![Carl-Beech](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Carl-Beech.jpg)
Operation Midland was a criminal investigation which the London
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
carried out between November 2014 and March 2016 in response to false allegations of historic child abuse made by Carl Beech.
The operation focused on investigation of several high-profile British citizens—politicians, military officers and heads of security—over claims of historic
child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whet ...
and murder.
The 18-month operation failed to find sufficient evidence to support the claims, and an inquiry into the police investigation afterwards concluded that the people involved had been falsely accused, leaving them dealing with considerable damage to their lives and reputations. A report of the inquiry's findings found that detectives and officers within the operation's taskforce had committed several errors during the course of their work, and made calls for more effective checks on allegations and accountability by police.
Following the reporting of the inquiry's findings, the Metropolitan Police were forced to make apologies to those who had been accused and to compensate them financially. The disastrous outcome of the operation further eroded the organisation's reputation, already impacted by government pressure to improve its handling of abuse cases. It was concluded that, as a consequence, genuine victims of abuse might be discouraged from coming forward. The inquiry's handling was criticised by some of the accused in Operation Midland. The
perpetrator of the false allegations, Carl Beech, later investigated for perverting the course of justice
Perverting the course of justice is an offence committed when a person prevents justice from being served on themselves or on another party. In England and Wales it is a common law offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Statu ...
, was himself found to have been a child abuser, and was eventually arrested and charged for his actions. In July 2019, he was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Background
In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal
It emerged in late 2012 that Jimmy Savile, an English media personality who had died the previous year, sexually abused hundreds of people throughout his life, most of them children but some as old as 75, and most of them female. He had been w ...
in 2012, police were facing mounting pressure to investigate any and all cases of child abuse, particularly of a historic nature, reported by victims either directly to officers, or through interviews with journalists. Growing national public outcry over the possibility of there being more VIP serial abusers concealing their actions and political campaigns demanding greater action to investigate cases of historic abuse, greatly affected the need for police to step up their efforts.
In 2014, journalist Mark Conrad came across an online blog containing allegations of a potential case of historic abuse, created by Carl Beech – a Wiltshire man born Carl Stephen Gass in 1968, who assumed the surname of his stepfather, a military officer, after his parents divorced and his mother remarried.[ Conrad made contact with Beech to discuss his blog and its contents, in which he was given detailed allegations by Beech about abuse he claimed he had suffered from a group of powerful men, including his stepfather, during his youth. During meetings with him, Conrad was taken to various locations and given accounts of what Beech had allegedly been made to endure between 1975 and 1984 at each site. Conrad made further confirmation about his abuser's identities, by supplying photos to Beech for him to identify those he had named.][
Conrad posted his inquiries into the blog and its allegations in a story for the investigative journalism website ]Exaro
''Exaro'' or ''Exaro News'' was a British website based in London between 2011 and 2016. It purportedly undertook political investigative journalism, but is now primarily known (together with its editor Mark Watts) for its direct involvement in ...
, providing Beech with the pseudonym of "Nick" to conceal his identity, as is common practice for protecting victims of abuse from their abusers.[ Conrad's story was picked up by detectives in the ]Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
, who made requests to see his source, and agreed to allow the journalist to attend their initial meeting with Beech upon Conrad arranging for him to come forward. In these meetings, Beech gave full, detailed accounts of the abuse he claimed he had been subjected to at various locations, including the Elm Guest House
The Elm Guest House was a hotel in Rocks Lane, near Barnes Common in southwest London. In a list produced by convicted fraudster Chris Fay, several prominent British men were alleged to have engaged in sexual abuse and child grooming at the Guest ...
, the Dolphin Square
Dolphin Square is a block of private apartment, flats with some ground floor business units near the River Thames in Pimlico, Westminster, London built between 1935 in architecture, 1935 and 1937 in architecture, 1937. Until the building of High ...
apartment block in Pimlico
Pimlico () is an area of Central London in the City of Westminster, built as a southern extension to neighbouring Belgravia. It is known for its garden squares and distinctive Regency architecture. Pimlico is demarcated to the north by London V ...
, the Carlton Club
The Carlton Club is a private members' club in St James's, London. It was the original home of the Conservative Party before the creation of Conservative Central Office. Membership of the club is by nomination and election only.
