One Law For the Rest of Us

by Peter Murphy

  Audrey looked at them carefully.

  ‘Those are the men who abused me.’

  ‘If they may please be shown to the jury, my Lady,’ Norris said, ‘I have nothing further.’

  23

  ‘Mrs Marshall,’ Ben began. ‘It’s been suggested to you that this is all a wicked plot, cooked up by you and your husband to enable you to sue Lancelot Andrewes School and make a lot of money. Is that why you’re giving evidence today?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Tell the jury why you are giving evidence.’

  She bowed her head and was silent for some time.

  ‘I’m here because, when Emily told me what had happened to her, my memories of being abused returned to me; and I suddenly understood what my sister had been trying to tell me in her suicide note. I realised then how much Emily had been abused, and how much I’d been abused – and how much countless other girls had been abused, and were still being abused at Lancelot Andrewes School. And I resolved then that it would stop with me: that I would do whatever I could to bring the abusers to justice, to hold them to account.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Marshall,’ Ben concluded. ‘Does your Ladyship have any questions?’

  The judge thought for some time.

  ‘Just this, Mrs Marshall. Have you ever received counselling, or have you ever spoken to a psychologist or psychiatrist about your recovered memories?’

  ‘No, my Lady.’

  ‘Have you ever been made aware of the possibility of recovered memories being false memories? Not that you’re not telling the truth as you see it, let me make that clear: but that the mind can play tricks on us, and create false memories. I wondered if you’ve ever had that conversation with a professional – or with yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I have. I haven’t consulted anyone, but I’m well enough informed to know that there are such things as false memories.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about. Let me say again, I’m not questioning the sincerity of your belief. But how can you be sure your memories are genuine? Is it possible that, in your imagination, you put yourself in Emily’s place when she told you what had happened to her?’

  ‘I have asked myself that, my Lady. But my memories are so clear, so detailed – right down to the layout and furnishing of Father Gerrard’s private library, a room I would never have entered if I hadn’t been abused – and I’ve since verified that my picture of that room is exactly right. I couldn’t have imagined that.’

  ‘I don’t want to repeat matters Mr Norris asked you about, but do you have any explanation for having your lost your memories so completely for so long?’

  ‘I believe that my mind suppressed the memories for many years to spare me the pain of them, my Lady. But when the same thing happened to Emily, it was too much, and the memories returned to me.’

  The judge nodded.

  ‘I understand. And as you examine your conscience today, as a witness giving evidence under oath, you have no doubt that the memories are real?’

  ‘No doubt at all, my Lady,’ she replied.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Marshall,’ Judge Rees said. She glanced up at the courtroom clock. ‘You can call your next witness after lunch, Mr Schroeder.’

  ‘How did I do?’ Audrey asked. ‘I feel discouraged, as though I’ve let everyone down.’

  They were standing outside court as everyone filed out for the lunch hour. John Caswell had excused himself to check on the progress of Andrew Pilkington’s case.

  ‘I was watching from the public gallery,’ Julia replied, ‘and I thought you did very well. To me you came across as honest and believable.’

  Ben nodded. ‘We knew it was going to be a rough ride, but you didn’t let Norris get to you. You stayed calm, and your evidence was clear. I couldn’t have asked for any more.’

  ‘I’m not sure anyone believes my memories are genuine,’ Audrey replied quietly. ‘Even the judge was questioning them.’

  ‘She has to,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘The jury have to be sure they can rely on your evidence, and it’s the judge’s duty to make sure they understand the point. That doesn’t mean they won’t believe you.’

  ‘Do you need to rush off home? Or are you staying to hear Mary and Ken?’ Julia asked.

  ‘I’d like to stay, if it’s all right. Emily’s with friends. As long as I can get back to Ely tonight, she will be fine. Can I sit with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Julia replied.

  ‘Thank you,’ Audrey said. ‘Would you excuse me, please? I feel exhausted. I’d like to go outside for a few minutes and get a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘So, what do you really think?’ Julia asked, as they watched Audrey make her way out of the building.

  ‘She came across as honest,’ Ginny replied, ‘and I don’t think the jury will buy the idea that she’s just in this to take the school for everything she can lay her hands on. But we’ve got a problem with the recovered memory. It’s not her fault: there are real doubts about people suddenly remembering such dramatic events; that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘But she made a good point about the detail of the library,’ Julia pointed out. ‘How else could she know that?’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Ben agreed. ‘The real test is whether the jury believe her identification of the Three Musketeers. We’ve got Mary Forbes coming to back her up this afternoon, but I’d be happier if we had some independent evidence to put at least one of those men at Lancelot Andrewes during 1940, 1941, 1942.’

  Julia leaned against one of the large pillars outside the door of the court.

  ‘Since it’s just the three of us here,’ she said, ‘and I know you will understand what I’m about to say: there is evidence to put the Right Reverend EF at Lancelot Andrewes on any number of occasions during the early to mid-1940s. But it’s not accessible to us.’

