1. Ms Smith also commented on this letter. She said that she had no reason to believe that Professor Friedrich had not overcome any difficulties he had mentioned in watching the videos in European format. She certainly believed that he had watched them.

    2. Dr Sandra Hewitt and Dr Hamish Cameron: Child behaviour

  2. The experts dealing with interpretation of child behaviour, and the extent to which certain manifestations might or might not be linked to sexual or other abuse, were Dr Sandra Hewitt for the Defendants and Dr Hamish Cameron for the Claimants. Each of them considered individual children and the available information about their behavioural patterns, but also addressed more general issues.

  3. Dr Hewitt records how she would often encounter very young children and experience difficulty in structuring interviews in a way that would efficiently extract reliable information. She explained that this was, or appeared to be, because the children were lacking in the language skills (and presumably also concepts) that were necessary to communicate what she wanted to know. She then decided that she could regard behaviour as "the language they did have". She claimed that "suddenly" it was easy to understand children. "Behaviours are the mirrors of young children’s experiences. In assessing cases of pre-school sexual abuse, that is where we were to look for information about a child’s past".

  4. As to the 28 Shieldfield cases she reviewed, she referred to a recurring leitmotiv ("something very powerful") which they had in common. She claims that they were caused "massive dysregulation from their stable entrance behaviours". She identified eight issues to be considered:

    5. 1) The combination of significant trauma and atypical sexual behaviours.

    2) A commonality of fears, actions and references to places (not normally experienced in a random sampling of abused children) pointing to a common source.

    3) She thought old memories were triggered and recalled in detail following a medical examination or formal interview. She describes "remarkable responses" to such events that were "unprompted and unstructured", thus emerging "with emotion and content intact".

    4) Consistency of recall "not only within their accounts, but also across many children".

    5) The commonality of atypical sexual behaviours she regards as "virtually impossible" without a common source.

    6) She excluded the hypotheses of cross-contamination and suggestive questioning in her child-by-child analysis.

    7) The commonality of atypical symptoms across so many children defies the probability of other causes than the origin of the trauma at Shieldfield.

    8) In sum, she concludes, the cases reviewed match a "research and practice population of sexually abused pre-school children" but, in any event, the rich behavioural data cannot be explained by any other reasonable hypothesis than the experience of sexual abuse at Shieldfield Nursery during the time the children were in the Red Room with Lillie and Reed as their nurses.

  5. This list gives rise to questions that I shall have to consider carefully, namely (1) the extent to which these eight issues are truly distinct from each other, (2) whether significant questions have been begged, and (3) whether Dr Hewitt has been operating on correct factual data. (For example, Child 5, Child 11, Child 14 and Child 31 were never in the Red Room.)

  6. Once again, the experts divided more or less on "party lines". Dr Cameron was asked to consider a sample of only seven Shieldfield children. While he agrees that sexualised behaviour in two to four year olds, provided it is "persistent, intrusive and seems ‘driven’ within the child", should alert one to the possibility of sexual abuse, neither this nor any other behaviour can be regarded as probative or diagnostic of sexual abuse. So much depends on context. He highlighted the very important point that one cannot come up with a responsible diagnosis on paper without having seen the child and investigating his or her particular circumstances. That is something Dr Cameron is used to doing either clinically or for the purposes of family litigation.

  7. Some of the behaviours noted at Shieldfield are neither probative nor indicative of sexual abuse in two to four year olds (e.g. nightmares or disturbed sleep, lack of speech development, fear of dogs, becoming upset in certain locations, fear of clowns or beards, pre-occupation with death, aggression, bed-wetting or soiling). In the course of cross-examination, Dr Hewitt was quite prepared to put the issue of clowns to one side as irrelevant to the matter of child abuse.

  8. On the other hand, unusual sexual posturing or play can at least be indicative of sexual abuse. It is thus important to be careful about what is classified as "sexual" in this context – a matter I shall turn to again.

  9. It is necessary to allow for "separation anxiety" when starting at a nursery, or changing rooms within it, as a possible explanation for behavioural changes or regression. Moreover, behavioural deterioration arising after questioning might connote the awakening of dormant memories of past abuse or, alternatively, the arousal through clumsy interviewing of fears about certain individuals, if portrayed as threatening or wicked people. It is inevitably the case that a belief that one (or, in the case of a parent, one’s child) has been subjected to wicked behaviour can in itself lead to trauma and severe disruption of one’s life.

  10. While Dr Cameron recognises that it is established knowledge that one of the techniques used by paedophiles is that of threatening or cajoling their victims into silence, he regards it as unrealistic to suppose such a technique could have worked in relation to all of these children, so as to prevent the making of contemporaneous complaints. He considers that a significant proportion, at least, would have complained immediately to a principal carer or trusted relative. He expressed "grave doubt" as to whether any of the relevant children’s remarks could be construed as indicating coercive threats or enticement. It is his opinion, in respect of the children he reviewed, that such remarks as could be interpreted as reflecting enticement, or coercive threats, were so inconclusive that a reader would have to construct that scenario out of very few facts. In this context, it is naturally worth remembering how widely the Review Team cast the net of the Claimants’ alleged abuse. They did not in the Report confine their findings to the 27 children in this case. Far from it. They suggest that the abuse was much wider. On Dr Cameron’s thesis, therefore, it becomes even less likely that all the supposed victims would have remained silent.

  11. Dr Cameron considers that it is important to focus first on more common or expected causes for clusters of symptoms in young children, before attributing an explanation which is not within ordinary experience. Each child has to be considered individually, with particular reference to family background and personal circumstances. It is also important to recall that the large majority of children suffering from sexual abuse incur it within the family. "Stranger sexual abuse is less common. Even rarer is sexual abuse by an unrelated man and woman working together to organise and systematically sexually abuse a large number of children in their care". Unlike Dr Hewitt, Dr Cameron does not regard the recurring themes in the children’s "disclosures" as pointing inexorably to abuse by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. He refers to some of these notions (e.g. "flats", "lifts", "an old woman", "nakedness in bed together") as having an "interactive imaginative quality, typical of childhood story telling under questioning". He went, originally, so far as to offer the opinion that, focusing specifically on the behaviours described, the balance would be 90:10 in favour of common place explanations rather than a planned sexual abuse programme engineered by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed which, in his view, remains no more than a "possibility". (I believe, in the witness box, he accepted that putting a precise figure to the probabilities was unsatisfactory and that, in any event, if one were to assess the evidence separately in relation to each child the probabilities would vary.) In coming to an overall conclusion, of course, Dr Cameron accepts that one has to factor in to the exercise other forms of evidence and, in particular, statements by the children and any physical findings by paediatricians.

  12. Because he was taking a cautious approach rather than claiming certainty, very little was added to the overall picture by his oral evidence on 16-18 April. But I found him helpful, cautious and objective. It is true that he started off a little bumptiously and cracked a few jokes, but he soon got into his stride. His primary message was to warn about leaping to conclusions too readily – especially in the light of the Cleveland inquiry to which he had given expert assistance 15 years ago. One needs to approach the matter in an open-minded way and without being wedded to pre-conceptions or any idée fixe. He was referring particularly to Dr Marietta Higgs and her apparent obsession with reflex anal dilatation. He said that one always needs to be watchful for any professional who was narrowly specialised and over-zealous in diagnosis. That is wise advice and I bore it in mind.

  13. There was an interesting example of the need for full information in the course of his cross-examination. His attention was directed to Child 23 whose video material he had been asked to watch before giving evidence. He said that it was necessary to consider carefully all possible explanations for her symptoms. He had not been given her GP notes and was, therefore, unaware of her history of urinary problems and associated soreness. When told about this, he immediately recognised that it was a material factor. This is simply one of many examples in the case where the addition of one new category of information about a child can significantly shift the balance of probabilities derived from first impressions.

  14. There were a number of significant general propositions put forward by Dr Cameron and underlined with considerable conviction. First, at the beginning of his evidence on 18 April, he referred to the situation where a mother may suddenly come to believe (as a result, say, of a parents’ meeting or some other conversation) that her child has been abused, and thereafter becomes obsessively committed to an idea which had not previously entered her head. This is, as it were, the "zeal of the converted":

    15. "A difficulty, my Lord, is that that kind of sudden understanding, the flash of understanding comes with such force into the mind of the mother, a very reasonably concerned mother about her child, is often so strong that [it] becomes really a very entrenched belief which has far more energy from the emotions attached to it than from the logic attached to it, but I agree that it is understandable and reasonable presumption that the mother leapt to. But it is the way it sticks in the mind. It is the sudden conversion of belief which is driven emotionally as much as by intellect".

  15. Secondly, Dr Cameron was asked by Miss Page about the possibility for diagnosing child abuse without the opportunity of seeing the relevant child or children or of investigating the family circumstances. He made the following point:

    16. "I actually think paper exercises are very difficult things to do and fraught with risk in drawing conclusions. I like the approach that Dr Hewitt talked about the interview and I particularly like when she says [in her book] ‘to schedule at least a 2 hour intake period’. ‘At least’ is in my experience quite the operative word. You often need a long time to really get the feel of the child. A paper exercise can take you so far, but actually it is in my view a very risky business going and drawing conclusions from papers alone. That is the difficulty I have myself found in giving evidence in this case – that I have been asked about behaviours on paper, and that is it, and I think it has come out in cross-examination. This is – it is a limited exercise".

