The Dignity of Failure

SUMMARY:

This blog appears to describe the arrest, prosecution and treatment of a supposed "sex offender". If these events ever took place, the authorities in question clearly have a real problem. Not only does it appear that they are training suspected sex offenders to lie, but it seems that people who are a real danger to children enjoy the protection of the police while anyone who reports those persons to the authorities can expect to be arrested and subjected to state-sponsored brainwashing (at the expense of the taxpayer) in order to cover up police incompetence. If this is true, it beggars belief to suggest that it is a unique event - in this case the system seems to have failed at almost every level and in almost every possible way. Maybe we are just looking at the tip of an iceberg...

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Just to make things clear, here is a little story: "Bear tale one" (1 of 3):

Zeke was a prospector who lived out in the hills, panning for gold, farming a smallholding by the river. He was plagued by a huge grizzly bear that made life impossible for him. Every time Zeke looked round, the bear was there, coming straight at him. Usually he managed to get back to his cabin, but one day the bear got between him and safety. Zeke had to run for his life, and found himself on the edge of a cliff. Once again the bear was coming at him like an express train. Zeke had three choices: he could reason with the bear, he could fight him or he could try to run away. The bear was clearly in no mood to allow him any of these options. So what do you think Zeke did?

Well, as you may have guessed, Zeke had a fourth choice. The bear was so angry that it couldn't see him, couldn't see the cliff, all it could see was red mist. So Zeke just stepped out of the way.

Now read on.

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CONTENTS:

* PROSECUTION
* THE LEGAL PROCESS
* TREATMENT
* THE GROUP
* FANTASY AND REALITY
* BEYOND BELIEF
* REHABILITATION
* THE 'RIPPLE EFFECT'
* THE IMAGES
* 'J.R.'


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PROSECUTION:

"Donal Declan" was arrested by officers from the Serious Crime Unit in 2005 for making and possessing indecent images of children. Donal had a previous conviction (dating back to the 1970s) for indecently assaulting three young boys.

Knowing that he was about to be arrested, Donal e-mailed a local journalist 48 hours before the police arrived. He said: "They (the police) always cock it up and arrest the wrong people. Sometimes you have to allow people the dignity of failure". In the police station he said: "A blind man on a galloping horse could have seen it coming." At this point the police officers present glanced at each other like naughty children who have been caught out in a lie.

In his written statement, the arresting officer ('Wiggum') says: “At XXXX hours on Xxxxxx XX Xxxxxxxxx xxxx I was on duty accompanied by DC XXX 'Blake' when I attended XX, Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx, the home address of Donal Declan. I identified myself to Mr. Declan, cautioned him and then arrested him on suspicion of being in possession of indecent child images. I asked him if he understood and he replied 'YES'. I then informed Mr. Declan that we would be conducting a search of his house, we were in the living room of his house at this time and he pointed over to the Computer Tower Unit in the living room and stated "The stuff you want is on a disk in there; I go on a site called Boylinks".

In his initial statements to the Probation Service Donal stated that he had been collecting information about “J.R.” (see below) and thought that the officers were responding to his reports. 'Boylinks' is not, and never has been, a site hosting abusive images of children. There are no pictures on Boylinks. It is a text-only site which links to teen fan-sites (e.g. pop stars such as Justin Bieber) and scholarly resources such as university websites dealing with the consequences of abuse. The police from the Serious Crime Unit are presumably not idiots; they must have known this, but for some reason chose to ignore it. Even after a 14-month investigation. Six years down the line (2011), they are still ignoring it. Now why would they do that?

Furthermore, in his recorded interview with Donal, the arresting officer remarks that he was unable to get a response when he knocked at the door and that Donal came out of the house voluntarily and spoke to him outside. Confusingly, the officer later said in his written evidence that the arrest was made BEFORE Donal allegedly incriminated himself by mentioning BoyLinks.

No other reason was ever given for the arrest.

On the day of his arrest, Donal made two telephone calls, one from his home and one from the custody suite at the police station. The arresting officer remarked that both these calls were made to a clergyman and said that they would have been logged by BT and by the police security system. Even so, the recipient of the calls was never interviewed, even though the arresting officer was aware that Donal had planned to spend the day in Scotland with that person.

Now we come to "Bear tale two" (2 of 3):

We all know the story of the Three Bears. Goldilocks finds a deserted house in the woods. There are three tables, three chairs, three bowls of porridge, three spoons, three glasses of milk. Even the smallest idiot child can work out how many BEARS there are going to be.

