Fit Up (9 page)

W
e had accepted that we were stuck on the rollercoaster and that, until we had assigned a forensic expert to look at the computer evidence, we would not be getting off any time soon.

After the fourth hearing, we had decided that we needed something to help us get through yet another Christmas overshadowed by fear and uncertainty. That came in the form of a dog called Sasha. She had proved to be a pleasurable distraction from the case and even getting up early on these dark winter mornings to feed and play with her was not a hardship. We adored her and my only regret was that we couldn’t focus completely on this joyous bundle of fur.

Jeremy was to be in court again and Lahiffe would be representing him this time. Rather than continuing to use up my leave, I decided not to go. After all, it was only a case management hearing, and these seemed only to go over the same information, with the only conclusion being the scheduling of another date. It would be another day of the shop being closed for business, however, but we could not afford to take on other staff and if Jeremy did not attend the hearing it would be Sod’s Law that he would be needed to answer questions directly.

At around 11.30 a.m. the phone rang while I was at work. I jumped, expecting Jeremy’s call, but on a closer inspection of the clock I thought
it might be too early to be him. I picked up and offered my usual greeting. Silence. I repeated, ‘Good morning, Office Services.’ It was then that I heard the sound of a sob, followed by Jeremy’s voice: ‘The case could be thrown out this afternoon.’

For the first time in months I felt a surge of hope and asked him what made him think this. Jeremy had difficulty in getting his words out. He had driven from the court and had to park up as he could not see through his tears to drive properly.

‘Faith, Faith, it’s over,’ he said.

This news was so exciting that I couldn’t stop smiling. Apparently the CPS were rambling through their case and the judge kept interrupting to ask questions, the kind of questions we had been asking, which was encouraging. Not happy with the responses, he decided, as lunchtime was fast approaching, that the CPS should go away and reconsider their case, and that to proceed with a possible week-long trial would be a waste of tax payers’ money. The evidence was flimsy at best and if the court were to proceed and find Jeremy guilty then it would just be a fine. In comparison to costs that would be spent on both sides, was this a good way to spend public money? I thought.

Jeremy continued: ‘The judge is clearly irritated and the CPS’s barrister looked embarrassed by the judge’s comments.’ I asked what Lahiffe’s opinion was and he replied that seeing how the morning’s session had gone, it was more than likely that the case would be thrown out and that the CPS were quite ruffled. At last, I thought, a judge that could see clearly. My faith in the justice system was restored a little. Jeremy was now heaving sobs of relief, very much overcome with the last fourteen months of stress and absolute misery. Listening to him, I could not contain the emotion myself and felt the tears drop down my cheeks. At last, we could move on.

The court would be reconvening at 2 p.m. and I needed to go home to
feed Sasha before then, so I told Jeremy to go and get some lunch, while I did the same at home, thinking that from now on we could really get on with our lives.

Back at work, I was clock watching from 2 p.m., constantly wondering what time I would hear from Jeremy. I couldn’t concentrate and just aimed for trying to look busy. After what seemed like an age, Jeremy called. His voice was despondent as he told me that the CPS barrister had returned to court and very aggressively told the judge that she had spoken with Hopkins and they were pursuing the case because it was in the public’s interest. I asked what the judge’s response to this was and Jeremy said he looked kind of witheringly at the CPS, but let it go ahead.

Apparently Lahiffe said that it happens that way sometimes and that we had to get our own forensics report. I agreed but it seemed to be taking ages for our side to get to grips with sorting this out.

I made my excuses at work and left to be home with Jeremy. As I parked up on the drive I looked up to our bedroom window to see the curtains were closed. Jeremy’s reaction to the afternoon’s events was to bury himself under the duvet in the darkness. From being full of hope earlier in the day he had now descended into despair.

My thoughts returned to Hopkins who wanted to ‘press on’. How I hated him.

