GORDON ANGLESEA: APPLICATION FOR £150,000 PROSECUTION COSTS DROPPED

1 October 2017

A COURT application to make Gordon Anglesea pay £150,000 towards the cost of his prosecution last autumn has been abandoned.

The retired North Wales Police superintendent was given a 12 year prison sentence in November for sexually abusing two boys in the 1980s.

After the trial an application was made that he should pay £150,000 towards the cost of the prosecution which included a six-week trial at Mold Crown Court.

Anglesea died in prison in December.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has told Rebecca the application has now been withdrawn.

However, a separate investigation into Anglesea under the Proceeds of Crime Act continues.

GORDON ANGLESEA
THE DISGRACED police superintendent died before he could be stripped of his publicly-funded police pension. His death meant that his estate has also avoided a possible £150,000 bill to cover part of the costs of the prosecution against him. However, the National Crime Agency have confirmed that an investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act is continuing.
Picture: © Daily Mirror

The NCA also confirmed that Operation Pallial, its investigation into historic child abuse in North Wales, is investigating a further 31 suspects.

Fifteen of these suspects are the subject of advice files currently being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The remaining 16 are the subject of ongoing investigations which are expected to take more than a year to complete.

The NCA also confirmed that “a number of matters” — understood not to involve child abuse — are also being considered by CPS Wales.

As Rebecca reported last month, Operation Pallial had cost £4.3 million up to the end of March.

A further £1.2 million will be spent this year.

To date nine men have been convicted and eight have been gaoled.

A total of 361 complainants came forward and 143 suspects were investigated.

♦♦♦ 

Published: 1 October 2017
© Rebecca 2017

♦♦♦ 

NEXT
GORDON ANGLESEA & ARFON JONES: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
NORTH WALES Police Commissioner Arfon Jones has declined to answer Rebecca questions about his role in the Gordon Anglesea affair. Jones, a former North Wales Police inspector, won’t say why he allowed Anglesea’s widow to keep half of his pension without consulting the Home Office. Nor will he explain why his damning testimony against Anglesea in last autumn’s trial did not feature in the hearings of the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal in 1996-97. And he won’t say if he made a statement when North Wales Police originally investigated abuse allegations against Anglesea in 1991 …

♦♦♦ 

DONATIONS
If you would like to support the work of Rebecca, you can do so by clicking on the DONATE button.

CORRECTIONS
Please let us know if there are any mistakes in this article — they’ll be corrected as soon as possible.

RIGHT OF REPLY
If you have been mentioned in this article and disagree with it, please let us have your comments. Provided your response is not defamatory we’ll add it to the article.

GORDON ANGLESEA ARRESTED

RETIRED NORTH Wales Police superintendent Gordon Anglesea has been arrested on suspicion of historic physical and sexual assaults against children.

Anglesea was detained at his Colwyn Bay home in December by officers of the National Crime Agency.

He was the 18th person to be arrested as part of Operation Pallial, based at North Wales Police headquarters.

 Operation Pallial was set up by Prime Minister David Cameron in November 2012.

 His decision followed the BBC Newsnight programme which falsely implied that Tory peer Lord McAlpine had abused children in North Wales care homes.

GORDON ANGLESEA
The retired police superintendent arrested on suspicion of historic sexual and physical abuse of children in North Wales.
Picture: © Daily Mirror

ON 12 DECEMBER officers from the National Crime Agency knocked on the door of a house in a quiet suburban street in Old Colwyn on the North Wales coast.

Inside the property they arrested a 76-year-old man and later took him to a police station in Cheshire.

The detectives were part of the Agency’s Operation Pallial team.

They questioned the arrested man about allegations of child abuse dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.

Seven men have alleged that they were sexually or physically abused by the retired police officer in the period 1975 to 1983 when they were between 8 and 16 years of age.

The following day the National Crime Agency, which is in charge of Operation Pallial, said the pensioner had been released on police bail until mid-April.

The Agency would not reveal his identity.

Rebecca Television understands it is Gordon Anglesea.

Between 1975 to 1983 he was a North Wales Police Inspector based in Wrexham.

He served as a policeman for more than 34 years and reached the rank of Superintendent by the time he retired in 1991.

Anglesea is a Rotarian and a Freemason.

Shortly after his arrest last December, he informed his local Rhos on Sea Rotary Club that he had been detained.

Six days after the arrest, on December 20, Rebecca Television rang John Roberts, secretary of the Rhos club.

We told him we were planning to name Anglesea.

Roberts replied that Anglesea had not resigned.