When the police searched Donal's house they found three desks, three chairs, three computers, three monitors, three keyboards, three mice, three sets of speakers, three scanners and three printers. Each of the three desks was personalized in one of three different ways. On the walls of each of the three workspaces were three lots of telephone numbers, three lots of addresses and three lots of other contact details. Each of the three computers was in one of three office-like spaces with three filing cabinets and three drawers containing minute books, accounts (including numerous invoices for the refurbishment of second-hand computers), correspondence and other records suggesting that these three computers were used for community work. In their interviews with Donal the police remark that there were duvets and other bedding in the upstairs office. There were photographs on the computers of other people using the computers. Other computers and parts of computers were found during the search and are mentioned in the police report, but, curiously, were not used in evidence.

Donal says he worked for a voluntary group that recycled second-hand computers from skips. One of these computers (the main exhibit) had been previously owned by a security guard (Raymond) and used by his ex-partner, his teenage sons, their friends, his girlfriend, her teenage sons and their friends, his landlord and many others. The computer had been moved around the country over a period of six years, rebuilt several times, stored in portacabins and garages and coal sheds. One police expert remarked that this computer was in a 'very dirty' state. The police found receipts showing that two of the computers (those used in evidence) had recently been modified by a local computer dealer, but somehow forgot to mention this in court. One of the computers, an Apple Macintosh, was not used as evidence. Perhaps this was because every part of the computer was marked with the address and postcode (in indelible ink) of a local firm of architects. They also found several unopened brown-paper envelopes addressed to 'Raymond' at Donal's home address but these were not opened or mentioned in evidence. These sealed envelopes are still waiting to be opened.

The police experts concluded that the three working computers belonged to Donal, that he had bought them new in 1999 out of his £50-a-week state benefits, that he lived alone and that no-one had visited the house or had access to the computers in the previous six years. Oh dear. Images produced in evidence by the police show that this was not the case. The scene-of-crime pictures and pictures on the hard drives show dozens of people in the rooms where the computers were found, along with pictures of people of all ages using the computers. The Internet history of each computer shows patterns of usage consistent with regular public access over many years. For some reason, the so-called police 'experts' failed to notice this. Now what reason could that have been?

All three computers were enabled for Internet access, but there was only one standard BT landline connected to the house and the bills only show payments for one landline. During the SOTP course Donal had to explain why he had three broadband computers. Under pressure to comply, he said he had three computers so that he could download three times as much child pornography. He was praised for his openness and honesty and held up as an example to the group. Wrong again. Linking three computers to one standard BT line would give you LESS pornography, not more. Rather like turning on a shower in a house where several other people want a shower at the same time.

Publicly-available documents show that Donal's house had been a drop-in centre for socially-excluded adults for about 30 years. No-one on the contact lists was ever interviewed. No member of the management committee was ever interviewed. Donal's long-term friend and companion of 25 years, with whom he had often been on holiday in Northern Ireland, was never interviewed. Church, school and community group leaders were never interviewed. Local journalists who had written extensively about Donal's activities were never interviewed. The computer shop owner who maintained the computers was never interviewed. People who had donated computers were never interviewed. Children from Donal's group had often provided entertainment at the police club and other clubs frequented by local police, and local police had often contacted Donal to book him and these young musicians for charitable functions, but for some bizarre reason the police didn't interview each other. When interviewed by police, Donal gave no reply. At one point he seemed amused by the evidence placed before him. The officer said: 'Do you think this is funny?'

Given that Donal was facing a ten-year prison sentence, why would he think that? Subsequent events proved that Donal was right to be amused. But it gets better.


THE LEGAL PROCESS:

Following his conviction, Donal said that the arresting officer ('Wiggum') lied to him three times, and that this was why his solicitor had advised him not to cooperate during the interviews. For example, the officer promised that there would be no marked police cars at Donal's house: "We like a low-key operation, just a plain white van" when in fact neighbours reported numerous marked police cars and vans, flashing lights and sirens, officers in white forensic suits carrying out bags of so-called 'evidence' and so on. The officer had clearly lied. The same officer then visited Donal in his cell and told him that his solicitor had been delayed and was on his way to the police station. This was also clearly a lie and a trick. The officer then produced a scribbled note on a piece of scrap paper and asked Donal to sign it, thus agreeing that he had said the words "The stuff you want is on a disk in there; I go on a site called Boylinks" AFTER being arrested and cautioned. 'Wiggum' said this was just a formality to save paperwork. Donal considered the officer's kind suggestion but said he would prefer to take legal advice before signing anything of that sort. His solicitor later agreed that Donal had made the right decision.

Donal stated that he worked with people with learning difficulties in the voluntary sector and said they had used the computers in question. Donal says that his solicitor suggested calling these people as witnesses: “If I could get them into the witness stand, I could cut them to pieces” he said. Donal says he refused this offer.

Donal says his barrister advised him to plead guilty; even if he won a spectacular victory in court, the press would crucify him on account of his earlier conviction. "PUBLIC FURY AS SOFT JUDGE FREES PEDO TEACHER AGAIN", for example. Donal had worked for 30 years in the voluntary sector and was now politically active as a campaigner for adult survivors of abuse. He published a website (The Dxxxxxx Project) which suggested that child protection had become an industry which had more to do with making money than with protecting children.

