Real Hard Cases

by Robert Jeffrey

  Holiday camps also attract young folk looking for seasonal work. The thought of a pleasant month or two earning a bit of cash in the company of like-minded folk appealed to Linda, a tall, leggy and attractive nineteen-year-old. She worked as a waitress in Butlins at Ayr in 1998 and, instead of spending a carefree summer, she found herself at the centre of a nightmare.

  The horror story began in the early hours of the 23 May. She was making her way back to her chalet after work and a bit of a night out when another employee, a security guard she vaguely knew by sight, offered to accompany her home. This he did but, when Linda went to close the door of the chalet behind her, she realised he had managed to slip into the room. She was thrown to the floor and raped. She reported the attack to the head of security and insisted the police were informed. What happened next beggars belief and I say that as an experienced ex-cop. She was accompanied to the police office in Ayr at around 9 a.m. and was still in the station at around 11 p.m. Much later in her story, when I interviewed her in my role as an investigator of alleged injustices, she repeated what she had said from the start – while she was in the station that long day, voluntarily attending to report a rape, she suffered verbal abuse from two police officers. She was also put under pressure to retract her allegations. In addition, she told me she was denied her basic rights such as being given food, the right to use a telephone and access to legal advice.

  It seems obvious to me that the intention of the interviewing officers was to get her to change her version of events so that a hard-pressed force would have one fewer case to investigate. It does nothing to excuse such behaviour to point out that, from time to time, false accusations of rape were made by people staying at the holiday camp but this was a genuine victim who voluntarily put herself into what was to become a nightmare purely to make sure her assailant did not go free.

  She was driven back to the camp that night and was picked up and returned to the station at 11.30 the next morning. It appears that the pressure on her to change her story continued. The police even sent a car back to the camp to pick up a fellow employee who advised Linda to change her story and say she had not been raped. Linda refused. But the pressure continued for hours and eventually she cracked, signing a document to the effect that she had not told the truth about the rape – though why on earth she should have done so is beyond me. At 5.45 she was allowed to leave the police station.

  That could have been the end of it, horrific and unsatisfactory as it was. But, no, more was to come and her nightmare grew. She was charged with ‘making false accusations and wasting the time of the police’ and later the might of the law took its course with this nineteen-year-old appearing at Ayr Sheriff Court. The possible consequences were dire. Her solicitor warned her that, if she went to trial and was found guilty, she could go to jail for two years. And, at the proverbial last minute, she took the less dangerous way out or so it seemed at the time. After admitting the charge, she was fined £200 and, of course, she was now a person with a criminal conviction. Interestingly, if she had insisted on going to trial, the first witness would have been the man alleged to have committed the rape. Such conflicts in court are a common occurrence in rape trials and many a victim simply can’t face the ordeal of seeing their attacker face to face again.

  The reader will well understand my concern about this case when looking dispassionately at the facts but some might think that the police would never have treated a rape victim in this way. That is naive. Before moving to the conclusion of Linda’s story I will tell you of Susan who was also raped at Butlins in 1998. This young girl was only fifteen. She was on holiday with her parents and she was attacked on the way back to the chalet she shared with them. Like Linda, she reported the assault to the police and, like Linda, she was treated in what I would describe as a similarly inhumane way. While she was at the police station, she says she was offered no food over a period of hours and her father, who was at the station for fifteen hours, claims he was not allowed to speak to her during that period. After what she describes as aggressive questioning, Susan, like Linda, signed an admission that she had had given false information. She was allowed to leave the station and the family cut their holiday short and returned to Yorkshire.

  Susan was taken to a police station in Leeds and this time interviewed compassionately. She was also examined by a doctor whose opinion was that she had indeed been raped. A DNA sample was taken and analysis of it revealed a connection to Butlins. On telling Strathclyde Police this, the Leeds cops were taken aback to be told they had no right to interfere in the case. The girl was summoned to appear at Ayr Sheriff Court but, after she travelled north on several overnight trips costing £200 a time, the procurator fiscal at Ayr informed the family that the charges had been dropped. At least Susan didn’t end up with a criminal record – unlike Linda – but that was of little consolation to the family who had been forced to sell their house to pay for, among other things, all the travelling and overnight stops in Scotland.

  So where do folk turn to in such circumstances? Both families sought advice from various quarters and A Search for Justice heard about the cases on the grapevine. It was all to become even more outrageous and would generate newspaper coverage in newspapers in both England and Scotland, especially in the Sunday Mail in Glasgow, a paper that always picks up on such stories.

  Our investigations started with Linda. One day, her mum was out walking the dog and she was deep in thought about the case – she found it difficult to think of anything else at that time – and she offered up a prayer for guidance. In an astonishing piece of serendipity – I claim no otherworld guidance! – her mobile rang at that very moment. When she answered, she heard a voice say, ‘Hello, my name is Les Brown and, along with a colleague, I run an organisation called A Search for Justice. Can we be of any assistance to you?’