Roberts said the retired police officer had applied for leave of absence and that the request would be considered at the club’s January meeting.

At that meeting, which took place on January 7, Anglesea was given leave of absence until April.

He is a long-standing Rotarian, one of 51,000 members in Britain and Ireland.

He has been President of the Rhos on Sea club on three occasions — 1989-90, 1990-91 and 2007-8.

In 2010 he was the club official in charge of “Youth Service”.

A spokeswoman for Rotary International told Rebecca Television that “while there was a legal process under way, the organisation could not comment.”

NORTH WALES POLICE
Operation Pallial operated out of the North Wales Police headquarters in Colwyn Bay until it moved to undisclosed National Crime Agency premises.
Picture: Rebecca Television

Anglesea is also a Freemason of more than 30 years standing.

There are 250,000 masons in England and Wales — outnumbering Rotarians 5 to 1.

In 1976 Anglesea joined a masonic lodge in Colwyn Bay.

In 1982 he became a member of Wrexham’s Berwyn lodge.

He left in 1984 to join a new Wrexham lodge called Pegasus becoming its Master in 1990.

The secretary of the North Wales Province of Freemasonry, Peter Sorahan, said:

“In view of the fact that Operation Pallial is an ongoing investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment.”

“However”, he added, “I can assure you that if requested by the Police to do so, the Province of North Wales will provide full assistance with their inquiries.”

Masonic HQ, the United Grand Lodge of England based in London, also confirmed it would assist the police if asked.

On January 8 Rebecca Television wrote to Gordon Anglesea informing him that the website intended to reveal that he was the man arrested on December 12.

We asked for a comment.

Royal Mail confirmed delivery of the letter.

There was no reply.

Operation Pallial can be contacted on 0800 118 1199 or by email at operationpallial@nca.x.gsi.gov.uk.

© Rebecca Television 2014

DONATIONS  If you would like to support the work of Rebecca Television, you can do so by clicking on the DONATE button.

CORRECTIONS  Please let us know if there are any mistakes in this article — they’ll be corrected as soon as possible.

RIGHT OF REPLY  If you have been mentioned in this article and disagree with it, please let us have your comments. Provided your response is not defamatory we’ll add it to the article.

 

BROTHERS IN SILK

THIS IS a tale of three Cardiff barristers.

Two flourished — they became QCs. One has been honoured by the Queen, the other has made his name in major public inquiries.

Both are members of an important legal lodge in Wales.

The third prospered but was never made a QC. He believes this was because he refused to join the lodge.

He took his fight to the European Court of Human Rights but failed.

 

IT’S 1973. For five years Roger Everest has been a barrister at the chambers at 34 Park Place in Cardiff.

Everest is invited by his clerk Ken Gorman to join a new masonic lodge that’s being set up. It’s to be called Dinas Llandaf.

One of the founders of the lodge, Eifion Morgans, is a barrister who will later become head of chambers at 34 Park Place. Morgans is already a past master of another Cardiff lodge, Shir Gar.

ROGER EVEREST
The barrister believes his decision not to join a masonic lodge prevented him from being appointed a QC.

Another founder is solicitor Sir Norman Lloyd-Edwards who had been a Tory councillor in Cardiff for many years.

Today he’s the Grand Master of the masonic province of South Wales. He stepped into that role in 2008 just as he retired from being the Queen’s man – Lord Lieutenant – in South Glamorgan.

Other well-known Tory members of the lodge have included Stefan Terlezki, MP for Cardiff West between 1983 and 1987 and Gwilym Jones, MP for Cardiff North and a junior minister in the Welsh Office from 1992 to 1997.

Everest decided not to join Dinas Llandaf. Ken Gorman warned him his advancement at the Bar would be affected.

Two other members of the chambers were happy to join the lodge. They were Winston Roddick and Gerard Elias.

When Dinas Llandaf opened for business the first master was the solicitor and Cardiff Tory councillor Julius Hermer.

In 1984 Gerald Elias was made a Queen’s Counsel – a promotion to the inner circle of barristers allowing the letters QC to be added after his name.

It’s called “taking silk” after the material in the gown a QC wears in court. Being a QC opens the way for a barrister to become a judge and with it the eventual possibility of a knighthood.

Roger Everest couldn’t help noticing that there was a masonic connection in Elias’ appointment.

The man who had an important say in appointing QCs in Wales, Mr Justice Leonard, was then presiding judge of the Wales and Chester circuit.

