s any silver lining to this whole sordid affair, it’s that the case of Carl Beech might be recognised as symptomatic of a culture that has developed a bogeyman myth that has become so dominant, and so strident in tenor, that it even clouds the judgement of our objective professionals.
In Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (2000), James Kincaid argued cogently for a more rational approach to child sexual abuse and paedophilia. (Note that these terms aren’t synonymous—one refers to an action, the other attraction. Even the BBC are guilty of talking about ‘convicted paedophiles’, which makes no sense.) Hysteria, Kincaid argued, doesn’t benefit anyone. It leaves us believing that the bogeymen are omnipresent, yet our caricatures are too outlandish for us to spot the real threats, which are often close to home. Two decades after Kincaid wrote this book, we still haven’t learned, though admittedly the case of Jimmy Saville has fanned the flames in the interim.
To tackle hysteria, we need to remain critical about our cultural orthodoxies. For example, we could dare to notice that our bogeyman myths become more strident the more we sexualise children (or expose them to sexualised imagery) in advertising, fashion, pop music, on Instagram, etc. We could observe how we wheel out phrases like ‘tip of the iceberg’ whenever the evidence doesn’t support the claim. We could note our tendency towards dysphemism as we attach the label ‘survivor’ to any victim of a sexual offence, irrespective of severity, whilst the targets of near-fatal assaults are relegated to the status of ‘victims’. Or we could note the cult-like nature of some survivor groups, which are prone to the pernicious habit of trying to universalise their own experiences by telling people who present with common complaints such as generalised anxiety and patchy memory of early childhood that yes, they were definitely sexually abused. The mantra, said Kincaid, is that if you remember abuse, it happened, and if you don’t, it still happened, but you’ve repressed the memories (despite there being no credible evidence for that Freudian notion of repressed memory; as PTSD shows, genuine trauma isn’t repressible). To call them out on this is to invite the straw man: ‘you obviously want children to suffer’.
Operation Midland was a witch-hunt that’s now readily recognisable as a witch-hunt. I do hope that it will lead to positive change, as a rational approach is the one most conducive to creating a safer world, most conducive to victims’ well-being and most conducive to fairer, more objective police investigations and trials.
The third of your lessons to be learned about how difficult it is to detect liars misses the point. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible to determine if someone is lying, from the way they talk, react, behave etc but the content of what they say is relevant. What Beech said was extraordinary and on the basis of what was said alone almost certainly false. The idea of a large conspiracy of very public figures committing extraordinary and theatrical crimes based on the account of a single individual should not be discarded immediately but it should raise a great deal of sceptiscism and caution in the investigation. When talking about financial fraud it is said that if something seems to be too good to be true then it probably is. When talking about allegations of sexual assault the same principle should apply – conspiracies of the famous committing extraordinary theatrical crimes should have been treated extremely cautiously by anyone with any competence or sense of proportion. The behaviour of the police was reckless and incompetent in light of this.
I always considered the allegations to be extremely unlikely and probably false on these grounds alone and I have no special expertise, experience or ability.
I’m surprised the Met don’t have a special team investigating abuse by aliens.
No, not abuse by illegal aliens:
But illegal abuse, abductions, assaults, medical experiments, impregnations, and the like, by aliens from another planet, or perhaps dimension.
If only we had this type of analysis in the mainstream media.
What I find so bizarre is that many of those mentioned by Beech had Police Security Officers to guard them.
The idea that they could be involved with some sort of illegal activity, let alone something rather problematic without their minders knowing seems at best unlikley, yet the Police – the very service who were guarding them merrily carried on their investigations without considering this.
As an ex bodyguard pointed out to me, these people could not even go to the bathroom without The Police knowing
Excellent write up, I hadn’t followed this case. Considering how absurd his claims were, it does make you question how many of these type of convictions are safe. If the police were prepared to say his claims were credible, can they be trusted to of acted fairly in others which were much less off the scale of believeability? The use of forums where people share stories, make it difficult to know whether there was collusion. It’s important to take allegations seriously, but it was always a myth that people don’t lie about such things, fantasists do exist, as well as people wanting to earn compensation. And of course real victims exist too. Unpopular as it is if you have one person claiming that something happened, and one person claiming it didn’t – you need to investigate both
There’s a massive problem with the police and confirmation bias, particularly related to sex offences.
