FRAMED! - part 3

3

Amidst the females moving in across the road, amidst the psychosexual training on the Advanced Diploma course, amidst the plethora of reading on the subject of child sexual abuse, amidst the encounter on Faceparty.com, and amidst the knowledge of grooming by Maryn Murray at Lambeth, Brian Pead then met a new client on Wednesday 30 January 2008 at Off Centre.

The meeting was scheduled for 10:15, but she appeared in Reception ten minutes early and wanted to be seen straightaway.

As he walked down the two flights of stairs between his office and Reception, he wondered whether he would tell her she would have to wait until the scheduled time, or whether he would allow himself to be manipulated by this unknown client into seeing her early.

He was met by a thin-looking young woman with a head-scarf and dark glasses. He introduced himself and as they shook hands, his instincts told him that he would see her ten minutes early.

For the purposes of this book and so as not to compromise confidentiality, we shall call the client ‘Jemima’. She was 23 and her presenting issues (the problems clients first tell their counsellor about – they rarely tell their counsellor about the underlying issues) were marginal anxiety, depression, drugs, alcohol, a previous eating disorder and ‘poor relationships’.

Jemima referred herself to Off Centre through her GP and Brian noted that this took enormous courage, particularly given her long list of presenting issues. Brian and Jemima contracted for 12 sessions of one hour in length. With such a long list of presenting issues, he already felt that twelve sessions would be an insufficient length of time in which to deal with Jemima, but funding at Off Centre always seemed to be an issue.   

He did not know at the time that this encounter, too, would focus heavily on sexual issues. There had been no mention of this in the notes prepared for him at interview by a colleague. It was as though no-one at Off Centre would even acknowledge that sexual abuse existed in the world outside its doors.

After the initial explanation of the way he works as a counsellor, Jemima launched into an account of her life. Within minutes, she recounted that she had had five or six lovers and all of them had left her feeling unfulfilled. She claimed that her parents loved her unconditionally, yet her father wanted her to be a scientist like him, whereas her mother wanted her to fulfil her potential as an actress.

This contradiction was noted by Brian – this did not seem to be a relationship based on unconditional love.

It is always a difficult call for any counsellor – particularly in the first session with a client – to challenge any of the client’s perceptions, but Brian did gently challenge Jemima’s perception of this ‘unconditional love’.

Jemima flew into a rage, issued a torrent of expletives at him and cried. “Don’t you ever challenge my parents’ love for me again,” she retorted.

This was ‘meat and drink’ to Brian on a number of levels. He knew in that instant that he wanted to work with Jemima, that she was a young woman of some substance because she had turned on him and challenged him in the room and because he knew that all of her presenting issues were likely to be around the split love for her mother and her father. Whom could she please the most? With either parent appearing to be living their life vicariously through Jemima – one wanting her to be a scientist, the other an actress – Jemima would be unable to satisfy them both, and, more importantly, she would not satisfy herself and fulfil her potential as an autonomous human being. It is always Brian’s goal to assist people to become autonomous.

He suggested to Jemima that she might prefer a female counsellor (he always offers this to female clients), but she steadfastly wanted to continue with him. 

She told him that she did not have periods and this was not, she said, a medical issue. He noticed how thin she was.

As she left, she donned dark glasses. The mask she used to shield herself against the world was put back on.

As Jemima left the Off Centre building, and her perfume lingered in the air, Brian felt that the encounter would develop into an incredible working relationship. And so it turned out.

All of his clients at Off Centre were female and aged between 21 and 25 – the same ages as the females who lived at 62 Days Lane, Sidcup.

In the weeks of February and March, he was given a client who was self-conscious about the size of her small breasts and who felt “less of a woman” because of it, another whose step-father had abused her and her friends at sleepovers, and another whose opening line was “…All men want to fuck me, do you?”

Being an assiduous note-taker, Brian kept lengthy notes on each client session which were available for inspection by his line manager and supervisor. Always being conscious of his own safety, he always contracted with clients to tape their sessions together, so that – in the rare chance that they accused him of any form of impropriety - he would be able to produce tape recordings of their sessions. 

