Fit Up (23 page)

‘Ah, you are sure you did. There we go. We have got the truth now. You did ask and you were told. You have just admitted, “I’m sure I did ask.” What is the truth now? Why did you say yes, that you are sure you did ask?’ Hopkins replied that he felt sure he would have asked questions, although he could not recall and was not sure about the location question.

Hopkins, referring to file paths again, told Leslie that he may have asked Fouhey on which computer the images were found as there were five computers taken from the shop, but Leslie dismissed this and said that Hopkins knew it was only one computer as it had an exhibit number, so there was no confusion at all about where the images had come from. ‘You knew then it was from the Tiny computer. You knew about the file path because you asked, because it would have been the very first thing you would have done, whereabouts on the computer, and you were told these images cannot support a charge of making or possession. You were told that before you charged, yet the reason why you charged was to boost…’ Before Leslie could finish Hopkins jumped in with ‘I don’t believe that, no.’

‘Why did you tell Willcox that then?’ said Leslie, relating back to the SID document.

Hopkins replied, ‘I made a mistake but it was an innocent mistake. I was told.’

‘So you do not recall the instructions you gave Grundy in the letter of claim?’

Hopkins was not given the opportunity to reply before Leslie jumped in with another question:

‘You do not recall telling Willcox that you added possession charges to give additional weight to the incitement charge? You have been caught out lying time and time again, have you not?’

‘No,’ replied Hopkins.

This was all very frustrating as all the evidence indicated that Hopkins was lying, but it seemed Hertfordshire Constabulary were not letting him admit to this, which would have been an easier, less time-consuming and cheaper option. When we started the complaint all we wanted to hear was an admission with an apology but now both sides had come this far that was definitely most unlikely, as for any side to cave in now would mean astronomical legal costs. For us it would be total annihilation, but for the police, not a problem. Their funding would go on.

Leslie was moving on to the malice part of our claim now, which was to give the court reasons as to why Hopkins had acted as he had done against Jeremy. Leslie brought up the fact that Jeremy had made Hopkins’s job difficult by complaining about his conduct, via the solicitor representing him at the time, regarding holding on to our possessions from the house and shop for too long. Leslie put to Hopkins, ‘“I know, let’s charge him with possession. Maybe he’ll plead. The more charges we put on in relation to this, he might put his hands up to one of them.” Was that your thinking?’ Hopkins said no to this.

Continuing, Leslie said, ‘So you decided to bring a little pressure to bear on him and you told his enemy, Lloyd Gerard.’ Again Hopkins said no.

Leslie then took Hopkins through his meeting with Gerard for the first time on 9 July 2004 to take his statement in relation to the Tiny computer. During the whole time of the investigation nothing had been heard from this man until then. Leslie asked a question about one of the comments from the statement, that the ‘computer was taken away for several weeks to clean it’. He proceeded to ask questions as to how a comment like that can be plucked out of thin air, that there had to be
some direction or a list from Hopkins as to what the statement should include, to which Hopkins agreed but said that there was no list and that he had not told Gerard what the investigation of Jeremy was about. Leslie disputed this, because the evidence showed that within a few weeks Gerard was on the phone and emailing people about Jeremy being a paedophile. Even I knew that was a leap to be able to use that term unless you had been told specific information. Computers are confiscated from people during investigations for all sorts of reasons to look for evidence, such as fraud, so you could not make the assumption that someone is a paedophile solely because their computer is taken away. Hopkins would have had to have given some indication but continuously denied Leslie’s accusations. It made a change from not recalling, I suppose!

Referring to Gerard’s witness statement, Leslie’s tone was sarcastic and suggested to Hopkins that we could not be expected to believe that this statement could have been written completely out of the blue without Gerard knowing of the allegations against Jeremy. He then asked Hopkins, ‘There is one point I want to take up with you in relation to the statement and that is, did you make a personal note? You have made a personal note in relation to the witness statement, is that right?’

Hopkins replied that this was normal. Leslie then asked Hopkins to go to the note in the bundle in front of him.

