Bob Woffinden, The Guardian, Thursday December 19, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,86 2421,00.html
WRONGFULLY JAILED
Blunkett payout for abuse libel pair
"If you know you are innocent
you just keep battling on until someone listens. There is nothing else you can do."
Christopher Lillie
The home secretary, David Blunkett, has agreed to pay compensation
to Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie, the former nursery nurses who won a libel case
after being falsely accused of child abuse.
Mr Blunkett has exonerated the pair of
criminal charges based on facts arising from a case in the civil courts. Lawyers
have also pointed out that the decision to accept the pair's claim has been reached,
for the Home Office, with exceptional speed.
Ms Reed, 31, and Mr Lillie, 38, were
originally charged with child abuse at Shieldfield nursery in central Newcastle in
1993, but were acquitted the following year after the crown offered no evidence against
them.
Tony Flynn, then the acting leader of Newcastle city council, repudiated the
verdict, and the council set up an inquiry. The report, published in November 1998,
found Ms Reed and Mr Lillie guilty of serious sexual and physical abuse of children
in their care.
The pair then brought an action for defamation against the council
and the four authors of the report, Richard Barker, Judith Jones and Roy Wardell,
who had backgrounds in social work, and Jacqui Saradjian, a clinical psychologist.
At
the end of the six-month libel trial in July, Mr Justice Eady found that the report
was "malicious" and that the authors had made "a number of fundamental claims which
they must have known to be untrue."
The judge concluded that "[Reed and Lillie] are
entitled to be vindicated and recognised as innocent citizens who should be untouched
by the stigma of child abuse." He awarded them each 200,000 pounds in damages, the
maximum possible, saying that "In view of what they have been through since November
1998, it is hardly excessive by anyone's standards." Ms Reed and Mr Lillie will now
be compensated through the Home Office ex gratia scheme for the distress and suffering
caused by the unfounded allegations from 1993-98. The payment is for wrongful imprisonment
- Mr Lillie was in jail for 10 months and Ms Reed for 14 weeks - and for being wrongfully
charged.
Since the end of the libel case, which cost Newcastle city council an estimated
5 million pounds, Ms Reed and Mr Lillie have had their names removed from lists held
by the Department of Health and the Department of Education of people deemed unsuitable
for employment with children. The council has apologised to them and produced a report
on lessons to be learned from the judgment.
The paediatrician at the centre of the
case, Camille de san Lazaro, whose diagnoses of abuse in young children were critical
in the Shieldfield case, has been suspended and is under investigation by the General
Medical Council after a complaint against her by Ms Reed's and Mr Lillie's lawyers.
Mr
Justice Eady criticised Dr Lazaro for "throwing objectivity and scientific rigour
to the winds in a highly emotional misrepresentation of the facts."
The four authors
of the report, who were paid over 350,000 pounds between them, have resisted local
media pressure to return the money.
Ms Reed and Mr Lillie said in a statement: "We
felt completely vindicated by Mr Justice Eady's judgment in July, and we are now
delighted that the home secretary has recognised our complete innocence."
Lawrence
Kormornick, who acts for Reed and Lillie in the Home Office claim, said: "My clients
have suffered irreparable damage and their lives will never be the same. I shall
now be asking the home secretary to make an interim payment."
The final amount of
compensation will be determined by the independent assessor, Lord Brennan QC, next
year.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org