He says his barrister advised him that he could not win the case because a jury would be instructed to return a verdict of 'mens rea' (in other words, it would be taken for granted that Donal was the kind of person who could reasonably be suspected of having committed an offence in view of his previous history)

His barrister said it was unlikely he could expect an impartial jury in the present climate of public opinion. "If you got a jury of probation officers, psychologists, social workers and university professors you might walk free" he said. "But what is more likely is that you will get a jury made up of people who think the Sunday Sport is a quality newspaper".

His barrister said that Donal would probably win the case on appeal, but that this might take several years in view of his previous convictions. Since Donal was considered to be an highly dangerous sex offender he would almost certainly be remanded in custody. Quite apart from not wanting to go to prison, it should be noted that Donal was caring for his companion at this point and believed he had a public duty to investigate 'J.R.' in the absence of any police interest.

Throughout the legal process, Donal was told by police, lawyers, probation workers and friends that, even if he insisted on his innocence and opted to appeal against his sentence, he would still have to complete an SOTP course in prison. Donal knew that the courses operated differently in prison, with tougher sanctions for non-compliance, and his probation officers and PPU officers warned him against this course of action. "You don't belong in prison," one police officer said. "Just think how much you have to lose." Following legal advice, Donal decided to plead guilty and comply with the course of treatment provided by the Probation Service.

Donal complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) after waiting for many months for the police to charge him. The police finally brought formal charges against Donal and his complaint was referred back to the local force about whom the complaint had been made, and they investigated themselves. Not surprisingly, they decided that their officers had behaved with exemplary professionalism - they had done their homework, got their facts right, hadn't taken any shortcuts, made any mistakes or told any little white lies.

On the day his trial was due to start, Donal had a private consultation with his solicitor. Less than an hour later, details of that conversation were repeated in open court by the prosecution in a way that totally distorted the 1975 allegations. Donal could not help but notice that his legal team spent quite a lot of time in the areas set aside for the press and the prosecution. The word 'collusion' popped into his head, but he dismissed it because he didn't believe such things could happen in a modern democracy.

Following his guilty plea and the (favourable) court ruling, Donal's solicitor said that under no circumstances should Donal suggest that his legal advisors had recommended such a course of action. "Tell them you had a change of heart," he said. "You were overcome with remorse and decided you needed psychiatric help."

TREATMENT:

Before going into the details of Donal's treatment, consider the third of our "Bear tales" (3 of 3):


A central doctrine of many courses based on popular cognitive psychology is that all behaviour is caused by thoughts and feelings. All you have to do is manage these thoughts and feelings and you can control behaviour. Any behaviour can be managed, including alcoholism, phobias, drug addiction and inappropriate sexual behaviour. The advantages of cognitive psychology are that (in the UK) you don't need a degree, it's cheap, fashionable and politically expedient.


Donal had a problem with this, which he illustrated on several occasions during the course using a teddy bear. "This is Jamie," he would say. "He's at least 18 years old ...but of course that could be a cognitive distortion." There was usually some laughter at this point.


"I'm going to ask Jamie to do three things," he would say, using the teddy bear to act out each request. "Jamie - sit on my knee. Very good, Jamie. Jamie, give me a kiss... how sweet is that. Now, Jamie, I want you to fall on the floor. (dropping the teddy bear on the floor). Oh dear, that's going to hurt in the morning!" More laughter.


"Just one more thing," Donal would add. "Jamie, I'd like you to describe the feelings and thoughts that made you behave in those three different ways... Er, hello? ...Jamie? I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that." This time there was never any laughter. "In fact," Donal would say, "Jamie's a stuffed toy. It has no thoughts. It has no feelings. I made it do what I wanted it to do and it obeyed me. But in some ways, thoughts and feelings would have made it even easier to control Jamie - one thinks of emotional blackmail: 'Open the bank vault or your family die', for instance. And there are many forms of behaviour that have nothing to do with thoughts or feelings: Alzheimer's behaviour. Being run over by a truck behaviour. Getting cancer behaviour. Drug reaction behaviour. Being a victim of crime behaviour. Separation and bereavement behaviour. To Donal, behaviour seemed to be dependent on a vast range of social, environmental, biochemical, historic, genetic, developmental, educational and other factors. For example, Donal's companion has a degenerative nervous condition which causes involuntary movements; shortly before being diagnosed, he picked up nine points on his driving license, despite having been an an excellent driver until then. His medication often has side-effects (including drowsiness, confusion, inappropriate sexual behaviour and random conversation). A man of the highest moral standards, many of these behaviours might well have nothing to do with his thoughts and feelings at a given moment, but might well have brought him into conflict with the law. The drug companies are only just starting to admit that such side-effects exist.

