Letter to Durham Police

Document/01

On the ............DATE PLEASE 2006, Judge Cockroft, (a circuit 9 Judge) at Leeds court said: “These are serious crimes committed by crown officers”.

Following the telephone call at 14.34 on Tuesday 4th January 2007 when we victims of abuse at the hands of Neville Husband were in a meeting, you said you were not prepared to take any further action in relation to Neville Husband’s crimes. We understand the reasons behind your decision. However our reason for complaining is not in relation to the actual crimes committed by Husband but the numerous crimes committed by the other prison officers at Medomsley.

Many officers not only failed in the duty of care they owed to the inmates at Medomsley. They hid and destroyed evidence, and conspired with other officers to destroy the evidence that could have substantiated any possible complaints at the time.

Leslie Johnson, another officer at Medomsley who worked in the stores was a close friend of Neville Husband. He was arrested and sentenced to time in prison for sexually abusing one Mark Stuart Park, who was also a victim of Husband. We believe Husband gave evidence on Johnson’s behalf. Mark Park told police about Husband at the same time…And yet nothing was done until years after Johnson was investigated and jailed for his crimes,

We have always been led to believe that there were no complainants from victims from Husbands time at the two United Reformed Churches where he worked. We have been made aware that this is not the case and there were complaints that came from his time at the church. Can you elaborate?

The trauma that all Neville Husbands victims suffered is being made even more tortuous by the failure of the Legal system to protect those who have suffered abuse. Basic human rights are still being trampled on by the Home Office as all these victims have not got the closure that they rightly deserve. Neville Husband was investigated over a period of twelve years. Why did the investigation take so long? Was this because Leslie Johnson was a close friend and fellow mason to Neville Husband? The following words are quotes from the trial that Judge Cockroft presided over:

“Neville Husband gave an inmate to Leslie Johnson so that he could abuse him.”

“There was an enormous responsibility, you may conclude, placed on prison officers and those who worked in the establishment of Medomsley.

Enormous trust was bestowed upon them by the system, by the Government, by the public, but also that very system was open to abuse. If somebody betrayed that trust, then it is incumbent upon the police service that originally arrested Mr. Husband to seek the justice that we are asking for. Only an investigation into the behaviour of all the officers at Medomsley, and not just Neville Husband’s behaviour will draw out the truth of the matters.

These matters hold us up in the courts while facing the current statutes of limitation on article 33 s (14). We have more than proven that conspiracy to pervert the course of justice was going at the time of the offences, therefore article 32 (b) comes in to play:

8. Section 32(1) (b) of the 1980 Act postpones the commencement of the limitation period where
"Any fact relevant to the plaintiff's right of action has been deliberately concealed from him by the defendant".
In such a case the period of limitation does not begin to run until the plaintiff discovers the concealment or could with reasonable diligence discover it. The rationale for this provision is plain: if the defendant is not sued earlier, he has only himself to blame.

9. Section 32(2) provides:
For the purposes of subsection (1) above, deliberate commission of a breach of duty in circumstances in which it is unlikely to be discovered for some time amounts to deliberate concealment of the facts involved in that breach of duty."

We are not talking about a few, or even a handful of incidences. We are talking about behaviour that was allowed to go on for a period of decades. We feel that the trial of Husband should have continued on to include all the people who allowed these horrors to continue.

In 2001 the Law Commision found that the time limititations for reporting child abuse claims were not in the best interests of the victims, who in many cases were so traumatised that it took many years before they could bring themselves to make claims against their abusers.

The public interest in protecting defendants from stale claims, and ensuring there is an end to litigation does not apply where the defendant has been guilty of sexual abuse. The Commision therefore recommended that its proposed long-stop Limitation period of 10 years should not be applied to claims in respect of personal injuries to the claimant and gave these recommendations to the Government. In July 2002, Lord Irvine, announced that the Government had accepted the Commission’s recommendations in principle yet over the following years, no legislation has been brought forward. At the end of last year, the Government confirmed that the report was amongst the many Law Commission reports still awaiting Legislation.

Given the concerns raised by both the commission and set out in this correspondence, it seems to us that the government should at least explain why further action on this matter appears to have halted. It is simply not good enough to think that there are abusers who will not be brought to justice because of this government inertia. It is an issue to which all concerned should give the most serious of considerations. Victims are being abused once again by this ridiculous Law that does everything to protect the rights of abusers or the places and people who employ them; Many thousands of pounds have been spent on this case and the public purse is not being served by the legal system in the way it should, and purports itself to be.

Let us not forget that there was a death as a direct result of what Husband did and what the prison officers at Medomsley did or didn’t do. After one of husbands victims had given his testimony in Newcastle Crown Court Detective Ian Mitchell told him that another of the victims who was due to testify had just taken his own life. We think that further investigation would shed more light on a matter of a serious magnitude and it would also be very much in the public interest.