  Ben nodded. ‘You mean, we’ll never get a witness to give evidence to that effect.’

  ‘Not during our lifetimes.’

  They were silent for some time.

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t take a flyer,’ Ginny suggested. ‘Look, we’ve always known that the key to this case is what Gerrard has to say when he gives evidence. We have a reasonable basis for believing that EF was there. There’s no reason we can’t press Gerrard hard about it in cross-examination. He doesn’t know we have no access to the evidence. He may give EF up.’

  ‘That’s fine in theory, Ginny,’ Ben replied. ‘But I don’t think he’s going to give evidence.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.

  ‘How could Gerrard not give evidence?’ Julia demanded. ‘By the end of the afternoon, the jury will have heard three witnesses say that he took them down to the library and watched while his guests abused them. How can he not offer the jury some answer to that?’

  ‘What would he say?’ Ben replied. ‘Beyond a blanket denial – that the whole story is a pack of lies, cooked up by vicious former pupils hell-bent on taking the school for a lot of money. And the price of giving evidence is that he opens himself up to cross-examination – when he has no idea what ammunition we may have against him.’

  ‘But he’d be taking a terrible risk, Ben,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘This man is one of the stars of the Church of England. He’d be giving up the opportunity to tell the jury all about his good character, and his stellar record as a priest and a teacher over God knows how many years. The jury are bound to wonder why. The judge can remind them as often as she likes that he’s not obliged to give evidence, but it’s not going to matter. They’re very likely to convict.’

  ‘All perfectly true,’ Ben agreed. ‘But Anthony may have advised him that it’s his best chance.’

  ‘I can’t see it,’ Julia said.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ Ben replied. ‘Anthony’s floated the idea that this is all
a cover for a planned civil action for damages against the school. But he doesn’t have to go that far – at least as far as Audrey’s concerned. The judge has already floated an alternative view: she’s telling the truth as she sees it, but she may well be drawing on her imagination rather than her memory. So now, Anthony can say, “You don’t have to call her a liar after all. You can simply find her evidence to be unreliable”.’

  That’s true,’ Julia agreed. ‘It’s easier for them to go with him if they don’t have to brand her as a liar.’

  ‘Add to that,’ Ben continued, ‘the suspicion that Audrey and Mary have been talking about this and feeding each other’s imaginations for years, and Audrey’s dead in the water. You’ve still got Emily, of course, but if you can’t believe Audrey and Mary, Emily’s evidence is uncorroborated. So it’s not a bad choice if you want to play the odds, and you don’t want to risk betraying your high-profile paedophile friends, who may have their own ways of taking revenge if you give them up.’

  He paused.

  ‘It’s a strategy Anthony will have considered, I guarantee you that: and I’m not sure it isn’t his best option.’

  24

  ‘Woman B,’ Ginny began. ‘Please tell the jury when you were born and how old you are now.’

  ‘I was born in 1932, so I’m now forty-two.’

  ‘Are you a solicitor by profession, and are you married with two children?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m not going to ask you any more about your personal details. But as a child, where did you go to school?’

  ‘From the age of seven, my parents sent me as a boarder to Lancelot Andrewes School, near Ely.’

  ‘For how many years were you a boarder at the school?’

  ‘Until I left to read Law at Cambridge when I was eighteen, in 1950.’

  ‘I imagine there weren’t very many women doing what you did at the time?’

  Mary smiled. ‘That’s the truth,’ she agreed. ‘The university didn’t even award degrees to women until 1948, and we were still very much second class citizens in 1950.’

  ‘And it hasn’t changed all that much since, has it?’ the judge asked sourly, to chuckles from the jury box.

  ‘Not as much as one would have hoped, my Lady,’ Mary replied, still smiling.

  ‘Woman B, the jury have heard a good deal about the school from another witness, so I needn’t ask you in detail about your life there,’ Ginny continued. ‘But when you first went to Lancelot Andrewes as a seven-year-old, did you sleep in a dormitory of twelve girls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was one of those girls Audrey Patterson, as she then was – Audrey Marshall, as she is now?’

  ‘Yes, Audrey and I shared a dormitory until the lower sixth, and then a study-bedroom. We were – and are – good friends.’

  ‘Yes, I want to ask you about that. Did you become friends early on?’

  ‘I was already at school when Audrey arrived. She came in March and I’d arrived the previous September. She was one of about twenty girls who’d been evacuated from London during the Blitz. We were told to expect them, and make them welcome.’

  ‘Did all the girls do that?’

  ‘Sadly, not. Most of us came from fairly well-off families who could afford the fees, and there were some girls who resented the fact that the evacuees got in without paying. It was only until it was safe for them to go back to London, but some girls still held it against them: that and their Cockney accents.’

  ‘Of course, we know that Audrey stayed on at school until she left for university.’

  ‘Yes: that was because she and her sister Joan lost their parents in an air raid, just after they arrived. That was how I got to know Audrey, really. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She seemed so lost and bewildered, and I tried to take her under my wing and introduce her to other girls I knew. That was when I found out what a sweet, kind girl she was, and we became very good friends.’