Following his conviction, Donal told probation officers that he could not remember buying child pornography from paysites, but accepted their advice that it would be unrealistic and 'disrespectful' to protest his innocence in the face of unanimous expert opinion to the contrary. They reminded him that the police had found 'thousands and thousands of images of young children, boys and girls, being massively abused'. Strangely, this seemed to be at odds with the police evidence: "A boy standing on a beach" - "A boy kneeling next to a shrub" - "A boy standing on the bars of an indoor gym" and so on. He was told that it would be a 'breach' of his probation order if he failed to admit that he had downloaded images of children being 'massively abused'. He would be taken back to court and 're-sentenced' for not complying with the terms of his probation order. This would inevitably mean a prison sentence.

Psychometric tests confirmed that Donal was a 'high risk' sex offender. Clearly, the only reasonable option for him was to accept that he had committed numerous crimes against young children and that he must address the cognitive distortions which he had used to give himself permission to offend. This meant he must accept that he had broken the law, accept ownership of the offences and accept responsibility for them. He must also identify 'triggers' and risk factors that had caused him to offend and put in place blocks and coping strategies to reduce his risk of being a danger to children in the future.

Incredibly, despite repeatedly telling probation officers that he was a rape victim, that he was innocent of all charges, that he had twice been framed by notorious psychopaths who still had unsupervised contact with children, that he was an adult survivor of abuse, a civil rights activist, an actor, a group facilitator and a freelance journalist, Donal was placed on a 36-week Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP), followed by compulsory attendance on the 12-week Better Lives Programme which seeks to rehabilitate sex offenders in the community. Donal's background and his extensive knowledge of cognitive and deviant psychology would have automatically excluded him from such courses in almost any other part of the world.

Probation officers (and friends) advised Donal that all he had to do was tell the truth and everything would be fine. The experts had done their homework and got their facts right. They hadn't made any mistakes, taken any shortcuts or told any little white lies. SOTP wasn't about facts or figures, dates or times. Such details were meaningless and irrelevant. It was about the feelings and thoughts that led to illegal behaviour. And it was about a process of mutual verification. Even allowing for a reasonable margin of human error, anything Donal said that agreed with the experts must be true, while anything that contradicted them must be false. This was how Donal would be able to tell reality from fantasy. If any mistakes had been made, the experts would spot these errors and put them right.

A facilitator ('Rowan') on the SOTP programme provided Donal with the 'RULE' tool (Faced with a cognitive distortion, one had to ask: is it Realistic, Useful, Logical and Evidence based) Armed with this powerful weapon, Donal was ready to address his distorted memories.

For example, one facilitator ('Servalan') convinced Donal that there had never been a popular movement to legitimize sexual relationships between adults and children in the 1970s. She persuaded him that organizations such as Tom O'Carroll's Paedophile Information Exchange had never existed; that they were a figment of his imagination. Newspaper reports and historical records about such organizations had been faked by left-wing criminals. There had never been such a person as Tom O'Carroll.

When Donal said he kept finding documents that contradicted the 'official' version of events another facilitator (“Hayley”) suggested that Donal should destroy them. “I would just set fire to them” she said.

Time and again, Donal found that the course seemed to be geared towards men who wanted to rape women. Men attracted to boys (or to other men) didn't fit the profile. The psychometric tests had been crudely adapted with biro and tippex to accommodate gay/homoerotic tendencies.

By the end of the course the facilitators seemed to have completely lost touch with reality. Donal told them how a friend had joked about the baby vegetables in Tesco - 'You'd better keep away from that sort of thing!' - so in his weekly review (and the end-of-course report) this was recorded as an inappropriate attraction to baby carrots. Donal was described as 'sexualizing' baby carrots 'as children'.

THE GROUP:

Abusers and victims of abuse were routinely placed on the same group. For example, Donal was placed on the same group as a man who taught him at school. This man was in a relationship with a younger man on another SOTP group who had also been taught by Donal. The story of that relationship will be told elsewhere, but really needs a blog of its own. Clearly, they should not have been on the same course.


One young man on the group ('Jon') said he had been a 'down-and-out' and a 'rent boy' during the time that Donal claimed to have been 'living rough' in the same town. He didn't remember Donal, having been a regular substance abuser, but clearly, they should not have been on the same course.

One group member ('Geoff') was very familiar to Donal. He was a churchwarden at a local church who often met Donal and his companion at church events involving young boys. Donal was required to give details of hiscompanion's sexual preferences to the group. He had previously made it clear that hiscompanion was involved in sensitive discussions (e.g. regarding the appointment of women bishops, who could potentially sit in the House of Lords and influence national legislation), which meant that such disclosures were politically explosive and that it was entirely inappropriate to discuss them in the context of an SOTP programme. Clearly, they should not have been on the same course.