I
n my search for a forensic expert, I had found Duncan Campbell on a website forum where I had been in contact with a fair few other people who were in similar situations to ourselves. To chat with them online had been a real comfort to me in the previous months, as I could not always talk to Jeremy. One person that I had been communicating with, whom I only knew as ‘Nugget’, recommended Duncan after I mentioned that we were looking for a forensic expert and he let me have his telephone number.

One afternoon Jeremy made contact with Duncan to discover that he was an investigative journalist specialising in privacy, civil liberties and secrecy issues covering electronics, computers and telecommunications. It was on the basis of this background and the fact that Duncan had lots of experience with Operation Ore cases that Jeremy had made up his mind that this was the expert he needed.

Just after the bank holiday Duncan let us have a copy of his draft report, which spanned twenty-four pages. Although a lot of it was quite technical (especially in relation to computer terminology) and not totally understandable to us, there were enough positive paragraphs to make it encouraging reading.

Just before this time we had received copies of witness statements from Gerard and Fouhey, the forensic expert acting for the police, who had produced the first report. Fouhey’s statement of 21 July 2004 was a three-page report listing various items of software and the five computers confiscated. Against each piece, Fouhey had stated that ‘examination showed nothing of any note’. However, against the Tiny computer that was sold to Gerard, he stated:

This was it? Despite an investigation through hundreds of tapes, various electronic media, computer software and five computers, all coming out clean, the only computer that contained seventeen images of note was the one that was sold to Gerard, now a prosecution witness.

That paragraph, together with a few blurry thumbnail pop-ups and a no comment interview, had evidently got Hopkins excited enough to convince the sergeant to charge Jeremy. Even Fouhey said they were ‘not necessarily’ indecent photographs.

The conclusions of Duncan’s report in summary were:

1. There is no evidence to support the charges that Jeremy made indecent images of children.
   
2. There is no evidence to support the charge that Jeremy possessed indecent images of children.
   
3. The dates and times specified in a police statement and in the charges against Jeremy in relation to making indecent images of children bore no relation to the forensic evidence that he inspected.
   
4. Circumstantial and damaging testimony against Jeremy from an important prosecution witness [Gerard] was refuted by forensic evidence. If cleaning of the computer had taken place it would follow that none of these images would have survived and could not be recovered.
   
5. Forensic evidence for a prima facie case of possession and possible attempted distribution of indecent images of children can be made out against the same witness but this evidence appears to have been ignored (by police) and has not been reported.
   
6. Intelligence passed to Hertfordshire police and which led them to regard Mr Clifford as a suspect was based on gravely flawed and in some respects untruthful information provided by United States law enforcement officers in 2002. Important parts of this misinformation have since been corrected or retracted.
   

The report further stated that the ‘images of note’ had been deleted and were found in an area called ‘unallocated clusters’ which meant they were not therefore knowingly in Jeremy’s possession.

We were interested to read of Gerard’s activity on the Tiny computer where he had installed a programme called Morpheus, one of a number of file sharing programmes available on the internet and commonly used by paedophiles. In one of Gerard’s folders were two sexually explicit images that were made when he was the owner and user of the computer. The labels on the images suggested sexually explicit material of underage girls and we wondered why Fouhey did not pick up on these images and the significance of the titles. Perhaps if Hopkins knew this he might not have been so quick to consider Gerard as a reliable prosecution witness.

Duncan’s report continued:

I found it interesting that the US government approached its citizens differently from the UK. Instead of branding every name on their list from Landslide as a paedophile, officials carefully profiled and investigated selected individuals against whom there was fresh evidence of making indecent images of children or of actual abuse. In respect of the 35,000
US records, only 144 homes were searched and 100 people charged. In the UK, there were 7,272 individuals and currently 4,283 people had been arrested.

J
eremy’s relationship with Hamilton had become acrimonious and we were losing confidence in how he was being represented. Duncan Campbell had recommended a solicitor called Irene Hill of Smith, Brown & Sprawson with whom he had worked recently. Jeremy, after meeting her, knew that he had, at last, found the right person to defend him. Upon Hamilton’s return from holiday he was informed that Jeremy wished to part company. He said that he would not oppose this but it would involve another court appearance to change the representation order.