4

Over the weekend of 2 and 3 February 2008, he attended a compulsory course entitled Working with Survivors of Abuse. The course was primarily focussed on sexual abuse.

As a survivor of child sexual abuse in a children’s home in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Brian became greatly fascinated by the subject from a psychological perspective. He refuses to use the word ‘victim’ in relation to abuse, choosing instead to use the word ‘survivor’. He wrote a poem called The Children’s Home in 1983, inspired by his English degree.  It is reproduced with kind permission of the author:

Cowboy and Indian prairies of lush green fields,

Hiding-place woods,

Swings touching sky,

Toboggan-slope slides,

Bread-filled ducks upon the idyllic pool,

No substitute this paradise, where

The willow, bowing gently in the middle of the green, weeps –

But not as much as I.

Incarcerated by drab, naked walls,

Cold linoleum floors

Indifferent to my needs.

These harsh surroundings echo

Lack of parental love.

Wet beds earn cold baths,

Knuckles are rapped for elbows-on-the-table,

The penalty for lying is an empty belly,

Truth's prize is a bread-and-dripping tea.

Imprisoned by authority,

Stifling independence yet

Creating more.

"Home" --

Ruled by despotic 'sisters',

Serving neither God nor me.

Patronizing visitors bring unwanted gifts,

Head-patting, false-smiling

"What a nice little chap" --

Like an animal in a zoo.

"Keep your presents,

They're not needed, or your condescension,

Just you...”

They never return

Is a lesson soon learned,

Their interest lies not in me

But in gaining the approval of the WI,

Or the vicar next Sunday at tea,

Where the sherry will flow

Though not as freely as my tears.

© Brian Pead 1983

(Authors’ note: Poetic licence had changed the oak trees in the middle of the green into a weeping willow.)

The course on child abuse comprised of modules including Understanding Abuse and Healing Tasks, Rage and Anger, Understanding the Abuser and Intimacy and Sexuality.

Those attending the course developed intensive skills and enhanced therapeutic competence in working with adult survivors of abuse. The weekend addressed childhood abuse and the consequences such as life scripts, self-harm, shame, blame and guilt.

Almost all of the lecturers at CPPD were psychosexually trained and Brian was like a child in a sweet shop, soaking up all that he could learn about the subject.

Lynne Kaye, a counsellor and psychosexual psychotherapist accredited with the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (AHPP) ran the course. Lynne spent many years researching and working with survivors of child sexual abuse and has formulated and facilitated psycho-educational workshops and training on the subject in England and overseas.

From around September 2007 at the time the females moved in over the road from Brian Pead, he had been monitoring a social networking website for adults known as Faceparty.com. He had been a member for around two or three years and had made some good friends on the website, attended art galleries with some people, restaurants and exchanged books with like-minded members.

Around September 2007, the website, which claimed in its Terms and Conditions that no-one under 16 could gain access to the website, suddenly allowed chatrooms with such names as “TeenSlutsforOldMen” or “Teens4Cash” or “TeenSex4Cash”.

This drew Brian’s attention because of the reading material that he was studying on a weekly basis at CPPD and because he could not understand why a website for adults would permit such names. He decided to investigate. The motivation to investigate odd situations is something Brian was born with. In 1972, his older brother, Robert Pead, aged 21, was injured on board a Lowestoft trawler in the North Sea, some 200 miles off the coast of Aberdeen.

On Tuesday, April 11, 1972, Robert suffered catastrophic head injuries on board the St. Kitts trawler working off the east coast of Scotland. The knocking-out bar, which weighs around a hundredweight, had fractured his skull.

This was reported in the Glasgow Herald on the following day, under the headline “Helicopter picks up injured seaman”. The report is reproduced here: 

“...A helicopter made a 380-mile round trip from Aberdeen yesterday to pick up a seriously injured seaman from a trawler.  The man, Robert Peed (sic), of Aulton (sic) Broad, Lowestoft, was in a critical condition last night in the neuro-surgical unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. 