Donal stated that some of photographs were of himself aged 25. During the police interviews in 2005 he had almost laughed out loud when these pictures were produced as 'child pornography.' He was now threatened with 're-sentencing' for using these images in the 'victim letter' exercise. 'Jon' asked him: "How can you be the victim of your own offence?".

Asked to take part in a role play exercise, Donal used method-acting techniques and his knowledge of psychology to cognitively assume the persona of a child abuse victim. (As he said later, this was rather like saying: 'Do you think you could camp it up a bit, Elton?) Apparently showing signs of acute distress, he repeatedly asked if he could 'come out of role' but was pressed to continue by 'Servalan' the facilitator. One group member ('Dave') was so traumatized by this that he privately told Donal later that he had tried to commit suicide, but was unable to get enough tablets to end his life because the doctor's surgery was closed.

FANTASY AND REALITY:

Prior to his court appearance in 2006, a friend told Donal that the 'ring of truth' was unmistakeable. All Donal had to do was tell the truth and everything would be fine. But every time Donal made a statement that seemed to him to be true he was reprimanded and threatened with prison, while every time he made a statement that seemed to him to be untrue he was congratulated for his openness and honesty. It was almost as if the facilitators were training sex offenders to lie... but why would they be doing a thing like that?

From the start, it was clear that the kind of truth that was acceptable on the SOTP programme was not the kind of truth that Donal was used to. SOTP truth was more flexible. It kept changing. It changed in relation to political and economic circumstances. It followed a sliding scale. Everything was relative: there were 'no right or wrong answers'.
'No-one's offence was worse than anyone else's'. For example, stroking a teenager's leg was just as bad as raping and murdering a baby. There was no difference. It was a case of 'one size fits all'. Conversely, raping and murdering a baby was no worse than stroking a teenager's leg. Donal had a long struggle with this concept, but reluctantly agreed that the experts knew what they were talking about. Otherwise why would they get so much public money?

You had to be 'true to yourself' rather than to any objective truth. In other words, there was no truth apart from the truth that existed inside the SOTP room. Reality was inside the skull. Two plus two didn't have to equal four; they could equal anything you wanted them to. You had to get rid of all those 19th-century ideas about the laws of nature - the so-called laws of nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished', Donal said in one session, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' He was now getting top marks. He began to set his watch alarm to 13:00 and would often say: 'The clocks are striking thirteen' as the group broke for lunch. George Orwell famously used the same phrase in his novel "1984" (Secker and Warburg, 1949)

Donal said that he had been deeply traumatized by the suicide of a boy (Peter Greaves) at his boarding school. Peter had hanged himself following a disastrous romantic episode. Donal said: "Apparently the police can tell when a tree's been climbed twice." His probation officer ('Hayley') said 'It's a bit like a love triangle'. Peter Greaves also appears as a character in 'Sandel', a popular novel by Angus Stewart (Hutchinson, 1968) which was found by the police in Donal's house and used in evidence.

Donal said he had replied to a job advertisement and was employed as the bodyguard to the 12-year-old son of a French nuclear physicist. He had been whisked away to a tropical island where he taught the boy classical Greek and judo with his Indian friend Hadji, who dressed like a maharajah, and their little dog, Bandit. There are strong similarities between this account and the cartoon series 'Jonny Quest' (Hanna-Barbera, 1964)

Donal said he "kept hearing the word 'Thud'". He said it reminded him of a dinosaur that should have been extinct, but was still pursuing him. The psychologist David Rosenhan and his colleagues used a similar phrase in a landmark study in 1973, "On being sane in insane places."

BEYOND BELIEF:

During the course Donal made two critical statements:

He stated that in 1999, while living alone, unemployed, penniless and deeply in debt, without assets, savings or credit facilities, he spent £30,000 on computers because he was so desperate for child pornography that he was downloading it simultaneously on three high-speed broadband computers using his credit card while masturbating in front of one or other of the machines. Even at 1999 speeds, this would have meant that Donal was downloading millions of pounds worth of images a year while claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. When Donal made this statement he was praised for his openness and honesty. He got top marks for his self-awareness and engagement with the programme. He was held up as an example to the rest of the group of how the programme was supposed to work. He was described as a 'father figure' to the group and lightly rebuked for being more like a facilitator than a group member. He was even given a week's holiday and asked to help with the training of a new probation officer. Even though the police have had Donal's admission of massive benefit fraud for over six years, they have never thought of sharing it with the Department of Work and Pensions.

