FRAMED! - part 4

6

After enjoying the weekend course at CPPD and after having been asked to conduct training in child sexual abuse at Sub19 and Off Centre, Brian was overjoyed.

Two days after being asked to conduct the staff training, he was again in ‘conversation’ with the person purporting to be the 14-year-old.

The ‘conversation’ was clearly designed by the ‘girl’ to acquire information. The ‘female’ asked for Brian’s address. Again, with no intention of ever meeting, he did not provide one.

The innocent ‘child’ was keen to meet, it seemed. ‘She’ then asked Brian his screen name, which was typed in the MSN address line. Realising ‘her’ mistake, ‘she’ then typed, “…I shud be blond…”

For those not as keen on linguistics and words as Brian, they may not have noticed an oddity here – the word ‘blond’ was supposedly spelt by a female, yet this person typed it wrongly. The female version of the word is ‘blonde’. Brian Pead believed that even a 14-year-old girl would know that the feminine version has an additional ‘e’ at the end of the word. As a little test, he typed back in response, “…Glad I’m not blonde…” but the person made no comment about the different spellings.

By ‘her’ using the masculine version of the word ‘blonde’, Brian began to feel that there might be different people using the same account name.

He then claimed to be going out in order to leave the conversation and ‘she’ asked “…cld u txt me? …” before providing a number which he never called or texted. Since he had no intention of meeting this person, or speaking with the person, or texting, he provided a second false telephone number based on his real number, but minus one digit each time (thus 539 would become 428, for example).

In two conversations, he had provided two different mobile numbers. Both were false. This demonstrates that his motives for remaining in contact with this person were not so that he could meet or engage in any form of criminal activity or sexual offending with this person. His motives were entirely based on what was happening on Faceparty at the time (which was corroborated by others) and what was happening in his life at that time which was filled with research into child sexual abuse and with clients who were survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

This ‘conversation’ proved to Brian that the likelihood was that the female was actually a male, possibly more than one person, and was trying far too hard to appear as though he/ she were a teenager. With his considerable knowledge of language and linguistics, Brian’s interest around the form of ‘texting’ that this person/ people was using focussed on the omission of vowels, but also such oddities as spelling out certain words in full. One example he noticed was the phrase “…ur fnny … mak me laugh neway…”

Most people might not look twice at that phrase, but Brian Pead is not most people. Apart from the word ‘me’ which cannot really be shortened, every word had been reduced except for the word ‘laugh’, yet people often type that as ‘laff’. He noted this anomaly and wanted to know more. It certainly seemed to him that this was most definitely not a teenager.

The online ‘conversation’ had lasted 21 minutes in MSN time. This allows for delays between someone typing out a phrase, it being received by the other person, then read, and then that person typing out a reply. The delays are obvious, so the 21 minutes can ordinarily be reduced to around 14 or 15 minutes.

Had Brian really been interested in grooming this person claiming to be a ‘girl’, he would have engaged the other person in conversations lasting far longer than 14 or 15 minutes. He had no intention of meeting and he had no intention of finding out about the ‘girl’ as a person – all he wanted to do was to test his theory that this was an adult posing as a teenager and then report this person to the Faceparty management. He saved the messages between him and the ‘girl’ on his laptop so that he could read them and read them again to analyse what was occurring in the conversations.

7

Having attended the Employment Tribunal in Croydon on 14 January 2008, Brian Pead then returned on 25 February. What struck him immediately was the fact that Lambeth had retained their barrister, but reduced the fourteen executives to just four. Brian represented himself again. By reducing the number of executives, this showed him that Lambeth had the result ‘in the bag’ and this is how it turned out.

The ‘Hearing’ lasted less than three hours and at the end of it, Judge Anne Martin found in favour of Lambeth Council. It had been another farce and, just as happened in the investigation process, the disciplinary process and the Appeal process, all of Brian’s material had been discounted. He repeated the information about Murray and her bullying, racism and grooming of pupils, but it fell on deaf ears.

Upon returning home that evening, he once again logged on to Faceparty to discuss the events of that day with friends.

Remarkably, at 18:25:28, he was approached again by the person or persons claiming to be a 14-year-old girl who wanted money in exchange for sexual favours.

