Babyface. Elizabeth Woodcraft

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       SIXThursday – Inquiry

      The rain drummed on the plate-glass window in relentless waves. Through the fluorescent lights the air was grey while Shelly Dean gave her evidence. She was wearing a neat black jacket and a loose white Tricel blouse. Her round face was flushed with concentration.

      We had decided at the conference that Shelly would be the first witness. She was confident, spoke clearly and made good points. Like many of the other clients, she had had a difficult life – it was her complaints to the police about abuse by her father which had led to her reception into care, only for her to be abused at the children’s home. Shelly was determined that the system would give answers for what had happened to her in her childhood. She had high hopes for the inquiry.

      The lawyers had finished their opening submissions in the morning. Each advocate had stressed how his or her clients wanted to assist the panel in every way, to ensure such things never happened again. I had said it myself. Before Shelly went into the witness box, as my clients milled around in the lobby at the end of the lunch break, tense and garrulous, she had approached me, holding a cigarette in a trembling hand and asked me again what would happen. ‘We’re all fighting on the same side,’ I assured her. ‘They won’t have a go at you. You’re assisting the inquiry. It’ll be fine.’

      ‘Yeah, but what about my dad?’ she said. Charges had been brought against her father, but something had happened, the police had mixed up the dates of the court hearings and the case had been dismissed for lack of the chief prosecution witness.

      ‘No one can attack you for that.’ I said. ‘And if they do I shall want to know the reason why.’

      She smiled at me, reassured, and as we all filed back into the room, she instructed the group where to sit to ensure they saw her best side when she took the stand.

      The Chair had said he didn’t want witnesses giving evidence in chief, because they had said everything in their statements, and we would go straight to cross-examination. After Shelly had settled herself on the upright green leather chair behind the small, square table which was the witness box, she told me her name and address and I had asked her briefly about the action group and the letters she had written in her role as secretary.

      Now she was answering Frodsham’s questions about her time at Haslam Hall. She had mentioned Mr Wyatt, his client, by name. Frodsham feigned outrage. He did it very well, his face turned puce. ‘Are you saying that my client – the principal – was in the room?’

      ‘Not unless he was hiding in the cupboard. Are you listening to what I’m saying? He were never there in the punishment room, not when I was. But when I told Mike and Tim, our so-called carers, that I was going to tell Mr Wyatt, they said he wouldn’t be very interested. But I wouldn’t have told Mr Wyatt anyway. I were only nine.’

      ‘The description you give implies that my client was in some way negligent.’

      ‘I don’t know what that means. They just said if I wanted to tell him, I’d have to go and find him down at the Bull Ring, and then they laughed as if it was a good joke.’ Mr Wyatt sat beside Frodsham, pale and thin, gazing impassively at Shelly.

      ‘Your statement to the police mentions nothing of this,’ Frodsham went on.

      ‘They didn’t ask me about it. My statement to the inquiry does though.’

      ‘That was made almost a year later.’

      ‘That’s not my fault.’

      He smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘Perhaps you have reported the conversation wrongly.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Perhaps you have not properly remembered what was said.’

      ‘I told you, no. That’s what they said.’

      ‘It’s not true is it?’

      ‘It is.’

      ‘No, it’s not.’

      ‘Are you calling me a liar now?’ Shelly’s cheeks were flushed. She turned towards me hopelessly.

      I rose to my feet. ‘My client is giving, or attempting to give, a description of a conversation that took place in the absence of Mr Frodsham’s client. The panel will remember that it was Mrs Dean’s evidence which began the process which led to the arrest of staff members who had abused their position of power over vulnerable young people. Mr Frodsham is not representing those men. Mr Wyatt was never charged with any offence. The tone of the cross-examination is oppressive and, more than that, it’s completely unnecessary.’

      ‘What are you asking me to do?’ drawled Henry Curston.

      I wanted to say ‘Tell this pompous bastard to shut up and sit down,’ but I thought that line of argument might not go down too well. ‘My client is not attempting to prove, or disprove anything in this case. She is assisting the inquiry. Courtesy, and a more reasonable approach to cross-examination, might prevent an already distressing experience for her becoming more so.’

      ‘So what are you asking me to do?’

      ‘Perhaps you could ask Mr Frodsham to stop treating my client as if she had done something wrong. She is no more nor less than someone who as a child was systematically abused over a two-year period.’

      ‘Giving evidence, Miss Richmond?’ he asked with a ghost of a smile.

      ‘You already have her written statement,’ I said. ‘I am saying nothing that is not written there.’

      ‘Robust cross-examination is one of the pillars upon which our legal system is built,’ Curston said complacently, pressing the tips of the fingers of both hands together. ‘How else is Mr Frodsham to deal with the issues, except through cross-examination?’

      ‘In the Family Division we have a rather different approach,’ I said. Curston was a criminal practitioner. ‘Where matters of children are under discussion we tend towards the inquisitorial approach,’ I went on, ‘and politeness and respect are always held in high esteem. And let us not forget that those care workers, of whom Mike and Tim were only two, pleaded guilty to some twenty-nine charges.’ I took a deep breath. I was furious.

      Curston said nothing.

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