He also stated that, in 1975, while driving his high-performance two-seater sports car along twisting, slippery country roads he forced a 13-year-old choirboy called Antony Sandel to masturbate him in the back seat (of his two-seater sports car) without taking his hands off the wheel, slowing down for roundabouts or stopping at traffic lights. Clearly Donal was breaking the law. Not by speeding, not by reckless driving, not by committing a ludicrous impossible gymnastic sex act with a character from a popular novel, but by driving without a tax disc. He couldn't get a tax disc because he didn't have an MOT certificate or insurance. Or a driving license. In 1975 Donal didn't need a driving license because he didn't have a car. In 1975 he didn't know how to ride a bike. In fact, he didn't get his first car until 1994, twenty years after the alleged offence, when he took his first driving lessons. (During the course Donal often said that he was a 'new driver' and that hiscompanion had to show him how to get in the right lane for roundabouts.) Even so, when he made this key statement on the SOTP course, one probation officer ('Marge') said: "It was one of those moments when, as a facilitator, you want to jump up and down and run around the room shouting. Did you see me and 'Rowan' make eye contact? After the group I ran upstairs to the Treatment Manager and said 'Breakthrough!' and I told him what you'd said, and he said 'Yes! Breakthrough!'.

REHABILITATION:

The police often said they had technology which could identify illegal activity on Donal's computer. Donal said he had no problem with this. On one occasion, an officer ('Cletus') brought a USB device to test Donal's hard drive for illegal activity. Donal had to tell him where to plug it in to the machine, and the officer was a bit bemused when his device did not bring up the expected interface. He had to 'phone a friend' to see why his device only brought up pages of machine code. The friend had no idea. Donal suggested that perhaps it was because he wasn't using Microsoft Windows. The 'friend' agreed, but said he couldn't help. The officer then asked Donal to show him round his file system on a voluntary basis. Donal gave him full access to his files, but the officer later said: "I still wasn't happy. I may have to take your computer away and have it examined." Like his colleagues in 2005, this officer is unaware that Donal has never owned a computer and that the device in question has no hard drive. It is basically an empty box. To access the Internet Donal uses a read-only CD which anyone can download for nothing from the PCLinux website. Unlike Windows, it has no memory, cannot get viruses and forgets everything when you turn it off. Insofar as Donal has any files, they are encrypted and stored on remote servers in Singapore, Toronto, Reykjavík and Scunthorpe. (Or, more in keeping with Donal's love of lo-tech methods, scribbled on the backs of envelopes.)

Donal was placed on a welfare-to-work scheme where he was required to work with a convicted sex offender whom he had met on the SOTP course. Donal did the right thing and informed all the relevant parties. The other person did not. That person is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for raping a child, a detail he had somehow neglected to mention on the course, even though Donal had been reprimanded for correctly identifying him as a cold-blooded psychopath who had no empathy with children.

Donal was frequently offered training opportunities with local colleges. On one occasion he was offered training at a centre for school leavers located between two schools and a children's nursery. On another he was ordered to attend a course involving under-18 trainees. Donal said he could not be involved in such schemes without contacting children and young people in violation of his SOPO. One college offered Donal training under the New Deal programme. Donal attended the first session and scored 100 per cent on the literacy and numeracy tests. During the lunch break Donal contacted the college authorities and explained that he was a convicted sex offender. The vice principal met him in the college foyer and said 'so how is that a problem?' At that moment a small child ran across the foyer and scrambled between their legs. The vice principal gave Donal his bus fare and sent him home.

Donal was offered a job at the Independent Safeguarding Authority, where, given his IT skills, he would have had access to the criminal records and personal details of 50,000 sex offenders. There was no CRB check on the application form. Once again, Donal behaved responsibly and refused the job, at the risk of losing his benefits.

Donal was then offered a training opportunity in the Victim Support building. Clearly this was a bad idea, but Donal was told that he had no choice but to accept the opportunity or lose benefits. Donal e-mailed the supervisor on her Facebook page which resulted in his immediate removal from the programme. The police reprimanded Donal for being on Facebook. His Public Protection Unit officer (who manages around 60 sex offenders in the community) said 'We don't like Facebook. I don't use it.'

Donal's personal advisor at the JobCentre turned out to be 'Harry', a notorious paedophile activist and a friend of Tom O'Carroll, founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange in a local village (who, you remember, never existed). Harry is what the anti-terrorist people would call a 'clean skin', one of the new generation of militant paedophiles: he has never been convicted of an offence, lives under a false identity and has access to the details of countless sex offenders through his position of trust in the DWP. He survives because the police are more interested in ticking boxes than preventing crime. Donal would not have known the truth about Harry had he not had access to the Internet; he looked up Harry's mobile number and found extensive information on the 'Wikisposure' site. As usual, the local police behaved like headless chickens.