‘Do you remember I said to you, you did a list of things and you said, “No, I wouldn’t do a list. You would do a list of things that you would need to get out of the witness statement.” Do you remember me saying that or not?’ Hopkins replied in the affirmative.

Leslie continued: ‘What do we see at page 439? A list of things that you want in the statement, is it not?’

Hopkins looked at the page in front of him, face flushed red, and replied, ‘Yes.’

‘So why were you telling us that you did not do a list of things?’
persisted Leslie. There was a moment’s silence as we all waited for Hopkins to reply. Witheringly, he responded, ‘I must have forgotten.’ How convenient, I thought.

Leslie concluded, ‘There are a lot of things you have forgotten, are there not?’ Unbelievably, Hopkins replied, ‘Yes.’

In Hopkins’s notes, when taking Gerard’s witness statement, he had put down that the computer had been taken away by Jeremy for two weeks to clean it, yet when the statement was finalised this had changed to several weeks. Leslie asked Hopkins, who knew that there was bad feeling between the two men, if he had taken steps to verify whether the computer had been cleaned, to which he replied that he had not. It was also established that he had not instructed Fouhey either, because if this was the case it would have boosted Jeremy’s evidence and credibility as to what he had been saying in his defence. We knew from Duncan’s report that the computer had not been cleaned, but Challenger jumped up to say that there was to be no admission of computer evidence in this case and that what is known is that on 11 February 2001 Windows 98 was reinstalled. So what? I thought, that does not prove guilt either if someone is having problems with a computer virus.

Leslie then turned to the transactions on Jeremy’s credit card in relation to the accessing of the Landslide website. He explained to Cranston that one of the key problems about the Landslide website was that there had been widespread incidence of fraud. Leslie quoted information from the BBC in May 2007, the
Daily Mail
and
The Guardian
where lawyers and computer experts said that some forces were not carrying out proper checks to see if suspects arrested as part of the investigation were fraud victims. Operation Ore was launched in May 2002 when the police received lists of people whose credit cards had been used for the purchase of child pornography. Many people had spent months under investigation before charges were dropped because of fraud and headlines included ‘Operation
Ore flawed by fraud’. Leslie asked if Hopkins had this information before interviewing Jeremy and he confirmed that he had.

Leslie then drew to Hopkins’s attention a table of the transactions on Jeremy’s card and asked if he noticed that they ran in quick succession within a minute or so of each other, that the card was being credited or debited at about the same time. Did he not think that odd? Hopkins confirmed that it did seem so, to which Leslie suggested that this was the reason the incitement charge was dropped very early on. Hopkins said he was not looking at it in this way and relied on the answers he gave earlier on.

Returning to Gerard, Leslie asked what Hopkins did when Jeremy called him from Spain reporting what Gerard was saying to his staff. Hopkins said that he called Gerard and asked him not to pass on comments that he could not substantiate. Leslie then asked Hopkins why he did not say to Gerard, ‘Where did you get that from?’, and before Hopkins could answer, he finished for him: ‘Because you told him, Is that not correct?’ Hopkins denied this. Leslie persisted: ‘You did not ask him where he had got that information from because you had already told him.’ Again, Hopkins said no, but Leslie finished with: ‘Your answer is informative.’

We were now moving on to what Hopkins did with the information provided in Fouhey’s second statement, dated 21 December 2004. There is no explanation as to why this had come about but Hopkins said that the CPS had asked for more definitive information on the images resulting in this statement. Hopkins said that he had passed this on to the CPS along with a memo he wrote. However, he did not state that he had had a conversation with Fouhey where effectively he was told that he did not have a case. Leslie pointed out that the CPS are only as good as the information they receive and asked why he had not told them of the significance of the information on the statement, thus sitting on information. Hopkins
said he could not comment at this time but thought he had done on 21 December. Leslie at this point became exasperated and asked Hopkins for the third time to answer the question: ‘When you learned that on 21 December and you wrote your memo, why did you not tell the CPS?’ Again Hopkins said he did not know and Leslie went on to answer for him: ‘Because you have deliberately caused this prosecution to go on for much longer than it needed to, for another five months. The information was in your hands. The very information which causes this case to collapse, namely that the files are in temporary internet files, was not given to Mr Clifford’s lawyers until a couple of weeks before the case collapses in April 2005. I am asking you to explain yourself,’ to which Hopkins said he couldn’t.

