OPERATION PALLIAL COST RISES TO £4.3 MILLION

15 September 2017
THE COST of Operation Pallial — the police investigation into historic allegations of child abuse in North Wales — has risen to £4.3 million.

The figure, obtained by Rebecca under a Freedom of Information request, was the total at the end of March this year.

A further £1.2 million has been earmarked for this financial year.

The inquiry, carried out by the National Crime Agency on behalf of North Wales Police, is largely underwritten by the government.

The Home Office has paid 85 per cent of the cost — leaving the North Wales force with a bill of £671,000.

An additional £278,000 has been spent by the National Crime Agency.

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SO FAR nine men have been convicted and eight have gone to prison as a result of Operation Pallial.

One was gaoled for life and the others for a total of 55 years and 9 months.

They are:

Gordon Anglesea 

The retired North Wales Police superintendent is the most controversial figure in the child abuse scandal.

He was first accused a quarter of a century ago.

At the time the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Anglesea then successfully sued two national newspapers, the magazine Private Eye and HTV in 1994.

He received £375,000 in damages.

In November 2016 he was gaoled for 12 years after new witnesses came forward.

A jury unanimously found him guilty of four counts of indecent assaults on two boys in the 1980s.

GORDON ANGLESEA
THE TRIAL of the former North Wales Police superintendent took place at Mold Crown Court last autumn. The jury of five woman and six men found him guilty of indecently assaulting two boys in the 1980s but cleared him of buggering one of them. He died at Rye Hill prison in Warwickshire in December 2016.
Photo: Trinity Mirror

He died in prison after serving 42 days of his sentence.

John Ernest Allen 

In 2014 John Allen, the former head of the private Bryn Alyn Community complex in Wrexham, was sentenced to life for sexually abusing 19 children in the 1970s and 1980s.

It was his second conviction — in 1995 he was gaoled for six years for abusing six residents of Bryn Alyn.

Allen is the most prolific child abuser in the North Wales scandal.

Roger Griffiths 

The former head of Gatewen Hall, part of the Bryn Alyn Community, was gaoled for 9 months in April this year.

He admitted possessing 51 indecent images of humans and animals engaging in sexual acts.

In June 2015 he was acquitted of two counts of historic indecent assault.

In 1999 he was gaoled for eight years for a serious sexual assault on a boy, an indecent assault on another boy and several counts of child cruelty.

Keith Alan Evans

The former care-worker at the Bryn Alyn Community was given an eight months suspended sentence in March 2016 for a physical assault on a resident in 1983.

He was cleared of physically assaulting six other boys.

Gary Cooke

A serial sex offender, Cooke was gaoled in October 2015 for 14 years on 15 counts of indecent and sexual assault.

The court heard five vulnerable young boys were lured to his home in Wrexham and plied with alcohol and other drugs before being abused by Cooke and others.

Cooke has used many aliases during his long career — he now calls himself Mark Grainger.

He has convictions for child abuse stretching back to the 1970s.

JOHN ALLEN
CURRENTLY SERVING a life sentence handed down in 2014. In total, he abused 25 children in his care at the private Bryn Alyn Community. The complex of care homes around Wrexham was an immensely profitable business — local authorities in England and Wales paid him more than £30 million between 1974 and 1991 to look after problem children.

David Lightfoot

The former Wrexham publican, an associate of Gary Cooke, was sent to prison for 10 years on eight counts of indecent and sexual assault.

Roy Norry

An ex-local radio reporter, Norry was another of those involved in Cooke’s paedophile ring.

He was gaoled for 11 years on six counts of indecent and sexual assault.

Neil Phoenix

Gaoled for three and a half years on one count of sexually abusing a boy at Gary Cooke’s home.

Julian Huxley

The former Metropolitan Police officer was gaoled for four and a half years on two charges of indecent assault.

Huxley was working as a civilian at Wrexham Barracks at the time of the offences.

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THE CPS are considering files on further suspects.

Operation Pallial continues to investigate other historic abuse allegations.

 

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Published: 15 Sept 2017
© Rebecca
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COMING
THE MYSTERY OF ARFON JONES 
THE POLICE COMMISSIONER for North Wales has declined to answer Rebecca questions about his role in the case of Gordon Anglesea. He has refused to ask the Home Office to strip the disgraced former superintendent of his fully-funded police pension. And he won’t explain why his damning testimony against Anglesea at last year’s trial never surfaced in the 1996-2000 North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal …

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CORRECTIONS

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EXCLUSIVE — GORDON ANGLESEA: THE FINANCIAL REWARDS OF CHILD ABUSE

INCOMPETENCE BY North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones led to convicted paedophile Gordon Anglesea keeping his police pension.

The Commissioner has acknowledged Anglesea deserved to lose his pension but, in the eight weeks between Anglesea’s conviction and his death, failed to ask the Home Office to revoke it.

Rebecca understands the pension — which is fully-funded from the public purse — is worth up to £25,000 a year.

Jones’ inaction meant that Anglesea was being paid some £500 a week while he was in prison.

Jones has also decided that his widow, Sandra, should receive a widow’s pension  of 50 per cent.

She will receive up to £12,500 a year for the rest of her life.