History
The ...
, and various other locations in the Home Counties
The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often inc ...
.
More concerning for detectives were Beech's claims that he, alongside a number of other child victims of the group, had been witness to three murders – Beech claimed that two children were killed for sexual pleasure, while a third was eliminated to intimidate the other abuse victims – in which he supplied the names of two individuals whom he stated had been murdered by the group: Vishal Mehrotra
Vishal may refer to:
People
* Vishal (name), a common Indian given name
* King Vishal, emperor of the Mahabharata era who founded the ancient city of Vishalapura
* Vishal (actor) (born 1977), Indian film actor, producer and anti-piracy activi ...
, whose abduction and the subsequent murder in the early 1980s remained unsolved, and Martin Allen
Martin James Allen (born 14 August 1965) is an English football manager and former player. He played more than 100 games as a midfielder for both Queens Park Rangers and West Ham United before finishing his playing career with Portsmouth and So ...
, whose disappearance was documented in the late 1970s. Metropolitan Police deemed Beech's accounts "credible and true", though what he told them turned out to be entirely false.
In November 2014, Metropolitan Police announced a large-scale investigation, codenamed Operation Midland, into Beech's claims. The Metropolitan recruited a taskforce of detectives and experienced officers, led by Detective Superintendent
Superintendent (Supt) is a rank in the British police and in most English-speaking Commonwealth nations. In many Commonwealth countries, the full version is superintendent of police (SP). The rank is also used in most British Overseas Territories ...
Kenny McDonald, to handle the investigation, and modelled the operation after Operation Yewtree
Operation Yewtree was a British police investigation into sexual abuse allegations, predominantly the abuse of children, against the English media personality Jimmy Savile and others. The investigation, led by the Metropolitan Police Service ( ...
, a similar investigation conducted by police that had investigated several VIPs over child abuse allegations.
Criminal investigation
Announcement and political support
Once Operation Midland was under way, the police began their focus on the men whom Beech had implicated as being members of a VIP child abuse ring – amongst those he had named included the former Members of Parliament Harvey Proctor
Keith Harvey Proctor (born 16 January 1947) is a British former Conservative Member of Parliament. A member of the Monday Club, he represented Basildon from 1979 to 1983 and Billericay from 1983 to 1987. Proctor became embroiled in a scandal i ...
and Lord Janner, the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan
Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, (25 September 193921 January 2015) was a British Conservative politician and barrister who served as a European Commissioner from 1989 to 1999. As a member of Parliament from 1974 to 1988, he ser ...
, former Prime Minister Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conserv ...
, former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall, the former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
Maurice Oldfield
Sir Maurice Oldfield (16 November 1915 – 11 March 1981) was a British intelligence officer and espionage administrator. He served as the seventh director of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 1973 to 1978.
Early life
Oldfield was b ...
, and former Director-General of MI5
The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...
Michael Hanley
Sir Michael Bowen Hanley KCB (24 February 1918 – 1 January 2001) was Director General (DG) of MI5, the United Kingdom's internal security service, from 1972 to 1978.
Career
Educated at Sedbergh School and Queen's College, Oxford where he re ...
.[
All were subsequently informed they were under investigation regarding the allegations against them; Proctor himself learnt from his solicitors that the allegation against him included claims that he had stabbed a 12-year-old boy before strangling him to death,][ holding a press conference afterwards to give the public details of the police's accounts of the claims, along with the names of those accused on similar charges.
Appeals were sent out for further information and witness reports in regards to the allegations of child abuse and possible ]homicide
Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
, alongside any other potential activities of a similar nature that could have taken place near the Houses of Parliament
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank ...
between the 1970s and 1980s. Alleged contemporaneous incidents across London and at military establishments were also placed under investigation.
Public support for the case was increased by the influence of Labour politician Tom Watson, the future deputy leader, who had campaigned in support of investigations into historic abuse. Watson had met with Beech prior to the start of the operation in regards to his Exaro story, and remained in contact with him as the operation began, showing his support of Beech's allegations by accusing the named men; when interviewed about the matter, Watson publicly spoke out against Lord Brittan, one of the accused, as being "close to evil" based on Beech's accounts. Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith
Frank Zacharias Robin Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith of Richmond Park, (born 20 January 1975) is a British politician, life peer and journalist serving as Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment si ...
spoke out in support of the allegations against Lord Brittan,[ while former Labour politician John Mann compiled a dossier of his own, containing allegations against 22 high-profile individuals, which he passed on to police.