  16. Shortly afterwards, Dr Cameron gave evidence which is fundamentally important for this case and it is therefore desirable that I should set it out in extenso:

    17. "Did it occur or did it not occur? What I was trying to say is that, as I understand this case, Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed are alleged to have abused a group of children, a substantial group of children, so that the children themselves are the focus of having been abused, and the case emerges out of that group phenomenon. The parents say ‘our child has been abused’. The alternative view is that there is still a group phenomenon but the group phenomenon is based on a collective belief that the children have been abused. The first one, the child has actually been abused. The second one, is there is a collective belief the children have been abused. When that collective belief takes root in a group it is a very powerful force. It actually holds people in a group, who mutually reinforce each other and it is quite difficult for professionals, unless they are very experienced, to stand back from the weight of that belief system. Now, that is the sort of belief system that child psychiatrists (of whom a number have been mentioned in this case) are familiar [with] when parents have a belief about a sickness in their child. That is the factitious disease by proxy idea: ‘I believe my child is ill or harmed, therefore my child is ill or harmed, and my neighbour’s child is ill or harmed, and my neighbour’s neighbour’s child is ill or harmed. All of us together as parents who have a child at this nursery – our children are ill or harmed’. What is striking is that when one looks at that group of parents who come to occupy that belief, you find that others within the group will not say the same and that they refuse to join that group. They say, ‘No, no, we do not think anything went on’, but the belief system is a very powerful one. So when I am talking about the alternative hypothesis I am not trying to have a ‘yes – no, were these children abused or not?’ I am trying to say these children have suffered harm. Either these children have been physically and sexually abused, as described, and they had actually been harmed, or the belief system in the group of parents, supported sometimes by professionals, has led to the perception that they had been harmed, and that perception has itself been abusive to the children. These children have been emotionally abused by the collective belief. So that is what I am saying, when I just wanted to set out the context within which I would analyse the case".

  17. I asked Dr Cameron to elaborate further, so as to give any examples either from his own experience or from the literature of such a group phenomenon in operation. He told me that he had come across it himself in the context of new religious movements and, in particular, the "Children of God" case in which he was involved. He said that there was a collective belief system about the children within that organisation. He did, however, refer to other examples in the literature such as the Kelly Michaels case and the Little Rascals case in the United States. As to this jurisdiction, reference was also made to Re E [1991] 1 F.L.R. 420 (Scott Baker J) and Rochdale Borough Council v. A [1991] 2 F.L.R. 192 (Douglas Brown J). Both of these cases are well known and I do not think anything would be gained by my summarising them or addressing parallels with, or distinctions from, the present case. Each factual situation must be addressed individually.

  18. Dr Sandra Hewitt found herself in a difficult position because she was being asked to offer an opinion in a case for which, as she put it, there were "no road maps". She agreed with Dr Cameron as to the limitations upon a purely paper exercise such as that she was required to carry out. She did not regard it as her function to "diagnose" child abuse in this case. She accepted that the decision as to whether abuse had taken place at Shieldfield could only be taken by the court in the light of the overall evidence. Since, however, she had been asked by the Defendants’ solicitors to offer an opinion on the behaviour of children in this case, she would do her best. But she emphasised that it was an artificial one-off exercise, since not only was her task to be carried out on the papers alone but it was to be confined to behaviour (thus excluding many potentially relevant factors).

  19. This was a perfectly reasonable stance to take, but it seemed a little difficult to reconcile with what she had actually said in her report. For example, Miss Page referred her to page 21, where she appeared to be offering something very like a diagnosis in respect of Child 2:

    20. "Child 2’s patterns, over time and across situations, strongly indicate that she suffered trauma as a result of the placement with Lillie and Reed. Her behaviours, coupled with [her] statements best identify the source of trauma".

  20. Dr Hewitt would not accept that this could be described as a "diagnosis"; she preferred to call it "a conclusion from data". This is, of course, to some extent a matter of semantics.

  21. It is quite obvious to me that Dr Hewitt took a great deal of time and trouble over preparing a report in this case and that she was determined to be as objective and helpful as she could. I must pay particular attention, however, to the fact that she (like the other experts) finds herself in unusual circumstances in this case. The exercise is inevitably an artificial one because she had to work on what she called "retrospective data" without seeing the children or having an opportunity to establish the complete factual background in relation to any child. Nevertheless, her terms of reference may somewhat obscure the limited nature of the enterprise. She referred me to a passage on page 9 of her report, which included the request from the Defendants’ solicitors that she should "… express an opinion as to the extent to which any inference may reliably be drawn from the behaviours of those 28 children as to (a) whether they have been abused; and if so (b) what form the abuse took; (c) when the abuse took place and (d) the setting in which the abuse occurred". It is noteworthy that Dr Hewitt was not, in principle, prepared to take what has been described as a "leap too far". She has rightly emphasised that all she could do was to assist the court by reference to the limited data in the light of her experience. I am grateful for that assistance but naturally I can only regard anything in her report that looks like a "conclusion" or a "diagnosis" as of limited value.

  22. Dr Hewitt focused very much in her report on the concept of traumatic stress disorder and referred to the recognised criteria for understanding trauma responses in young children to be found in the Zero to Three Diagnostic Classification Manual. As I have already made clear, Dr Cameron has pointed to the danger of looking at symptoms sometimes associated with traumatic stress disorder and working backwards from them to a conclusion that, in any given case, a trauma must have taken place. In the course of his re-examination, he said this:

    23. "I have great respect for Dr Sandra Hewitt’s work, my Lord, but I have to say that when children have experienced a major trauma at the hands of carers they will actually tell people that they have experienced something awful and frightening and in my view if trauma (by that I mean menacing violent actions towards the child) is fundamental to the assessment, and there is no evidence of that, no satisfactory evidence of that whatsoever… then I cannot professionally see how there can be a post traumatic stress disorder assumption. You have to have a trauma before you can have a PTSD. If you diagnose PTSD in a child and then say, ‘therefore there must have been a trauma’, that is not logical and it does not add up".

  23. This warning ties in with the content of a chapter in Expert Witnesses in Child Abuse Cases: What Can and Should Be Said in Court published by the American Psychological Association under the editorship of Stephen Ceci and Helene Hembrooke. The chapter is by Celia B. Fisher and Katherine A. Whiting, How valid are child sexual abuse validations? It contains the following relevant paragraphs, at p.166:

    24. "Psychologists applying the PTSD diagnosis as validation of child sexual abuse fail to recognise the tautological nature of this position (Fisher, 1995). According to DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), the essential feature of PTSD is ‘the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure, to an extreme traumatic stress’ (italics added, p.424). Thus, the validity of the PTSD diagnosis depends on first establishing that the child has been a victim of an uncommon trauma. Accordingly, to meet ethical and forensic demands for scientifically based evidence of child sexual abuse, a PTSD diagnosis cannot be established in the absence of independent documentation that sexual abuse has occurred.

    In some cases, PTSD-like behaviors may be a consequence of the stressful nature of repeated interrogations by investigators, parents, therapists, or some combination of these people who attempted to substantiate whether sexual abuse had occurred (Fisher, 1995; Gardner, 1994). For example, in some instances, overenthusiastic social workers, police investigators, or psychologists may attempt to elicit from a child information regarding suspected abuse by describing lurid accusations made by others about the accused (see Bruck, Ceci, & Rosenthal, 1995). According to DSM-IV, learning about serious harm experienced by family or close friends may also trigger PTSD symptoms. Gardner suggested that court-appointed evaluators of child sexual abuse should attend to the temporal framework of PTSD symptoms, thereby distinguishing between abuse-related PTSD symptoms due to a sexual abuse trauma (usually present, to varying degrees, during and immediately following the discontinuation of the abuse) and investigatory-related PTSD that does not appear until after the disclosure and interrogation. Other investigatory-related PTSD-like symptoms, such as repetitive play in a therapist’s office, may be a product of the repetitive nature of the therapy sessions rather than a pathological acting out of a traumatic event (Fisher, 1995)."

  24. Against that background, it seems to me, Dr Hewitt’s resort to Zero to Three has to be approached with caution. I did not understand her to disagree. As Miss Page pointed out, at an early stage in cross-examination, that document in itself quite expressly makes clear that it is not intended to be used in the context of any legal application. She accepted this, although she agreed that with the benefit of hindsight it would have been better to make that clear in the body of her report. She emphasised that she was not using the criteria in a standardised way, but merely as an aid to assisting the court in these very unusual circumstances. She explained how she came to use it shortly before her report was due for delivery in the middle of December:

    25. "I was trying, as I said earlier, to look at this data through the framework that I used to analyse the cases or to organise the cases that come to my practice – the prior history, ‘rule out’ factors, objective measures – and somewhere, about a week and a half before my report was due, I was feeling very crazy because none of the data … I could not manage it, there was no way I could get it into conceptual framework that made sense to me and then suddenly I realised I could not stay with the framework – as it was not working and I did not know where to go. Based on what I had read and the cluster of symptoms which I was concerned about, it felt to me that the best framework was going to be some measure of traumatic stress behaviours that are seen with children that comes out of a reliable source. Now, I went to the conference at Zero to Three when the sequelae to some earlier research were discussed and ended up being in this version of the manual with the traumatic stress disorder and I thought, I bet if I look at this data, organised around traumatic stress factors and central behaviour factors, it may make some sense, and in fact that is what I did. Suddenly, that lens organised the data for me. It is from looking at that, I could then reach the conclusions that the combination of traumatic stress behaviours, coupled with the atypical and unusual level of sexual behaviours would come together to say there has been a traumatic history for this child".