Jeremy was advised to turn up in a suit for the hearing in case the judge wanted to speak to him. He hoped it would all go to plan; he was anxious for Irene and Duncan to get going on his case once they had got past this formality.

Entering the court and seating himself, Jeremy looked around for Hamilton but he wasn’t there. It had turned out that Hamilton had actually sent a barrister to represent him and his practice, and there he was, settling down with papers at one of the lecterns. What came next was even more amazing. Once the proceedings started, the barrister fought vigorously
to keep Jeremy as a client for Hamilton. What had happened between the verbal and written assurances that Hamilton would not be opposing this change of solicitor? Jeremy had called him every name under the sun; to have to remain together would have meant that Hamilton would likely have only done legally what was necessary rather than really care about Jeremy, and Jeremy would only resent having to deal with him.

Irene’s representative did their part by explaining that she had been approached by Jeremy, telling the court what had brought him to the point of the breakdown of the solicitor/client relationship. Clearly the judge was confused by Hamilton’s barrister’s vociferous attempts to keep his client. ‘Is Mr Clifford in court?’ he asked. Jeremy got up from his seat, glad to have been looking smart in a suit, and said, ‘Yes, your honour.’

He nodded to Jeremy but, saying nothing to him, turned his gaze back to the rest of the court and announced that he would grant permission for the representation order to be changed. There was a bang of the gavel and an ‘all rise’. Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. Irene smiled and said that she would be in contact with him soon.

Once out of the court Jeremy called Duncan to say that he had been successful at the hearing and that Irene would now be his solicitor. Duncan was equally delighted by the news.

We had to pay £352 for this hearing out of our own pocket as it was not covered by legal aid, but it had been well worth the investment. There was still some way to go but Jeremy felt encouraged with Irene and Duncan on his side and we decided to enjoy this small victory.

F
ouhey had also mentioned two other CD reports, which Duncan was not in possession of but were of crucial importance to Jeremy’s case. He had told Irene that his report could go ahead more or less as it was, but that she needed to apply as much pressure on the police to get immediate disclosure of the CD reports.

Eventually Irene managed to get these reports, but only on the third or fourth time of asking. They revealed that Fouhey had failed to mention ‘recovered folders’. He implied he was dealing with ‘allocated/deleted’ space, i.e. deleted but still present files. Duncan reviewed this again and reported that it was clear that Jeremy was using the computer for much of 2000. There was no presence of any sex-related material until 18 January 2001 when, in the middle of an internet banking transaction with RBS, a page came up called
www.sex-exchange.com
. It popped up between two banking pages and was not driven by Jeremy, but the same page popped up again three hours later. After that, the offending images all came in quick succession on 26 January between 9.06 and 9.09 a.m. which were scripts driving pop-ups (computer commands that are executed without the user knowing). Duncan had loaded one of the main scripts into his browser bar upon which around twelve unwanted pages popped up in a matter of seconds, most of the material relating to children. On
11 February there was another similar session, although on this occasion the material was not related to children.

In the court hearing of 20 December 2004, which Hopkins had attended and when the CPS were asked to firm up on their forensic evidence, apparently a further report had been forthcoming from Fouhey. The report was dated 21 December 2004, but this was the first time anyone in our legal team had seen it and it was definitely not in the files sent on from Hamilton. Where had it been during disclosure? Duncan said that this was most important and it would have saved him a lot of time had he seen it earlier, as it accurately set out where the images were found.

The report from Fouhey was made up of only a few lines but it was the last sentence that was the most crucial part as far as we were concerned: ‘These images would appear to have originally come from a temporary internet folder.’ Duncan agreed with this entirely, but Fouhey failed to spell out the implications of this observation in his report.