By 2015, police were conducting extensive searches for documents and articles that could support the accusations against the accused – the homes of both Bramall in Yorkshire and Proctor on the estate of ]Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle ( ) is a faux historic castle and stately home in Leicestershire, England, situated west of the town of Grantham and northeast of Melton Mowbray. The Castle was first built immediately after the Norman Conquest of 1066 an ...
, in Leicestershire, were searched in March, while the home of Lord Brittan was raided six weeks after his death, with computers, hard drives and documents removed for examination.[
]
Concerns of falsehood
Despite a search for abuse victims connected to the allegations made by Beech, no credible individuals could be found by police. Shortly after Beech's claims of abuse were announced by Metropolitan Police, another accuser came forward to make further accusations against Lord Brittan and statements of witnessing two murders committed by the group. Although given anonymity and referenced by detectives under the name of "Darren", the Metropolitan Police questioned the validity of the claims, and eventually determined them to be potentially false.
Despite this line of inquiry no longer being feasible to pursue, the claims of "Darren" were passed over to Suffolk police to further investigate. Detectives in Suffolk interviewed six people under caution before eventually dropping the case in September 2015 on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Suffolk Police's decision to drop the accusations of "Darren" led to detectives within Operation Midland to question the justification of launching the probe into the twelve men based only on the words of Beech's accusations. Their concerns were further increased after another accuser – hidden under anonymity with the name "David" – admitted to detectives that he had been falsely claiming that he had been abused by some of the men stated in Beech's accusation, including Lord Brittan.
Journalists for the BBC investigation series ''Panorama
A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...
'', investigating the inquiry, interviewed "David" over his revelation to police, when it came to their attention. The accuser's actions to come clean to police were derived from personal guilt over their false claims – the accuser had never met the people he named; his accusations were made as merely a joke to begin with; and the claims had been supplied by "two well-known campaigners" he had met.
Concerned that police would falsely charge people for actions they had not committed based on his false accusations, "David" voiced the belief that the origins of the investigation needed to be double-checked alongside a re-examination of any case based on elements that "aren't even true".
Collapse of investigation
Fourteen months after Operation Midland began, detectives concluded there was insufficient evidence and no credible witnesses to support the continuation of investigations against the accused. The statements of those interviewed by police who had worked with the accused provided no support for the accused having been abusers during the 1970s and 1980s, and subsequent interviews with the accused revealed total denial of the accusations made against them: Proctor denied being part of any "rent-boy ring" or attending sex parties with prominent figures, while Bramall denied having "a connection or anything to do with the matters being investigated. It is not in my character or my psyche."
Public support for the investigation eventually began to wane after Proctor held a press conference to denounce the police's operation and the allegations against himself and the others, and further after the findings of both the ''Panorama'' investigation and those conducted by the ''Daily Mail''. Over the course of three months in 2016, between January and March, the Metropolitan Police began to drop the charges against each member of the accused, saying that they would take no further action against them, before eventually shutting down the police operation.
Police conduct inquiry
With no sufficient evidence being uncovered or credible witnesses being located by detectives working within Operation Midland, and growing criticism that the investigation was becoming a baseless "witch-hunt", the-then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London's Metropolitan Police Service. Sir Mark Rowley was appointed to the post on 8 July 2022 after Dame Cressida Dick announced her resignation in February.
The rank of Commissione ...
, Bernard Hogan-Howe
Bernard Hogan-Howe, Baron Hogan-Howe, (born 25 October 1957) is an English former police officer and was the head of London's Metropolitan Police as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2011 until 2017.
Born in Sheffield, Hogan-Howe ...
, ordered in February 2016 for an immediate inquiry into the operation to be conducted, a month before its conclusion. Retired judge Sir Richard Henriques
Sir Richard Henry Quixano Henriques (born 27 October 1943) is a British retired lawyer and judge who was a Justice of the High Court of England and Wales.
