The ‘sad’ war between factions who should be working together to end the tyranny of parental alienation, is rearing its ugly head again…
Social media – instead of being the world platform for free speech and the dissemination of ideas – is the new untamed wild west, a prairie blistered by vitriol, anger, viciousness, lies and libel.
Social media – instead of being the world platform for free speech and the dissemination of ideas – is the new untamed wild west, a prairie blistered by vitriol, anger, viciousness, lies and libel.
There is no doubt the real prairie dog of insults and attack is Facebook.
And Andrew John Teague, from Swansea, and his supporters say he has become a real-life victim.
Andrew is co-founder of D.A.D.s (dads against double standards) and the National Association of Alienated Parents and is seen by many as a prime mover in the battle alienation, climbing mountains and staging protests outside family courts across the UK.
However, he is regularly accused of theft, of cynically cashing in on the battle to bring parents and children back together again, of being a self-publicist, of accepting a free holiday and even being gifted a car.
Now his personal story of surviving child-sex abuse, bullying and fear inside Britain’s child care system has been thrown in to doubt by social media posts.
The problem with the robotic world of social media is that it has no boundaries of human decency, lawfulness or compassion and allows heartless cyber bullies and keyboard thugs to share their vileness without control.
In the meantime, Peter Davies, NAAP founder and director, has submitted this in an attempt, as he describes it, to put the record straight:
How the sheer hell of a child abuse victim has been used to perpetuate his suffering
Introduction
Andrew Teague says he spent a total of six years living in the inhumane conditions of children’s homes in North and South Wales during the 70s and 80s.
We know now that some childrens’ homes were hellholes where many were routinely subjected to the most degrading, horrendous and appalling abuse imaginable.
In a cruel twist of fate when Andrew was a boy he says he had actually asked to be placed in care.
Even then he was a survivor and reasoned that at least then his basic needs would be catered for. The reality of life in care turned out to be an even worse nightmare than the one he was trying to escape from.
As if living with the agony of these experiences has not been hell enough, in recent months, Andrew has been forced, by a certain individual and a few of his supporters, to relive these horrendous memories which are the stuff of nightmares.
Why anyone would wish to goad, bait, harangue or bully a victim of child rape, violent beatings and ritual humiliation lies outside the scope of my understanding of human behaviour.
To anyone with an ounce of empathy even the notion should be vile and abhorrent. Nonetheless, it came as no surprise to learn that the main protagonist of online abuse and bullying, besides fronting an online PA group and a campaign against PA appears to have his own skeletons to hide.
This individual has publicised, and others have shared, some thoroughly disgusting, utterly thoughtless and unimaginably nasty allegations claiming that Andrew has lied about his childhood experiences.
To justify these claims they have failed to produce one iota of evidence or produce anything that remotely resembles credible research or evidence.
Unless one bears a compelling desire to do time it would be a great idea to learn the difference between evidence, opinion and hearsay.
Our message for them is to either evidence your vile words or do us all a favour and shut-up.
Below, we have set out some evidence and information to allow readers to make up their own minds.
To give a flavour of the climate which led to the disclosures of institutional child abuse in the children’s homes of North Wales this 2012 news report on C4 stated:
’It’s hard to imagine a more tragic misnomer: calling Bryn Estyn a ‘care home’. ‘
It is perhaps one of the most tragic and callous misnomers since the signs at the gateway of the Auschwitz extermination camp.
Background to the North Wales Children Home Public Inquiries
This next news-clip in 2012 follows David Cameron’s announcement of an independent review to the Waterhouse report of some 12 years before. This would become the Macur review.
The prime minister at the time also ordered a further police investigation by an INDEPENDENT force into the numerous complaints of child abuse in the North Wales children’s homes. This investigation by the National Crime Agency was to become operation Pallial.
Several messages emerge strongly from the second news clip.
Firstly, even by 2012, despite years of shining a light upon one of the worst child abuse scandals in living memory, there had been only around 10 convictions. Following the Macur review and investigation the number of convictions was doubled.
Secondly, far from being a ‘witch-hunt,’ as convicted perpetrators and pedophiles have claimed, there was every indication that there had in fact been so little action after ‘…dozens of council inquiries…’ and ‘…dozens of police investigations…’ that the repeated investigation and lack of prosecutions arising from the institutional child abuse at the North Wales children’s homes bore the noxious smells of injustice and establishment cover-ups.
Thirdly, as with parental alienation and other forms of abuse there were strong suspicions that undue influence had been at play to protect, divert attention from and shield the pedophile perpetrators of systematic institutional rape and child abuse.
The Waterhouse Inquiry and Cover-ups
In 2000 Sir Ronald Waterhouse chaired a public inquiry which reported that:
‘The evidence before us has disclosed that for many children who were consigned to Bryn Estyn, in the 10 or so years of its existence as a community home, it was a form of purgatory or worse from which they emerged more damaged than when they had entered and for whom the future had become even more bleak.’
