FRAMED! - part 6

16

At the time of Brian’s unlawful suspension from Lambeth on 8 December 2006, he was working as a Volunteer Counsellor at the Community Drug Service, South London in Wallington, Surrey. The service was managed by Franco Toma and Michael Bird was the clinical supervisor in charge of overseeing the work of counsellors and volunteer counsellors.

During tea-breaks, or in between clients, Brian told Michael Bird of his troubles at Lambeth, which were, he told his supervisor, based on the fact that he had been forced to dismiss a female teacher for grooming female pupils, racism and bullying.

Michael Bird listened with great interest, but little did he know that he was to play a major part in the story in the coming months and years.

17

On Tuesday 20 May 2008, just as he was preparing to leave for his journey to Hackney, Brian answered a knock at the door around 7.30am. He thought it might be the postman delivering a parcel, but when he opened the door he saw three people – two male police officers and a female officer.

They stated that they wished to ask Brian some questions. Having nothing to hide, he allowed them entry into his house where he was promptly arrested. He had been tricked into this situation.

“Why are you arresting me?” he asked.

“You’re being arrested for indecent exposure and voyeurism.”

He was unnecessarily handcuffed in his own home.

“Why are you handcuffing me?”

“Because you might cause us danger.”

“I’m not going to hurt anybody … please take the cuffs off.”

“No.”

At this point, one officer, whom Brian later discovered was known as Peter Thompson, went upstairs to Brian’s bedroom and started taking photographs from his front bedroom window.

“Have you got a search warrant?” asked the indignant Brian.

“I don’t need one. We’ve arrested you. That’s sufficient,” lied Thompson.

“On what authority are you searching my bedroom?”

“We believe you have been using binoculars and other similar equipment to spy on the girls who live opposite at 62 Days Lane,” continued Thompson.

“Well, let me correct you. The girls are not girls. They are all at least in their twenties. Secondly, their house is not opposite. It’s at an acute angle. I have no spying equipment and I am not guilty of any crime. Where is the search warrant? Have you finished searching my bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“So, where are you from and which division?” asked Pead.

“We’re from Bexley Police. The Sapphire Unit.”

As a counsellor and former teacher, Brian knew that each police station had a Sapphire Unit attached to it and that its purpose was to investigate sexual offences.

“The Sapphire Unit?” inquired Brian. “Let me tell you that that’s bollocks because I haven’t committed any sexual offences.”

“Well, you’re coming to the station to be interviewed.”

The unmarked police car took a convoluted route to Bexleyheath Police Station in Arnsberg Way and Brian was asked if he required the assistance of a solicitor.

“I’ve done nothing wrong, so it’s ok.”

It should be noted that were this to occur today, with his increased knowledge of police procedures, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 2008 and the judiciary in general, he would not have admitted the police into his house and he would demand that they produce an Arrest Warrant and a Search Warrant. But, at the age of 53, he had never been in trouble with the police and was thus not aware of his Rights.

He had, however, attended the Liverpool v Nottingham Forest FA Cup tie on 15 April 1989 as a Liverpool fan and he had seen how – for almost 20 years – the police had been involved in a high level cover-up of what was so obviously malpractice. But this was 2008 and THE REAL TRUTH had not yet been published about the Hillsborough Disaster.

He was held initially in a police cell – this is the first part of their ‘scare tactics’. Brian Pead is not a man to be intimidated. He put his feet up and rested, awaiting the farce that would inevitably follow.

The first interview commenced at 09:50 and was conducted by PC Jane Sargeant (RY1782) and Detective Constable Saib. The PC led the interview.

Brian was reminded that the reason for his arrest at 07:30 had been for indecent exposure and voyeurism on dates ranging from October 2007 until 18 May 2008 and indecent exposure on 7 May 2008. He was told that an allegation had been made by a “young female neighbour and two other witnesses who live opposite you at number 62 Days Lane”.

