Where There is Evil

by Sandra Brown

  I think there are other parallels. Like Fred West, I believe my father was able to build up a self-belief system that allowed him to go about his business normally. It has acted like a safety net, helping him to live with what he has done and enabling him to push aside any stray emotion he may feel from time to time. I cannot be sure what he has been doing over the years he has lived in Leeds, but all the evidence shows that paedophiles and abusers do not change their spots and in a lifetime may have more than a hundred victims. Retrospectively, Glasgow police are examining the files of those women and girls who disappeared when Fred West resided in the south side of the city in the 1960s, during his first marriage to Rena Costello.

  Despite the open manner of the reporting of Rosemary West’s trial, there would appear to be a conspiracy of silence going on post-Cromwell Street Gloucester. A hundred or so pornographic videos were mentioned in the 1992 trial in which she and her husband were involved that led to nothing. What happened to them? They could not possibly all have been made by the pair. A video-shop owner had reported that Fred West had openly offered him film of ‘real murders’. It is fairly clear that the Wests were part of some ring, and although we cannot be sure that all the facts will emerge, others may have known the secrets of 25 Cromwell Street. Will these others be brought to justice?

  The story of the Wests exposes non-intervention, non-pursued lines of inquiry and disregard for child-protection procedures. No one bothered to put the jigsaw together. Did Charmaine West’s school never query where her records should be sent? Did the local hospital never query that a fifteen-year-old brought to them by her father with an ectopic pregnancy was under age? The Wests were able to get away with their catalogue of crime because as a society we refused to confront the possibility that such crimes could be occurring in the heart of a perfectly ordinary British community. This was no Stephen King-type Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror movie to thrill adolescents. This was real, and far more ghastly for it.

  We cannot ignore the fact that everyone, from agencies to institutions to ordinary next-door neighbours, put their heads well below the sand while a large number of young women perished in their midst. The most chilling aspect is that nobody cared enough to notice. Not one person, despite a church being next door. But if professionals such as social workers, police personnel and childcare staff do not receive the resources or the training required to deal with the perpetrators of child sexual abuse, what chance have we that members of the public will be able to recognize the features such deviant people possess?

  The wickedest sexual crimes are often carried out by those who look normal, but whose behaviour patterns are a give-away when we take time to observe them closely. We ignore these people at our peril, and we do our own children no favours by joining the conspiracy of silence on sexual abuse. If we study their behaviour and peer down into the darkness, a disease is revealed that goes so deep, we begin to realize that we are naïve if we assume it has not spread its roots through the entire fabric of our nation.

  We are not alone.

  It has come as a huge shock to the people of Belgium, two years on from Gloucester, that they have their counterparts of the Wests, with allies highly placed in the police forces who covered for them. For those who would suggest that I exaggerate, and insist that Britain is no worse than any other civilized country in its attitudes to child sexual abuse, I would ask if they are aware of the slow response our government made to the worldwide campaign to end the abuse of children in Asia, created by the demand for child prostitution by Western tourists. We show our true colours by being out of step with a remarkable number of other world powers who took early action to ensure that their nationals who abuse children in other countries will be pursued, prosecuted, and dealt with accordingly, despite international crime syndicates who aid and abet paedophiles with information and pornography peddled through the Internet.

  We have a choice.

  To tolerate such a malignant blight on our society is not the answer. These people – the paedophiles, the abusers, and the Mr Bigs who feed from their unhealthy tastes – must be exposed for what they are. A positive step would be to listen to what our children are saying. Perhaps the most surprising element in the West case was that someone finally listened to their children, which our culture does not encourage. Too often, what children say is swept aside as fantasy.

  Even professional people accept ancient myths about offenders that are quite untrue; that they are sexually inadequate, disturbed individuals whose behaviour will be noticeably bizarre. Little is circulated about them being powerful, clever, manipulative and in control, with a system of carefully planned strategies to avoid being caught. There is little about them instilling such deep fear in their victims that disclosure can only surface years later. So thorough has the disparaging of children’s evidence against abusers been, it is no wonder that the typical pattern shows itself as initial denial, then disclosure, followed by terrified retraction as the possible consequences set in, then reaffirmation when support is given. If there are fears by children that accusations of malicious fantasy will be aimed at them, it is understandable how adults such as my cousins, who finally summon the courage to reveal childhood abuse and who then find the legal authorities totally uninterested in doing anything about it, feel as if they have been kicked in the teeth.

  Infection spreads when it goes unchecked. All cancers start with an insidious if minor change, but the progress of the disease can be halted if it is treated early. When I look back to the events I have described that took place in 1957, it is easy to diagnose that something began to go askew in that community. I ask myself why, given all the signs that foul play had occurred and hints that something was seriously amiss, the investigation was never scaled up from a missing-persons inquiry to a full-scale murder case. The responsibility for that seriously flawed judgement rests on someone’s conscience.