The helicopter, one of BEA’s oil rig service fleet at Aberdeen Airport, was on its way to the Shell-Esso rig Staflow when the Lowestoft trawler St Kitts radioed for medical help.

It is understood that Mr Peed was struck on the head by a bolt. The helicopter returned to Aberdeen and picked up a doctor, who was lowered to the trawler.

After refuelling on board the oil rig Zapata Explorer the helicopter returned to the St Kitts and picked up the injured man and the doctor...”

Robert Pead was air-lifted off the boat and transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. 

He received excellent care, but was in a coma with a heavily fractured skull and lying in a vegetative state. He remained in this condition for some six months before being transferred to Addenbrooke’s specialist unit in Cambridgeshire, but it became apparent that he would not live. Such were his injuries that he would have had no quality of life. He was on a life support machine and in those days before the law forbade the ending of life for such patients, it was decided between the doctors and Fred, his father, that his favourite son should die by switching off the life support equipment.

Brian Pead, who had been writing football and boxing reports on a voluntary basis for the Surrey Comet from the age of 17, set about investigating the names of the crew who had air-lifted his brother off the St. Kitts trawler and flown him to Aberdeen.

Within three or four weeks, he had the names of the captain and all of the crew. He wrote to them individually and thanked them for their efforts.  They all wrote back to him and thanked him for having contacted them.

The phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will guard the guards themselves?”) was to return to Brian, now aged 19. At the age of 11, when he went to Hinchley Wood Secondary School in Surrey, Brian encountered Latin lessons for the first time. His form (1A) had a Mr Campion as their Latin teacher and in an early lesson, the teacher wrote the phrase ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ on the blackboard and asked the pupils to translate it via their English-Latin dictionaries. The phrase – ‘Who will guard the guards themselves?’ was to have a major impact on the young Brian’s life. He had immediately grasped the power of the phrase and the fact that there was layer upon layer within society until the person ‘at the top’ had no-one looking over their shoulder and could, theoretically, get away with murder, or more.

 Robert had left a widow, aged 22, and two young sons, Jason (two years)and Shaun (six months).

The insurance company was refusing to pay his widow, claiming at the inquest that Robert’s injuries had been the result of his own negligence. The evidence, however, did not support this theory. Although young, he had been to sea for some five or six years and undertaken hundreds of fishing expeditions. He had, by his own hard work and skill, worked himself into the position of a Third Hand. 

Brian attended the inquest. He instinctively felt that something was wrong. A man who relies heavily on, and trusts, his intuition, he knew that the insurance company was attempting to lay the blame at his brother’s door, rather than accept responsibility and pay out a significant sum to his widow and two children. Robert had had almost 45 years left of his working life.

The insurance company won the day. They were represented by a barrister – his widow was not. The grieving, lost, lonely woman was not sufficiently capable of dealing with the inquest, either on an emotional or intellectual level.

It was a lesson that the teenaged Brian would carry with him into middle-age.

Leaving his teens behind him, Brian left his well-paid position as a manager of MacFisheries and moved to Lowestoft to gain employment with Boston Deep Sea Fisheries. His motivation was to work undercover alongside former shipmates of his brother’s and try to discover the real reasons for his brother’s death. There had even been talk that his brother had been the victim of an assault. In the middle of the North Sea, the skipper’s word is final. There are no police to call. The skipper IS the police.

Despite going undercover, Brian never did find out what really happened to his brother. However, seeds had been sown in his mind about investigative journalism, undercover work and seeking justice.

  It was this determination to achieve justice that drew Brian Pead’s attention to the improper practices that he noted on the Faceparty website. He had also noted such chatrooms as ‘TeenpixSwap’ and when he once entered such a chatroom to understand what was actually occurring, he received several unsolicited messages along the lines of “How young have you got?” He beat a hasty retreat because the type of activity that was being undertaken in that chatroom was obvious and he had never been interested in child pornography.