It is important to note that the ‘girl’ was doing the chasing here. ‘She’ continued to claim to be 14 and continued to want to arrange a meeting for money. ‘She’ was desperately trying to ask how much he would pay her and what she would be required to do for the money. She suggested a meeting at 7pm on the following Friday. Little did ‘she’ know, but Brian attended lectures at Inner Space on self-improvement every Friday night. He rarely missed a lecture and he certainly wasn’t going to miss a lecture for this person claiming to be a teenager.

It is evident that if you really have an intention of meeting someone you either need to speak with that person directly to arrange a time and a venue, or you need to call or text them.

Testing out this person he said, “…What’s your mobile?...” and received the following reply: “…I gav u min lst tim … u gav me 2 I trd but it didn’t work…”

Brian replied, “…You have a great memory … I don’t remember all that … you sure? ... memory like an elephant, huh?”

He had, of course, been saving their conversations and was well aware that he provided two false mobile phone numbers, but he was playing a game.

The ‘girl’ claimed, “…yh bin thnkg bout the mony…” (“Yeah, been thinking about the money…”

It was a full two minutes before Brian replied. The ‘girl’ was evidently impatient because ‘she’ then typed “?”, meaning that she hadn’t had a response and was waiting for him to reply. She had just asked for his “moby numb” and he was looking through his previous conversations to see which false number he had used. To buy time he claimed, “…Hang on one sec … suddenly got bombarded with messages … wont be a sec …”

Three minutes later he provides her with the same false number that he had used on the previous occasion. Thus he had provided the ‘girl’ with three false numbers (albeit two of the false numbers were, in fact, the same number).

The ‘girl’ again freely gave a mobile number. He checked this number against previous conversations and it was the same.

“…U gng 2 txt me den…?” she asked.

But Brian did not call or text that number.

As the conversation drew to a close, he randomly asked, “…Have you got a webcam?” and the answer confirmed to him that this was an adult. ‘She’ replied, “…no mum nt buy me 1 yt … I nly got comp at christmas…” (“No, my mum hasn’t bought me one yet, I only got the computer at Christmas…”)

The word ‘buy’ struck Brian instantly. This person, claiming to be a teenager and who omitted as many vowels as possible had actually spelled ‘buy’ correctly when, in this context, the word ‘by’ would have sufficed.

But by far and away the killer word in Brian’s mind was this person’s use of the word ‘Christmas’. Albeit spelled with a lower case ‘c’, the word had been spelt correctly and in full.

Now, Brian thought to himself, if this really was a teenager who was obsessive about omitting the vowels, wouldn’t the ‘teenager’ have simply written ‘xmas’?

Again, this suggested to Brian that the person typing had a modicum of a good education and was most certainly not the teenager he/ she was purporting to be.

Indeed, Brian checked the first conversation between him and the ‘girl’ on 28 January 2008 and ‘she’ had used the word ‘xmas’. Given that this person was working hard to appear as a teenager by omitting as many vowels as possible from ‘her’ typing, it occurred to Brian that it was odd that someone should use the word ‘xmas’ on one occasion and then ‘christmas’ in full on another occasion. It also occurred to Brian that this might not, in fact, be the same person.

It was also in this conversation of 28 January that he had previously asked the person whether she/ he had a webcam and received the reply, “…Mum nt let me hav 1… (Mum not let me have one)…”

So, Brian felt that he had caught out this person on a number of levels. Initially ‘she’ had claimed that ‘her’ mother would not let ‘her’ have a webcam and now ‘she’ was claiming that ‘her’ mother had not yet bought one. It is possible, of course, that had this been a real teenager, then ‘her’ mother might have relented between Christmas and February and allowed her ‘daughter’ to have a webcam but had just not got round to purchasing one yet.

Feeling that he had gathered a good deal of evidence to prove that this was not a teenager, he casually asked, “…You got more pics of you?...”

The ‘girl’ replied, “…Soz dad nly put a cple of pics on comp for me…(Sorry, dad only put a couple of pictures on the computer for me)…”

Again this alerted Brian. If this person was really a 14-year-old, surely he/she would know how to upload pictures to the profile? So what did this person have to gain by claiming to be a teenager?

She continued, “… I cld ask him 2 put sum mre up…”

Fired up now, Brian replied, “…Why don’t you do it yourself then?’

“…Cos I dnt no how 2 (Because I don’t know how to)…” came back the reply.