Since you drag in Brexit I think it fair to point out that it has been the same modern Establishment that has clung to the EU and has introduced PC policing.
Personally, I think this was all part of an establishment plot. Maybe Beech did suffer something, or maybe nothing at all….but I think we was encouraged to embelish/ exaggerate at least. He was as much manipulated by other people….just so the powerful elites can do what they did. Change public perception and have a good excuse for not investigating these powerful people anymore.
But what if it was ‘nipped in the bud’ quickly? i.e. pigyobs chose to believe it was a malicious report….most he probably would get is a fine ‘for wasting pigyob time’….like that young lady did for reporting the threats from her stalker ex….who promptly went on to murder her. Unclear whether she actually paid the fine before getting murdered.
Similar thing done to Sabine McKneill, who I did know somewhat personally. She’s an intelligent woman and was never out to make money. They targeted her mainly because of her site which was publishing testimony from thousand of victims such as myself. That COST her a lot of money to run….she was simply a campaigner, manipulated/ tricked I think then fitted up. If her site was under their control it would have simply been ordered to be closed down. But it was hosted in Germany…so they basically tortured her to get the ‘keys’, destroyed it all….then renegged on their promise to release her…and fitted her up for 9 years!
Then there is the Rolf Harris thing…convicted purely on hearsay from one individual who was also shown to be telling lies TWICE…but still convicted. I question how it even got to Court on that basis anyway.
Then there are the thousands of us who get ‘sectioned’ to cover it up. I also had my identity stolen, don’t officially exist anymore…and forced to survive as a slave to pedophiles basically for over a decade now
They are exceptionally good at destroying people/ victims and covering these things up. Which I think Beech was as much used here by these people to create the situation that they now have.
#FreeMelanieShaw
His lies could have been and should have been spotted.
All the paedophiles Beech ever met were sadists.
All the paedophiles he ever met were in prominent positions.
None of them ever attempted to groom him.
Put those together and it was obviously untrue. Sadists and paedophiles occur in pretty much known % in human populations, and most paedophiles want to believe the child enjoys the abuse. Sadistic paedophiles are quite rare, and usually kill their victims.
This should have been obvious to anyone with genuine experience, either in the police or the counselling sector.
You may find the following document to be of interest
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a3BCcSObIU4J:https://www.calameo.com/books/0030995411d948846fef2&client=safari&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=0&vwsrc=1
keep up the fantastic work
I think you will find this link helpful
It contains the text for a leaflet titled
Hope & Recovery: A Self-Help Guide for Jersey Care Leavers
by Survivors West Yorkshire
States of Jersey 2010
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a3BCcSObIU4J:https://www.calameo.com/books/0030995411d948846fef2+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari
(posted not working link in earlier post)
keep up the great work
All of these various police investigations involving celebrities and public figures have been deeply flawed. The moment you tell someone they will be automatically believed without investigation of the alleged crimes is a recipe for disaster and Beech was the culmination of all this. The sheer outrageousness of his claims should have set off alarm bells for anyone with a brain cell, but not our brave boys in blue apparently. On top of this the prospect of large compensation claims were publically broadcast and the combination of fantasy and financial reward is too good an opportunity for some.
As others have already stated there seems little evidence against those already convicted, or reputation posthumously trashed, yet the publicity hungry politicians and ‘wanna be’ TV presenters show no remorse and Inspector Knacker is made of Teflon.
Meantime real crimes were committed in places like Rotherham, Rochdale etc which Inspector Knacker was aware of but decided not to investigate citing ‘community relations’ as their reason for not doing so, or maybe the only victims were working class girls and women, so who cares eh ?