Early life and education
Henriques was born in south Fylde, educated at Southdene, in So ...
headed the inquiry by the Independent Office for Police Conduct
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is a non-departmental public body in England and Wales which, since 8 January 2018, is responsible for overseeing the system for handling complaints made against police forces in England and Wale ...
(IOPC) to determine the overall conduct of officers and detectives during Operation Midland. An extensive check was made into several areas, including how thoroughly police had looked into the allegations they had received from Beech, the treatment detectives had given to those accused by him, and the manner in which evidence had been acquired. Henriques' findings, released in his report in November 2016, uncovered several errors that the Metropolitan Police had made in their investigations, amongst which were:
* A failure to conduct a background check on Carl Beech – Metropolitan Police were unaware he had approached Wiltshire Police
Wiltshire Police, formerly known as Wiltshire Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Wiltshire (including the Borough of Swindon) in South West England.
The force serves 722,000 people over an area ...
two years previously, over claims that he had been a victim of abuse from Jimmy Savile. The inquiry showed that such a check would have alerted detectives that his story to them in 2014 had inconsistencies and could therefore have been identified as being false.
* Unfair treatment of the accused – a police policy designed to protect the identity of victims and not their abusers, was chiefly blamed for the group being harshly treated during the operation. The inquiry found that despite the lack of evidence to support Beech's allegations, the accused men were subjected to unwanted media attention after their identities were publicly disclosed, while detectives presumed them guilty without just cause.
* A failure to prioritise the search for important witnesses – detectives failed to secure those connected to the accused in the initial weeks due to Beech claiming discomfort on his alleged abuse, while they wasted time seeking out others of significant relevance to the investigation. Those connected to Beech had not been contacted after considerable time, while the search to cross-out possible names connected to those Beech had identified in his accounts as being murdered wasted months of police time.
* Search warrants were not legally valid – inaccurate and/or false information was supplied by detectives requesting these from magistrates. The inquiry found that these warrants were severely flawed, as detectives had failed to double-check the information supplied to them by Beech and vouched for him as a "credible" witness, thus invalidating the raids they committed against the homes of the accused.
Analysis
Henriques's report condemned the actions of the Metropolitan Police, and voiced support for, amongst other things, providing anonymity to suspected abusers until sufficient evidence had been found. In regards to those accused and investigated by the police, Henriques made it clear in his findings that the men had been "all victims of false allegations" with it firmly noted that the "presumption of innocence appears to have been set aside." The IOPC made clear that, from these mistakes uncovered, future public accountability and reassurances needed to be addressed by British police, with recommendations for possible audio recordings of court hearings for search warrants and renewed efforts to balance the acceptance of a victim's allegations with the objective need to investigate such claims.
In response to the findings made in the report, Hogan-Howe admitted that, in his opinion, the mistakes and errors that occurred during Operation Midland stemmed from an over-reaction to "apparent mistakes back in 2012 relating to revelations of very serious and serial child abuse, a mixture of public outrage and propaganda" which "put immense pressure through the Home Secretary, on the police". However, the decision by the IOPC to excuse detectives, and thus not prosecute any officer for their mistakes in Operation Midland, were heavily criticised by Proctor and several politicians – they believed the IOPC had failed in not pursuing charges on possible misconduct in order to maintain that detectives acted in "good faith" with their investigations. Henriques himself noted that, despite his findings and general acceptance of the mistakes made, the inquiries made by the IOPC had been "flawed".
Investigation impact
Damage to victims
The overall impact of Beech's allegations created considerable damage towards the lives of the men investigated by police. For some, the damage ruined their reputations and their trust with the police; in Harvey Proctor
Keith Harvey Proctor (born 16 January 1947) is a British former Conservative Member of Parliament. A member of the Monday Club, he represented Basildon from 1979 to 1983 and Billericay from 1983 to 1987. Proctor became embroiled in a scandal i ...
's case, the false claims effectively cost him his home and his job. But the emotional cost of the allegations was far greater in magnitude, both for the accused and their families, in their fight to deny and defend the accusations against them from both the police and media coverage.
For some, the cost was made more severe – some of the accused and relatives of those named, died during the course of the operation, and would never know that the accusations by detectives would be dropped. In the wake of the report into Operation Midland, Hogan-Howe was forced to personally apologise to some of the victims of the investigation for their treatment, including Bramall, Lord Brittan's widow, and Proctor.