“…You’re having a laugh, surely … aren’t all teens able to do internet stuff?...”

“…Dunno, I dnt hav cam so cnt do pics…”

And in this moment, Brian’s hypothesis became proven in his mind. This person was trying so desperately to be seen as a teenager without appearing to know that the vast majority of teenagers are highly computer-literate and simple tasks such as uploading more pictures to a profile would be ‘well easy’ to them.

Notice, too, how Brian had turned the conversation from one in which the ‘female’ claimed to be wanting to meet up and receive money for sexual favours to one in which he was testing his hypothesis to destruction and proving to himself that this was not a teenager but an adult.

We sent these MSN conversations to Dr John Olsson, a forensic linguistics expert. On 26 February 2010 at 11:55, he stated:

“…I have had a brief look at these conversations. There is something very interesting happening here…”

The emphasis is the authors’. Even after a ‘brief look’ at the conversations between Brian Pead and the ‘girl’, Dr Olsson states that “…something very interesting is happening here…”

On 28 February 2010 at 15:28, he sent the following additional comments:

“…I obviously need to look at these more closely but there seems to be something of a style change between the first and second conversation and between the second and third conversations in the female’s messages. There is less difference between the first and third conversations of the female in terms of style. However, I must stress that it is far too early to be firm on this point…”

This appears to corroborate with what Brian had discovered. He, too, had noticed that on occasions the ‘girl’ typed out some words in full and on other occasions ‘she’ would drop vowels as if they were hot metal in her hands.

The conversation just discussed – that of 25 February 2008 – was the fourth conversation between the parties. The first interaction had been on Faceparty itself in a chatroom. Then there had been three MSN conversations and on each occasion the ‘female’ was attempting to extract information from Brian, trying to arrange a meeting and trying to obtain his contact details, including a genuine mobile phone number. On three separate occasions (that is, in each conversation on MSN, he had provided a false mobile phone number – hardly the action of someone trying to engineer an illicit sexual liaison or, as the Bexley Times would have it, someone offering a 14-year-old girl £300 for sex.  

The reality was very different from the disinformation promulgated by Scotland Yard and disseminated through the vehicles of local (often free) newspapers.

Examine this comment on the internet about Faceparty and what had begun to occur there:

“…Apr 14, 2008 4:03 AM

My story is much the same. I had a Faceparty profile for 6 years which I used every day.  I’ve made many friends thankfully, some of whom I have contact with through ordinary email, so I won’t lose them.  But there are many acquaintances who I will lose now that my account has been deleted without any warning or explanation.

Although I’m sad at not being able to contact some of the nice people I socialise with on Faceparty, to be honest I’m not sad at losing the account.  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable being a member of a site that openly assists the promotion of pornography and supports advertising from people offering sex services for money, have a stand at the erotica exhibition and yet enable under age people to have profiles. They promote themselves as child friendly and concerned for the online welfare of youngsters ... hmmmm money conscious and greedy at the cost of anyone they can exploit if you ask me…”

This also corroborates Brian’s findings about Faceparty. It had degenerated from being an excellent networking website for adults into one which had links with some members on Adultwork.com and, according to this post, Faceparty was allowing under-aged people to have profiles when its Terms and Conditions stated quite clearly that no-one under 16 could join the website.

The question has to be asked: “If Faceparty monitored all photos uploaded to its site before making the photos live, and if some of the photos were photos of naked teenagers under 16, what happened to those photos?”

Did they form a collection for the Directors of Faceparty, were they sold to private collectors of child pornography, or were they handed over to the police to control?

Were the police, in fact, controlling Faceparty?  If they were, look at what could be achieved there. Firstly, they could upload fake profiles and trap genuine sex offenders. Secondly, they could create illicit photo swap chatrooms and add to their growing stash of child porn and achieve convictions at the same time. Thirdly, they could charge adults for Adult Verification Status (AVS) and then (a) increase their income and (b) gain the names and addresses and credit card details of those adults with a propensity towards child pornography. Fourthly, the police could ‘do a lot of damage’ and, when they felt they were being discovered by people like Brian Pead and others, they would simply liquidate the company, lose all the data which would incriminate them and save all the data which might incriminate others. 

Let things settle down for a while after people would ‘huff and puff’ about losing their money, create a new company, maintain the website and gradually, over time, do it all again. A perfect circle.