Several people – not understanding how Brian’s mind works – have asked him why, if he was not interested in such topics as child pornography, he would even enter such chatrooms and leave himself open to the doubt of others.

But others’ opinions of him do not matter to Brian Pead. Like Gary McKinnon, the autistic man who hacked into the Pentagon’s website so that he could search for evidence of aliens, Brian possesses a similar driving force to learn what lies behind the obvious. Psychologists who study the mind-set of murderers are not normally described as murderers themselves.

Having been sexually abused in a children’s home, Brian developed a great interest in the subject. He suffered trauma on the first occasion of abuse and developed a speech impediment. Years of speech therapy enabled him to recover his speech and at the same time develop a love of psychology and language. This ability to undertake one task, yet simultaneously learn about other tasks is a skill which he retains to this day.

In the Harpenden children’s home in January 1957, Sister Beaulah Waters completed a Half-Yearly Branch Report on Brian, then aged 4½. She described the young Brian as ‘…very energetic and full of life. He mixes well with other children and quickly makes friends. He is very affectionate […] He is intelligent and his speech is improving…’

In December 1958, aged 5½, the young Brian undertook several psychological tests. The Psychology Report produced by the psychologist attached to the National Children’s Home in Harpenden stated:

“…Brian’s IQ places him in the superior class… He is still a little boy and has had some disturbing experiences already… It is recommended that he be seen again on the next visit and that his superior intelligence be taken into consideration in any plans made for his future…”

This report provides an invaluable insight into the mind of Brian Pead. In January 1960, in the Half-Yearly Branch Report, Brian was described by Sister Margaret Carr as

“…taking a great interest in all that goes on […] He has been attending speech therapy and his speech has improved enormously. […] He is quite intelligent and can be reasoned with and is capable of working things out for himself…”

Brian Pead attended Roundwood Park Junior and Mixed Infants School in Harpenden. His class teacher wrote on his report on 27 July 1960 that

“…Brian writes easily … He enjoys reading … He is quick to grasp new concepts … He is full of ideas and enthusiasm which he passes on to other children … Brian is the recognised class leader and he is very popular … Brian has developed into a helpful boy who fits in with the rest of the class…”

He was just 7½ years of age and his obvious intelligence had been noted by several different members of staff at the children’s home; his ability to make friends easily had also been noted, as well as his leadership qualities.

Although Brian is intelligent, he has a great desire to continually learn about himself, others around him and life itself. He regards learning as a lifelong experience.

It is against this background that Brian’s interest in investigating Faceparty needs to be understood. His burning anger at the sexual abuse in the children’s home also needs to be understood. His desire for justice also forms a significant part of his psyche.

But he was not alone in investigating Faceparty.

Research by the authors since Brian’s original arrest in May 2008 has shown that a sizeable number of other intelligent and well-meaning people were monitoring the Faceparty website. Reproduced below are some of their comments. It should be noted that these comments reflect accurately what Brian told the police under interview at Charing Cross police station on 4 June 2008.

For the sake of accuracy, it should also be noted that spelling mistakes have been corrected so that the comments flow more easily when read:

“…gmale

May 19, 2008 11:14 AM

I too have had my account deleted this morning after being a member for over 5 years, and more than just a member as I actively reported members who were under age or racist etc.

The ‘missing accounts’ statement that is accessible on the home page of the site is full of blatant lies. There is no obligation for them to check against sex offenders’ email addresses ... sheesh can u imagine how many addresses anyone could create in a day to get round that?  There is also a suggestion that the new owners Anarchy Towers Ltd have purchased the company from CIS Internet the previous owners. I did a search at Companies House and the director of both companies is the same ... one Andrew David Bamforth, the secretary of the new club is listed as CIS Internet Ltd ... so much for them having nothing to with one another as is implied.  If you are wondering why the age of 35 has been taken as the cut off point ... it may be that Mr Bamforth’s date of birth on the records shows him as not being 35 until November this year ! !  I fear that no one will get any refunds from payments they may have made for adult and cool tools !