  25. Shortly afterwards, Dr Hewitt emphasised the special use she was making of these criteria:

    26. "If I am not to make a diagnosis, then I am not using this in that sense to frame a diagnosis, I am using it in combination with factors. I am using this cluster of behaviours which ends up being at a level which is significant. It is across the various types of behaviour that children can exhibit and across a number of sub-categories".

  26. She was very clear that the manual was intended for assisting the diagnosis in individual cases – not to have application in the present circumstances for what she called "a review of group data". It follows that I must look at the available data for each child separately and weigh any of the behavioural symptoms in the individual context (remembering that there is no cluster of symptoms diagnostic of sexual abuse).

  27. Miss Page took Dr Hewitt through her conclusions relating to a number of individual children (which looked remarkably like diagnoses of sexual abuse). There is no need for me to reflect them in detail in this judgment, but she focused particularly on Children 1, 2, 11, 14, 21 and 24. She demonstrated in doing so that (despite her terms of reference, however artificial) Dr Hewitt had in fact taken into account matters other than behaviour.

  28. She purported on a number of occasions also to take into account statements, but without having seen the videos, up to that time, or without having the full context of the statements before her. Miss Page suggested that Dr Hewitt had indeed made a "leap too far" and, what is more, that she had displayed bias in her methodology. This may have been partly a factor of her limited information, and I am sure it was unconscious. Nevertheless, Miss Page was clearly right about this. There were a number of examples, but perhaps the most striking was Dr Hewitt’s classification of vulval soreness as an "unusual sexual behavior" with reference to Child 2. It was also curious that this should have been so readily accepted as a pointer to Red Room abuse since Dr Hewitt herself listed the symptoms before as well as during the Red Room period. When pressed, Dr Hewitt agreed that her report was "misleading" at least in this respect. No doubt all the experts are very busy people, but by December 2001 when the reports of Dr Friedrich and Dr Hewitt were prepared it must have been apparent how grave the allegations were that the Review Team had chosen to make. Sloppiness of this kind is not good enough.

  29. Dr Hewitt explained that her very strong conclusion in respect of Child 2 (that she had suffered trauma while in the Red Room) had been reached by combining behaviour with statements. I can readily understand the artificiality of separating out behaviour and statements. I noted the same problem with Professor Friedrich, who was supposed to be concentrating on verbal disclosures but decided to refer to behaviour in addition (for reasons I have explained). Nevertheless, it was a fair point for Miss Page to make that Dr Hewitt did not make clear when and to what extent she had departed from her specifically behavioural brief. Miss Page pointed out to her that the picture she had been given was somewhat incomplete since the mother of Child 2 had in May 1993 described her as "loving" the Nursery at the material time (i.e. prior to July 1992).

  30. One of the more surprising claims of Dr Hewitt was that the court could rule out cross-contamination as a factor in respect of certain children (including Child 2). Miss Page suggested this as an indicator of bias, but more importantly it was a matter outside Dr Hewitt’s expertise and she lacked a good deal of relevant information now before this court. In any case, although she tried to explain how she had ruled out cross-contamination (on the morning of 19 April), I found this part of her evidence difficult to follow.

  31. Once again, I shall have to address the opinions expressed by these two experts on child behaviour, in relation to the individual children, when I come to assess the evidence relied on for the purposes of justification.

    32. 8) The evidence of multiple abuse

    General Introduction

  32. I shall now turn to consider the evidence relied upon by those Defendants pleading justification to support the primary allegations of rape and indecent assault, child by child, as well as the secondary (but obviously grave) allegations of involvement in a paedophile ring and the supply of pornography.

  33. Ms Judith Jones made the point in her evidence (probably regarded in some quarters as controversial, and certainly of some sensitivity) that, since this was primarily a social services nursery, one would expect a significant proportion of the children to be suffering from some form of abuse simply on the basis of ordinary experience. She would also have expected to find some of them on the child protection register. What surprised her in the present case was how few, relatively, were so registered. It is clearly necessary to factor in this evidence to the exercise of weighing what is or is not inherently unlikely, in the context of applying the principles discussed by Lord Nicholls in Re H (cited at paragraph 358 above).

  34. As I have noted elsewhere (paragraph 481), Dr Cameron made the very telling point that, over a large cohort of supposedly abused children, it would be quite astonishing if threats by abusers could be so effective as to prevent any single child from making a contemporaneous complaint. One of the factors mentioned by Holland J in July 1994 was that none of the indictment children (subject to one possible minor qualification) had made such a complaint. Given that the Review Team have now airily accused Mr Lillie and Miss Reed of abuse on such a massive scale, the absence of contemporaneous complaints has become a major factor. It is true that the Review Team brushed it aside, on the basis of speculation, but I cannot take such an approach. Such a widespread and deafening silence prior to April 1993 could be explained on the basis that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had so skilfully terrified dozens of children that they were unwilling to disclose ongoing abuse to parents/carers, but Dr Cameron thinks it highly unlikely. So do I. The relevance of the point is that I propose to look carefully at each and every case to seek some solid evidence of threats by Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed that might account for the child’s silence.

  35. Miss Page sought to introduce similar evidence given by Professor Bruck in a supplementary report served in June 2002. Her focus was not so much upon threats to child victims but rather to the ability of children, in general, to "keep secrets". She cited a number of studies, from which I believe it is fair to say that the general import is that a significantly high proportion of children appear to be unable to comply with requests not to reveal matters which they have been asked to keep secret and, what is more, that the proportion would appear to increase inversely to age.

  36. Professor Bruck suggested in the light of the papers she cited (and indeed some others which were not available for production) that the data indicate that at least 50% or more of children under the age of five will tell a secret even if asked not to by their mother or a familiar adult.

  37. It is unnecessary to rehearse the underlying materials in any detail, but one study might have appeared to be of particular interest which focused particularly upon children aged three to five. They witnessed "a male confederate" break a particular glass. He instructed the children not to tell anything about the incident. Some of the children were offered a reward not to tell; some were told "sternly" not to reveal the information; others were told it would be "fun not to tell". Most of the children who were simply instructed not to tell revealed the secret in due course (86% of three year olds and 57% of five year olds). Those who were instructed not to tell "sternly" appeared more reluctant to reveal the information, but the pattern was similar (64% of three year olds and 50% of five year olds).

  38. Another factor which emerged from research by Douglas Peters and colleagues was that there is a tendency to keep a secret only for so long as the "transgressor" is present (see Jeopardy in the Courtroom, Ceci and Bruck, 1995, p.145). Another trend revealed by research (Thompson, Clarke-Stewart and Lepore, 1997, What did the Janitor do?) is that, perhaps not surprisingly, there is a greater initial reluctance to reveal such information when questioned in a neutral manner (e.g. "What happened?"). Leading questions, of one sort or another, are more likely to reveal "a secret" without delay. Even, however, neutral interviewing, if pressed further, appeared to lead to revelation.

  39. Shortly after I received this supplementary report, Mr Bishop responded and it became clear that he did not accept that what Professor Bruck was saying amounted to a fair representation of the current state of research. It would not be right for me to take these matters into account without Mr Bishop having an opportunity to cross-examine or call evidence in rebuttal.

  40. I naturally appreciate, in any event, that these experiments have to be approached with caution. Not only are they inherently artificial, but the factual circumstances are very far removed from the issues with which I am concerned in this case. It would, therefore, clearly be appropriate to approach this information conservatively and to allow a considerable discount when addressing percentages. I propose, therefore, to concentrate on the evidence of Dr Cameron, to which I have already referred, which suggests strongly that the scenario for which the Review Team would contend (upwards of 60 children being cowed or cajoled into silence) is at least as unlikely as untutored common sense would suggest.

  41. A further general point arises from the evidence of Lorraine Kelly. She has been Mr Lillie’s partner over the last decade. It is necessary to emphasise that it has never once been suggested, or even hinted in the Review Team’s case, that Miss Kelly was implicated in any way in criminal or paedophile activity. She gave evidence about the flat they shared in Red Barns from December 1992. It will be remembered that a constant theme in the pleas of justification advanced on behalf of the Review Team (and until 23 February also by the Newcastle Chronicle) was that children were taken to "Chris’s flat" and that abuse took place there. Allegations are variously made that on such occasions people took baths, indulged in sexual intercourse, rape, buggery, oral sex, and also sadistic assaults with knives, forks, spoons and scissors. There was urination, ejaculation and bleeding. Yet not once did Lorraine Kelly come home before, during or after December 1992 and find any signs of disturbance. There were no blood stains, no seminal stains on carpets or bedding, no wet sheets or clothing. There was not so much as a damp towel. There was nothing.

  42. She was cross-examined by Miss Sharp (still participating at that stage for the Chronicle) on the basis that she must surely have found disturbed or damp towels because a friend of hers came sometimes to exercise and feed the dog – and he surely must have washed his hands from time to time. It did not seem to strike any particular chord with Miss Kelly. But even if he did wash his hands, that would hardly advance the case Miss Sharp was then putting forward of regular orgies and sadism.

  43. Naturally, Miss Kelly’s evidence would not trouble the Review Team. Ms Jones, for example, took the line that if a child refers to "Chris’s house" that may not actually mean Chris’s home at all. It might simply be a reference to Mr Lillie’s domain in the Nursery. If this reasoning is taken to its logical conclusion, it might well apply to every reference made to "Chris’s house". Therefore, presumably, one should take every such allegation with a pinch of salt. Moreover, if it is reasonable for me to treat one or more of the "disclosures" about Chris’s house as truly relating to the Nursery, one has to address the alternative scenario that the orgiastic behaviour alleged took place in the Nursery without parents or other members of staff spotting anything amiss. The Jason Dabbs case affords no precedent for anything remotely like that.

