FRAMED! - part 26

44

Thursday 17 December 2009

Brian arrived in court at 11:17. There was no sign of Bell, so Brian called Angela Shaw, only to be told, “He’s on his way.” So much for preparation.

The tall, bearded male reporter came into court carrying a notebook and a pen only.

At 11:20 Forster and a trainee female barrister were discussing the case outside court. This infuriated Brian because his counsel was not even at court.

Brian overheard Forster saying, “There’s no way they can prove...” and he had Brian’s personal learning journal in his hand, trying to find fault with it. The police joined Forster outside the court and the entourage surrounding the prosecutor was in sharp contrast with the fact that Brian sat alone, waiting patiently for his defence counsel to arrive.

Eventually Bell arrived and at 11:38 the jury that had never been properly sworn in filed into court.

The judge explains to the jury that he has had another case to sentence and a Plea and Case Management Hearing too. “We’ll continue to lunch then finish about 3pm. Apologies.”

The plan was that DC Godfrey would read out sections of Brian’s interview statements again. This is highly unusual. If the prosecution has a robust case, it will focus on that case. But in this trial there was an over-reliance on mere interview tapes. Godfrey claimed a bad throat and asked a female police officer to read.

Judge: This is a first.

Officer Shelley (Michelle Wilkin) takes to the stand and swears to Almighty God.

Forster and WPC Shelley read transcripts which focus on what sexual acts a female escort would undertake for money. This bore no relation to the purpose of the trial and to the allegation against Brian – an attempt to incite another person to engage in sexual activity.

The purpose of this charade was merely an attempt to blacken Brian’s name in Court.

Forster and Shelley continue to read ... they are monotonously reading out material that has no relevance to the indictment. The prosecution is merely trying to make Brian look bad and trying to establish a bad reputation.

By 12:00, they are still reading out and it still has nothing to do with the charge.

At 12:10 the prisoner who has come to be sentenced has arrived in Court, and Brian’s trial is adjourned to 2.15pm.

Bell asks the judge what the purpose of all this reading was.

Judge: Yes, I was wondering what all this reading was about. I agree with you, Mr Bell. This is an unusual defence, though.

At 12:22 Brian met his barrister in the canteen.  Bell held forth, “The judge was right to say your use of the internet was research driven. You clearly stumbled across Shelley. You clearly have no interest in teens.”

At 13:05, Bell left the canteen.

At 13:17, Brian left the canteen to head back to find his barrister in order to speak with him about his replies to police officers’ statements under interview. Bell said he was unable to meet until 13.55. A disconsolate Brian went back to sit in the canteen and make notes in his court journal.

At 13:50, Maya Walker called Brian to ask how the trial was going. He merely reported that he was unhappy with the way it was playing out.

At 13:55 Brian and Bell in the canteen as arranged. Brian said, “Roy Bacon told police that I am an author and that I’m always doing research, so why are the prosecution trying to claim that I wasn’t conducting research in this matter?”

Bell: We need to recall DC Robbie. I want to ask him about the DVDs again.

Brian: And when do you propose to call Geoff Bacon? He’s a vital witness in all of this, especially since the police are claiming that the conversation of 15 May didn’t take place and I know it did and Geoff can back that up with firm evidence. Even DC Godfrey questioned me about 15 May 2008, saying that she knew I was online on that date when I told the person to fuck off. And then they burnt out the hard drive on his computer.

Bell: I’ll call him tomorrow or Monday.

Brian did not like the level of doubt that always crept into Bell’s voice whenever he asked his counsel about calling Geoffrey Bacon. Brian wanted the whole story about the 10-minute house search, the false search warrant and the burnt out hard drive to emerge in Court, but Bell always seemed reluctant to discuss calling the witness as to fact.

Brian: I’m sacking you. The CPS will have to drop Charge 1 because all the girls denied seeing my penis, so there can’t be exposure. So, when charge 1 is dropped, then there’s only charge 2 in the New Year with a new jury and it won’t be a biased jury like this one is.