The statement that it was for teenagers anyway is a load of rubbish .. why have an adult paying membership system ?

I fear that this is just one huge con ... have they actually got rid of their advertisers .. or is it the other way round ???  that would give them sudden cash flow problems, we read above they have got rid of staff ... now get rid of over 35s and they save a massive amount of bandwidth overnight .. plus of course they don’t refund the subscriptions paid by the cool tool and adult members ... in some cases that could be 50 quid !! …”

The person calling himself (the authors assume it is a male) ‘gmale’ makes mention of the fact that he has had his profile removed from the Faceparty database, that the new company claiming ownership of the Faceparty website is listed at Companies House as having the same directors as the previous owners of the website and that a great deal of money was mysteriously ‘lost’ when the original company (CIS Internet) liquidated.

‘Gmale’ also mentions that he had reported underaged and racist people on the website to the management of the company, something which Brian intended to do once he had gained sufficient information.

Another disgruntled former member of Faceparty added:

“…exfp

May 19, 2008 1:39 PM

Faceparty has today deleted my account. I am one of the over 36 year olds, in fact over 50, and have been a member of the site since 2005. I had recently renewed my cool tools and this money has not been refunded. It seems the site is now being run by a bunch of condescending idiots who have no business acumen whatsoever. You only have to read their explanation of ‘missing accounts’ to realise this. The site is acting illegally and I ask all people in the same position as me to get everyone they know to boycott the site and remove their own profile. They are in breach of English contract law no matter how they try to wriggle out of it. There are many other properly run chat sites you can sign up with.

With support we can at least close the site down this way.

Many thanks

Rieann, MCIPS (Member Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply)…”

This former member of Faceparty makes mention of the financial aspects associated with the liquidation of CIS and claims that the site is acting illegally, something which Brian Pead also claimed.

Another comment was:

“…May 20, 2008 6:37 AM

I also use Faceparty, but their support is non-existent.

Foolishly a few months ago I purchased the Cool Tools option which also claims to have a 48hour response timeframe to support emails.

However, in the past 6 months that I have been sending numerous support requests about abusive members etc, I have not once received a reply. I recently called them up and they told me to direct my enquiry to the Billing team, because that would be ‘a good email address’ to get hold of someone.

Still no response. I cannot believe a site like this is so lax on things like abusive members. I’m 27 and I have had all sorts of abuse sent to me through the site, but Faceparty tells you to simply block messages from being sent. This is in no way a control mechanism for such activities on a site like this.

To a point I can take the abusive comments (although I shouldn’t have to) and ignore them, but my fear is that there is a much younger audience on that website and Faceparty has a duty to protect them - particularly if they receive such abusive messages and profile comments…”

With his vast experience and own sexual abuse in a children’s home behind him, Brian also shared the same fear … that the younger element on Faceparty were being manipulated and possibly abused and that this was condoned by Faceparty itself.

Another former member added:

“…To be honest I think the whole organisation has gone to pot and the management have lost their senses. They are going on about paedophiles, yet are aiming for a younger market…......Hmmmn doesn’t sound right does it????

It’s a shame, as it was a great site until the past few months. I have lost touch with many folk off there. I only hope like me they have moved to better sites who are not ‘Ageist’…”

It seems that Brian Pead was not the only member who thought that Faceparty was ‘…once a great site…’ and that it had degenerated ‘…in the past few months…’

In another post added at 08:27 on May 26, 2008, a member added:

“…How can they possibly say they are concerned for young people’s welfare when they openly allow and even encourage teens and young adults to advertise sexual services on their site ffs?

Good grief, I’ve never heard such hypocrisy in all my life.  Grim Rita is a BDSM Dominatrix figure and the big parties they’ve held in the past have all been about fetish and sex orientated themes and entertainers.