In an article entitled The Suspects are in Charge of the Case published in The Independent on Sunday 10 July 2011, former flying squad commander John O’Connor wrote:

“…Scotland Yard is facing its worst corruption crisis since the 1970s when senior police officers were found to be controlling London’s pornography industry. The investigation and subsequent purge left many detectives out of a job and in some cases serving prison sentences. The gloom that surrounded the Yard in those days is similar to the atmosphere that pervades it today […] (Scotland Yard must accept their responsibility for what has happened. It is astonishing that with so many resources being spent on anti-corruption, they could not see it when it was right under their noses…”

Given that John O’Connor, a former Flying Squad commander, has gone on the public record as stating that Scotland Yard itself controlled the adult porn industry, is it too fanciful to believe that it also controls the child porn industry? By taking over a website such as Faceparty, the police would benefit greatly. Firstly, by securing convictions against some users of the website and then ensuring (through the Scotland Yard press office) that maximum publicity is given to their ‘excellent work’, the public confidence in the police rises.

Secondly, by infiltrating the website and creating chatrooms in which pictures of underaged teenagers are swapped, this also benefits the police greatly. It adds to the Scotland Yard collection of child pornography and these pictures can be re-circulated time and again to trap more members of websites. Members who show an interest in the police-created chatrooms will be targeted, arrested and charged. More PR successes for the police.

By infiltrating a site such as Faceparty, which was ostensibly a free website but which then charged for additional services such as ‘Cool Tools’ (which allowed members unlimited free messages to other members) and Adult Verification Status (AVS, which allowed members to pay a fee of £25 per annum to access naked pictures of members who posted them.) For the avoidance of doubt, Brian Pead did not purchase any additional services.

With some 7 million members at one time (not all of whom, of course, would have purchased additional services), it is easy to see the potential for vast sums of money to be made by operating (or infiltrating) such a website.

If the police were creating suspicious sounding chatrooms such as TeenSluts4OldMen and TeensPixSwaps and then gained intelligence that their sorties were being monitored by respectable and concerned members, what better way to respond than liquidate the website, ‘lose’ the income from the additional services offered by the site and also – more importantly – ‘lose’ all the data that would show their wrong-doing?

That all members over the age of 36 suddenly found that their profiles had been deleted overnight suggests some wrong-doing of some kind.

That the company operating the Faceparty website (CIS Limited) was liquidated and that the new company (Anarchy Towers) was made up of the same Directors throws further suspicion onto the way in which the website was operated.

Given that between liquidating Faceparty (as owned by CIS Limited) and re-establishing Faceparty (as owned by the phoenix company called Anarchy Towers) there was an almost seamless transition, this suggests that some form of skulduggery might have been afoot.

Given that the website now allows people much older than 36 to become a member suggests that the potential for further wrong-doing exists once again.

8

On 4 March 2008, Brian Pead received the judgment of Mrs Anne Martin, who had presided over the farce that masqueraded as a genuine Employment Tribunal hearing.

Mrs Martin – a school Governor – found in favour of Lambeth Council.

What irked Brian Pead was that while Mrs Martin claimed that there were ‘child protection issues’ in the case, the Tribunal could understand why not a single pupil or parent had been interviewed! Furthermore, Mrs Martin claimed that the investigation by Cathy Twist had been ‘wide-ranging’ and ‘thorough’.

As is his nature, Brian appealed. On 26 March 2008, he sent a letter to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, Audit House, 58 Victoria Embankment, London, informing them of his wish to Appeal the judgment made in error by Mrs Anne Martin.

9

Brian’s work at Off Centre was going extremely well and he made friends easily, had a full client portfolio (all females) and his clients attended on a weekly basis and were fully engaged in the therapeutic process. Feedback he received from his clients was that they completely trusted him as their counsellor and felt that they were ‘making progress’ in their lives.

The management at Off Centre and Sub19 were pleased with his efforts and offered him four days a week instead of his usual three days. He gratefully accepted, since he enjoyed the work and he wanted the additional income since work was well underway on the refurbishment of his house.

From September 2007 until this point in his life (March 2008), he had continued to notice the displays in the front bedroom of 62 Days Lane, Sidcup.

Not only were Off Centre pleased with his work, but they suggested he might like to apply for the full-time post of Group Therapist which was becoming vacant due to the current post-holder securing a position elsewhere.