At this point the barrister became extremely agitated and angry. He said he was duty bound to call the instructing solicitor, which he did there and then. “She’s on her way. I’m off to tell the judge,” said Bell, like a naughty schoolboy who has been found out and goes off to tell the Headmaster before anyone else can get to him.

It was 2.20. At 2.25 Bell had still not returned. Brian assumed that he was still with the judge and discussing his having been sacked.

Brian made notes in his journal of his complaints about his defence counsel. We reproduce them here:

“…My complaints re DB

1.               Judge told him off for being rude

2.              DB rebuked for being continually late

3.              I feel nothing is being given to me by the judge

4.             Why haven’t CPS dropped Charge 1 yet?

5.              Why hasn’t jury been dismissed?

6.             Each time I make a point, DB knocks it down

7.              If Charge 1 is written off, it ought to be dropped                because it should be out of time

8.             DB and AS have both said from the beginning that                       DB is very confident of winning case 2 (on basis of no                        under-16s on website) now it seems much more info is                needed to win – why the change?

9.             Why have we not got a copy of the ITV film crew              video?

10.          Why have we not got a true copy of my mobile phone                   records?

11.            Why is DB not interrogating witnesses robustly?...”

At 2.35pm, the case was called back to court.

Bell informed the judge that Brian had asked him not to represent him any further. The judge agreed to continue with the trial on the basis that only non-contentious issues would be discussed.

This was completely inappropriate. What should have happened is that the trial should have been stopped and the jury dismissed because the defendant was no longer represented. A new trial should have been set for the New Year, but Charge 1 – the exposure case – could not possibly be added to the indictment because the females had all denied seeing Brian’s genitals. This would mean that a new jury would only hear about the incitement case and it is likely that that spurious allegation would also have had to be dropped because it lacked merit.

But none of what should have occurred actually did happen, and at 2.40 the jury filed back in. Bell, the sacked barrister, continued to sit on the front bench to the left of the judge. It was as if he had never been sacked by Brian.

Prosecutor Forster began reading from the interview transcripts again. It ought to be remembered that they had not been signed and that they did not have a unique reference number on them, so they were inadmissible as evidence.  

Whilst reading it becomes apparent that the first conversation Brian had with the ‘girl’ was on Faceparty and that they then moved to MSN, but this was something denied by DC Robbie. Yet no-one appeared to bring this contradiction to the attention of the Court.

The Court then heard how Brian had challenged DS Tunn to obtain the chatlogs for 28 January 2008 and how Tunn claimed that he would be unable to obtain them. Earlier he had agreed that the police were “working closely with Faceparty.” No-one brought this contradiction to the Court’s attention, either.

Then the person calling herself WPC Shelley left the stand and DC Godfrey took to the stand. It appeared that she still had a bad throat.

Forster: Were you present when the defendant was charged?

Godfrey: Yes, he said he was not guilty.

Then it was Bell’s turn to cross-examine the police officer. He had just been dismissed by Brian in this farcical trial.

Bell: The defendant’s real mobile phone number was 07758620183. Is that correct?

Godfrey: Yes.

Bell: Can you look at the number he has given the alleged ‘girl’ and read it out to the Court please?

Godfrey: 07747519072.

Bell: Would it be accurate to say that it is the defendant’s number, minus one digit from his real number?

Godfrey: Yes, it looks like it’s -1 of his real number

Bell: How co-operative was the defendant on 4 June 2008?

Godfrey: Very co-operative.

Bell: The document he signed at the time of his arrest re his email addresses. He didn’t have to give you that information did he?

Godfrey: No.

Bell: So is it fair to say that the defendant has at all times co-operated with the police and been open and honest?

Godfrey: He certainly co-operated with police.

Disappointingly, Bell left his cross-examination there. He never asked DC Godfrey about her visit to the house of Roy and Geoffrey Bacon on 31 July 2008 in which a computer was unlawfully seized. He did not ask her why the hard drive was burnt out, or why the search of the Bacons’ house had lasted for only ten minutes. He did not ask her why she had called Sorrel Birch (née Pead) to tell Brian’s daughter that her father “is a paedophile”, or why she had said the same thing to Roy and Geoffrey Bacon and to Nicola Noone and no doubt anyone else who would listen.