  44. As Detective Constable Helen Foster confirmed, in evidence on 22 May, the immediate neighbour at Red Barns had been shocked when she found out about the allegations because she had heard and seen nothing suspicious. It is hardly realistic to suppose that if children and/or paedophiles were trooping in and out of Miss Kelly’s flat she would have remained oblivious. The police were given this important piece of evidence but it seems to have been accorded no significance. Nowadays, Miss Foster acknowledged, a statement would have been taken from the neighbour.

  45. Of course, one could overcome these difficulties if one transfers all these abusive trips to an unspecified flat (perhaps with a lift) or a house (perhaps with a black door or a red door) in some other location within push-chair distance of the Nursery. That is a very attractive option to the Defendants because not only is it difficult to prove a negative but virtually impossible to destroy a chimaera. The problem I face is that this would be purely speculative. It is not simply that there is no corroboration for such allegations (although that is certainly true). In the present context, I am postulating (at Ms Jones’ invitation) that one rejects all references to "Chris’s house" as being inaccurate. I am therefore not concerned with corroborating a child’s account at all (since it is ex hypothesi wrong). I am not prepared to conjure up such flats or houses, to serve as imaginary substitutes for "Chris’s house", out of thin air. There is simply no solid evidence. There are some statements attributed to children which I shall have to consider in individual cases, as I come to them, but they all have to be assessed according to the circumstances of each particular case – including Ms Jones’ warning that they are not necessarily to be taken literally.

  46. One of the general propositions to which great significance was at one time attached by the Defendants was that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed were supposed to have an exceptionally high ratio of recorded accidents as compared to other staff. The theory was that they were recording bogus accidents to cover abuse. What was said at page 244 of the Report was:

    47. "There appears to be the possibility that Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed abused children and covered their activities by recording fictional accidents to disguise either physical signs of abuse or distress caused by the abuse".

  47. This fell apart as soon as it was examined. Not only was there no correlation between the "accidents" and reported examples of abuse, but the Defendants were not even comparing like with like. The statistics they produced made no allowance for the fact that some of the comparator staff had only been in the Nursery for a relatively brief period, or that others were responsible for less vulnerable age groups, or even primarily for administrative duties rather than the direct care of children. It was utterly spurious. No more was heard of it (apart from a brief mention in closing submissions). Yet it was used both in the Report and in the Defendants’ case on justification. In court, one could see the inadequacy of the allegation and discount it. Unfortunately, however, the readers of the Report were not in a position to see through the Review Team’s "statistics" because, as in other instances, the reasoning is not set out for readers to make their own assessment. They were supposed to take it all on trust. They were presented with a picture of careful, planned and long-term manipulation of records to disguise paedophile activity. This would naturally carry conviction, on a superficial level, because paedophiles are widely perceived as cunning and manipulative. Ironically, of course, it does not tie in with Mr Dervin’s sceptical assessment of the two Claimants as being "among the most disorganised and chaotic abusers in the history of child care".

  48. There is another aspect of the regime at Shieldfield at the material time that needs to be borne in mind when assessing opportunities for abuse and the likelihood, or otherwise, of its having occurred. I am prepared to accept that there were legitimate matters for criticism and that later the Newcastle City Council attempted to make radical improvements. In particular, so far as the present Claimants are concerned, there was a lack of accurate record-keeping as to when and with whom children left the Nursery premises. As one parent pointed out, had there been a serious fire on the premises, it would not have been easy to pin down at any given period who was supposed to be on the premises and who had gone out (for whatever reason). Several parents spoke of having come to collect a child and finding that he or she was not there and of having to wait for staff to bring them back. Moreover, on some such occasions, no one on the premises (including managerial staff) was able to say where they had gone or when they were due back. That was obviously not satisfactory, to say the least. Not surprisingly, much has been made of this by the Defendants in suggesting that such occasions provided opportunities for abuse outside the premises.

  49. Another aspect of the "chaotic" administrative arrangements often referred to was the problem of clothes being muddled up. Children sometimes wore different clothes when collected from those worn were delivered at the Nursery that day. On occasions, these were ill fitting and uncomfortable. No one disputed that there were sometimes "accidents", requiring a change of garments, or that children’s clothes were sometimes wet from playing with water, or dirty from playing inside or outside, or from food being dropped over them. The criticism was that there seemed to be no system, and everything was done on a "hit or miss" footing. Again, this is relied upon as affording opportunities to cover up abuse. Although never quite spelt out, I understand Mr Bishop’s point to be that evidence of abuse, such as bleeding or seminal staining, could be removed and substitute clothing provided. On the other hand, I believe that these "chaotic" elements of the Shieldfield regime were what Mr Dervin had in mind when he expressed scepticism (as I find that he did) in his letter of 22 January; in other words, I believe he was expressing doubt whether any cunning and manipulative paedophile would ever be so "chaotic" about covering tracks. One of the more bizarre allegations is that a small boy was delivered in the morning wearing his new football strip and came home in a pink dress and cardigan. Neither Claimant would accept this was possible. They certainly knew nothing of it. On the other hand, it is not the sort of thing a mother would forget. If it did happen, however, it hardly has the stamp of a manipulative paedophile trying to cover his/her tracks.

  50. In the light of the allegations of widespread abuse outside the Nursery premises, in unspecified flats or houses, it is necessary to have in mind some background context as to the typical daily regime at Shieldfield during the relevant period.

  51. I quite appreciate that, as the Review Team have emphasised, it is rarely possible from contemporaneous records to identify when children were taken out of the nursery, where they were taken, or how many children went at any one time. It is fair to say that record-keeping was, to say the least, sketchy. Nonetheless, I have received evidence from Mr Lillie and Miss Reed about the general pattern of daily routines and activities which was, at least in general terms, not the subject of challenge.

  52. There was in operation a shift system, with nursery officers tending to alternate the shifts between themselves from day to day. Accordingly, Mr Lillie would be on early shift (beginning at 8.00 a.m.) one day, whereas Miss Reed would take that slot the next. I was told that the manager and assistant manager also alternated their shifts in a similar manner.

  53. The building was normally opened at 8.00 a.m. Those present at that time would be the early shift nursery officers, the cleaners, the cook and one of the managers. Those children who arrived early would all be ushered into one room. The other staff and the majority of children would arrive at about 9.00 a.m. At that stage, the children were moved to their individual rooms. The next event was a trolley round bringing milk and biscuits for everyone at about 9.30 a.m. It was quite usual for some parents to stay on the premises and chat rather than leaving immediately after the child was delivered.

  54. It was expected that the individual rooms would be set up for the day’s activities by about 9.30 a.m., so as to be ready for 10.00 a.m., by which time it was anticipated that all those arriving for the morning session would be in place.

  55. When Mr Lillie and Miss Reed were in the Red Room (i.e. from approximately the end of February 1992 until April/May 1993), it was generally the case that they would be joined once or twice a week by a home care worker. Such persons were employed by the Social Services Department for the specific purpose of looking after a child if the parent/carer needed a rest for some reason. (It so happened that one of the home carers was also called Dawn. Her only potential relevance to the case is (a) that it is conceivable that some children when referring to "Dawn" might have had her in mind rather than Dawn Reed, and (b) that on a trip to Whitley Bay on 10 February 1993 she accompanied Mr Lillie and Miss Reed.)

  56. It was generally the case that the "morning session" lasted from 8.00 a.m. until 11.30 a.m. The lunch period seems to have taken up a significant part of the day. By about 11.15 a.m., the children were being encouraged to tidy up in readiness. It was necessary for them to wash their hands and clean up for lunch, while tables were laid. During this period, also, there would be some movement between the rooms while staff were replacing borrowed toys.

  57. Lunch normally began at about 11.30 a.m. Some children ate faster than others, and regularly the meal went on for over an hour. Sometimes members of staff would add 15 minutes on to their lunch break if they had been unable to take their scheduled break during the morning period.

  58. From about 12.30 p.m., the children would be tidying up after lunch and having nappies changed where necessary. Some would at that stage have a nap. Also, the parents of those children who were attending the morning session only would begin to come along to collect them.

  59. At around this time, the member of staff who had come on for the early 8.00 a.m. shift would generally take a break while other members of staff supervised the children. The second member of staff (i.e. the one who had not been on early shift) would take a slightly later lunch break at around 1.00 p.m.

  60. At this halfway stage, it was also necessary to set up the activities for the afternoon session. In most cases, this was shorter than the morning session. It would generally last until about 3.00 p.m. At that time, or shortly afterwards, the bus would arrive to pick up those children placed at the Nursery by Social Services (if parents were unable to collect). The children, therefore, began to thin out at this point and, if there were not many children left in the Nursery after 3.30 p.m., then the number of rooms in use would be reduced.

  61. Another regular practice at the time was that there was a rota for cleaning rooms. This meant that each room would be vacated once a week between around 3.30 and 4.00 p.m. for a thorough cleaning. Meanwhile, the other rooms would have floors only cleaned.

  62. For those children still remaining at the Nursery at 4.00 p.m., tea would then be served. By that stage, only the staff on late shift would still be in attendance. Members of staff from the early shift would leave the premises or stay on to write up their books.