Elias’ appointment was made by the Queen on the advice of Lord Hailsham, then Lord Chancellor, but on the recommendation of the Presiding Judge of the circuit.

Mr Justice Leonard was a mason.

(He was also infamous as the judge in the 1987 Ealing vicarage case where he handed down shorter sentences for rape than for aggravated burglary.)

Two years later, in 1986, it was the turn of Winston Roddick to “take silk”.

Elias and Roddick are well-respected advocates who would no doubt have been awarded silk without any masonic connections.

However, Roger Everest claims that Eifion Morgans, who died in 1987, told him that their advancement was made easier by the fact the two barristers had met Leonard at masonic functions.

Roddick became master of Dinas Llandaf in 1983 and was followed a year later by Elias.

GERARD ELIAS QC
Did his membership of Dinas Llandaf accelerate his appointment as a QC?

In 1997 Elias was appointed lead counsel to the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal.

A year later Winston Roddick was appointed Counsel General to the National Assembly for Wales.

On his appointment, he resigned from freemasonry and has never rejoined.

In 2003, when Roddick’s term of office came to an end, Roger Everest was intrigued to note that the man nominated for the £140,000 a year job by the Civil Service Commissioners in London was … Gerard Elias QC.

However, First Minister Rhodri Morgan, a Labour politician with an ardent anti-masonic reputation, put his foot down.

Morgan said “I did not register any over-riding objection to the shortlist, although I did comment on the fact that one candidate, subsequently recommended for appointment by the panel, was a prominent freemason.”

“I was, however, prepared to waive my concern on this issue, noting that the candidate was prepared to resign from the freemasonry, as did the previous general counsel on appointment.”

“When the permanent secretary advised me of the recommendation from the panel and I read the full papers, I became aware of information not previously available to me that the recommended candidate was also a board member of the Independent Supervisory Authority for Hunting.”

Elias had joined the board of the Independent Supervisory Authority for Hunting ISAH. Another member of ISAH was Sir Ronald Waterhouse, the former High Court judge who chaired the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal of which Elias was leading counsel.

The First Minister vetoed the appointment because “I judged that the legal advice of a Counsel General prominently associated with these two controversial issues would not carry the necessary stamp of untramelled authority throughout the Assembly.”

DINAS LLANDAF, Lodge No 8512
THE LODGE meets five times a year in Cardiff. The entry in the 2009-10 South Wales provincial yearbook names 34 of the current membership of 40. They are:
S R Adam • A A Attard • F G Bottarini • G Bull • D Davies • J A Davies • G Elias, QC • B M Etherington • S Evans • K T Flynn, OBE • F A Green • P M M Grimson • J Hermer • E Howells • P S R Jamison • F A Jones • G A Jones • Gwilyn H Jones • G J Jones • M S Lewis • K P Malloy • P R Marshall, OBE • W G D Morgan • P A L Mount • N H B Payne • P G Powell • J W Reed • Neil J Richards • J W Richards • N J Richards • J S Sidoli • C M Williams • P M Williams, OBE • C E Yandell

Elias hit back saying he had never been to a hunt and had joined ISAH because of his disciplinary expertise in cricket. He had offered to resign from the organisation – and freemasonry – if it was felt there was any conflict of interest.

He denied that he was a “prominent” freemason and said he had not been an active mason for seven years.

This statement was made in March 2004. This suggests that he gave up being an active mason in 1997, the year when the public hearings of the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal began.

Rebecca Television checked the Dinas Llandaf entries in the provincial yearbooks. In every year Elias is shown as a subscribing past master of the lodge which meant that he continued to pay his dues and remained a mason. He is still listed in the 2009-10 edition.

Elias accepted the First Minister’s decision to veto his appointment but added: “Whether … the First Minister’s personal objections to my appointment are proper considerations, either as a matter of public law, or even as a matter of fairness and justice to a candidate, I leave for others to judge.”

Roger Everest tried to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights but the Secretariat refused to hear it.

Rebecca Television e-mailed Gerard Elias about Everest’s claims. He did not reply.

We asked Rhodri Morgan to comment. He told us he didn’t want to talk about the issue.

WINSTON RODDICK was elected police commissioner for North Wales last November. The article A Fistful of Coppers charts some of the controversy that surrounded his election.  

♦♦♦ 

© Rebecca Television 2013

CORRECTIONS  Please let us know if there are any mistakes in this article — they’ll be corrected as soon as possible.

RIGHT OF REPLY  If you have been mentioned in this article and disagree with it, please let us have your comments. Provided your response is not defamatory we’ll add it to the article.