  It turned out that we could. I was able look at what had happened in-depth and the first thing I found was that, even though they didn’t know each other, both girls’ stories about the treatment they had received from the police matched to a remarkable degree.

  Not long after Linda was fined, her parents decided to lodge an official complaint regarding the way the police had treated her. A senior detective from Strathclyde Police called at their home, which was outside the force’s jurisdiction, and, according to the parents, it seemed obvious he was there to try to talk them out of continuing with the complaint. They say that, at one point, this officer told them, ‘If you do not withdraw this complaint things could get very messy.’ He said he was conducting an independent inquiry and claimed that the police in Ayr were ‘sick and tired’ of the complaints they were getting from people staying at Butlins.

  The man Linda had accused was interviewed by the police and a female officer later told the family that this man had stated that he was not a drug addict. This was the first and only mention of drugs in the case.

  The family also brought the matter to the attention of their MP and others but without success. A Search for Justice wrote to the Law Society on Linda’s behalf, complaining about the advice her solicitor had given her before the trial. We were not too surprised by the Society’s reply – the complaint, they said, was time-barred.

  In 2002, we contacted all the principal players in this injustice. We went about this with the kind of compassion that seemed to be so sadly missing in Ayr. The police office in Yorkshire where the second victim had been examined and interviewed was contacted and, if the whole business had not been so tragic, I would have been amused by that phone call south. The officer I spoke to asked which force I had been in and, when I told him it was Strathclyde, he replied, ‘Excuse me while I spit!’ But, when he got the drift that this was a Strathclyde man chasing up the facts, he mellowed and told me I had restored his faith in human nature and proceeded to be as helpful as he could.

  We also contacted an organisation called the Rape Crisis Centre. They have offices in several parts of Scotland, including a branch in Ayr. In 1998, the y
ear Linda and Susan claim they were raped, they said more than 1000 people has contacted them. Six men were prosecuted and four of them were found guilty – an indication of both the size of the problem and the difficulty in getting successful prosecutions.

  When word of all this got out, I was contacted by other women who claimed to have been raped at Butlins. One woman told me that, months after she was attacked, she spotted the rapist and followed him to his workplace. I contacted the local police, not Strathclyde, and, after a compassionate interview with the victim, the law took its course and her attacker was jailed. We got a nice thank-you call for that one, something I really appreciated.

  Years after the attack on Linda, we were not much further forward though a look back at the evidence turned up an interesting statement. According to Linda’s family, back in the autumn of 1998, a female police officer told them that they would catch the rapist. This was especially interesting as this was the only admission that there had been a rape. Some years later, I interviewed this officer and she denied that she had ever uttered these words but the look on her face did not convince me.

  We continued to dig deep into the case and the full extent of what happened was hard to take. For example, on the day Linda was called to the Sheriff Court, she was told to turn up at Ayr Police Station at 8 a.m. She did so and says she was then placed in a cell with others and then taken, in handcuffs, to a police van and driven to the court in time to be there for at 10 a.m. This was not normal procedure. Usually, the accused would be asked to attend the court at 9.30 a.m. and, if he or she was not present when their name was called at 10 a.m., a warrant would be issued for an arrest.

  Why was Linda not accorded this treatment? Why was she made to suffer the indignity she did? Further investigation also suggested that she had been detained illegally on the two days following the rape. The Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, Section 14(2) says, ‘Detention shall be terminated not more than six hours after it begins.’ This seems to have been breached in the case of Susan too.

  Like the parents, A Search for Justice wondered where to go next. We met Linda’s parents for a conference on the next move in this battle to right a wrong. I remembered that I had played a minor role in the original investigation of the horrific case of the Doyle Family murdered in a firebomb attack in what is now known as the Ice-Cream Wars in the east end of Glasgow. Big TC Campbell and Joe Steele were wrongfully convicted of the attack, convictions that were only overturned many, many years after the trial. Joe and TC finally got their freedom after the case went to the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (and after years of campaigning by some journalists and lawyers) Could this be the way forward in these cases too?

  We got the appropriate forms and filled them in. On 1 December 2004, Linda opened a thick letter with the long-awaited response. The Commission wrote:

  The SCCRC has now completed its inquiries into whether or not a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in respect of your conviction and sentence. The commission is not minded to refer your case to the High Court. Please find enclosed the Commission’s statements of reasons for that decision.