Bell had been negligent whilst representing his client, he continued to be negligent having been dismissed. Either way, the authors believe that there is substantial incontrovertible evidence that Brian was ‘being sold down the river’.

After Godfrey left the stand, the statement of Warwick Brown was read out by Forster at 3.45. However, like all the other statements it was unsigned and it did not have a unique reference number and it was thus inadmissible evidence.

As we have shown in an earlier chapter, Warwick Brown was actually residing in London at the time of this trial and he was still working for Faceparty. But Forster had misled the Court in claiming that Brown had emigrated to Australia.

The statement had allegedly been made on 19 January 2009. We reproduce below the most salient points:

“…I am the IT Manager for the internet social networking site known as ‘Faceparty’. The official company name behind the site is CIS Internet Ltd, based at 89½ Worship Street, London, EC2A 2BF.

I have worked for the company for approximately 14 months. My role involves the moderation of user profiles […] In this position I have access to all user accounts and the data entered by individual users.”

The emphases are ours. Mr Brown clearly states that his role is to moderate all user profiles. How then did he manage to allow an alleged 14-year-old girl to create a profile on a website whose terms and conditions stated that no-one under 16 could become a member? Why, then, did he allow naked photographs of under-aged girls to be uploaded to the Faceparty website?

These serious questions needed to be answered. And he was living in London just a few miles from Southwark Crown Court, but the Court had been told by Forster that Brown had emigrated to Australia, which makes the prosecutor guilty of perjury when his actions are measured against the Perjury Act 1911. However, it is likely that, when confronted, Forster would simply say that he was not a witness, but a prosecutor, and so cannot be guilty of perjury. In that event, he is then guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct at the very least and also guilty of perverting the course of justice. Furthermore, it demonstrates that Brian Pead is innocent and that his entire trial was a gross miscarriage of justice.

It also, in our opinion, makes the judge very unprofessional if he allowed such a comment to be made in his court without asking for robust evidence.

And it makes Dominic Bell culpable for not conducting his own investigation into the whereabouts of Warwick Brown – that is what barristers do, after all.

Mr Brown’s statement then says that only the last IP address is ever recorded by the system. This means, of course, that the last IP address for Brian’s account would direct the police to Geoffrey Bacon’s house, which was why they illegally seized his computer. By using his friend’s computer, Brian had left a digital footprint on that computer. The police knew this and had to erase it.

With the prosecutor still reading the Warwick Brown statement, the final sentence is perhaps the most pertinent of all: “…All data, including the IP address, is held within the company servers for an indeterminate amount of time…”

This means that the police ought to have been able to obtain the chatlogs that Brian challenged them to do on 4 June 2008 at Charing Cross police station.

Brian called the usher from inside the box. He wanted to pass a note to his solicitor, Angela Shaw, and he gave her Brown’s omissions – the things he didn’t include in his statement. Shaw passed them to Bell. Bell did not use them.  

At 3.50pm, the jury was sent home with an instruction to return at 10.15 the following day.

Brian met with his solicitor, Angela Shaw, who brought Dominic Bell with her.

“Brian,” said Bell, launching into a pretence of still being employed by Brian, “I’m calling one of your former pupils Kirsty McIntyre on Monday at 11am. I want John Callow tomorrow at 2pm and also Michael Bird tomorrow at 2pm. Can you call them and let them know when they’re needed?’

The emphasis is ours: calling witnesses and writing to them is the job of the defence team, not the defendant. Both Shaw and Bell were neglecting their client.

“I will call you to the stand tomorrow,” Bell continued. I’ll take you through the following topics: your background, your employment history, your role as counsellor, your use of other names, the weekend child sexual abuse course that you attended, the Staff Training you did on sexual abuse at Sub19, your personal learning journal – especially from when the females moved in opposite you up until Christmas 2007, your use of the internet, how you accessed the internet, what happened to your laptop, conversations with “Shelley” on 28 January 2008; chatrooms on Faceparty; MSN chatrooms; your mobile telephone number; and your entry on 29 January 2008 in your learning journal.”