Rebecca has also discovered the Commissioner did not consult the Home Office over this decision.

We have written to policing minister Brandon Lewis asking him to issue a “forfeiture certificate” under the Police Pensions Regulations 2015.

This would automatically revoke Anglesea’s pension — and prevent his widow from enjoying the proceeds of his child abuse.

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THE CONVICTION of Gordon Anglesea on October 21 last year immediately placed his police pension in jeopardy.

He was gaoled for 12 years after a jury unanimously convicted him on four counts of indecent assault on young boys in Wrexham in the early 1980s.

He was a uniform inspector in the North Wales force at the time.

Under the Police Pensions Regulations 2015 a former police officer can be stripped of his pension if the offences were

committed in connection with the [officer’s] service as a member of a police force and in respect of which the Secretary of State for the Home Department has issued a forfeiture certificate.

There are compelling reasons to believe Brandon Lewis, the current policing minister, would have issued the certificate.

The first is Gordon Anglesea’s high profile.

When he was first named as a child abuser in the early 1990s, he successfully sued four media organisations, including HTV, and accepted damages of £375,000.

Concerns that his success may have been assisted by North Wales Police and fellow freemasons were important factors in the setting up of Britain’s only child abuse Tribunal in 1996.

The £14 million inquiry, headed by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, expressed “considerable disquiet” about Anglesea’s testimony but decided there wasn’t enough evidence to brand him a child abuser.

The second powerful reason why Anglesea would have been stripped of his pension lies in the nature of his offences.

Three of these took place while he was in charge of the Wrexham Attendance Centre.

This was part of the youth justice system and was a Home Office initiative staffed by serving officers of the North Wales Police.

Anglesea wasn’t just abusing one of the boys at the centre — he was abusing his position as a police officer, abusing the youth justice system and abusing the trust placed in him by the Home Office.

It’s clear Commissioner Jones also felt Anglesea’s offences merited the revocation of his pension.

After Rebecca — and local journalists — asked a series of questions, Arfon Jones issued a statement on January 26:

“I concluded this was a case where the forfeiture of pension was appropriate.”

A great deal of money was at stake.

The pension scheme Anglesea was part of when he resigned from North Wales Police in 1991 was far more generous than it is today.

It was a fully-funded scheme and officers were not allowed to make personal contributions of their own.

For every year of service Anglesea was entitled to one sixtieth of his pensionable salary.

Rebecca understands it could have been worth as much as £25,000 a year.

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AS SOON as Anglesea was convicted, there were two reasons why the issue of his pension became a matter of urgency.

The first was public confidence.

Many people in North Wales would find it morally wrong that a paedophile who used the cloak of public office to conceal his offences should be rewarded for his crimes.

(It was, of course, part of Anglesea’s defence that his victims invented their allegations to gain compensation.)

The second was a matter of financial efficiency: if Anglesea didn’t deserve his pension, the sooner he was stripped of it the better.

In the event he enjoyed his full pension — perhaps as much as £4,000 — in the eight weeks he was in prison.

Rebecca investigated further.

We asked the Home Office if Commissioner Jones had applied for the all-important “forfeiture certificate”.

A spokesman told us:

“the Home Office does not comment on individual pension forfeiture cases or requests made by Police and Crime Commissioners.” 

We put a similar question to the Commissioner.

A spokesman said the answer was “no”.

In other words, even though he considered Anglesea should lose his pension, Commissioner Jones did not ask for the forfeiture certificate.

His only explanation was:

“Gordon Anglesea passed away before the process was concluded and the agreement of the Home Secretary was secured.”

He then makes it clear that the decision to grant Sandra Anglesea 50 per cent of her husband’s pension was his alone.

Anglesea’s death, he said

“meant his wife was granted a widow’s pension …”

“There is no precedent in law to with-hold that 50 per cent especially as the beneficiary has not been convicted of any offence.”

Rebecca asked if Arfon Jones had consulted the Home Office before making this decision.

Again, the answer was “no”.

The Commissioner says he took legal advice before making his decision.

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WE HAVE written to policing minister Brandon Lewis asking him to issue a forfeiture certificate.

Having decided Anglesea’s pension could be revoked, Commissioner Jones was morally bound to refer the matter to the minister.

The issue of whether Sandra Anglesea should receive a widow’s pension should have been irrelevant.

If Arfon Jones had done his job properly Gordon Anglesea would have been stripped of his poension long before he died – and his widow would have automatically lost her entitlemnent.

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Note
1
The Commissioner would not reveal the details of Anglesea’s pension. It was a fully-funded, final salary scheme but officers were allowed to take a substantial amount as an initial lump sum. The current salary level for superintendents is between £63,000 and £75,000.

COMING
A FORCE FOR EVIL
HOW DID Gordon Anglesea get away with it for so long? 
The answer is he used the cloak of public office to conceal his crimes and counted on protection from North Wales Police. This forthcoming article lays bare the conspiracy hatched at the highest levels of the force in the early 1990s to cover up its failure to investigate child abuse — and to protect Anglesea at all costs. In the process, the force helped Anglesea win a famous libel case and made a mockery of the £14 million North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal ……

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DONATIONS

If you want to make a contribution towards the work of Rebecca, just click 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.