Brian remained calm, believing the whole incident to be a complete farce. He listened intently to every word uttered by Sargeant and Saib.

He noted their use of the word ‘young’ in relation to the neighbour, aged around 22. He made a mental note that this word had been used extensively in his unlawful suspension and dismissal at Lambeth. It already seemed to him that this was an extension of the troubles he encountered at Lambeth, and it was not lost on him that this episode was less than three weeks after he had put in his letter to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (which had still not been responded to).

Brian asked for a pencil and some paper. He asked PC Sargeant to recap the allegations against him.

PC Sargeant: Yes, October 2007 through to 18 May 2008.

Brian Pead: Okay and then you said there was something on 7 May?   

PC Sargeant: That’s right, that was the indecent exposure. From October to 18th May, that’s what we class as the voyeurism, where the girl says that you’ve been watching her while she’s been in her bedroom doing private acts in her bedroom. So that’s why you were arrested this morning and you’ve been brought here today so you can tell us your side of the story. So would you like to tell me what you know about what I’ve told you today?

Brian Pead: Well I’m fuming and I’m furious and I think this is bollocks, if you’ll excuse my language. I somehow feel set-up in this and I’m really puzzled by this to be honest because eight months allegedly this has been going on, allegedly, and so consequently that’s an awful long time it seems to me before anyone phoned and made any kind of complaint anyway. So that’s bizarre to me. I have seen the girls from that house in the local stores, the local Co-op round the corner, I see them in the street, nobody has said anything to me before now, which to me seems odd, but never mind that’s their story. There’s clearly some strange dynamic going on here, then, a strange dynamic and I’ve been sitting for the last hour or two trying to work out what that can be because it seems bizarre, really bizarre. Okay I’ll draw you a diagram to explain this, sometimes a picture is a thousand words.

MR PEAD WAS SUPPLIED WITH A SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER AND HE DREW TWO WINDOWS, THE VIEW FROM HIS HOUSE.

Brian Pead: I don’t know who’s put in the complaint, you say a young lady from that house has put in a complaint …

PC Sargeant: Well three of them yes, one of the young girls made the complaint first, the allegation, because she feels that you have been watching her, and then two of the girls saw the indecent exposure on 7 May, two of the other girls saw the indecent exposure.

[Authors’ note: notice the police officer’s use of the term ‘young girls’ – these were females aged between 20 and 25. Note how it is a phrase used by those at Lambeth.]

Brian Pead: They say.

PC Sargeant: Yes.

Brian Pead: And they’ve got pictures of this?

PC Sargeant: Only their word, they didn’t take pictures.

Brian Pead: They have mobile phones, web cams and all of that and they didn’t take pictures?

PC Sargeant: Well, no, because they were very shocked by what they saw and when, as they said a person who they don’t really know is stood across from them masturbating naked in the window, their first thought isn’t to take a picture it’s to scream, to close the curtains, see what’s happening and then try ...You tell me what’s happened…

Brian Pead: Okay if that was a real scenario I could understand that yeah, if the young ladies had felt threatened or anything like that I could understand that.

MR PEAD REFERRED BACK TO THE TWO WINDOWS (HE DESCRIBES AS LEFT AND RIGHT). HE SAID HE DOESN’T KNOW THE YOUNG LADY CONCERNED, ONLY THAT SHE IS BLONDE...”

Notice that the typist (called Lynn) spells the word ‘blonde’ correctly unlike the person who was purporting to be a 14-year-old female on Faceparty and MSN.

Returning to the conversation in the police station, Brian Pead has already called the constable on the fact that the females had never taken a single photograph of him over an alleged nine-month period from September 2007 through to May 2008. PC Sargeant tried to avoid his pertinent question by saying that they were ‘afraid’ and ‘screaming’. This is nonsense – the females were surely not afraid or screaming over a period of nine months. Besides, who would wait nine months before taking action, had these incidents really taken place?