“I’ll also ask you about further shows by Elizabeth McIntyre on 7 February and 25 February 2008. I’m not sure yet about whether to use the conversation you had on Faceparty with the ‘girl on 15 May 2008.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure? You ought to be sure because it’s a vital date in this entire trial. Yet it hasn’t been mentioned and it should be. And when are you calling Geoff Bacon? He wants to know when he needs to be in Court.”

“I’m not sure yet. I am not sure that he will help your case. I think he may just confuse the jury.”

“That’s bollocks! And haven’t I sacked you? What are you still doing here and why is the trial still going ahead when I’m unrepresented?”

“Look, Brian, I can help acquit you. You’ll need to explain the messages you posted on Faceparty about cash for sex. You need to tell the jury about your arrest on 20 May 2008 by Bexley Police. You need to read from your personal journal and it’s allowed because it’s a contemporaneous document. We’ll talk about how it’s all affected you and not seeing your grand-children.”

“You’ll need to tell the jury that you did not masturbate because all three females said that you did.”

“I didn’t, but what’s that got to do with anything? I’m not on trial for masturbating. It was alleged exposure and I’m not guilty – they all said they hadn’t seen my genitals.”

“Well,” Bell lied, “it’s important. It looks bad for you with all of them claiming that they saw you masturbate.”

“And the fourth girl in that house? Why didn’t you call her?”

“It’s not necessary. She didn’t make a statement.”

“Precisely! That’s why she should have been called.”

“Look, focus on the trial as it is now. Tell the jury that you did not seek a 14-year-old girl.”

“Of course I didn’t. That’s bloody obvious! She never existed and I told the police that 18 months ago. I don’t know why we’re even here!”

“Only answer my questions,” said Bell. “Do not dwell on this, we are well prepared.”

Brian was alert to the danger of the words “only answer my questions”. As a linguist and a counsellor, he knew that people who have something to hide usually say such things. This was a court of law and he wanted his story to be heard – the full, unabridged story, not just a slice of it which could be taken out of context.

“We’re not well prepared at all. You haven’t done enough research. Angela hasn’t done enough. It’s crap. The judge has given me nothing. The trial is flying past. Even the usher told me that she had never seen a trial fly by so fast!”

“Brian,” said Shaw, “trust Dom. He has consistently said he’ll get an acquittal based on the fact that you couldn’t possibly have believed a 14-year-old girl would be on an adult social networking website.”

Brian had heard enough. He said his goodbyes and caught a train to Geoff Bacon’s house, to update him on the trial and explain to him why he hadn’t been contacted yet by Bell or Shaw.

Roy Bacon cooked a roast dinner and couldn’t believe that his son was not being called as a witness. “This stinks, Brian!” he said with the force that his 83 years could muster.  

“Bri,” said Geoffrey over dinner, “they seized my computer on 31 July 2008. If there had been anything inappropriate on it, you and me would have got rid of it immediately after your arrest on 4 June 2008. We wouldn’t have kept using it until it was seized 7 weeks after your arrest.”

“We know you’re innocent, Brian,” said Roy. “I’ve got your favourite ice-cream for pudding.”

The indefatigable Roy gave Brian a lift back to Days Lane, where he saw a client between 7-8pm. For the purposes of this book we will call her ‘Donna’. She was well-dressed and well-mannered, 26, and very pretty. She told Brian that her main issue was a fear of sex and guilt after the act.

It was not lost on Brian that her story was a continuation of his role with clients at Off Centre.

The hour that passed between them was a beautiful meeting of two human beings, both suffering in their own way. ‘Donna’ – about the same age as the three female witnesses from 62 Days Lane - trusted Brian enough to share her deep, intimate secrets with him, and for Brian, the emotional connection between him and client was a world away from the evil that was permeating British justice in Court 4 at Southwark Crown Court.