The prison officers at Medomsley committed worse crimes against the inmates than the crimes the inmates had committed out in society. What is worse, is that those crimes were done with the approval and knowledge of other officers. We believe Officer Boyle commited purgery in the dock when he said there was no violence to inmates at Medomsley. 'Medomsley was all about violence.' said the Deputy Warden Homewood's son, who lived at Medomsley and was similar in age to the inmates at the time.

Taken from emails from Simon Homewood (Lawyer and son of the chief deputy warden of Medomsley until 78/79).

“I have been in contact with this man on a number of occasions and he says his father knew nothing of sexual abuse but knew of the physical abuse
Mr Homewood said “As for physical abuse..... Yeap, I know it went on.
I don't really know to what extent it went on. Whether you like it or not that was what DC's were about to a large degree.

“Looking back as a lawyer and with many years of life behind me, I would condemn it without reservation. That is simply how it was in the 1970s. It’s different today, as you point out. Apparently by 1976 it had got softer. In 72/73 and earlier it was supposed to be far worse! Makes you wonder doesn't it?

“Further, DC's, whether me and you like it or not, were supposed to be rough and tough. Even if "and Violent" wasn’t the official line, it was certainly the unofficial one. I suppose you could argue that for my father and his staff to claim that they were only obeying orders is no more of an excuse than it was for the German soldiers at Treblinka, Sorbibor and Auschwitz.

“I agree that he shouldn't have overlooked this violence and he may well agree himself, I don't know. If it is decided that he has to answer for it then so be it. But of course that will never happen because the whole state machine was complicit in it.

“He was doing what the prison department wanted him to do. I entirely agree with you, that he was wrong to do it, but then I am simply being wise after the event. It is still unfair to look back and judge people's actions in the past by the standards and thinking of today. Surely you must see that?

“Thank you for correcting me on Onslow. I doesn't surprise me that he was violent. If I may I will expand on him and his wife and why I mentioned her. My brother who was about 15 at the time and as a developing young lad took rather a liking to Mrs Onslow and to be honest he couldn't take his eyes off her when she was anywhere near him. She was a very attractive lady, as I have said. To cut to the chase, Onslow noticed this one day and went berserk. He grabbed hold of my brother around the throat almost choking him and had to be restrained by Brian Judson (Very tall blonde haired guy) and another officer. This may show a tendency to violence as well as an element of insecurity you may think?

“Perhaps now you see why I mentioned her in the way I did. It was a very prominent factor in my recall if not relevant to you. Perhaps, on reflection, I should have omitted the comment, but I was writing what I was thinking at the time.

“The running around the fence and the baseball bat business was a tactic employed by Royal Navy PEI's but they used a pick-axe handle. Naturally they targeted anyone they didn't like. I was actually in the Royal Marines and you may have seen recently the revelations about initiation ceremonies. There was a culture of violence at Lympstone and always has been. It is Action Man territory and the simple rule is if you don't like it, don't join, the exit door is over there.

“Many people would have said the same about Detention Centres at the time, but of course you couldn't walk out and the fact that we didn't made us volunteers I guess.”(End)

What could be worse than crimes that enable so many young people to suffer decades of sexual abuse without the possibility of escape? We think it's not having the possibility to have their complaints taken seriously. The behaviour is curtailed by the regime itself, with the tragedy of dangerous prison officers & criminals being allowed to continue in the prison service. With all the evidence that was found in the centre being consistently destroyed, who else was responsible but those who were in charge?

What has happened to police integrity, honesty? As a part of the Police Force, you know the truth of this matter. We have learned that people complained to both Durham Police and Consett police over the years. We can prove this with statements from witnesses who have said they went to the police in their local area. Further, that the police station did contact Durham police, and a woman police officer confirmed this by telephoning the complainant back from Durham police station. We have accounts of others who say they made complaints to various people and nothing was done. We have inmates who actually clubbed together to support each other and told officers exactly what Husband was doing, and still nothing was done.

If there was enough substantive evidence to jail Husband in two court cases, then one would imagine that this evidence was just as substantive to justify further criminal charges against those who allowed it to continue for years. There is enough evidence at the very least, to warrant a re-questioning all officers who where at Medomsley again.

The public would indeed be interested to know that there are prison officers who are still working in prison in the UK today who where instrumental in the continuation of the sexual torture of many young & vulnerable people. Despite the current cases of litigation against the home office, we feel it would be more equitable to take a criminal action against their employees. The management and governorship are just as accountable as those officers who destroyed evidence and ignored contemporaneous complaints.


David Greenwood, Jordans Solicitors, Neil Jordan House, Wellington Road, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire WF13 1HL, 01924 457171