Brian felt that this reminded him of Lambeth and the masturbation in the theatre – apparently nobody had bothered to report this alleged incident until after he had had good cause to dismiss the person calling herself Maryn Murray for grooming young females, for bullying and for racism.

Lambeth had failed to respond appropriately or even to respond at all. His appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal also did not receive a response, despite three attempts and now – when he had forced their hand to provide him with an Appeal date - he had been arrested on a trumped-up charge of indecent exposure and voyeurism. It was far too much of a coincidence he, and friends, believed.

Brian went on to draw a picture of the windows at 62 Days Lane as seen from his house, and he patiently explained that he felt that he had been the subject of surveillance from that house.

He explained that the female was not merely ‘changing her clothes’ in the bedroom but actually putting on a deliberate show. He told the police that his initial reaction was that she was performing for the 20-something year old men in the house next to his, at number 87.

PC Sargeant then attempted to manipulate the version of events that Brian was relaying by claiming “…So you’ve been watching her from your window…” to which Brian corrected, “…No, I said I had seen her from time to time which is a very different thing…”

Being something of a linguist, Brian usually always feels the need to correct language where misunderstandings can occur. He did not want to be charged with voyeurism, or be charged at all. He knows that the legal system is built on a foundation of legalese – a ‘restricted code’ - that only a few people are aware of because knowledge is power and those in power do not want those not in power to learn the ‘code’.

 The conversation between Brian Pead and PC Sargeant moved on to a discussion of the note that he had put through the door of 62 Days Lane in order to draw the occupant’s attention to the fact that she could be seen (had she not been aware, which is unlikely).

But PC Sargeant, instead of seeing the good intentions of Brian’s note, chose to try to twist the note into some form of perverted communication. 

PC Sargeant: Are you trying to say that you weren’t attracted to her great looking and fantastic body?

Brian Pead: Not in that sense, no.

PC Sargeant: Did you find her a turn-on?

Brian Pead: Not in that sense, no.

It was clear to Brian that the police officer had absolutely no intention of listening to his account – she was, of course, looking for a conviction to add to the ‘success rate’ of the Bexley Sapphire Unit.

Although he had been careful to explain that he first thought that Elizabeth McIntyre had been performing shows for the three sons of Glen Meeking, his neighbour at 87 Days Lane, PC Sargeant attempted to claim that Brian had said that McIntyre was putting on shows for his benefit; “…So what made you think that a girl in her twenties … sorry if this sounds rude, would be interested in a man who’s fifty-three/ fifty-four?..”

Brian had never said that he thought that Elizabeth McIntyre was interested in him. He had said that he felt that she – or others – had, in fact, been watching him, or keeping him under surveillance.

PC Sargeant claimed that Elizabeth McIntyre had been ‘distraught’ at receiving the note from Brian Pead, that she had felt ‘dirty’. So dirty in fact that once she had received it, she increased the number of shows and continued to display herself at an open window for several months.

In his research and training, he had learnt that the most common response to a woman feeling thus ‘violated’ would be to withdraw, but McIntyre did not. She increased the frequency of her shows and – more significantly – she kept the note that Brian Pead had sent in her best interests.

It was incomprehensible to him (and his friends) that a woman who felt so violated would keep hold of a note that made her feel traumatised. It occurred to Brian and friends that she had kept that note for a reason. This was sounding more and more like a set-up.

The interview took a farcical and almost surreal tone when PC Sargeant turned to McIntyre’s claims that on 5 May 2008 she had witnessed Brian standing at his bedroom window in the dark. The two houses are almost 100 feet (33 metres) apart, and at an acute angle. It should be remembered that scaffolding completely covered the front of his house. Directly in front of the window at which McIntyre claimed she had seen Brian in the dark were three scaffold poles and just to the left was a scaffold ladder. All of these items would have further obscured her view into his room.