As a former teacher and manager of teams, Brian had long had a great interest in group dynamics. Through 2007 and 2008, he attended monthly Psychodrama workshops at the Lancaster Gate Hotel in London where he met and forged friendships with practitioners including Richard Oliver, Marcia Karp and Dr. Olivia Lousada.

Brian was a devotee of the work of Irvin Yalom, the American existentialist counsellor who has written a number of books on his work with his clients, something that Brian himself wanted to emulate.

Yalom, Professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has written a large number of books about his work with clients including Love’s Executioner and Every Day Gets a Little Closer.

However, perhaps his most important work was, in Brian’s opinion, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.

An avid consumer of reading material, Brian had read almost all of Yalom’s work, as well as the work of other group therapists such as Wilfred Bion.

In March, Brian completed and passed the Advanced Diploma in Humanistic Integrative Counselling at CPPD and his Case Study on his client Jemima ran to some 29 pages and received a distinction, being regarded by the tutor as ‘worthy of publication’. As a trainee teacher in 1982, his lecturers had also considered much of his written work as ‘worthy of publication’. Writing is in his blood – since he won a trip to Whipsnade Zoo for winning a story writing competition at the age of 7.

It is important to note here that throughout March, Brian Pead had had no contact with the person claiming to be the 14-year-old. He made no attempt to contact ‘her’ and ‘she’ had not contacted him.

His attention had been focused on his final preparations for the Staff Training on Child Sexual Abuse and his job application for the post of Group Therapist.

On Friday 28 March 2008, he arrived at the Sub19 offices in Florfield Passage, Hackney.

The day was bathed in bright sunlight and the Sub19 team (except Liam Shannon) were in attendance and two members of the Off Centre team also attended – Maya Walker, his lover of 36 years of age, and Mark Elmer, who – due to a prior engagement – was unable to stay for the entire duration of the training.

As a former teacher and Head Teacher, giving presentations is something that Brian is relatively proficient at and something which he enjoys, particularly if the topic is something he relishes.

As the survivor of sexual abuse in the children’s home in Harpenden, he relished the opportunity to train his colleagues in the topic, particularly since the team had identified a perceived weakness in this area of its collective knowledge.

It is important to note here that Maya Walker’s attendance required her to do two separate, small and almost insignificant acts. Yet these acts were to have important ramifications for Brian in the coming months.

She had to enter her attendance at this Staff Training in the TOIL folder in the Off Centre general office. TOIL – or time off in lieu – meant that she was able to claw back the time she spent attending this meeting because it was outside of her normal working hours. Thus there was an official record of Maya Walker’s attendance at the Staff Training undertaken by Brian Pead at the Sub19 offices in Hackney on 28 March 2008. This official record is important for reasons which will be explained in later chapters. Maya Walker’s TOIL record shows that on 20 March 2008 she attended a Multi Agency Meeting for 3 hours, on the 28 March 2008 she attended “Training at Sub19” for 3 hours, and on 11 April 2008 she attended the Fairbridge Project for 3 hours.

This is an official record of her TOIL hours. It is incontrovertible evidence that she attended the Staff Training presented by Brian Pead on that day. Each new TOIL record was entered into the Log Book in pen (not pencil) and each new entry went on the line below the previous entry. This meant, of course, that staff members could not falsify entries or erase entries.

That small and almost insignificant entry in the TOIL log book is of crucial significance to this entire story.

The second small and almost insignificant action that Maya Walker took was to pre-record her attendance at the Staff Training in her work diary. The entry for Friday 28 March 2008 shows that she has drawn an arrow commencing at 10am and finishing at 1pm. She has added (in capital letters) the word ‘TRAINING’ and underneath that heading she has written ‘Child Sexual Abuse – Brian’.

Together with the TOIL log book, this is clear and unequivocal proof that (a) she attended the Staff Training and (b) that it was undertaken by Brian Pead.   

Feedback from the team was extremely complimentary. Colleagues felt that only had he managed to ‘teach them something’ about a topic which many people find uncomfortable even acknowledging, but that he had simultaneously ‘held’ the group by regularly checking with the group how they were feeling, whether they wanted more heat or more air, refreshments or comfort breaks.

All of his research into child sexual abuse was held on the Off Centre main server, in a sub-directory called ‘Brian.Pead’.