In all of the shenanigans involving Beech, no one has put into the domain the many ‘little people’, those who do not have good PR people or a significant bank balnce to fall back onto or a get-away place to go for sanctuary. I don’t begrudge any of them these hard earned ‘resources’, but as a professional ‘pay cheque to pay cheque’ earner with mortgage, who was caught up in the biased and non-evidential based Policing. A process that considers the ‘we believe you’ complainant to be trusted beyond doubt, whereas the person accused had all their moral and judical rights disolved.
As one of the ‘little people’, who lost their professional ‘trusted status’ on the day I was arrested, in front of colleagues, was then held for fourteen hours and the bailed for nearly four months (for it to be determined by forensic evidence that there was not an iota of evidence to support even my arrest), I went through a ‘witch hunt’. As friends, family members and colleagues abandoned me, I was left to the good graces of the state to provide me with a subsistance income, the roof over my head is always at risk and I have only been physically attacked once, locally.
I believe that there is much to do to re-align our justice system that will not be satisfied by political utterances of putting ‘more officers on the beat’. Much of the writing on this site does bring our attention how our justice system is being slowly manipulated away from fairness and justice. I had been a successful but naïve academic, who failed to recognise the brutal ‘real world’, where those given power will abuse and get away with it. The writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (the Noble peace winner) resonates; ‘Unlimited power in the hands of those with limited capacity always leads to cruelty . . . . . ’.
I do have some sympathy with Beech.
Not for his claims, or his behaviour. But I think his mental stability must be at least questionable.
And therein lies an issue. If you take someone who has mental health issues, and push them to just say things how is the responsibility shared between the fantasist and his enablers ? If (as has happened) Social Services place a known child abuser in a foster home with young children, is any subsequent assault simply the responsibility of the abuser ?
At what point do Exaro and the Police start to become directly responsible ?
Would that fantasists whose lies send the innocent to prison might be compelled to witness the damage they do not only to the convicted but to their families and friends. Depriving a nonagenarian mother of the company and support of a son; causing fall-out over family inheritance; unwarranted investigations of friends by PC Plod leading to summary dismissal from the workplace because of the ‘threat’ the friend poses’by association’, in effect the character assassination of other totally innocent individuals. A School frightened beyond belief to retain a long-serving, non-teaching member of staff, with an unblemished record. There is little to be proud of in our justice system.
What the ‘Beech’ saga has highlighted is how judgemental we are, as a society. If you tell a lie often enough it becomes the ‘truth’ (to the lie teller, those around and to the prognosticators). If you hold doubt to someone’s innocence, then they are in your mind guilty. If you seek compensation, then you are minded towards your belief that you have a rightful claim to get redress from the ‘hurt’ someone has inflicted on you.
Where this all falls apart, if when you are that person who has clearly driven to their ultra-ego personality, desiring attention ahead of others and along the way is supported by those who join the mob culture.
The ‘we believe you’ and ‘#metoo’ culture has surely dismembered any ‘fair play’. It exponentially favours those who make claims. The Police, who battle with a past history of failing those who were subject to abuse, have moved away from ‘evidential based policing’, joining forces with online and terrestrial media taking the word of mischievous people.
The current culture is not helped through these times of highlighting mental health issues, we are accepting that when someone accuses, that their actions can be excused (when their actions are questioned). They seem to get away with simple mitigating statements, such as “I made the accusation when I was under a lot of pressure and did not mean it”. And the Police and courts accept this. Meanwhile the person accused has had their life destroyed and they become vilified by all, often without any recovery. The ‘no smoke without fire’ pedlars take centre stage supported by national politicians and other commentators.
I am one of those who was accused, by the Police service, without any evidence to support my arrest. Held under police bail for 4 months and then dismissed (without any explanation or apology) from Police investigation. I was a ‘trusted’ professional who was subject to a summary dismissal from my career and can not get any compensation. I cannot get work (despite massive effort). I have become one of those who is now described ‘as someone with a mental health condition’ (the unforseen consequence of the current culture and the direct result of an accusation).