The Waterhouse inquiry marked a significant milestone in changing public and government attitudes of the day. Once the genie was out of the lamp it could not be put back in. In the case of Bryn Estyn, once the cover was taken off the cesspool it could not be put back on. Nonetheless this has not stopped some very dishonest, obsessive, vindictive and nasty people from having a go.
Establishment cover-ups are not exactly unheard of in the world we inhabit. Where money, wrongdoing and influence are involved they are the order of the day.
For fine examples of institutional cover-ups of the day we need look no further than Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993 which took the valiant efforts, devotion and persistence of his parents until 2012 before there were convictions of Stephen’s murderers.
The Hillsborough disaster in1989 took a series of inquests and inquiries before charges were brought for manslaughter and negligence in 2017.
Bryn Estyn and the North Wales children’s homes provide further examples of how power and influence have stood in the way of fairness and justice for many years before ordinary and highly vulnerable people, who are often unable to defend themselves, are able to get as far as the courtroom steps. In all of these situations justice and belated apologies have needed to be prized from the jaws of the state who has only ever conceded anything grudgingly.
Jillings Report, Waterhouse Report, Macur Review and Operation Pallial
The Waterhouse report also marked a watershed in obtaining justice for the abused child residents of the North Wales children’s homes because it was the first major inquiry in this sordid and squalid affair to be heard publicly and to be subjected to public scrutiny.
The 300-page Jillings report, prepared for Clwyd council in 1996, provides a sorry example of how easy it was to hush up findings which in any free and democratic society should have been in the public eye. This report was not even published until 2013 some 17 years later.
The pathetically inadequate reason for the secrecy and deliberately suppressing valuable evidence and damaging findings was that it would inevitably have opened the floodgates for compensation claims from the victims of institutional child abuse.
Details of the findings of the Jillings, Waterhouse and Macur reports are easily accessible on line.
Unfortunately, the official lack of transparency concerning earlier inquiries than Waterhouse allowed the propagation of conspiracy theories from parties such as some children’s home staff whom were subsequently convicted of numerous charges of child abuse. Organisations such as a pressure group, calling themselves, North Wales FACT (Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers), formed in 1999.
The group claimed that false allegations had been made about their membership in the North Wales children’s homes and campaigned for ‘justice’ for the men they claim were vilified during the Bryn Estyn care home cases of the early 1990s. Despite these claims of innocence and of a ‘witch hunt’ between 1978 and 1995, at least nine people were convicted of offences against young people relating to care homes in North Wales and there were around 10 additional convictions of abusers and pedophiles arising from operation Pallial after 2013.
We cannot find any trace of appeals or wrongful convictions since. Far from there being a witch hunt or a climate of false allegations the total of around 20 convictions indicates an epidemic of child abuse and pedophilia on a scale not seen before. Indeed, 7 of those convicted worked at Bryn Estyn.
Public hysteria and conspiracy theories
One of the main protagonists was an author named Richard Webster who was a supporter of FACT and was to have spoken at the FACT conference in 2005. Richard Webster’s book entitled ‘The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt ’ was published in 2005.
Webster relates a story of Bryn Estyn which he suggests became the focus for false allegations and a witch hunt. Well known and respected solicitor Richard Scorer was scathing of Webster’s book. In a review for the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers he said,’
‘However, I would put a very stark health warning on the front of the book. This is a very unbalanced book, and Webster is economical with the facts when it suits him to be.’
Scorer added, ‘The buggery of boys by a member of staff – the fact that it could happen, undetected, over a long period – apparently provokes no interest, comment or concern on Webster’s part, other than to complain that it encouraged the police to pursue their investigations further.
Around 30 years on and with the advent of new technology it has never been easier to obtain information or to verify facts, evidence and data such as we have quoted and referenced above.
Therefore, when individuals and groups of people fail to even attempt to verify basic data and choose to rely upon or cherry pick information, which in some cases could only have come from those convicted of paedophilia and child abuse, one has to ask serious questions about their integrity and their motives for doing so.
Therefore, when an individual quoted from a New Statesman Article written by Webster any critical analysis or even a fair representation would automatically demand at least a mention of the reams of data that have emerged before and since 1999. Furthermore, some of Webster’s assertions are misleading.
Webster’s 1999 allegations of a witch hunt pre-Waterhouse.
Below we have quoted Webster’s words and answered each point in turn. This nasty and feeble excuse for individuals that abused children is beneath contempt. Please do not read Webster’s words on a full stomach because it really is a sickening and hateful attack:
“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.”
– Andrew actually claimed to have been beaten and sexually abused at Bryn Estyn, but beaten at another home called Ty Mawr. Immediately, Webster has mischaracterised the evidence in order to give his own version credence.