Proctor later commented about the impact of the investigation on those falsely accused stating that: "I do believe it is profoundly un-British and unfair....I believe I have been pilloried and the Met Police service has enabled me to be wrongly depicted as a paedophile, child abuser, child murderer." He also added that for those affected, it had been the "worst things that can be said of a human being." Watson himself had to apologise to Lady Brittan for his comments against her husband, while police were forced to apologise to Martin Allen's family for mistakenly claiming that he had been murdered by the group based upon Beech's false claims.
Negative impact on future abuse investigations
Despite Hogan-Howe backing the findings of Henriques' report into the operation's conduct, including the need for anonymity protection for those accused until sufficient evidence was provided to support allegations against them, charities supporting victims of abuse and British policing voiced clear concerns that Operation Midland had created uncertainty amongst abuse victims, stating that the entire operation's conduct, and its subsequent revelation that it had been based on false information, had left genuine victims likely to question if police would consider their claims credible enough to investigate.
Watson remained adamant in support of abuse victims coming out against their abusers, though his own conduct was placed under considerable doubt after further inquiries deemed that he had pressured officers extensively to investigate Beech's claims without realising that he was being misled.
When the ''Panorama'' exposé was due to be broadcast in 2015, Metropolitan Police became "worried that this programme and other recent reporting will deter victims and witnesses from coming forward in future. Seeing an individual make allegations and then be targeted by the media is not going to encourage others to speak out".
Proctor called on Hogan-Howe to resign in the midst of the calamitous police operation, stating that Operation Midland "has had a disastrous effect on genuine complaints of child sexual abuse, both present and historical. I think it has been incredibly counterproductive....And when they established the truth – some time ago I think – they were too afraid of each other and the media to pull the plug."
Financial costs
For the Metropolitan Police, the cost of belatedly investigating Beech's allegations was severe. Over the eighteen months that Operation Midland was in effect, detectives spent over £2 million; when it was clear that false allegations had been made, further costs were incurred – the investigation into Beech's allegations, handled by Northumbria Police
Northumbria Police is a territorial police force in England. It is responsible for policing the metropolitan boroughs of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and the City of Sunderland, as well as the ceremonial county ...
, added a further £900,000, while the police were forced to compensate both Lord Bramall and Lady Brittan, at a cost of £100,000, for illegally entering their homes for documents and evidence without possessing a legal warrant. Proctor, who had been affected considerably by the investigation, lodged a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police for compensation over their behaviour against him.
Police action
Assessment of Beech allegations
One of the significant errors detectives had made in Operation Midland was to fully accept the allegations made by Carl Beech without objectively investigating the credibility of his claims. As the operation began to reach its conclusion in March 2016, the taskforce began to re-check the accounts given by Beech, and slowly began to unravel his deception. Unknown to the Metropolitan Police at the time he made his allegations, Beech had previously attempted to submit a claim of abuse to Wiltshire Police in 2012, in the wake of the Savile scandal – his claim at the time alleged that his stepfather, along with Jimmy Savile and a group of unidentified men, had abused him considerably.
Detectives who investigated these allegations eventually concluded them to be unfounded, based on certain facts – his family situation in particular threw doubt on the claims, as his stepfather was married to his mother for only a few months before they divorced, and, shortly afterwards, retired from the army on mental health grounds.
Prior to Operation Midland, Beech had continued to put forth claims that he had been abused, including appearing in a short-lived documentary series concerning the possible male victims of Savile's abuse, in order to support his allegations. He then turned to online blogs to spread his false claims. By 2014, he had become obsessed with public attention to potential historic abuse cases and their impact within British society, paying particular attention to rising conspiracy theories surrounding a possible cover-up amongst the British establishment, including the disappearance of significant documents concerning potential abuse cases.
The failure to know of Beech's dismissed claim of 2012 in Wiltshire meant that detectives unwittingly supported Beech in making a fraudulent claim for compensation in connection to the Savile scandal; Beech received around £22,000 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) is an executive agency of the UK Government. The Authority, established in 1996 and based in Glasgow, administers a compensation scheme for injuries caused to victims of violent crime in Englan ...
.