  Repeated deception by the paedophile Thomas Hamilton, the executioner of sixteen five-year-olds and their teacher in Dunblane in March 1996, in retaliation against worried parents who helped close down his dubiously run boys’ clubs, went unnoticed and unchecked over years. Sloppy police work did not follow up his claims in the mid-eighties that he was a top marksman who competed throughout the UK. Internal police records (made available, but not brought to attention at the ensuing Cullen Inquiry) show that no effort was ever made to check out to which gun clubs he was supposed to belong. Negligence is nothing new when it comes to catastrophic outcomes regarding the safety of our children.

  All those people I have come across down the years who muse about what befell Moira in 1957 and pontificate, ‘Of course, it would never happen nowadays,’ need to have their complacency shaken to its foundations. Not only was it allowed to happen then, the same thing was equally condoned in Gloucester: the luring of young women or children, none of whom suspected the harm she would meet, to satisfy the vilest of sexual appetites. Tenfold, or more. The final tally of victims may never be complete, but in the end, they met the same fate as Moira: in many cases, missed by their immediate families, but consigned to public oblivion. Some were never reported as missing, such as Rena and her child, because out of sight seemed to mean out of mind. They had simply gone, and not enough questions were asked.

  There are never enough questions asked by those whose job it is to seek information or by ourselves. As ordinary human beings, we should care about the loss of one person, never mind twelve. I find myself staggered by the view of some people I have encountered who find it hard to fathom why I should wish to fight for justice for a child to whom I was not related. Whether or not it belongs to you and yours, or is part of me and mine, the loss of a child should be mutually mourned.

  I vowed that I would not stop campaigning on behalf of Moira, and would continue to fight to see justice done for both herself and my cousins, and all other victims of sexual abuse. Even when shutters descended, and rebuffs came consistently from the Scottish Crown Office, with refusals to answer
any of my questions regarding my father’s non-prosecution, I decided I would not stop asking: ‘Why?’

  A book that set down the events I have met, the people who have given support, and those who have presented obstacles to justice inevitably raises questions that cannot be ignored. I also saw it as a way of keeping faith with Moira and ensuring that what happened to her will not be forgotten or covered up.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I told myself, ‘when I have written the last page, and typed the last sentence of such a record, then maybe I shall finally feel I have redressed the balance, even a little. I will have done all in my power to draw attention to the attitudes we must change when we deal with abusers. They are not going to change, so it is up to us to look at our strategies for dealing with offenders and the way we treat the victims of abuse.’

  The legal system in Scotland is woefully lacking at present in its communications to victims and shows remarkable inconsistencies in the way that it deals with sexual offences going back years. Some victims abused in childhood receive compensation, others do not. Other pensioners in their seventies have appeared in court over the period in which I have written this book, and often there have been parallels. Some have received sentences of several years, others generous spells of community service. What is so special about my father that he remains at large in the cover of a big city where he can so easily continue his lifelong habits? The Scottish Crown Office doesn’t see him as its problem. Again, out of sight, out of mind. But if it was relatives of theirs who happened to move into his stamping ground, I feel certain that they would ensure that people were alerted.

  There is no question of my cousins or myself seeking financial compensation for what my father put us through, although his behaviour continues to affect our lives. My motivation in writing down what happened to them, to my friends, to Moira and to me, is to let the public have the opportunity to hear the facts. This is in direct defiance of the Procurator Fiscal in Airdrie who shepherded me from his office saying that it was not in the public interest that our story was heard. He could not have known that his attitude would only strengthen my resolve. Clearly the last thing he expected was that the ordinary Scottish woman he brushed off with excuses would go on to bombard the people he represented at the Crown Office in Edinburgh with letters questioning his decision and theirs, which undermined months of painstaking police work.

  It is my hope that, on reading this text, questions will continue to be asked by others, which cannot go away as they hope I have. It has been enormously important to me to write these words alone and without the help of a third party who might have influenced what I say here. The memories set down are mine and mine alone. I am prepared to accept the responsibility which accompanies this, and stand by every word written, and I can withstand any attack after what I have already had to bear. Anyone who teaches child-protection courses to others cannot be hypocritical and walk away from what has occurred.

  What is also painfully clear to people like my cousins and myself, to Kate and Joe Duffy of Hamilton, who have campaigned long and hard for the Scottish ‘Not Proven’ verdict to be scrapped in the aftermath of the acquittal of Frances Auld, who stood trial for the murder of their daughter, Amanda Duffy, is that the Scottish legal authorities rebuke criticism, do not recognize any accountability to citizens, and see no need to change the way they handle a system that clearly lets down many ordinary people. Despite its worldwide high regard, our legal system is far from perfect, and needs fixing – now.

  It is significant that none of my cousins or myself would have qualified for legal aid, had we tried to launch a private prosecution. South of the border, these are much more common. We own our homes, which would have had to be remortgaged. There was no way we could contemplate that. Yet Robert Maxwell’s sons got legal aid for their court appearance. Again, it seems it is the little people who fall through the gaps in our legal system.