DONATIONS  If you would like to support the work of Rebecca Television, you can do so by clicking on the DONATE button.

COMING UP

ONE OF North Wales’ most controversial politicians is retiring after more than two decades as a councillor on Anglesey. Councillor Gareth Winston Roberts OBE has a chequered career — he was forced to resign as Leader in the 1990s after the District Auditor delivered a damning indictment of his administration. He recovered to become Leader again in 2006 but was overwhelmed by a planning crisis that saw his coalition swept from power in the 2008 elections. Rebecca Television examines his baleful legacy in the article Dirty Rotten Scoundrel, OBE.

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF “SAVILISATION”

THERE WAS a time when governments would announce an official inquiry to kick a crisis into the long grass. After a decent interval the “crisis” would reappear with a brief media flurry around a report which could usually be safely ignored.

The last couple of years have seen a sea change in this age-old political expediency. The Leveson Inquiry, with its televised proceedings dominated by some of the biggest names in British political and cultural life, intensified the crisis over press ethics rather than defused it.

What transformed the phone hacking saga was the Guardian revelation in July 2011 that the News of the World had hacked into the mobile phone of the dead schoolgirl Milly Dowler back in 2002. Up to that single, shocking moment phone hacking had been essentially a media affair.

Then came the ITV Exposure programme in October 2012 which, instantly, shattered the reputation of Sir Jimmy Savile. What was so shocking about Savile, who died in October 2011, was that most of the population shared the view that he was an eccentric character whose lifetime’s charitable work more than made up for his strangeness.

When it was revealed that a planned BBC Newsnight item on child abuse allegations against Savile had been shelved in October 2011, all hell broke loose. The BBC denied the decision was influenced by scheduled tribute programmes to the dead disc jockey planned for the Christmas schedule —  but many were openly sceptical.

“Savilisation” was born — a fear of being accused of any kind of cover-up.

IN NOVEMBER last year, Newsnight broadcast the now notorious item in which abuse victim Stephen Messham was allowed to accuse an unnamed senior Conservative politician of sexually assaulting him while he was in care.

The social network site Twitter swiftly identified the politician as Lord McAlpine who responded to the false accusations by legally pursuing all-and-sundry.

David Cameron moved swiftly to dispel any whiff of cover-up — ever since the phone hacking scandal forced him to dismiss his communications chief and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, the Prime Minister has been on the defensive in these situations.

Even after it was realised that Stephen Messham had made a mistake, Cameron remained committed to the North Wales inquiries.

These two inquiries have transformed the Rebecca Television (RTV) series The Case of the Flawed Tribunal. When the series was published last year, the response was zero.

Now the situation is reversed. In November, following a question from Paul Flynn in the Commons, the series became headline news on ITV in Wales. (It was largely ignored by BBC Wales but of that more later).

The RTV series will now feature in the two inquiries.

The first of these is a review of child abuse allegations in the 1970s and 1980s, headed by Keith Bristow, director general of the newly-created National Crime Agency. This will focus on allegations that may not have been properly investigated at the time.

The second, a review of the work of the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal, is to be carried out by High Court judge Mrs Justice Macur.

The question is — how deep will the two new inquiries go? In other words, as far as North Wales goes, has the “Savilisation” effect already worn off?

The  government will be sorry they launched these inquiries which, if they had waited just a few days, would never have taken place.

Will they, briefly, go through the motions and come to the conclusion that, after all, everything was done properly?

Hopefully not. Rebecca Television has written to Keith Bristow, the detective in charge of Operation Pallial, which is investigating if child abuse allegations were properly investigated in the 1970s and 1980s.

We’ve also written to Mrs Justice Macur, who’s job is to check that the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal did its job properly.

We want to make sure the Rebecca Television material is considered properly.

But the stakes are high. If Bristow and Macur conclude that there are grounds for a deeper investigation into what happened, the government is going to be faced with a difficult dilemma.

The obvious route is to order another Tribunal to investigate the first Tribunal. The first one cost £14 million — a new one will cost even more.

There’s a precedent, of course — Northern Ireland’s Bloody Sunday. The first Tribunal, under Lord Justice Widgery, was fatally tarred by accusations that it was an exercise designed to clear the SAS of charges that they had killed innocent civilians.

The second Tribunal, under Justice Saville, cost more than £200 million and concluded that the soldiers had, indeed, gunned down unarmed demonstrators.

The Rebecca Television series shows that there are plenty of questions to be answered. When Paul Flynn asked Theresa May if she would read this material, she assured him that police would be looking into these allegations.