  63. Those members of staff on late shift (i.e. up to 6.00 p.m.) might leave early if there were only a few children remaining at the Nursery. There would always be a manager present until it closed at 6.00 p.m.

  64. In this context, Mr Lillie pointed out that the bald statement on page 236 of the Review Team Report, to the effect that he was alone with children in the early mornings and late afternoons, gave a misleading impression. He made clear, first, that he worked alternate shifts and, secondly, that there would generally also be a student or home carer present as well. At the beginning of the day, those members of staff from the other rooms who happened to be doing the early shift would also congregate with the children arriving early. It would, therefore, be exceptional for him to be the only member of staff present between 8.00 a.m. and 9.00 a.m. Moreover, one of the cleaners ("Jackie") would usually be there at 8.00 a.m. as well.

  65. It will thus be appreciated that within this broad structure the opportunities for lengthy trips out of the nursery were necessarily restricted. I was told by Miss Reed that she and Mr Lillie were keen to take the children out whenever possible for fresh air and exercise and to provide a more interesting environment. Naturally, however, such activities were limited by a number of factors. Obviously the weather played a part. Also, it was obligatory to have a certain ratio of staff to children. It was necessary to have a group of less than eight children. One of them had to be able to take the hand of each child who was walking, but if there was a child in a buggy then it would be possible for them to take three children each (i.e. a maximum of six). They would only be able to go out with more than six children if there was an additional adult (for example, a student or careworker).

  66. During the relevant period, there were building works going on upstairs and use of the garden was therefore restricted. There were no opportunities, therefore, for outdoor play on the premises. Trips out of the Nursery were more frequent in the afternoon than in the morning and, generally, it was necessary to be back in time for 3.00 p.m. when the Social Services bus arrived. I was also told that normally the time for going out would be between 1.30 and 2.00 p.m. I was told by witnesses (for example, the parents of Child 1, Child 7, Child 10 and Child 14) that there were occasions when Mr Lillie and Miss Reed were not back in time for the Social Services bus and that, on occasion, a parent might have to wait for half an hour longer than expected. I have no reason to disbelieve this evidence.

  67. Miss Reed took particular offence at the assertion made by the Review Team in their Report (page iii) that "children were frequently and inappropriately taken out of the Nursery by Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed on the flimsiest of pretexts". The implication seems to be that they were taken out frequently for purposes of child abuse. This is one of the central allegations in the defence of justification, and I shall return to it in due course. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind just how circumscribed the opportunities were for trips out of the Nursery and that, in the periods available (i.e. normally a maximum of one and half hours), it would be necessary to transport the children back and forth from the Nursery – quite apart from any time spent at the relevant destination.

  68. In this context, I should record that in February I acceded to the request of the parties that I should go to Newcastle and visit the Nursery (which has undergone significant physical changes since the material time) and also to walk over the various routes that were considered significant. Not least, I was taken to various roads and blocks of flats where it was suggested that abuse might have taken place. I therefore have the geography of the locations very much in mind.

    69. The evidence of Dr Camille San Lazaro

  69. Dr Camille San Lazaro gave evidence on 13, 14 and 16 May. She was in a somewhat ambivalent position since, although she is a consultant paediatrician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, and a senior lecturer in paediatric forensic medicine at the Newcastle University, she was not for the purposes of these proceedings an expert witness, but rather a witness of fact. Nevertheless, her findings in respect of many of the children formed a significant part of the Defendants’ case on justification, as they did in the ill fated criminal proceedings in 1994. They are relied upon, together with certain oral statements made in her presence, as part of the factual material from which I am invited to draw an inference that Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed abused the children in one way or another. She personally examined no less that 53 children from Shieldfield looking for signs of sexual or other abuse.

  70. Dr San Lazaro has practised in the field of paediatrics for about 30 years, and has specialised in alleged child abuse or neglect since about 1980. Those were the very early days in the recognition and diagnosis of widespread child abuse and experience was gathered somewhat "on the hoof". Until relatively recently, and particularly before the routine use of colposcopy, practitioners in this field sometimes felt isolated and under pressure. It seems also to have been the case that there were few opportunities for training, peer review or the auditing of individually developed practices.

  71. She produced reports or records of examinations carried out in relation to the children and also documents described as "child protection records". Many of these were made available along with her original witness statement and other materials were produced later along with a supplemental witness statement. The purpose of this was mainly to clarify some of the terminology which she had used in her records and also to meet some of the points made about her evidence by Dr Watkeys. I shall consider the impact of her various assessments when I come to the individual children; and I shall confine myself at this stage to general matters.

  72. Dr San Lazaro immediately recognised in the witness box that her approach would be quite different nowadays. She said that "we" are less isolated and that paediatricians are more ready to consult others on issues of child abuse. She recognised also that there were points during the Shieldfield inquiry where she "lost her way". There were things written then which she would not write today. There were also inaccuracies in what she had written. Indeed, on 14 May she admitted in cross-examination that her records were in some cases inconsistent and difficult to interpret. As to Child 14, so fundamentally significant in this case, the following exchanges took place:

    73. "Miss Page: I am suggesting the whole picture is so unreliable and so flawed that the court could not safely conclude that this child had signs of penetrative injury at all?

    Dr San Lazaro: I accept that this – that the medical findings as laid out in this child’s records cannot be relied on in their specificity, specifically. But I believe that all the information put together is clear on the fact that there was penetrative damage to the hymen and I quite accept that that is a difficult matter for this court".

  73. This was not easy to follow. A finding of penetrative damage in a hymen is "specific". Unlike cases where the physical findings are neutral, it is not a question of "all the information put together". One ought to be able to rely on a paediatrician to give a clear factual assessment of whether there is diagnostic evidence of abuse or not. If I cannot rely on her medical findings "specifically", I am not clear what is left.

  74. A little later she was asked about the particular inconsistencies in her descriptions:

    75. "Miss Page: Why did you not take the opportunity to clarify and write down in your notes whether you had one or two complete transections or no complete transections, partial tearing, how many partial tears? Is it not extraordinary, bearing in mind that you were going to go into court as a prosecution witness on a charge of rape, that you should have the opportunity, with this child under anaesthetic, [and yet] you did not make any note of what you observed in those conditions?

    Dr San Lazaro: It is regrettable. The whole of this is regrettable and I do not know why it was not done.

    Miss Page: It was a professional lapse not to have done it, was it not?

    Dr San Lazaro: All of this is a substantial professional lapse, I would have said."

  75. It is to some extent a question of trying to assess through written records what the witness found eight or nine years ago with the benefit of hindsight. In some cases, the surviving information is so defective that it is just not possible. Unfortunately, things are not quite that simple. However ready Dr San Lazaro may be now to recognise her human frailties, and the improved techniques available today for dealing with such cases, there are certain facts that cannot be obscured. The truth is that Dr San Lazaro’s professional judgment and objectivity were in some of these cases hopelessly compromised. In particular, I can hardly sweep under the carpet the untrue accounts she was giving to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board with a view to assisting some of the parents recover compensation out of public funds. She herself recognises that there were "inaccuracies". She could hardly do otherwise. I am afraid, however, that the problem is more fundamental and goes to professional integrity rather than competence.

  76. To take but one example, Miss Page drew to her attention a passage in her so-called "generic report", which was produced to provide the Board with a general summary (but presumably a fair and accurate one) of the supposed multiple abuse at Shieldfield. She apparently did it "from memory", which would be hardly satisfactory in itself. More importantly, however, I need to consider the terms in which she referred to the streptococcal infection found among a few children. She included it in the generic report in a very short section supposed to be identifying physical signs relevant to the issue of child abuse. It had no place there at all. Such infections are quite common and the presence of the infection was not probative of child abuse. Indeed, it could easily be due to poor hygiene. Yet she deliberately gave the impression that it was significant. It was given a prominence in the overall picture of Shieldfield that was wholly disproportionate. This was reflected in the Review Team’s Report also, where it was said, "Dr Lazaro describes this as an unusual finding which suggested a common source". Its only relevance in the Report would be to give the impression that it was evidence of some sinister (but unspoken) form of child abuse.

  77. She spoke of "negotiating" the content of this report with a man from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, but she accepted responsibility for its contents. She actually admitted to Miss Page that she had adopted the role of "advocate" for the children’s compensation claims – and this inevitably seriously compromised her professional independence and integrity. Many thousands of pounds of public money were paid out at least in part as a result of her assertions.

  78. More generally, on 16 May, Dr San Lazaro made the following startling admissions:

    79. "Dr San Lazaro: I think I did advocate for these children. I think there was – I was certainly very distressed for them and affected by their trauma, and I accept that I attempted … to do my best for them, or to present the best case for them. I do not think that is unusual practice for doctors in any situation.

    Miss Page: The usual practice for a doctor is to simply send to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board their original report on the child and not to elaborate save to the extent that they are asked to do so.

    Dr San Lazaro: In children who have been sexually abused, and I have been doing Criminal Injuries Reports for a very long time, I recognise that they have been emotive and they have been exaggerated and overstated in the past … and they are much more measured now".

    I cannot believe, as she appeared to suggest, that it would be "not unusual" for doctors generally to behave in this way with regard to their representations to the C.I.C.B.

  79. She accepted specifically in relation to Shieldfield that her presentation to the Board was exaggerated and overstated in the "generic report" (in other words, the report applying to all the children claiming compensation). That is indefensible.

