Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (June 1st 2011)

Discretion and Valour

Of the seven vindication cases in Britain four of them are no longer eligible for compensation or after-care and it is too late to help a fifth, who would have qualified.[2] The abolition of the Discretionary Scheme for compensation in 2006 denies anyone whose conviction is quashed too soon eligibility for compensation. The current government endorsed that shameful decision.[3]

“The discretionary compensation scheme was abolished on 19 April 2006 by the then Home Secretary and the coalition Government have no plans to reintroduce it,” Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Lord (Thomas) McNally replied to a written question from Lord (John) Laird earlier this year.[4]

“We will continue to consider applications for compensation under the statutory scheme, Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which fully meets our international obligations.”

Scandalous

That means that some people who have been vindicated would be excluded if their cases were to happen now, but compensation is only part of the problem. There is an even bigger scandal over the provision of care or restoration.
A ludicrous error passed unnoticed nearly a decade ago. The Home Office recognised that victims of miscarriages of justice required and deserved assistance to rebuild their lives. It established a Working Group to consider the issue and establish such a scheme. It was given terms of reference and so was Peter Shore (not the former MP of that name), the Consultant that it hired to conduct a scoping study.
Shore failed to execute those terms of reference adequately and recommended a scheme that excluded the vast majority of victims of miscarriages of justice. Only Sean Hodgson is alive and eligible for the scheme operated by the MJSS, which begs the question, what use is it if it excludes the demonstrably innocent?[5]

To its shame and disgrace it failed to highlight the obvious injustice of its remit excluding among others Colin Stagg. There is plenty of shame and disgrace to go round over this and that includes mainstream media.

Plain Wrong

The term injustice is grossly inadequate to describe the suffering that Stagg and others like him went through. If he is not the victim of a miscarriage of a justice, the term has no meaning. Stagg is entitled to more than just compensation for what happened to him.
He did not ask for what happened to him to occur and is in no way responsible for the incompetence and unethical practices that ruined his life. He will always be identifiable as the suspect in the Rachel Nickell case regardless of his proven innocence.
At last he has now received apologies for what he went through, but the state has an obligation to restore him to the life that he should have had if that miscarriage of justice had not happened to him. That has not happened and the coalition government has no intention of ensuring that it does. In fact, its ministers donʼt even know its own policy.
“The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal,” McNally replied to Laird. “The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships. The MJSSʼ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide.”

Disgraceful

First of all, the MJSS does not provide help to those who have had their convictions quashed on appeal – it only provides that limited assistance to a tiny minority of such people. It shamefully reneged on a commitment to help Tony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi eight years ago to protect its funding, which included their wages.
The fact remains that there are several victims of miscarriages of justice who receive no help at all from the MJSS. If McNally is unaware of this, he ought to be ashamed of himself. The MJSS had the opportunity to help and improve the so-called service it provides eight years ago. It chose to sacrifice the interests of the undeniably innocent to protect its wages, claiming it was to protect its funding.
That disgraceful decision helped to cost lives. At least three vindicated people died without living to fifty without receiving any help whatsoever from the MJSS or the Ministry of Justice. Neither can ever make amends.

Exclusion Ordered

The original defendants in the Damilola Taylor case are at least still alive, but they receive no help from the MJSS. They were children when it happened; they had criminal records and were far from angels. So what!
They did not kill Taylor and they did not ask to be wrongly accused of a crime that shocked the nation. They have been compensated now after a long and hard battle and even that is resented. Why?
Where is the anger at the shoddy investigation that secured abysmal evidence from the child witness referred to as ʻBromleyʼ? Where is the anger at the utter incompetence of Sian Hedges that resulted in the wrongful release of the Preddie brothers (Ricky and Danny)?
The outrage at the size of the award given to two brothers (not the Preddies) is totally misplaced. They deserve compensation – at least that amount, but the size of the award given to Taylorʼs family is insulting. That should be addressed by increasing the award made to Taylorʼs family, not by attacking the award made to boys who stood trial when they should not have.

Motes and Specks

Meanwhile, we allow the undeniably innocent to be treated in a fashion that shames each and every one of us. That mainstream media ignores this scandal disgraces them too. That governments of both political hues refuse to act to end this outrage betrays every concept of justice.
They go to war in foreign fields to defend human rights, yet these hypocrites tolerate and ignore the human rights abuses that they allow to occur right here in Britain. By what right do they dare to lecture others when this is how they allow people they know to be innocent beyond doubt to be treated? It appears they need considerable assistance to remove the enormous mote from their own eyes, while tackling specks in the eyes of others.