  ‘I understand that Audrey and Joan would come to stay with your family during school holidays?’

  ‘Yes, quite often. They had nowhere else to go. Well, there was a distant relative, who they called an aunt, up in Northumberland or thereabouts, if I remember rightly. But I got the impression they weren’t very happy up there. They used to call her “the witch”. I couldn’t stand the thought of Audrey and Joan being stuck with her in the middle of nowhere or locked up at school throughout the holidays, so I pestered my parents to invite them all the time. They were pretty good about it, actually. I think they really grew to like them, Audrey especially.’

  ‘Let me turn to something else,’ Ginny said. ‘Were there ever times when someone came into your dormitory after lights out?’

  Mary nodded. ‘Yes. Father Gerrard.’

  ‘The headmaster? The gentleman in the dock at the back of the court?’

  Mary glanced at the dock with distaste. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Woman B, I want to ask you this before I go any further. Is your memory of what happened on those occasions a recovered memory, or has it been continuous?’

  ‘There hasn’t been a day in my whole life since those days,’ Mary replied, ‘when I haven’t remembered exactly what those men did to me. I’ve never forgotten it, and I don’t expect ever to forget it.’

  ‘Give the jury your recollection, then, please, Woman B. What would happen when Father Gerrard would come to your dormitory?’

  ‘He would select a girl – apparently at random, although I’m sure it wasn’t at all random – and he would take that girl with him just as she was, in the grey school nightdress we all wore.’

  ‘Did he ever select you?’

  ‘Yes, a number of times.’

  ‘Can you give the jury any more detail about that?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t give you exact dates. But I can say that it happened to me roughly once every couple of months, starting soon after I arrived at the school at the age of seven, and continuing until just after my ninth birthday.’

  Ginny paused, and looked at Ben for a moment.

  ‘Do you know why it stopped when you were nine?’

  Anthony Norris had leapt to his feet. ‘My Lady, would my learned friend please make sure that she’s asking matters of which the witness has personal knowledge? I’m concerned that she’s calling for hearsay, if not rank speculation.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ Ginny replied. ‘Woman B, you understand the point, I’m sure. What, if anything, can you tell us from your own knowledge?’

  ‘It stopped after I told my parents about the abuse while I was at home for Christmas. I have a good idea why, so I could go on, but everything else would be what my father told me – it would be hearsay.’

  Ginny glanced at Ben again. He shook his head.

  ‘All right. I’ll leave that for now. But are you saying that, in your case, the abuse stopped once you had told your parents about it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘Tell the jury, please, what would happen when Father Gerrard took you from the dormitory on those occasions.’

  ‘He would walk me downstairs to a room near his study on the ground floor, a small library. There would be two or three men – three usually – waiting for us there, smoking and drinking.’

  ‘What would these men do?’

  ‘One at a time, they would put their hands under my nightdress, as I was standing in front of them, and they would insert fingers – two usually – into my vagina. The man doing this would leave his fingers there for some time, moving them up and down. At the same time, he would be playing with his penis, either through his trousers, or after he had taken it out of his trousers. Actually, all three of them would be doing that, almost the whole time.’

  ‘Did they do anything else?’

  ‘Sometimes, one of th
e men would take my hand, put it on his penis and tell me to rub it.’

  ‘Would you do that?’

  ‘Yes. I would rub it until he achieved a climax. I’m describing that as an adult, obviously. At the time, as a seven-year-old child, I didn’t understand what was going on. All I knew was that at some point, his penis would shrink and my hand would feel sticky. Usually, I was left to wipe it off on to my night dress, though sometimes someone would give me a handkerchief.’

  ‘I know this is a difficult question,’ Ginny said, ‘but how did that make you feel?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that. I was very afraid, because it was such a strange experience, and I could never understand why Father Gerrard would be sitting there watching while all this happened, without doing or saying anything; and sometimes I would imagine that the men were just inspecting me, testing me, to see if they wanted to take me away somewhere else, somewhere where they could do whatever they wanted to me and no one would ever find me. That’s how you think, when you’re seven. Looking back now, as an adult, I would say that it made me feel insecure; I hated it, but I felt powerless to stop it.’

  ‘Was Audrey ever taken from the dormitory?’

  ‘Yes, on a number of occasions. I honestly couldn’t tell you when or how often. There were other girls being taken as well. But it went on longer in her case, until she was eleven or thereabouts.’

  ‘Did you and she talk about your experiences afterwards?’

  Mary thought for some time. ‘Yes, we did. But I’m not sure how often, or in what kind of detail. I think I was more able to talk about it than she was. She always seemed rather reserved. She seemed very intimidated by it all, and I can’t remember her telling me in as much detail what happened to her. But she said enough for me to know that it was much the same as what happened to me.’

  ‘Woman B, are you able to identify any of the men who abused you in the library?’ Ginny asked.