THE RIPPLE EFFECT:

Following his conviction, Donal expected no more than a few lines in the local paper, which would have been quite normal under the circumstances. But a reporter wrote that a 'clergyman' wearing a large crucifix and clutching a Bible' had admitted downloading 'thousands of sick child porn images' and was now being sheltered in a house owned by the Church of England. Donal's picture appeared in the local press and he was obliged to drive away from the house at speed after angry neighbours gathered in the driveway.

Over the next five years Donal had to move house 7 times. He spent three months in the retreat house of a monastery of (almost) silent monks. He received over a thousand threatening phone calls. He and hiscompanion were threatened with physical violence. Donal was chased down the street by vigilantes on three occasions. Bricks were thrown through his windows and his car was stolen and written off. His phone was bugged and his internet usage was repeatedly disrupted by hackers. Donal had to abandon all the voluntary work he did in the community. His family and friends refuse any contact with him. He now pays £400 a month to a private landlord but has to pay part of this out of his jobseeker's allowance because the housing benefit rates are capped in favour of single men who share a flat, which in his case is clearly not an option.

Donal was also involved in a protracted legal battle with his housing association and with the Department of Work and Pensions. Even after Donal explained that he had been the target of death threats, the local council could not understand why he had failed to attend a JobCentre appointment and were asking him to repay several months of Housing Benefit for a house where he was no longer able to live. After many hours of expensive telephone conversations Donal got through to the senior manager at Exxxxxxxx District Council who was able to sort out the problem in a matter of minutes.

The Probation Service gave Donal a list of local housing associations which was not much better than he could get from a public library. They promised all sorts of help with furniture, employment, housing and household expenses, but repeatedly failed to deliver. In the end, Donal got a house with help from a local church, then moved to a better house after walking around in the rain and looking for premises that were 'to let'. Bonds and rents were supplied by friends and churches. The Probation Service took no part in this. The furniture and other necessities were eventually supplied by local Christian groups without any support from the Probation Service.

Donal found that his income was not enough to cope with his regular monthly payments. For example, his debt repayments were almost twice his weekly income. Leaving aside his credit card repayments, his weekly rent was £100 while his Housing Benefit was only £80. Once again, the probation service had no advice or information for him. Even with help from friends, Donal had to apply for a Debt Relief Order (a form of bankruptcy) which allowed him to write off his debts on the payment of a one-off £90 fee. He even had to borrow the £90 on his credit card. Unlike most people in his position, Donal had access to the Internet. Without that access he would not have known about this facility.

Since his arrest, Donal has been supported by friends and by local churches. Donal's long-term friend and companion used money saved by his parents and his own personal insurance policies, which had been set aside for his retirement. Local churches made regular contributions to Donal's finances on the strength of his ability as a musician. This money could have been used for other purposes.

To keep his identity and location secret, he dare not register with a doctor or a dentist. He dare not register as an elector. He dare not own a television or a mobile phone in case his details are tracked down. He cannot register with an employment agency. He has been threatened with criminal proceedings for not disclosing his name and address to the register of electors and the TV licensing agency. He can only apply for jobs under a false name and address. Although a devout Roman Catholic all his life, he is not welcome in his local Catholic church, but has to worship in a Pentecostal fellowship. Public toilets are off-limits except in remote rural areas (in case Donal finds himself alone with a child). The same applies to leisure centres, swimming pools and all other areas where he might encounter children. In order to comply with the terms of his Jobseeker's Agreement Donal is obliged to travel during school travel times, as he was during the SOTP course.

THE IMAGES:

The images used to convict Donal were not at all what one might expect. For a start, there was no sexual activity in any of the images.

The three 'Level 5' images were clearly pop-up ads (tiny postage-stamp images cached by the system while browsing for unrelated material such as free games or free music) showing plump middle-aged women in ridiculous bondage poses, e.g. "Thrashed Schoolgirls". Temporary internet files of this type would not have been admissible as evidence. (R. v. Ross, Warwick et al; Porter, 2006) Even so, while the prosecution did not proceed with the charges, the images were allowed to 'lie on file' (not to be confused with the other kind of lying on file) so that Donal would always be vulnerable to further criminal proceedings.

Many of the images are clearly scans from published books. They have page numbers and are sharp enough to show the dots of a photogravure print.

Donal has often shown full-frontal images of naked boys and girls to police officers (including an inspector and a chief inspector) and suggested that they arrest him again for possession of indecent images of children. So far this has not happened. The Internet Watch Foundation website states that simple nude images of children are not illegal, and cites the case of R. v. Oliver, Hartrey & Baldwin (2002): “The implication of this judgement has been to remove nudity from the 'Level One' offence however still retaining the element of erotic posing”. This landmark decision was often cited by the Prosecution in Donal's case despite the fact that it clearly contradicted their position. There was no 'erotic posing' in any of the indictment images. For example, one image is a harmless piece of clip-art, commonly available on the Internet. One is a famous painting of baby Jesus. One is a photograph by Lord Snowdon. One is a photograph ('Water Rats' 1886) by the Victorian photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. Some show children queuing for ice-creams. Some of the images are from classic movies, such as 'Lord of the Flies' and 'Les Amities Particulieres' (Based on 'Special Friendships' by Roger Peyrefitte (1943)

One officer from the Public Protection Unit was shown similar full-frontal images of naked boys and girls in a library book and was asked: “Are these illegal images?” She replied “Of course they're not illegal, otherwise they wouldn't be in a library book”. The images in question almost certainly formed part of the evidence used against Donal in 2005.