‘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 New Statesman published Webster’s article on 19h February 1999 but what Webster conveniently omits to mention is that the Waterhouse tribunal report was not published until February 2000 which is exactly a year after this. Andrew is not named in the Waterhouse report and he was not named in the course of the inquiry since the anonymity of victims in sexual crimes, although not mandatory until the sexual offences Act 2003, was nonetheless commonplace beforehand and this convention was observed throughout the inquiry.
– In fact the Waterhouse report was subsequently criticised for failing to name the abusers.
– The most likely source of this information, since Andrew was not interviewed by Webster, is indeed the perpetrator of physical abuse upon Andrew at Bryn Estyn, Fred Rutter, who was already safely behind bars at the time the NS article was written. Therefore references to the tribunal would appear to be a device used to give a degree of credibility.
The later Macur review praised the sensitive way that victims and survivors were handled by the investigators. All potential witnesses were screened by psychologists and psychiatrists to gauge whether the ordeal of giving evidence would cause them even further harm. The welfare of victims came before the conviction of pedophiles.
The fact that rates of suicide amongst former pupils were notoriously high is testament to the immense psychological and physical harm inflicted by staff in these homes.The few that escaped being abused directly would lie awake at night waiting to be taken away by staff to be shared, raped and buggered at any time. After being raped they would return to their beds to cry themselves to sleep.
Merely, being in Bryn Estyn was traumatising. Wondering whether it would be your turn tonight would have been nothing less than torture.
The decision regarding who should give evidence was taken by the prosecutors not the victims. This is another misrepresentation.
‘The tribunal declined to use its powers to subpoena him.’
There was no need and it would have been pointless. Andrew’s main abuser, Fred Rutter, had already been behind bars after having been convicted on 4 counts of rape and two of indecent assault. He was sentenced to 12 years on each count to run concurrently. The likelihood is that further charges would also have run concurrently so what purpose would be served by putting more vulnerable victims through the emotional trauma of giving evidence and reliving their abuse? This is the sort of thing domestic abusers are being stopped from doing in the family courts. Consequently, this is another misrepresentation by Webster.
‘Counsel to the tribunal, however, did read out a statement which Teague had made to the North Wales police in 1992.’
Unless Webster attended every one of the 200+ days that the inquiry sat he could not possibly have known what or which evidence would be used. Again there was no sane reason to put more victims than absolutely necessary through the ordeal and trauma of cross examination when the evidence shows that a conviction was decisively obtained with a smaller number of less emotionally damaged witnesses. There was absolutely no need to further traumatise more victims. The implication here is that Webster had sight of the tribunal manuscripts. The fact is that in 1999, when Webster wrote his article, they had not been written let alone published!
‘In this statement he made allegations of physical abuse but clearly said: “I never experienced any sort of sexual abuse by the staff.” ‘
Andrew was a resident at other homes besides Bryn Estyn. He was a looked-after child for around 6 years. Andrew actually claimed to have been beaten and sexually abused at Bryn Estyn. However, Andrew was beaten at Ty Mawr. Webster’s words have been cherry picked from the account of his time at Ty Mawr.
‘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.’
Webster omits to say where this information came from and that Rutter and others were regular visitors before their employment. Rutter the ‘Nutter’ was well known to the boys long before he was on the payroll of Bryn Estyn. The writer has written this final sentence to suggest that it was ‘…pointed out to the tribunal’, that that Rutter did not start worker at Bryn Estyn until 1982. The construction of this sentence would make it equally likely that the source of this allegation was Rutter himself. And, his history of offending means he is not the most credible person to have briefed a reporter.
General
Anyone, other than a bigoted imbecile imbued with lashings of hatred, reviewing this article critically and fairly would quickly realise that it was written before findings of the Waterhouse Inquiry were published, before the Jillings report saw the light of day and before evidence was available from anyone other than the complainants or their abusers. The Macur review was to follow and so were a further 9 convictions arising from operation Pallial making around 20 convictions in all.
The veracity of the claims made by victims were subjected to a considerable and, many would consider, inhumane degree of scrutiny.
Already damaged young men were forced to relive their bestial abuse ad nauseam it would seem. For 20 years or more, time after time, they were compelled to relive their nightmares simply in order to be believed.
The BBC and press checked out individual accounts, all claimants underwent many interviews, there were psychological assessments, there were psychiatric assessments, there were numerous police interviews, cps interviews, lawyer
interviews and assessor interviews which took place before and after Webster’s article. Therefore, so much for claims of poor hard done by staff members promoted by Webster and others who either knowingly or unknowingly were obscuring and supporting the appalling abuse perpetrated by pedophiles in the North Wales children’s homes.
Our support will always be for the victims and the people who are otherwise denied a voice. Please make up your own minds and please comment.