Perversion of justice investigation
Toward the end of the operation's lifespan, at the time police had begun to doubt Beech's allegations, Beech began to distance himself from the Metropolitan Police, cancelling interviews and withdrawing his further co-operation with detectives.
On 2 November 2016, the Metropolitan contacted Northumbria Police
Northumbria Police is a territorial police force in England. It is responsible for policing the metropolitan boroughs of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and the City of Sunderland, as well as the ceremonial county ...
to investigate Beech over a possible charge of perverting the course of justice. Alongside a search of his home within Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
, where he now resided, for documents and evidence, detectives made a full check of the evidence he had supplied to the Metropolitan, and requested access to his school and medical records. Their findings confirmed that Beech had made seriously false allegations that had wasted police time – unpublished works of fantasy he had written showed that Beech was a fantasist who amused himself by playing out fantasies of being a victim of violent child abuse, enjoying the attention it would bring him, with little heed for the consequences and the damage it would cause.
Many of the claims surrounding the abuse Beech had purported to have endured and the effect it had had on his life, were contradicted by the records accessed by detectives, while many areas of his account were based upon various ongoing and closed abuse cases that he had extensively researched on the internet: in particular, sketches he supplied to the Metropolitan were found to be photocopies of those that had been already published, rather than original drawings, while his murder allegations were influenced by his research of online media stories surrounding the death of Vishal Mehrotra
Vishal Mehrotra (27 September 1972 – on or after 29 July 1981) was an eight-year-old boy who was abducted from Putney, London, England, United Kingdom, on 29 July 1981. The child's partial remains were discovered 25 February 1982 on an isola ...
and the disappearance of Martin Allen
Martin Allen (19 October 1964 – probably before or in 1998) is a British teenager who mysteriously disappeared on 5 November 1979. No trace of Allen has been found and his fate remains unknown.
Background
Martin Allen and his brothers grew u ...
, leading to published journalistic speculation that these two cases may have been connected to a large child abuse ring.
Much of Beech's co-operation itself was conducted with subtle deceptions on his part – in one case, a detective unwittingly kept Beech apprised of the ongoing raids made against some of the accused, after Beech had lied to them that Exaro was working on another piece connected to child abuse; in another case, detectives unknowingly passed to Beech questions he was to have answered in their inquiries, in the belief they were actually talking to a friend of his through an e-mail address Beech supplied to them.
Detectives subsequently found that Beech himself was a prolific child abuser who was already under investigation for a number of child sex offences, including charges of voyeurism, and making and possessing indecent images of children. These offences took place whilst he was co-operating with Operation Midland, whilst simultaneously working for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a British child protection charity.
History
Victorian era
On a trip to New York in 1881, Liverpudlian businessman Thomas Agnew was inspired by a visit to the New York ...
(NSPCC). Based upon these investigations and findings, Beech was arrested for the offences, with the NSPCC, in the wake of his arrest, stripping him of his role and commitments to their organisation . Whilst bailed to appear at Worcester Crown Court for trial, Beech fled to Sweden in 2017, evading capture for two months by residing in the far north of the country, using multiple aliases, until an extensive manhunt led to his capture and subsequent extradition back to Britain.
Trial of Carl Beech
In July 2018, after extensive interviews with detectives over his unsubstantiated claims, Beech was charged with twelve counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud, alongside the child sex offences he had committed. In December, the reporting restrictions in the case were lifted, allowing him to be publicly identified.
In May 2019, Beech was placed on trial, but denied the charges against him, continuing to pursue claims that his allegations were true despite the evidence to the contrary. The motives attributed to his actions varied, and were determined to be a mixture of a need for money – Beech had debts due to his spending habits – and his desire for the attention his claims granted him. Jenny Hopkins, the prosecutor in the case, made clear that Beech's actions were those of a man who was not a victim, but rather a "manipulative, prolific, deceitful liar".
On 22 July 2019, Beech was found guilty of all charges, and sentenced four days later to 18 years in prison.
Sources
{{Child sexual abuse in the UK
Edward Heath
False allegations of sex crimes
Police misconduct in England
M
Political sex scandals in the United Kingdom
Reports of the Metropolitan Police Service
Scandals in England
2014 crimes in the United Kingdom
2019 crimes in the United Kingdom