Progress

The Fitted-In Project led the way in highlighting the treatment of these victims and in one of the cases we helped fill the void caused by the betrayal of the innocent with the assistance of a remarkable advocate and champion of restorative justice, Roger Backhouse QC. He led the delivery of after-care in practice to his former client, Yusef Abdullahi, without which, shorn of help and hope, the prospect of recovery was bleak.
While Backhouse and others provided the assistance required to an undoubtedly innocent man, the government and MJSS ignored that manʼs needs and those of the majority of victims of miscarriages of justice.[6]

Even now eight years later, the government has no plans to right the wrong that allowed this shameful injustice to occur. Instead it will consult with the very organisation that betrayed the innocent to protect its funding – shameful!

The Effects of Vindication

Instead of consulting people that played no part in catering for the needs of the vindicated, even at the cost of consigning them to early graves, we call for meaningful research that will boost our understanding of a shamefully neglected group of victims of miscarriages of justice.
The psychological effects of vindication remain a mystery. The vindicated are no more innocent now than they always were. The difference is that now they are believed by all but those who refuse to see. But what about the effects on vindication? Has the very thing they craved actually damaged them?
For many years they suffered whispering campaigns, including among so-called friends and developed paranoid reactions to their own communities, wondering who believed them and who didnʼt. Friendships and other relationships broke down under the strain of the certainty they now have against their knowledge that they should have been believed and supported to the hilt earlier.

Justice Betrayed

Feeling hurt – betrayed even – by people they trusted, but whose support was not strong enough, the vindicated may need extra support, or at least understanding. That requires research and it must include the psychological effects of tariff abuse.
Some vindicated people have seen the truly guilty receive more lenient tariffs than they did. How can this be justified and what effect does it have on the mental well-being of the vindicated? There is not so much a dearth of research on this – it is virtually non-existent.
Tariff Reform and after-care, especially in relation to the vindicated, are the flagship projects of The Fitted-In Project. They even involve sport as a means to aid their recovery.
We believe that research is essential on both topics and we are conducting it, but there are areas that we cannot cover as efficiently as we would like, so we call on the Clinical Forensic and Legal Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, other organisations and individuals to join us in facilitating understanding of the psychological effects of vindication in terms of after-care needs and also tariff abuse through research. We hope that its members will research these issues, or facilitate research projects with us on these issues.
It is through knowledge that their needs can be addressed, but first they need to be understood – that is a task to be led by professionals in the field through rigorous research. It is in our opinion an essential tenet of another integrated approach – one that integrates the vindicated back into society and the life they should have had.

[1] An indication of the importance of an integrated approach can be seen in Equality of Arms, at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=690  for more on this case and others too.

[2]  Subsequently, a sixth who plainly was eligible has died, so it is too late for him too.

[3]  The current government has extended the attack on compensation to demand a standard that appears to demand that the wrongfully convicted must be exonerated – a standard that can prove impossible to meet unless the real perpetrator is brought to justice. Few independent observers believe that Barry George had anything to do with the murder of former gymnast and later television presenter, Jill Dando, but he has been denied compensation on the grounds of exoneration. This is grossly unfair as the criminal justice system rarely makes findings of innocence. A not guilty verdict includes both the innocent and also defendants who have not been proved guilty. The distinction is moot. Similarly convictions are quashed on appeal because they are unsafe. That includes both the innocent and appellants whose convictions were faulty. Again the distinction is moot as neither the trial nor appeal gives a finding of innocence, so how does a wrongfully accused prove that they have been exonerated and are therefore entitled to compensation?

[4] Please note that this was in 2011.

[5] That was correct when this presentation was given to a conference of medical practitioners, which included distinguished forensic pathologists.

[6]    See how we exposed this scandal in A Lack of Care at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=709 and Who Cared? at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=707

Hope

Two months ago Yusef Abdullahi passed away, aged just 49. It could and should have been different. Eight years ago I helped to arrange care that he desperately needed. Abdullahi was in a terrible state. He was by his own admission, addicted to heroin and had an alcohol problem too. It was a sadly familiar story and those just didn’t tend to end well. Tony Paris wasn’t in as bad a state, but he needed help as well and Stephen Miller was on their doorstep. It came as no surprise that he required help as well. None of them were given the assistance that the State which had wronged them owed them.

The Miscarriages of Justice Project (MJP) had been established in 2003 to provide advice and assistance to victims of miscarriages of justice to help them rebuild their lives, but there was a problem. The scheme excluded the Cardiff Three totally and many others too. Only people whose convictions had been quashed after an out of time appeal or a reference back by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) qualified for help.

Uncaring

This had not been the original intent of Parliament, so they were approached to help anyway. The MJP agreed that it was the perfect opportunity for them and for Abdullahi to illustrate the absurdity of a policy that forced them not to help even in a clear cut miscarriage of justice just because they had the temerity to win their first appeal, but its then Deputy Director Amarjit Kaur pulled the plug.