Duncan suggested to Irene that she write to the CPS, pointing out that they didn’t have a case given the fact that their own expert had stated that everything that was found was in the internet cache and that the images arrived as a result of pop-ups, which Jeremy was trying to stop from happening by installing the security software. Duncan also said that if they rejected this she could follow up with a report from him with a further statement that would bring out the embarrassing fact that the police had ignored highly suspicious material created by Gerard, whom they relied on as a witness.

Upon receipt of Duncan’s advice, Irene sent an urgent fax to the CPS in St Albans dated 12 April 2005. It read:

Before the trial was due to start, it was important for Jeremy to spend time going through the case management strategies with Irene. She would ask him questions that the prosecution would likely ask so that he could consider his responses. They would also discuss what the weaknesses and strengths of the evidence were, and so on.

On 14 April, the day before the case management hearing, Jeremy was in Irene’s office for the afternoon attending such a meeting. The questions were deep and searching, which made Jeremy irritated and wonder how it had all got this far. Despite having lived with the subject of child pornography for the last year and a half, it was still no easier to talk about and all mentions of it disgusted him deeply. His anger sapped his concentration and all he could think about was how someone was going to pay for this. He did not know if it was Hopkins persecuting him or Fouhey not doing his job properly but one thing was certain, he was going to find out no matter what the outcome of the trial.

Irene had to encourage Jeremy to carry on – every minute counted and she didn’t want to waste the afternoon. She told him that the evidence was very weak and that she was surprised that the case had got this far but, nevertheless, they had to carry on this session and others as if he was going to go to trial. She said that this was his chance to prove his innocence once and for all.

Jeremy began to settle down and about twenty minutes into the meeting, Irene’s assistant knocked on the office door and walked in. She handed Irene a sheet of paper that consisted of two typewritten lines. After she had finished reading it she looked up at Jeremy and said, ‘I am going to give you this to read and I will leave you alone for ten minutes. Then I will come back.’

Jeremy picked up the paper and looked at the two lines. He could not believe what he was seeing and had to read them several times as his eyes welled up.

The letter was from the CPS. It stated that their forensic expert agreed with Duncan and that the prosecution would be offering no evidence. All charges would be dropped and they had already informed the court.

This nightmare was actually over. There would be no three-day trial and no name in the papers. Gathering himself, Jeremy called me at work
to tell me the good news. At first I could not believe it and insisted he repeat what he had said. Then we were both crying. Shortly after he said he had to go as Irene had returned and that he would see me later.

It was late afternoon by this time and I decided to leave the office to meet Jeremy at home. The case management hearing for the next day had now become an acquittal hearing and I was definitely going to attend that. It had felt like an eternity but the day we had been waiting for had finally arrived.

That evening we celebrated with our families by booking the restaurant that we would have gone to for Jeremy’s birthday back in October 2003.

The next day we attended St Albans Crown Court with our heads held high. We met up with Irene and, for today, a Miss Beverley Cripps was to be Jeremy’s barrister for the hearing. She shook our hands and offered her congratulations as we sat down and waited to be called. Irene was staring thoughtfully into the distance, then her eyes hardened and she quietly said to us, ‘Something has been driving this case along.’ We were in no doubt about that, especially as Fouhey’s last report (the one that proved to be the downfall in the police’s case) had been sat on since before Christmas.

For the final hearing of
Regina
v.
Clifford
we filed into the courtroom to listen to the formalities and to hear the judge say the words we had been waiting sixteen months for: ‘Mr Clifford, you are free to go.’

On our way out of the courtroom Jeremy noticed that the reporter who had been following all of his hearings looked rather disgruntled as he packed away his notebook. We were again reminded how miraculous it was that in all this time we had not once been featured in the local papers.

We bid our final farewell to Irene who had been absolutely wonderful for Jeremy, both professionally and emotionally. She had been so proactive that she had ended this case in a matter of weeks – compared to the many months taken by Hamilton.

Finally, we were able to leave. Holding each other tightly, we walked down a long corridor towards the exit with the relief that it was all over.

The dark days were now behind us.

Or so we thought.