PC Jane Sargeant recounts McIntyre’s statement to Brian:

“…Coming a little bit more recently she says on 5th May 2008 she was in her bedroom sorting out her stuff and she noticed that the light was on in your bedroom, she said the light was always on in your bedroom but sometimes you do turn the light off and you still stand there and she can see a glow of something, maybe a PC or a TV in the room, and she can see it catching the side of her (sic) face and that’s how she knows you’re still looking at her. She said she caught you standing there, you were looking straight at her ... you were staring straight towards her and she could see that your right hand was down the front of your trousers and you were, as she put it, there was movement in the front of your trousers, and that was on 5th May and she says you were staring right at her…”

This was quite a bit of information to absorb under pressure in an interview room without a legal representative present, so Brian asked the PC to repeat what she had just said. She obliged him and added the following:

“…I looked in the direction and he was stood staring straight at me from his window. His face was evil, it was awful, he really scared me ... He was just staring straight at me. I could see his hand was down his trousers. It was his right hand down the front of his trousers and there was movement in the front of his trousers. I was so shocked and scared I closed the curtain straight away...”

One might wonder why McIntyre failed to keep her curtains closed ever since she received the note in October 2007 in which Brian had informed her that she could be seen.

One also has to wonder why the police took this allegation seriously. It does not take an Einstein to work out that you could not possibly see a person’s face from 100 feet away in the dark at a window which was partly obscured by three scaffold poles and a scaffold ladder.

Furthermore, the windowsill in the front bedrooms in Brian’s house were above his groin area, so it would have been impossible for anyone (let alone someone from 100 feet away in the dark) to have seen him with his hands down his trousers as McIntyre claimed.

But perhaps the most telling feature of these outrageous claims by McIntyre is that when asking for a paper and pencil so that he could draw a representation of the windows at 62 Days Lane, Brian drew the diagram with his left hand. He is not right-handed, but left-handed and nor is he ambidextrous. In fact, friends who have worked with him on his house would testify that his left arm is very much stronger than his right.

Thus it should have already been very clear to even the most inexperienced police constable that McIntyre’s statement was nothing short of a tissue of lies. Yet Detective Constable Saib was also in the interview room. He did not make mention of this alarming discrepancy, which is almost tantamount to a witness saying that the murderer was a white female and the police are interviewing a black male!

Given that McIntyre claimed she had witnessed Brian masturbating at his bedroom window over a period of nine months in total, one could conceive that – had this been true – she would have worked out which hand he would have used.

A decent and thorough interviewer at this stage would have stopped that particular line of questioning and taken up the alarming disparities in Brian’s statement to the police. But PC Sargeant did not. Rather like Cathy Twist at Lambeth, Sargeant ploughed her own furrow, determined not to listen to reason but to obtain any information with which to charge Brian. She changed direction.

“The other incident, which was dated 7th May, which was Wednesday, at about 11:30pm the girl is sat in her bedroom with the light on and her friend is also in the bedroom with her and the friend was stood at the bedroom door and they say that they saw you indecently exposing yourself at the window.”

Notice how PC Sargeant – about the same age as McIntyre – refers to the 22-year-old as ‘a girl’. This was sounding more and more like Lambeth.

“Do you remember what you were doing on 7 May at about 11.30pm?”

“Right at this minute, no I don’t, but I don’t indecently expose myself up at the window at all. I’ve already said that from time to time I get out of the shower, I get out of bed or whatever and I am naked and there are no curtains and there are no houses opposite me at all, so for me that wouldn’t constitute indecent exposure, and to me anyway indecent exposure suggests a kind of a willingness to expose yourself as opposed to just naturally going about your business from the shower to the bedroom or whatever.”

“Well, I’ll just read what she said. The two girls were talking, then the girl that was stood at the door screamed and she ran out of the room turning off the other girl’s light. The other girl that we’ve just been talking about, she turned off her light as she went. The girl with the blonde hair glanced around as she was shocked by her friend screaming and she noticed that your light was on and you were stood at the window naked and then she’s turned away and her other friend came rushing into the bedroom and went over to the window, and she has made a statement saying that she saw you stood at your bedroom window completely naked masturbating…”

(Notice at this point that the police officer fails to name the alleged witnesses. Notice, too, that the transcriber of the interview – Lynn – spells the word ‘blonde’ correctly.)