She claimed that if they even went to see them and assessed their needs, they could lose their funding and not be able to help others, so why had her staff agreed to the visit in the first place? “It’s outrageous,” said miscarriage of justice victim John Kamara. “He was a victim of a miscarriage of justice and clearly needed help. They should have given it to him. What use are they if they won’t help people like Yusef when he needed it?”

Lies

Michael O’Brien, himself a victim of one of Wales’ most notorious miscarriages of justice, raised the issue of people like the Cardiff Three being excluded with the MJP. He even asked, years later, why Abdullahi was not helped when it was promised. He was told that Abdullahi was offered counselling and turned it down.

This is not true. Who says so? Abdullahi for one. Others, including his QC, Roger Backhouse, who helped fill the void created by the lack of care for him, can attest to it. “Yusef was very appreciative of the help that I gave him”, Backhouse said. “He acknowledged and thanked everyone who had taken the trouble to help him.” The MJP was not on that list; he confirmed that he had never received any help from the MJP or offers of help from it.

Long Overdue

After-care for victims of miscarriages of justice was an idea whose time had come at the turn of the millennium. Following Parliamentary questions to then Home Office Ministers Lord Williams of Mostyn and Paul Boateng in the late 1990s, the Home Office’s Probation Unit, which became the National Probation Directorate, established a Working Group in July 2000 to consider how to provide help to victims of miscarriages of justice.

The late Lord Williams had recommended that a voluntary sector organisation that was familiar with resettlement of prisoner issues should develop a national service to provide advice and counselling that was tailored to meet the needs of successful appellants. There was no suggestion in his answer that any groups of victims should be excluded.

Errors of Judgement

We can reveal that despite the clear wishes of Lord Williams, many victims of miscarriages of justice have been denied assistance to rebuild their lives because they did not serve long terms of imprisonment. In fact, they were excluded by an error made by the consultant that the Working Group commissioned to scope the service to be provided.

Peter Shore’s job included devising a service based on the needs of former prisoners who had successfully appealed against their convictions. He also had to investigate the potential number of clients and average length of time served in prison. After that he had to consider whether those who had served the longest should be treated as priority users of the service. There was no suggestion in his terms of reference that prisoners who had served long terms of imprisonment should be the only beneficiaries of the scheme.

But Shore did not follow his terms of reference. The report of the Home Office Working Group itself which made the recommendations that resulted in the MJP being set up makes that clear. “The scoping study looked at the two primary sources of clients in need of an advice service: referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to the Court of Appeal and out-of-time appeals. The Report notes that 80 per cent of the cases referred by the CCRC in 1999/2000 resulted in success for the appellant. This suggests a likely annual figure of around 15-20 new cases each year. There are also likely to be a small number of additional cases per year arising from successful out-of-time appeals. In total, the annual case load for an advice service is likely to be in the region of 70 cases per year (new referrals prior to release, existing cases – immediately after release – plus cases requiring support beyond the immediate post-release period).” [their emphasis].

It is clear from that passage that Shore never investigated whether people whose convictions had been quashed on an in-time first appeal had any care needs at all. The Working Group had emphasised the wrong part. This is the important bit. “The scoping study looked at the two primary sources of clients in need of an advice service: referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to the Court of Appeal and out-of-time appeals.”

Shore had just admitted that he had not followed his own terms of reference and had wrongly devised a service that excluded people who had won in time first appeals. Worse still the Home Office Working Group had not only failed to notice that he had not followed his terms of reference, but commended him for his work and established a so-called service that excluded first time successful appellants like the Cardiff Three and also Annette Hewins and Donna Clarke. As a result of these failings the vast majority of successful appellants were excluded from the provision of after-care. Only Fitted-In highlighted this scandal.

Restitution

“Yusef is the only client that I would do this for”, Backhouse reiterated. “The state has a duty to restore people like him to the position they should have been in. They let him down. It is shameful that the consultant did not follow his terms of reference and that the Working Group did not notice his error. Their mistakes denied Yusef and others in his position the help that they needed”.

Abdullahi was fortunate, if that is the right word. He found that there were people who cared enough to help, but he tested their boundaries. He pushed people away hard. They came back time and time again. Eventually he saw that there was another way for him and he took that opportunity. Despite the odd lapse he stuck to the plan that was developed for him, based on his individual needs. Dev Barrah and George Silcott played an important role in helping Abdulahi too.

He managed to overcome some of his demons, but sadly lasting damage had been done and he died too soon. “The way Yusef was treated disgraces our society”, said Backhouse. “I was not surprised that he became a passionate advocate for restitution. His legacy must include an end to this scandal”.