How long do they think they can cover up their grooming activities? …”

Notice this person’s use of the word ‘grooming’. It was an exact echo of what Brian Pead had uncovered at Lambeth and precisely the reason why he was drawn to such illegal activity on the Faceparty website (after it had been a decent website for years), and why he was determined to expose this illegal activity.

The following post, added at 10:09 on May 26, 2008, drew attention to the vast membership and the possible considerable sums of money that were possibly misappropriated when Faceparty was liquidated:

“…I looked on the Faceparty Gossip on home page yesterday and it said they have deleted 7 million and more to be deleted and unfortunately some with cool tools deleted in error….....no good when you can’t get in touch with them!!!! …”

Now, if it is true that Faceparty had more than 7 million members and that it deleted for example, half of those members in their illegal cull, that leaves 3.5 million members. Not every member purchased Cool Tools (allowing unlimited messaging) or AVS (Adult Verification System (allowing access to naked photographs of members), but even if just 10% of the 3.5m members had purchased either or both of these additional services, that leaves 350,000 paying around £25 for the services, making a total of some £8.75m.

If just 1% and not 10% had purchased additional services, that would still provide an income of around £87,500 which was ‘lost’ in the process of liquidation. Thus the liquidation of CIS Ltd no doubt ensured that a good deal of bona fide members lost their money, to which they were legally entitled. But possible fiscal mismanagement was not Brian’s primary concern.

5

Having been enthused by the weekend course at CPPD on 2 and 3 February 2008, Brian Pead reported back his findings to the team at Sub19, a sister charity to Off Centre.

Sub19 formed part of the London Drug and Alcohol network. It was a statutory service which provided assistance to young people under 19 (hence its name) who had concerns around drugs or alcohol or both.

It was based at 11E, Florfield Passage, Hackney, E8 1DX. It was managed by Matthew ‘Matt’ Doocey, a counsellor from New Zealand. Other members of the team were Liam Shannon, Catherine Bedford, Marcia Asante, Delores McPherson, Hania MacLagan and secretary Ashirifianai Tete, more commonly known as ‘Ash’.

When he had applied for the post as a counsellor with Off Centre, Brian had been told that a requirement of the post was that he would have to become part of the Sub19 team, as well as the Off Centre team and that he would occasionally have to counsel young people under the age of 19. He explained at his interview that his counselling diploma was not a specific ‘child counselling’ diploma and that his particular approach to counselling (being based mainly on an amalgam of Existential and Gestalt approaches) was not particularly suited to children. Nevertheless, despite informing his interviewers of his shortcomings around counselling those under 18, he was given the post.

Each Tuesday morning, Brian Pead would report for work at Off Centre and then walk round to the Sub19 offices in Florfield Passage, a matter of a two-minute walk around the corner.

The energy of the Sub19 team was significantly different from that of the Off Centre team and Brian Pead enjoyed his Tuesday mornings there. He contributed greatly to staff meetings and on the morning of 5 February 2008, he gave a short presentation to the team about the weekend course at CPPD.

Although Sub19 (and, indeed, many other drug and alcohol services throughout the country) focus on issues of drugs and alcohol, the issues are rarely confined to just those substances. Clients often had other issues associated with substance misuse. Brian Pead, and others on the Sub19 team, had noted that several clients had underlying issues of sexual abuse in one form or another.

In a document entitled Sub19 Service Objectives created by Matt Doocey in January 2007, the New Zealander made reference to the fact that the Sub19 service was not ensuring that Tier 1 young people’s services receive specialist training and advice on working with young people with substance misuse problems. (He awarded the service only 3 out of a possible 10 marks for this area of the team’s effectiveness.)

When Brian joined the team a year later in January 2008, he immediately saw that this was a serious weakness in the team’s overall effectiveness. He formed the view that the Sub19 team was made up of a collection of hard-working, caring, intelligent individuals who were trying to make a difference but that they were basing their work on out-dated practices and with little reference to research.

During the clinical meetings, in which Brian made detailed notes, it became obvious to him that whoever presented a new client to the team, underlying issues of sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual activity in whatever guise were mentioned all too briefly and virtually dismissed.

