Police Trawling

ed by political affiliations, or multi-millionaire proprietors, or both.

Of all the publications in Britain which can lay a claim to such independence and which we rely on to speak out fearlessly where others remain silent, there is perhaps none which enjoys higher general regard, or exercises more invisible influence, than Private Eye.

It is therefore particularly disturbing and significant that Private Eye should, for so many years, have been one of the prime upholders of the very mythology which has undergirded police trawling operations and permitted them to flourish in the manner that they have.

It is because Private Eye, on the basis of little or no reliable evidence, took up very early a credulous position on the allegations of abuse which were made in North Wales (and in relation to Bryn Estyn in particular), that it has in practice been obliged to remain blind to the dangers of police trawling ever since.

Two weeks ago in their last issue Private Eye ran a piece “Trawling for the Truth” which brought up the practice of police trawling, and in the latest issue there are three letters on the subject, including this, from Margaret Jervis:

I’m glad to see you recognise the injustice of Operation Goldfinch [the police investigation into alleged abuse in Glamorgan]. Perhaps now the editor would be willing to retract his claim, made on BBC Question Time, that Derek Brushett, an exemplary headteacher and later inspector of social services in Wales, was a paedophile who was part of a “cover-up” of the alleged widespread goings on in North Wales children’s homes. This claim was made on the publication of the Waterhouse report in 2000.

Mr Brushett was a victim of Operation Goldfinch brought about by the prior chain of events supported by Private Eye. These were aided by the misjudged enthusiasm of Paul Foot….

Publishing the letter is probably as near as the Eye will get to admitting it got it wrong.

Now, with regard to MMR and autism….