‘In fact, the only reason why this case drops is because it’s not until Mr Clifford instructs his own expert and spots the point. You would have been happy for him to have gone to trial, despite what you knew, would you not?’ Hopkins did not answer. ‘You wanted him to go to trial despite what you knew, did you not?’ persisted Leslie.

‘You’re trying to say that I was being malicious in that and the answer is no,’ Hopkins complained.

Leslie confirmed it was what he was alleging because that was what the case was about and made worse by the fact that in January 2005 there were two court hearings, but still the information did not get through to the CPS, enabling the case to rumble on until Jeremy got his expert, Duncan Campbell, to examine the evidence and spot the point that Fouhey had already pointed out.

Leslie’s questioning continued to be relentless but he was now nearing the end and wanted to boot the point home that two wholly independent police sources – Grundy for the police solicitors and Willcox for the Police Standards Department – had been told two different things by Hopkins, who had today not been able to recall anything.

Leslie asked if this was the best response he could give, to which Hopkins said it was. Leslie finished with: ‘The reason is because you are lying and you have been caught out, have you not?’ Hopkins, being consistent, responded, ‘No.’

Leslie looked towards Cranston, told him he had now finished and sat down. The judge had said hardly a thing or looked up during the proceedings and just nodded to Leslie with a cursory ‘very well’.

Challenger then got up to re-examine Hopkins and opened with: ‘Mr Hopkins, I hope I can be reasonably brief.’ Leslie looked round to Andre, Jeremy and me with a huge grin, which made me want to laugh out loud as Challenger had no idea how to be brief. Still with a grin on my face, I looked towards Challenger’s back as he got going with his questions, starting off with a slight at Leslie by telling Hopkins that he had lost count at how many times he had been called a liar while in the witness box. He went on to sum up the allegations against him and then said, ‘We had better just remind ourselves – given the nature of the allegations of this – when is the first occasion that you met Mr Clifford?’ I couldn’t believe it. If we were going back that far this was most definitely not going to be brief. Challenger droned on monotonously and the adrenalin rush that had been created by Leslie’s questioning was soon dissipating to the extent I could feel the shutters of my mind coming down. Challenger’s voice faded into the background with nothing of his questioning bringing me back to full attention. It seemed to be a damage limitation exercise for Hopkins by bringing up his 31-year police career, exemplary service and commendations. I looked towards Leslie who was leaning back on the bench, occasionally flicking through papers, looking as bored as the rest of us. Suddenly he jumped up, exclaiming, ‘My Lord, my learned friend is re-examining. All we are getting is leading question after leading question. None of these arise out of cross-examination.’

Challenger looked to Cranston and then across to Leslie, retorting, ‘It
has been alleged that Mr Hopkins acted maliciously.’ Leslie sighed loudly and replied, ‘Leading questions, leading questions.’

Cranston looked up and for the first time in ages we were able to see his face as opposed to the more familiar top of his head. He looked at both Challenger and Leslie and said that they had both had quite a lot of latitude, but what Leslie was keen to establish with Cranston was that he should be allowed to cross-examine again after Challenger had finished as there was information being brought up that needed to be clarified by our side.

Challenger was taking so long and I was becoming fidgety as the benches were so hard to sit on for any length of time. I had to keep shifting from one side to the other to get some blood flowing to my feet. Finally, Challenger got my attention when I heard the words, ‘Can you wait there? I think Mr Thomas is going to be invited to ask you some more questions.’

Cranston reminded Leslie that he did not want this to be an extended exercise and just to keep his questions related to the information that came out of the re-examination. Challenger had asked Hopkins to confirm that the delay in Jeremy’s investigation was because of him changing solicitors but Leslie got him to admit that the reason was that there were problems in handing over the encrypted CD with the images for the defence forensic expert to examine.