One image shows two teenage boys kissing. While homophobia is illegal in the UK, there is still a deep-rooted prejudice against homosexuals of all ages. So perhaps we should not be surprised if an image of two boys kissing is somehow regarded as pornographic, while a heterosexual kiss between two teenagers of the same age would be considered normal and healthy.

A number of images show Donal as an adult. Dates on the slides/negatives show that he was at least 25 years old when the pictures were taken; clearly not a child. (It should be pointed out that the images have not been altered to create a 'pseudo-photograph' of a child). During the interviews in 2005 Donal was told that these pictures showed a child being abused. As a child abuse victim himself, the irony of this was not lost on Donal and he almost laughed out loud. It was at this point that the interviewing officer said: 'Do you think this is funny?'

Some of the images have UK dates (eleven-nine) and some have American dates (nine-eleven). Some were apparently created AFTER they were last accessed or modified. The usual reason for such anomalies is that the images had been copied (hastily) from one device to another.

The dates on the images also conflict with dates in Donal's diary. It is worth noting that, within hours of Donal stating to police officers that he would have been playing the organ in church for the Easter Vigil in 2005, (at a time when one of the indictment images was downloaded) 'J.R.' (see below) posted on his website a dated image of himself (very obviously faked) at an Easter festival in Oslo (giving himself an alibi). In fact Donal was not playing the organ at a midnight service that year, but of course 'J.R.' wasn't to know that. Oops.

'J.R.'

The story of 'J.R.' needs (at the very minimum) 500GB of disk space, due to the extraordinary quantity of hard data gathered by our researchers over the last 10 years. So where do you start? Perhaps the best way is to give a few highlights:

Donal told police that a man ('J.R.') visited his house regularly in the weeks leading up to his arrest and used the computers to access nude images of young boys. He says that 'J.R.' raped him. He says that he made dozens of attempts to report this to the police, since 'J.R.' was the player-manager of a boys' football team and had often expressed a desire to 'have sex' with boys in the team. In the weeks leading up to his arrest Donal tried repeatedly to alert the appropriate authorities to 'J.R.'s' activities. He contacted Interpol, New Scotland Yard and the local police. No record was kept of these reports and Donal has never been offered counselling or interviewed by officers trained in dealing with rape victims.

One blogger describes how 'J.R.' approached a group of boys and asked them to come with him while he put a brick through the window of a man he said was 'interfering with children'. The boys ran off but 'J.R.' went ahead.

Following every major report of his activities to the police, 'J.R.' routinely disappeared from the Internet and re-invented himself under a new persona. For example, after Donal reported 'J.R.' to the local police in 2007, 'J.R.' gave up all pretence of being a radio presenter and said that he was now the owner of a railway company. The company swiftly became a joke on the Internet and never succeeded in putting a locomotive into mainline service. 'J.R.' was vilified on Wikipedia and his pages were deleted, which resulted in him being involved in a 'flame war' with wiki editors who had little time for his outbursts. The company (which consisted of 'J.R.' and his mother) was eventually dissolved after being listed in the London Gazette as a failed company.

Donal became convinced that 'J.R.' was a maverick investigator working in some covert capacity for the police, perhaps as a psychological profiler. Needless to say, the police denied this, but Donal has extensive evidence that that seems to link 'J.R.' with QuinetiQ, a secretive company behind many covert government surveillance operations.

To this day 'J.R.' continues to work with children, posts interviews with them on Youtube and openly boasts on the Internet about how he got the local police to 'fix' Donal. In recent months (2011) he has become so confident that he has posted images on Facebook of people he claims are family members and former child 'associates' who now have young children of their own.

Donal rang the Department of Trade and Industry in 2006 and said he was concerned about the business activities of 'J.R.' and his associates. The call was transferred to a more senior person who then transferred it to someone even more senior. This person told Donal that his information was of great interest and that a full investigation would be launched; for operational reasons it might be some weeks before Donal heard anything, but he would probably be required to give evidence in court. However, less than an hour later the first person called back and said that the DTI would not be proceeding with the matter. “Can you tell me why?” Donal asked. “No,” was the reply. “Is that because you don't know or because you can't tell me?” “Because I can't tell you” was the response.