  Among the reasons given in the SCCRC’s letter were some of the events leading up to the incident, including the fact that Linda had been in the company of several teenage male holidaymakers. (What’s surprising about that?) Linda had never disputed this. The report went on to point out that Linda had been interviewed by two police officers, one male, one female, and that the outcome was that she was charged with making a false allegation of rape against the security guard. The Commission also noted that the applicant had not been charged with any offence on the Saturday and was at the police station voluntarily at that time. As a result of this, there was no requirement for her to have been offered the opportunity to contact a solicitor. The commission also noted that she had no entitlement to make a phone call in such a situation. It further pointed out, that in relation to what went on on the Saturday, the applicant was not being detained by the police and, because of this, there was no requirement under Section 14(2) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 for her to be released after a period of six hours. On the Sunday, the letter said, the applicant appeared to have attended voluntarily at the police station. It went on to say:

  [T]he applicant was cautioned and charged at 11.34 on Sunday 24th May 1998 and released about tea time the same day. The commission is not of the view that this length of time in custody is excessive. In relation to the way the applicant was treated at the police station, she accepted that she was not handcuffed for any great length of time.

  More followed in the same vein:

  While the commission notes that it would have been preferable to have offered the applicant some refreshment, it is not the view that the applicant’s placement in a police cell for up to two hours could be seen as excessive. The applicant’s mother’s complaint against the police relative to the applicant’s treatment at the hands of the police, over the two days, was passed to the Procurator Fiscal at Dumfries and Galloway. No action was taken. All the police officers denied that the applicant had been subjected to any threatening or abusive behaviour. The commission is not persuaded that any alleged abusive behaviour by the male police officer on Saturday 23rd May would have influenced the applicant enough for her to retract her allegation of rape. The commission is not persuaded that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice in respect of this ground of review. The commission, in detail, reached the same conclusion in respect of the complaint against her defence team.

  Well, there you are. You’ve read what we had to say and you’ve read the reply. But we didn’t leave it there and, on 14 December, we responded by making the following points.

  We are disappointed at your findings and your lack of investigation. Our argument has always been that Linda was forced into a situation by the police and her solicitor. Up to five minutes before entering court, she insisted to her parents she would be pleading not guilty. To say that she was not detained by the police beggars belief. On the Sunday she was charged at 11.34 a.m. and not released till teatime. Why the delay? She was not handcuffed for any great length of time? (A rape victim?) Why did she have to attend Ayr Police Office at 8 a.m. on the day of the trial?

  We went on:

  The police-training manual (Sect. 11, here) states, ‘The female should be examined by the police casualty surgeon.’ We are of the opinion that Linda was intimidated by the police to such an extent that she just wanted to end the matter at the police office and later at the court. An outsider reading your report would agree with your findings and disbelieve that Strathclyde Police would treat a victim in such a manner. We would refer them to the case of Susan (not her real name) who was raped at Butlins five months later. The treatment this young girl received at the hands of the police mirrors exactly the treatment Linda received.

  We also pointed out that Linda had been told that the attendance of a doctor would cost a lot of money and Susan had been told, ‘Yes, we can call a doctor but it will cost £750.’ During the year 1998, more than one thousand women in Scotland sought the assistance of the Rape Crisis Centre but there were only four convictions for rape that year.

  Not only had we got nowhere trying to right these two apparent wrongs, it also left the problem of two alleged rapists still being at large. Linda’s assailant was from abroad and can’t be found. DNA could perhaps trap the vile monster who Susan says attacked her – if he could be found. But, more importantly to my mind, Linda and Susan have become two sad victims of miscarriages of justice and two reasons the police and society in general should look deeply at the way we perceive and treat the crime of rape. In such a climate, it is no wonder that so many sexual attacks go unreported and so many women have to bear the burden of a secret that they can’t share and the intolerable anguish this carries with it.

  5

  MYSTERY IN THE SNOW

  There are few places in the British Isles as bleak and dispiriting as the run
-down backwaters of industrial Lanarkshire. The hinterlands round Hamilton, Coatbridge and Motherwell are depressing places these days, with gap sites galore where weeds and straggling bushes push their way up through the cracked concrete foundations of factories long razed by the bulldozers. Sub-standard housing and shops with the windows protected by corrugated iron covered in graffiti are commonplace. Once, fifty or sixty years ago, in the heyday of the steel works and mines, there was at least a commercial buzz about the place – and there was employment. But it was never a place of beauty. In the grim, cold and snowy winters of fifties, it was a hellish place to live in and to grow up in.

  But one girl, Moira Anderson, never even got to do that. On a bitter winter day in 1957 in Coatbridge, she went to the local corner shop on an errand. Her grandmother had sent her out to buy some cooking fat and she was seen standing in the vicinity of a bus stop, near the shop, in swirling snow, wrapped up against the cold. She was possibly sighted getting on to a bus but, after that, she was never seen again. She simply vanished off the face of the earth, as they say, and her disappearance started one of the longest running mysteries in the history of Scottish crime. It was a disappearance that has fascinated the Scottish press for almost fifty years and, even today, there are few folk in Lanarkshire for whom the name Moira Anderson does not ring some kind of a bell. But, inevitably, the details of the story have become blurred and sometimes forgotten as the years have passed since her disappearance.