“Mm.”

“And the young girl that ran out of the room screaming, that’s what made her scream, because she saw you naked at the window masturbating looking over at the blonde girl’s bedroom window.”

(Notice here how Sargeant uses the term ‘young girl’. Elizabeth McIntyre was 21 at the time of this alleged incident. Yet ‘young girl’ is precisely the same term that Maryn Murray and her friend Anya Hiley used in relation to claims against Brian. They, too, focused on the word ‘blonde’ – suggesting that Brian has a proclivity towards young, blonde females.

“Okay, two things; one I think that’s totally bollocks and secondly I really do need a toilet stop.”     

The interview was then suspended at 10:35 for a comfort break and the tapes were changed.

At 10:37, a second interview commenced. It should be remembered that Brian had been arrested at 7:30am in his own house just prior to leaving for work, that he had been unnecessarily handcuffed, that his house had been the subject of an unlawful search, that he had no legal representation and that he was facing two police officers. It was a daunting situation for anybody.

The police tactics are to try to wear a suspect down. They claim that they are there to try to ‘establish’ the truth, but they are not. The police service is a business. It needs convictions. The mantra exists whereby innocent people are ‘fitted up’ all the time. There is an endless list of such people: the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, Barry George (the alleged killer of Jill Dando) and many, many more innocent people who have been vilified by the press and who have had their lives completely destroyed by corrupt police officers. Perhaps even more poignantly, the list includes the 96 dead at the Hillsborough Disaster, a match which Brian attended. He knew how corrupt the police could be. Most ordinary, decent citizens exist in a world where they need to believe that the legal system is just and that the police service is there for them. They ‘turn a blind eye’ to the reality of such inherent corruption unless, or until, they come face to face with it. This was exactly the situation in which Brian now found himself.

He knew this entire situation was farcical. He knew that no-one could see somebody’s face in the dark from 100 feet away. He knew his bedroom window was obscured by scaffold poles. He knew he was left-handed. He knew he did not live directly opposite any houses. But most importantly, he knew he was innocent.

Yet the farce continued. It continued in much the same way that Brian’s unlawful suspension at Lambeth became an unlawful dismissal, that led to a farcical Employment Tribunal hearing in which his reports of Murray’s grooming, racism and bullying went unheeded by Judge Anne Martin, and how he had been forced to write three times to the Employment Appeal Tribunal in order to lodge his Appeal. Yet, just less than three weeks after he had visited the Employment Appeal Tribunal offices on the Victoria Embankment, he now found himself being arrested as a suspect of masturbation and indecent exposure. As his father used to say, “Even a blind man could see what’s going on here, Brian.”

As soon as the second interview commenced, PC Sargeant made numerous references to ‘the young girl’ in a direct echo of Lambeth.

Brian said, “Something doesn’t ring true here. I’m left handed, so I want to point that out and secondly, as I said, I think this is rubbish.”

By way of response, PC Sargeant asks:

“Well, were you, on 7 May, on that date that maybe you can remember, stood in your bedroom window at night with the light on, naked and masturbating?”

“No.”

“Have you ever stood in your bedroom window naked with the light on masturbating?”

“No, because let me explain to you, two things need to be said here. One of them is I’ve been in that house nineteen years. I have, I would say, a pretty good reputation in that street with all my neighbours and everything. Like you’ve pointed out and I’ve pointed out I’m fifty-four years of age […] I've never had any kind of problem like this, if you call it a problem, before. So it strikes me as very odd that an incident like this should happen now where we’ve got a ‘young lady’ putting on, my word, ‘shows’. I’d be very interested to know how other people would perceive that but in my words that’s a ‘show’. Yes, so I have a very, very good reputation and it’s a stirring time, because this is a huge puzzle to me, why this would happen after all these years. Something doesn’t ring true here at all.”