  Sometimes, however, even the littlest, most insignificant person will not take no for an answer. Sometimes the questions are just too important to be dismissed. Support to keep asking them came to me from the unlikeliest sources. Strength came from the knowledge that my unease at the way in which all charges against my father were dropped without explanation was shared by several of the keenest legal brains in Scotland and many of the police élite involved throughout.

  I am not the same person I was when events turned my life upside down over five years ago. It’s direction changed irrevocably with what came to light in 1992, and I have had to find my way back, through a valley of shadows and horror, where what had been only imagined previously, became all too hellishly apparent. I had to absorb hostility on this journey, which came in the form of attack, verbal abuse and rejection, as I groped for the truth.

  At the worst moments, when I was sinking under the sheer weariness of it all, someone would appear and carry some of the weight with me for part of the way. I find that my store of faith in my fellow human beings has not been eroded. Small acts of kindness boosted me. Amazing links happened which I do not now dismiss as coincidences.

  A sense of having restored the balance a little came when Janet Anderson Hart allowed two of her children to come and stay in my home, to help convey memories of their aunt that could be added to this book; then finally, my family and myself travelled to Australia and met Moira’s namesake.

  ‘For there is nothing hid which shall not be uncovered,’ Mark’s gospel tells us, and I have emerged from the darkness with my faith renewed. I know that everything that has happened since 1992 was meant to happen, and I believe that I was guided spiritually.

  The road was terrifying, but I was able to make sense of the events of my childhood, and what really happened in 1957, to myself and to Moira. If I do not warn others, however, of the lessons learned and the knowledge imparted, then the nightmare can and will descend on all of us. For the sake of our children, we can never let it settle again on unsuspecting innocents.

  Where there is evil, we must cast it out.

  SIX YEARS LATER

  The incredibly mild summer of 2003 was replaced by a golden autumn.

  I had a week’s holiday due with Ronnie, and wanted to switch off completely, I told Janet Hart. I would not take the book I was writing, a sequel to Where There is Evil. I had promised to read books only for pleasure. Janet laughed and said she doubted that. We were flying to Zakynthos on 12 October, but on 10 October I had an unexpected call. Steve Smith, a reporter I had never heard of, but instinctively did not trust, wanted to contact Janet. Warily, I said it would be up to her to ring him. He was elated.

  ‘You’re the woman who wrote the book about Moira, right? You’ll be pleased to hear – you’ve been proved right about it all. Someone’s made a deathbed confession.’

  Staggered, I said I didn’t even know that my dad had died, and it was not the kind of situation where I was thrilled to be proved right.

  I sat down when he said that he was not talking about my father.

  A man called Alec Keil had emerged from Peterhead Prison’s secure unit for dangerous sex offenders. He was a former prison mate of my father’s buddy from Baxter’s Buses, Jim Gallogley. In 1997 Gallogley had received a ten-year sentence for molesting a child in a tower-block lift. Janet had implored him to help us, suspecting he had information.

  I was sure that he did. Jim had been pals with Alexander when Moira had vanished. He had frequented my home and they had struck up a friendship that Mary could never entirely fathom given their ten-year age gap. It was not only magazines he brought to swap. Betty, the babysitter my father molested, was Jim’s young sister. Janet pleaded with him to write to her, and was initially fobbed off.

  Jim had unburdened himself before he died in April 1999. Frail, with cataracts, stomach cancer, and shaking with Parkinson’s disease, he insisted the confession was to emerge after his death; he had dictated it to Alec Keil. Gallogley had obviously been haunted by Janet’s plea:

  I have been grieving for my poor wee sister f
or the past forty years. The day she disappeared in Coatbridge was a day that changed my family’s life for ever. Each year, the anniversary of that day is a sorrowful one for me and all my family. My mother never stopped hoping to see her daughter again. My dear departed parents were never to enjoy a moment’s peace again, and went to their graves without ever knowing what had happened to her.

  Most of us have done things in this life that we regret. Sometimes by chance, without prior warning, we can be given the opportunity to somehow make amends, and to help in some way, to atone for some of the great wrongs that have been done in this world.

  I would like you to answer me truthfully, and perhaps make your heart a little lighter before God does come to judge you. I strongly suspect that Alex Gartshore murdered my sister, Moira. It would mean the whole world to me if you could ease my heartache and tell me anything you know or may have heard about her disappearance. I yearn to know what did happen to dear Moira, so I can put her memory to rest before I die.

  Janet believed her appeals had not gone anywhere, but they had. Steve Smith said my theory that my dad had abducted Moira, but had help disposing of her body, was accurate. My fear that a ring involving local men existed was correct, too; more horrifyingly, though, Gallogley’s dossier named other members as ‘police and legals’.

  In 1997, Gallogley had sought help in vain from those high up in the paedophile ring. (An irony never known to him was that the concierge who spotted him on CCTV was my cousin. His own sisters had not had justice, but my relative ensured a different outcome this time. Thanks to his quick thinking, Gallogley was caught red-handed.) Now, Gallogley had shopped his friends; their network had been active for years.