Recently a trial and a long ordeal for the innocent people who had been smeared as child abusers ended with the gaoling of the monstrous fantasist and paedophile Carl Beech. Beech a former nurse, was the infamous and pseudomyninous ‘Nick’ who made allegations against a number of high profile individuals of sex abuse and murder.
Although none of these claims by ‘Nick’ aka Beech had any merit or any provenance or evidence to back them up, the police still acted as if these claims were credible and failed to carry out even the most basic checks on Beech’s tall tales before acting. The police’s surrender to the emotive mantra of ‘believe all victims’ that sprung up following the various post- mortem allegations made against the entertainer Jimmy Saville appeared to have blinded the police to the need to be necessarily suspicious of outlandish claims such as those promulgated by Beech.
This awful case, which saw many people from former prime ministers and members of the House of Lords to war heroes, smeared by Beech also wasted millions of pounds of public money, money that could have been better spent on tracking down real sex offenders. Because the police were caught up in the moral panic about child abuse that emerged after the Saville allegations, they didn’t treat Beech with the appropriate level of suspicion that they should have done.
Beech aka ‘Nick’ and his ‘revelations’ not only caused the police to unjustly accuse innocent men of child abuse but also fed a torrent of ‘tin foil hatters’ some of whom believed that ‘Nick’s’ information was proof of a VIP paedophile ring. I’ve been dismissive of this ‘VIP paedo ring’ story for a while now as many of the allegations appear to be fantastical and not even up to the civil level of provenance of ‘balance of probabilities’ let alone the criminal standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. This case, which had such a terrible impact on innocent people and their families and which has resulted in Beech getting an 18 year gaol sentence for perverting the course of justice and fraud, must surely be the end of this particular ‘VIP paedo ring’ conspiracy theory? I hope so.
The families of Lord Greville Janner, Sir Edward Heath, former Home Secretary Lord Leon Brittan along the still very much alive Lord Bramall the D-Day soldier and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor have been completely vindicated by the conviction and gaoling of Beech. Their stance that they and their loved ones were completely innocent of the crimes that Beech had accused them of has been shown to be the righteous one. Beech’s allegations were all bullshit and have been proven to be bullshit in open court.
However although it’s right and proper that Beech, who it was also shown was a paedophile himself, got such an exemplary sentence, he’s not the only guilty party here. Police forces that should have known better than to take on trust the sort of wild ravings of Beech, failed to put the required cynicism glasses on and were bamboozled by Beech’s allegations. The police, eager to virtue signal to the public that they were taking allegations in the post-Saville era seriously, allowed themselves to be manipulated by Beech. This manipulation led the police to raid people’s homes and accusing individuals of the most heinous crimes without any real evidence. Some of those accused were lucky and lived to see their reputations which had been tarnished by Beech restored. But there are others, such as Lord Janner and Lord Brittan and the wife of Lord Bramall were not so lucky and died before their names or the names of their husbands could be cleared.
This case has rightly ended with the gaoling of a malicious and mendacious individual but judging by the way that the police have behaved, the officers who believed Beech should have been in the dock as well. They failed to examine closely Beech or his allegations before going in heavy on innocent people. It’s a gross failure of basic police work to find out if the person making the allegation is credible before acting on the allegation. A bit more attention being paid to Beech, his background and his life before smearing innocent people in public, would have saved a lot of those now vindicated innocent individuals a great deal of distress.