Brian felt that this was a serious oversight, since he knew that it is possible to work with a client on his or her drug issues or alcohol problems and provide a ‘sticking plaster’ to the work between the counsellor and client, but that if the underlying issues of abuse were not addressed, the work was essentially flawed, lacking in integrity and basically not relevant to the client’s real needs. He often used the phrase ‘pissing in the wind’ to describe the quality of the work if the underlying issues were not addressed.

On 5 February, he gave a brief report to the team about the weekend and made mention that several clients had been discussed in the clinical team meetings who had underlying issues of sexual abuse and that in his humble opinion, the Sub19 service was letting down its clients by not addressing these fundamental issues in their clients’ lives. Considering that he had only joined the team a month before, this was a brave move on his part. He knew that his comments might alienate some of the team against him, but that is another of his character traits – he is not afraid to be outspoken if he feels a needs has to be addressed and he is prepared to become unpopular if necessary ‘for the greater good’.

He had seen a similar problem in clinical meetings with the Off Centre team, but, in his judgment, the team members there were more firmly entrenched in outdated beliefs and he believed that it would take far longer to make the changes that he felt were necessary. He thus focused on the Sub19 team.

Having given some feedback on the Working with Survivors of Abuse weekend, his comments were met with approval from the team and Matt Doocey asked him whether he would be prepared to provide a fuller and more detailed account of the weekend to the entire Sub19 and Off Centre teams as part of Staff Training. Brian Pead accepted the offer with relish. A date was eventually set for the 28 March 2008.

Brian Pead is not a man who would be asked to undertake staff training and not thoroughly prepare for the task. As an author and former teacher, he set about conducting further research into child sexual abuse at home and at work. He saved his research on to his workstation in the Off Centre office that he shared with Maya Walker, a Slovenian, and Mark Elmer. The three counsellors would often discuss therapeutic approaches. Mark Elmer was keen on the work of Jacques Lacan, and Brian Pead was a devotee of the work of Irvin Yalom, an existentialist. It became obvious to Brian that, although Maya Walker had been qualified for some five years, she had not continued on a programme of continuous professional development by conducting research, since she rarely contributed to these discussions, but would sit back and absorb the information from Elmer and Pead.

Nonetheless, there was a chemistry between Brian Pead and Maya Walker and they became lovers. She was drawn to his ‘vast knowledge of many subjects’ and he admired that she had come to England from Slovenia and mastered not only the English language but also the language of emotions that underpins counselling.

Brian worked tirelessly to create an agenda for the staff training. He based a good deal of his presentation on the work of Derek Jehu who had written an article entitled ‘Personality problems among adults molested as children’, which appeared in the journal Sexual and Marital Therapy (volume 7, number 3, 1992).

Brian felt that he wanted his audience to focus not only on the ‘here and now’ issues that the clients presented, but that the work they did with clients could have much longer-term benefits if the underlying issues were addressed. He knew that these teenagers and young adults would grow into older adults with spouses and children and that, if the underlying issues could be addressed as successfully as possible, then society would benefit in the longer term. He saw this as something like a ‘ten-year plan’, but he also knew that he would have to limit his aspirations in order to get the team ‘on board’ since too much information or too much change can frighten people off or create resistance.

He was also interested in the work of researchers such as Anna Salter (in America) and Christiane Sanderson (in the UK). Both women had written extensively on the subject of child sexual abuse and offenders.

A good friend of Brian’s – John Callow – attended several lectures by Christiane Sanderson on the topic of child sexual abuse at Birkbeck University. Brian told Maya Walker of this link and she, too, attended such lectures.

Moving in such circles, it is evident that Brian Pead’s mind-set at this period in his life was full of his own experiences of sexual abuse in the children’s home, the abuse experienced by his clients at Off Centre, research and his experiences on the Faceparty website. This was a considerable weight to carry on his shoulders, but he wanted to educate his colleagues and lighten his load whilst simultaneously making things better for clients. He knew he could not fight this alone.