“I’ve explained to you why they’ve only just come to us now. When for instance the girl got the letter, after she said she got freaked out by it, she then the next morning woke up and thought she was going over the top, thought she was being stupid, so she kept the letter and tried to forget about it and then a month after she’d opened her curtains then she realised that you were ‘watching her’, as she puts it, and you watched her over this length of time. She says whenever I glanced up he always seemed to be there watching me. She said she comes in and out of the house and she sees that you’re watching her and you’ve even stood on the pavement and watched her go into her house.”

“This is what she says?”

“Yes. And then the incident with the indecent exposure. They did tell the police and it’s taken this long for us to get the report that came through and now we’re dealing with it. These girls were scared by your actions.”

Even the staunchest supporter of the police would have to question what is being said here. PC Sargeant had not addressed Brian’s proof of his being left-handed. Nor has she addressed that he has told her that “something doesn’t ring true here.”  

She claims that ‘the girl’ (not ‘young woman’ or even ‘woman’, but ‘girl’) was freaked out by the note but retained it. Had she really been freaked out, it is most likely that she would have reported it to the police at that point, or thrown the note away in a fit of temper, but she did neither – she merely kept it. This did not make sense to Brian.

She claims that the police did not act sooner because it had taken them “this long for us to get the report”. Brian knew this to be completely untrue. He had mentioned to friends that – ever since his time at Lambeth – he had felt that he had been under some form of surveillance. He knew that what he had uncovered at Lambeth and on Faceparty would make him a ‘target’ or a ‘person of interest’ to the police and, as such a person, it was likely that he would, sooner or later, be ‘fitted up’. He knew that he had been ‘fitted up’ at Lambeth and he had had this belief confirmed by Alex Passman, an award-winning employment law specialist who had told Brian that he was ‘being set up’.

Having sent three separate letters to the Employment Appeal Tribunal without receiving a single reply, and then having been arrested on a charge of indecent exposure and voyeurism immediately afterwards, it was becoming clearer to Brian and his friends that this entire episode in his life was following a pattern. He was being found guilty of things where no witness existed or where no credible evidence was offered up against him.

Brian had been a keen student of the law for many years. He read widely on the subject and was particularly keen on police procedure. He was a fan of Columbo and, whilst fictionalised, it had more than a nod towards reality. But, in his mid-twenties, he had come across the story of Frank Serpico, a New York policeman who tried to expose police corruption. In doing so, he was shot by his own officers and he ran a gauntlet of hatred in exposing the truth. Brian had been moved by the cop’s experiences which were, of course, entirely true.

Thus Brian had a good indication that events were occurring in his life which had all stemmed from the fact that he had been forced to dismiss Maryn Murray for her illegal activities in the pupil referral unit of which he was the Head Teacher. He had done the right thing and his life was being turned inside out because of it.

Back in the interview room at Bexleyheath Police Station, it was not lost on Brian that there were three people in the room and that one of them – calling himself DC Saib – had not spoken at all. As a group therapist, this was noted by Brian. He knew, as most people do, about the age old good- cop, bad-cop routine, but that wouldn’t work on him. Brian waited, knowing that Saib would speak at some point. After more than fifteen minutes of this second interview, Saib asked Brian to explain about the ‘shows’ that McIntyre put on, and why Brian referred to them as ‘shows’ as opposed to a woman undressing in her bedroom.

“ What do you call a ‘show’ exactly?”

“I kind of explained that earlier to your colleague here.”

“You did but I just want you to tell me what you call a show again.”

This is an old police trick. Get a suspect to go over it all again and try to trip him up if any small detail differs from his original account. Brian, nevertheless, humoured the detective.

“It seemed to me like a deliberate kind of show, a deliberate thing; it wasn’t somebody just changing.”

“Well, there’s loads of different types of shows, there’s theatre productions or plays and stuff like that...”