  80. It is ironic, in the light of this very serious state of affairs, to recall what Mrs Saradjian had to say about Dr San Lazaro on 20 February:

    81. "As a result of seeing Dr Lazaro I was impressed by her professionalism. I was also impressed by the information that she had to give about the large number of children that she had interviewed and examined that had medical findings of abuse, and also the level of trauma that she had witnessed and heard from these children.

    I was also impressed by her impression of the parents, in that she did not feel that they were exaggerating the situation with the children. I was also impressed by her analysis of the situation, as she saw it, from her point of view as a very experienced forensic paediatrician".

    The Review Team clearly fell under her spell.

  81. Dr San Lazaro’s admissions are not only serious in themselves, but they have profound implications for the evidence in this case. It is not simply that there are numerous examples of poor record-keeping and inconsistent entries, which make it difficult to be satisfied what Dr San Lazaro actually perceived at the time of her examinations. Everyone agrees that hymenal examinations in small children are difficult, such that even the average paediatric registrar would not be equipped to carry out or interpret them. Therefore a good deal of subjective interpretation is involved for a consultant in arriving at the basic data before they come to be recorded.

  82. Even where it is possible to identify what her original conclusion was, the question arises as to how safe it is to rely on Dr San Lazaro’s interpretation of what lay before her. Since she was so committed to what she perceived to be the children’s best interests and was "affected by their trauma", and because she was apparently prepared habitually to overstate and exaggerate, I must approach her unaudited personal conclusions with the utmost caution. It is as clear as can be that I must not proceed on an assumption of objectivity or truthfulness. On the other hand, I cannot simply dismiss everything she claims to have found. I do not believe she was setting out mischievously to misrepresent everything. It is rather that she was unbalanced, obsessive and lacking in judgment. I have thus to chart my way through a very treacherous terrain. In doing so, I have been greatly indebted to Dr Ward and Dr Watkeys, of whose experience and integrity there can be no doubt.

  83. Dr San Lazaro even went so far in May 1996 as to tell the Review Team: "I believe that children were removed from the nursery for reasons either of specific paedophile activity or to be used in possible commercial paedophilia or both".

  84. She also told the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in her generic report "there were syringes with medicines inside to make their bottoms feel all right". She was only regurgitating her interpretation of what some children had said, but appeared to be endorsing the allegation with her professional authority. As far as I understand her own view of the matter, she said she believed that they were objects used as part of a deception rather than actually to inject the children with drugs or medication. She added, "I still think I have that view". It is not easy to reconcile these statements. Either she believed that syringes were used to drug the children or she believed that they were part of a deception. Of course, either way she was merely speculating, but she does not seem even to have passed on her true belief.

  85. The overall picture she conveyed to the C.I.C.B was that the abuse had been "bizarre… almost certainly involving instrumentation, drugs and pornography". It was put to her by Miss Page that she had no proper basis to make such claims. Her answer was that she believed the children had placed inside them "items of cutlery - objects". Miss Page was obviously right.

  86. There can be little doubt that, because of the weight the Review Team appeared to be willing to give to people’s opinions, Dr San Lazaro must have given them considerable encouragement in respect of their conclusions about the administration of drugs and the use of pornography. It is a good illustration of why it is necessary always to keep in mind the distinction between evidence, on the one hand, and imaginings on the other.

  87. It is important to note that Dr San Lazaro also supplied dubious information relating to individual child applicants. I cite an example below in relation to Child 1. The same pattern is to be found replicated in other cases. It is clear to me that it was not only in the generic report that Dr San Lazaro was saying things that were untrue. Some of the individual reports are flawed. What is deeply disturbing is her tendency, when writing a witness statement or letter to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, to "beef up" her basic findings by adding a sinister slant to what had been recorded originally as a neutral or non-specific finding.

    88. Child 1

  88. This child was born on 28 March 1990 and attended the Nursery from 1 October 1992 to July 1993 (usually 2 days per week). Until their suspensions, he was in the care of Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed. He is the one child Mr Lillie admitted to taking briefly into his flat at Red Barns – something which he has no doubt bitterly regretted for the last nine years. He explained that he was a child who needed individual attention most mornings to settle him down. On this particular morning, he took him out of the nursery for a walk because he was on his way to the flat to collect something he had forgotten. Miss Reed confirmed that the child was difficult in the mornings and needed individual attention to settle him.

  89. No professional person has ever heard Child 1 make any accusation against Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed. No criminal proceedings were ever instigated. The "disclosures" seem to have been largely through the mother. The Review Team were warned by Detective Inspector Findlay that the Child’s mother had suffered mental health problems, and also that she appeared to be obsessed with the allegations of abuse at Shieldfield and "determined to get in on it". Mr Wardell said, on the other hand, that they did not accept this assessment as being accurate, and he thought the mother was "sincere". He clearly attached weight to her evidence as to the behaviours and disclosures of Child 1. It was a fundamental tenet of the Review Team’s approach to accept, unquestioningly, what complainants said on the basis that they believed what they were saying (or were "sincere"). They seem to draw no distinction between that which is sincerely believed and objective truth. What was perceived as sincerely believed was accepted as having happened.

  90. I cannot speak, of course, as to her demeanour nine years ago when it is quite clear that police officers had reservations about her, but the impression I formed on 23 April 2002 when she gave her evidence was a favourable one. She was the most visibly distressed of the mothers to give evidence and had to pause from time to time because she found it so upsetting. There is no doubt that this mother was in 1992-1993 having to endure real stresses and strains in her life. She was divorcing her husband who, she said, only occasionally turned up when he felt like it and was behaving unpredictably because of a drug problem. She started a new relationship with an old friend by whom she became pregnant in the Spring of 1992 and who moved in with her in that July. But by December he was telling her that he wanted to bring the relationship to an end. She had the baby on 12 February 1993 but shortly thereafter she had to worry about the Shieldfield "scandal". This took its toll finally on her relationship with the new partner. From the records, it appears that she had to cope with episodes of violence during this period involving each of the two men. It is easy to understand what an unhappy time this must have been for her.

  91. When she was first seen by social workers on 12 May 1993, she said that Child 1 got on well with Chris and often talked about him, asking where his house was. It is important not to lose sight of this in the light of later developments. Her account changed, however, after contact from other mothers. In particular, she was given information by the mothers of Child 22, Child 23 and Child 12. Child 22 had apparently referred to Child 1 in the course of his own disclosures.

  92. She came into contact with two pivotal figures in this case who clearly had a significant influence upon her, namely Dr San Lazaro and the mother of Child 22. The latter came to see her on 26 June. Later that day when she was reporting her conversation to her partner in front of the boy, Child 1 kept putting his hand over her mouth. What significance this was supposed to have remains unclear, but more importantly a fresh observation (recorded by social workers) was made the following day.

  93. It will be remembered that one of the matters to which Professor Friedrich attached particular significance was what he chose to call the "proffering of the bottom". I have already discussed that in the context of his expert evidence, but for present purposes it is important to note when this was first recorded. It appears on a note made by Kulvinder Chohan on 7 July 1993 referring back to an incident reported to her as having happened at 8.20 am on 27 June – in other words, the morning after the mother of Child 22 had been round to her home spreading alarm and despondency.

  94. The boy was lying on his bed "with his bottom in the air". His mother at that stage, according to the note, said that he should lie down "properly", to which he replied that this was the way to be nice. According to the mother, he lay in that position on more than one occasion and, indeed, still does so from time to time. I am supposed to infer that he was taught to do this by Mr Lillie to facilitate buggery or other anal abuse. Mr Bishop seemed to suggest that this was the only reasonable interpretation. I cannot agree. I am not prepared to dismiss as coincidence the fact that it was first observed the very morning after she had to listen to the mother of Child 22 cataloguing her concerns about her own son. The mother of Child 22 can, when in full flow, be a dominating and disquieting presence. It seems to me quite likely that she alarmed her and led her to misinterpret something which was of no consequence.

  95. This was, of course, a month before the police paid the mother of Child 22 a visit to try and stop her spreading alarmist notions, which they perceived as jeopardising the whole investigation. It appeared in Julie Kinghorn’s notebook for 30 July that the police had received information that she had been putting words in the mouths of "children of tender years". She could not recollect what the information was or to which children it related. But it shows the need for a cautious approach to interviews with children if they had come into contact with her.

  96. The visit also occurred some six weeks after Detective Inspector Findlay had told her, "No bull shit. I don’t want you talking to anyone". She clearly ignored that friendly advice.

  97. The other pivotal figure this child’s mother came into contact with was Dr San Lazaro. She apparently gave her regular "support", but Dr San Lazaro appears to have behaved oddly with regard to this child. When he was examined and she found no physical abnormality, she did nothing to put the mother’s mind at rest but left her believing that there was reason to think he had been abused. She then arranged for him to be examined under anaesthetic and for swabs to be taken to see if he had a sexually transmitted disease. Of course he did not. Yet again the mother was left to believe the worst. She was given some medication but not told that the child was merely suffering from a streptococcal infection common in infants. I have no doubt that Dr San Lazaro fostered this mother’s belief that her son had been abused. As the mother put it in the witness box, "she confirmed my worst fears".

  98. Dr San Lazaro played the psychologist and the detective and seems almost to have forgotten her role as a paediatrician. When she wrote a long letter to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, she set out a whole series of speculative thoughts, but she failed to mention at all the one matter directly within her expertise – namely the negative physical findings. The letter is by no means unique to Child 1, but it is worth setting out in the context of assessing the nature of Dr San Lazaro’s role in the development of the Shieldfield "scandal" and the extent to which she was, or was not, capable of professional detachment:

    99. "Thank you for your enquiry about this child. I can confirm that I saw him on 7.7.93. [Child 1] had been in the Shieldfield Nursery for 9 months.

    At first he seemed happy there and his mother was gradually able to leave him alone. Within 2-3 weeks, however, [Child 1] became extremely distressed, screaming and wrapping his legs around his parents, begging them to allow him to go home. Mother remembers that she always tied double knots in [Child 1’s] training shoes and that these had never come undone before he had gone to the nursery, or indeed when she had him home. However, he would often return from the nursery with a single knot in his shoes or his laces undone.

    [Child 1] also stopped using the toilet to open his bowels and began to display markedly aggressive behaviour, often looking as if he had been crying when they picked him up from school. There was soiling and periods of marked aggression when he hit his mother, telling her that he hated her and that she didn’t love him. He developed odd sexualised posturing and other sexualised behaviour and he appeared very frightened about having his nappy changed.

    There is little doubt that this is one of the most severely affected children from the Shieldfield Nursery. He had gross signs of traumatic behaviour with regression, sudden phobias and anxieties, abrupt changes into infantile speech whenever the nursery was mentioned and he also gave an account to the police of being removed to a caravan site and having his underwear burnt. I understand that the police did indeed recover artifacts which supported this story.

    His mother’s relationship broke down after the discovery of abuse and events in the home have been very difficult and fraught. Certainly mother’s distress and [Child 1’s] own behavioural patterns have been such that I have spoken to her and seen the child on more occasions that I can count. I would suggest that there have been at least 30 contacts with our department since this original event and I also have spent hours late at night talking to the mother to try and help her through her distress.

    This boy is receiving psychotherapy and I believe that it will be some time before he is going to recover from these experiences."

  99. This was a classic example of Dr San Lazaro’s role as an "advocate" (to which she admitted in the witness box). Some of the information was simply untrue. The child did not give an account of having his underwear burnt. In any event, most of what she was saying merely regurgitated or garbled what she had been told and had nothing to do with her medical expertise. Nor did she make any attempt to discern any other possible explanation in the troubled domestic background for any of what she was told. Everything was hung on her theory of multiple abuse at Sheildfield. I strongly suspect that the "hours late at night" talking to Dr San Lazaro were not so much "supportive" to this mother as baleful and depressing.

  100. There was a legal dispute at some stage, with Child 1’s father seeking an order for contact with him. Dr San Lazaro made a witness statement dated 19 September 1994 in which she asserted that Child 1 "had suffered previously damaging experiences" and that further harm would occur if he had contact with a parent (i.e. his father) who declined to recognise this and was capable of minimising it.

  101. The father was thus apparently being criticised by Dr San Lazaro over a conversation she had had with him in which he appeared sceptical and dismissive. He felt that the mother was harming the child by her persistent focus on sexual abuse. The doctor went so far as to accuse him of being "extreme" and likely to destabilise the mother and child. It is disturbing that someone with such flawed judgment should have such power and influence over people’s lives.

  102. The same weekend as the visit by the mother of Child 22, Child 1 was also sick more than once, having woken at 3 a.m. sweating and restless. He said he had a sore tummy. I do not see why this is supposed to have any more significance than any other childhood ailment. I would need to be given cogent expert evidence to persuade me that it should be interpreted as a symptom of child abuse. Why should he not just have had a slight temperature and a tummy upset?

  103. There was a home visit by social workers Kulvinder Chohan and Vanessa Lyon on 9 July 1993. It appears that Dr San Lazaro had upset the mother by this time, telling her that Child 1 had been traumatised and that he froze up every time the Nursery and the "perpetrators" were mentioned. Dr San Lazaro was thus, it would appear, making certain assumptions and passing them on to the mother.

  104. During July 1993 Child 1 was, it is true, indicating that he was to some extent not happy at the Nursery, but this was associated with aggressive conduct by another child who hurt his "bum" and hit him on the head. In so far as Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed were mentioned at this time, it was only in the context of chastising the other child for hitting him. There is no evidence that he was cowed into silence by threats.

  105. Child 1’s last day at the Nursery was on 9 July 1993, when he was discharged for non-attendance.

  106. When Child 1 was interviewed on video on 28 July 1993, he had nothing to disclose about Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed. Persistent attempts were made to get him to say things about them (including by leading questions). Nothing emerged.

  107. Despite this, a second interview took place on 7 February 1994. Again, it produced no evidence of abuse, although it becomes apparent early on that Child 1 was aware that he was supposed to be talking about Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed; it was he who introduced them into the conversation. What he said was that they had hurt Child 95, but he then qualified this by pointing out that, like Pinocchio, his nose was growing longer and longer; this, he explained, was because he had just been telling a lie. The mother told me that he was particularly interested in Pinocchio at that time and made it a habit to say the opposite of what he meant. The difficulty about such a habit, of course, is that one never knows what can be relied upon.

  108. There were a number of unusual behaviours noted about Child 1. For example, there was an unwillingness to let his mother’s current partner change his nappy or bathe him. Also, there was an incident of self-harm (arm-scratching) recorded by Miss Reed on 25 February 1993. But Dr Kate Ward drew attention to the fact that there had been significant events in his home life over the relevant period, which could have accounted for at least some of the changes in behaviour. She cited parental separation, the mother’s change of partner and a new sibling. Nonetheless, she was of opinion that these factors would be unlikely to account for sexualised behaviour. She was referring, essentially, to the following incidents. Child 1 is reported by his mother to have invited her, in or about December 1992, to kiss his genitals. He was at that stage two and a half years old. Later, in March 1993, aged nearly three, he is said to have touched his grandfather’s thighs and referred to a lollipop. It is certainly odd behaviour, but it would be a long leap to infer from this that he had been taught about oral sex by Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed. The remarks were in no way linked to them.

  109. Child 1 is significant in the context of a passage in the Review Team’s Report on page 210:

    110. "The children were able to take parents to and/or describe places to which the parents had no idea their children had ever been. Parents were also surprised at the level of distress and panic some children experienced when they went to these places. Sometimes in the course of a routine journey, a child would suddenly become distressed and identify a place that they said they had been taken to by Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed. One child had such a reaction to a house near St. Dominic’s."

  110. Child 1 took the police on a roundabout trip ending up at a caravan or mobile home. The matter was referred to in discussions between the Review Team and Detective Inspector Campbell Findlay. The Review Team were prepared to conclude (as they would claim on the balance of probabilities) that Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed had taken him there for sexual abuse, no doubt with other children. It is quite obvious from the discussion with the police officer that he was highly sceptical about this and certainly that he had found nothing to support the contention. Without such corroboration the incident can give rise to nothing more than speculation. It is to be noted that there had been an occasion when the children had been taken to see trains. That is reflected in the mother’s evidence on 23 April (at pages 11 and 141). Indeed, according to her, the child himself had "said about standing and watching the trains" by way of explaining why he had been taken by Chris and Dawn to that particular spot. She agreed that there were train lines there (although "you could not even see over the wall").

  111. Detective Inspector Campbell Findlay had found a pair of partially burned underpants there, and there was some suggestion that they might correspond to a pair of red underpants that had gone missing from a pack of three the mother had bought from Adams. She told me that she supplied the other two pairs to the police for identification purposes but it appears that nothing came of it. There is nothing in police records to confirm this and I cannot be confident in the mother’s recollection on this point. I have seen records which suggest that the police contacted Adams and obtained from them a pack of red underpants for comparison.

  112. At all events, the mother heard no more. No doubt she would have been informed if a link was established. As so often, the Defendants put these matters forward in evidence without making clear what inference is supposed to be drawn from them. It was not obvious to me why a child abuser would wish to burn underpants rather than seeking to give the impression that everything was normal. It makes no sense. One might reasonably anticipate that the parent of a small child would raise a query as to where they had gone. It is all inconclusive. It is not merely that there is nothing to corroborate an allegation that child abuse took place at these caravans; it is important to bear in mind that the child made no such allegation in the first place. (The mother did report to the police, however, by September 1993 that the child had told her when she took him there that she should not go into one of the caravans because it was a "bad house" and she would get a "sore bum".)

  113. It is worth remembering what Campbell Findlay told the Review Team about the underpants – "… that did not take us anywhere because this place is frequented by drunks, alcoholics … it is used for illicit purposes, that place".

  114. One of the mother’s complaints was that having previously been a "good eater" Child 1 began to refuse food after joining the Red Room. What is striking, however, is how regularly the Day Book entries record quite the opposite – that he had a good appetite. I see no reason to believe that these entries were deliberately falsified. As a matter of fact, the mother had a number of criticisms about the record-keeping. She thought that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had been under-reporting. The particular example she identified several times (see e.g. the transcript at pages 61-62) was that there was nothing from Christmas 1992 onwards about her son’s constipation. I have to bear in mind, on the other hand, that it is a normal concomitant of constipation that there is nothing to record.

  115. I am unpersuaded that these records are anything but genuine. They can perhaps be criticised in terms of lack of detail or occasionally compendious entries covering more than one day’s visit, but that is wholly different from false entries to disguise child abuse. In particular, I cannot for one moment believe that the "good appetite" entries are there to give a false impression of general well-being in order to put people off the scent of child abuse – nor can I derive any such sinister intent from the absence of any mention of constipation.

  116. On the other hand, if constipation was a problem at the time, it could account for soreness of the bottom and reluctance to have it touched – both of which are factors the mother has mentioned. It could also account for traces of blood apparently found in his underpants in January 1993. It may be significant, on the other hand, that even at that stage the mother’s reaction was not to explain it by reference to current constipation, but to say "Anyone would think he had been abused".

    117. Child 2

  117. Child 2 was born on 2 September 1989. She started in the Nursery on 11 November 1991 in the Red Room but Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed did not become her carers until the end of February 1992. She left then to go to the Orange Room the following July.

  118. Child 2 was one of the original indictment children in 1993-1994, although at that stage the allegation consisted of indecent assault only. There was no allegation of rape.

  119. It appears that in September 1992 (i.e. aged just three) she said to her mother and grandmother that "Chris" had touched her in the region of her vagina. I will assume that this referred to Mr Lillie. This in itself, of course, has to be seen in the context that he would have been quite probably responsible, when she was two years old, for taking her to the lavatory. It was this comment by Child 2 that Holland J had in mind in his ruling when he referred to a possible exception to the general absence of contemporaneous complaints. The Defendants place great weight upon this apparently spontaneous comment of the child and submit that it was "heavily probative of sexual abuse by Christopher Lillie in that he inappropriately touched the child on the genitals". Yet, at the time it was made, no significance was attached to it. The mother did not pursue it with her or associate it with impropriety. It only loomed large in the mother’s thinking eight months later when she mentioned it to social workers on 19 May 1993 in the context of the Shieldfield suspensions.

  120. It is important to note that the Review Team on page 212 of the Report describe a number of "acts" endured by various children, which they say would be difficult to understand as anything other than sexual, physical and emotional abuse by Chrisopher Lillie and/or Dawn Reed and/or other people. One of the more striking allegations that follows is clearly attributable to Child 2 (it comes from her mother’s statement). It consists of an allegation that she was raped on a settee in Christopher Lillie’s house. The child has also apparently made "disclosures" of other penetrative injuries at his hands, including the insertion of knives and spoons from the kitchen drawer in his house.

  121. The Review Team thus will clearly be understood as making a finding of rape by Christopher Lillie of Child 2. The fair-minded reader might therefore be not a little surprised if told that she was found by Dr San Lazaro on 13 August 1993 to have normal outer genitalia and an intact hymen. This fact does not emerge from the Report; nor does it seem to have given the Team any pause for thought before endorsing and passing on such a grave allegation to the general public. It is one of the more lurid in that part of the Report (Chapter 13) which is introduced on page 209 by informing the reader that he or she is in for a "very difficult and distressing" read. The Defendants argue that it need not actually have involved penetration at all, but merely a placing of the genitals together. So also it is suggested that the knives and spoon may just have been placed at the entrance of the vagina. It is, of course, possible. The probabilities have to be assessed, however, in the light of her disclosures as a whole (e.g. where the incidents are said to have happened and in whose presence).

  122. I turn to the video interviews. The first interview took place on 22 June 1993. It produced nothing significant. Child 2 was able to recall some of her friends and members of the staff, but made no reference to either Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed.

  123. After the interviewer had drawn a blank, her mother entered the room and began to question her (not, of course, good practice). At this stage, the furthest she would go would be to say that "Chris" had smacked another child’s "bum" on an occasion when Child 2’s mother was present. Eventually, she made an allegation that "Chris" had also hit her "bum" as well as taking her bouncy ball off her. Whether she thought this "Chris" was a child is unclear, but she spoke of "the teacher" (Diane Wood) telling Chris off. A good deal of pressure was then exerted both by Vanessa Lyon and the mother. In addition, the mother chastised the child while the social worker was out of the room, telling her she was being very silly and that she would not get any juice if she started "acting like a baby". The child moaned and said her mother was hurting.

  124. It is quite apparent from watching the video recording that by this stage the child has given up completely. She had become floppy and inert. She merely moans and whines. Meanwhile, her mother manhandles her back and forth to no effect.

  125. The Review Team did not all have the opportunity of watching this recording. No doubt, if they had, they would have concluded that the child’s behaviour indicated that she had something to disclose and that she was reluctant to do so for fear of retaliation. I can draw no such inference. I saw with my own eyes simply a bored and frustrated three year old.

  126. She was interviewed again on 1 December 1993. It became apparent that she realised she was there in order to tell the interviewer about "silly" things done by Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed. Things did not go well, since she appeared to have no recollection of them as Nursery staff at all. Despite this, she said that she had seen them "in their house"; and that she had been there on more than one occasion by car. She knew it was Chris and Dawn’s house because Diane had told her. She claimed that she had been taken there by Patricia, Jackie and Diane (i.e. three members of the Shieldfield staff). Although she claimed to have been taken to "Chris and Dawn’s house" in "Diane’s car", there is no truth in this. Not only is there no place corresponding to "Chris and Dawn’s house", but none of the three named teachers ever took them to any place that could be so described.

  127. Child 2’s mother is totally committed to the idea that her daughter was raped and abused by Mr Lillie and Dawn Reed. On 20 March in cross-examination, she was unable to deal at all convincingly with this difficulty about Diane Wood. She therefore resorted, so far as I am aware for the first time, to hinting that it might have been Lorraine Kelly who was participating and her daughter had mistaken her for Diane Wood. It is very sad that she felt driven to make such an allegation in a public court room. I can say, however, without any hesitation that it is quite untrue. It is necessary to recall, also, that Child 2 left their care (i.e. the Red Room) at the end of June 1992. This was six months before Christopher Lillie moved to Red Barns to live with Lorraine Kelly. It was about the time he was just beginning to go out with her. In any event, I have seen both Diane Wood and Lorraine Kelly giving evidence. I do not believe anyone, even a small child, could confuse them in a month of Sundays. Where it is alleged the child was taken remains entirely obscure, but clearly there was no confirmation for the story from any of the three other members of staff. That fundamentally undermines the allegation, obviously, but the Review Team failed to address the point. Even at the stage of closing submissions, the Review Team seemed to think it a sufficient answer to say that "…it should be noted that she does not allege them to have taken part in any abusive act or indeed that either they or the other children that she named as present witnessed the abuse".

  128. The supposed trip described involved a minibus. Apart from the five members of staff, there were about eight other children. Despite all these "witnesses", it is said that on the landing of the house Christopher Lillie raped her and also inserted into her vagina his knife, his gun, his pencil, his spoon, a crayon and his fingers. This is hardly likely to be the product of one child’s fevered imagination. It seems more likely that it was an amalgam of stories picked up from other children or parents. It is unclear whether this was a second rape (i.e. additional to that on the settee) or whether it is a different version of one incident. At all events, it simply cannot be true.

  129. The Defendants seek to overcome this by suggesting "the likelihood that some names are supplied simply because the interviewer is asking for more and more names". This raises two concerns. First, it hardly squares with the Review Team’s professed conclusion in their Report that children’s allegations could not be the result of suggestive questions or other pressure from interviewers. Secondly, if this child was so willing to come up with answers she thought the interviewers wanted to hear, how am I to distil the "core" allegation(s) that are free from such influences?

  130. I need hardly say that I am not suggesting that the child was dishonest. She was aged three and four when being asked to recall events that supposedly took place when she was two years old. It is a classic example of the general problem at Shieldfield following the suspensions in April and May 1993. Anxious staff and parents were asking questions and exerting pressure; frightening stories were doing the rounds among very small children, who were being encouraged to talk about events and concepts the significance of which they could barely understand.

  131. The Review Team point to corroboration in the account, for example, of Child 23 who claimed that she had been present during abuse by the Claimants. Their submission ignores, however, two fundamental points, namely (i) that Child 2 and Child 23 did not overlap in the same room at Shieldfield and (ii) that there is no evidence that Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed took children out of the Nursery from other rooms.

  132. Reliance was also placed on behavioural problems. It was this child who Professor Friedrich cited when giving an example of how difficult it was to attribute behavioural symptoms to child abuse because of the various other factors that could account for them. Indeed, one of the incidents which had clearly stuck in the mother’s mind was that on one occasion she had found her daughter looking out across Newcastle from a spot in their garden in the direction of where her father lived. She was expressing apparently some concern about whether he was all right. I am invited to draw the inference that this must have come about because Christopher Lillie had abused her and threatened that, if she told her mother, he would see to it that some harm befell her father. There is a more humdrum explanation, however, since it has to be seen in the context of a father who (according to the mother’s evidence) more or less swanned in and out of their lives when he felt like it. Since the child was clearly fond of him, it seems plausible that she would have been upset by unexplained and prolonged absences.

    133. Child 3

  133. Child 3 was born on 28 June 1988. He began with Amanda Caisley and Clare Parrish towards the end of October 1990. He left the Nursery finally on 22 January 1992. This was before Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed teamed up in the Red Room and they never cared for him directly. Physical findings were non-specific and within normal limits. No oral testimony was given in relation to this child. An unsigned witness statement was served on the Claimants from Child 3’s mother. Also a Civil Evidence Act Notice was served in respect of her interview with the Review Team.

  134. On 10 November 1993, nearly two years after his departure from Shieldfield, and when he was aged five years five months, his mother was visited by social workers. She told them apparently that she had questioned the child about Chris and Dawn. That is not a promising start to his "disclosure", since I can know nothing of how this questioning proceeded, or in such ignorance form a conclusion as to the significance of the fact that he apparently "froze". It is recorded in Social Services records between 12 January and 9 February 1994 that there had still been no "disclosure". The mother was, however, clearly becoming anxious. She reported that she felt very left out of things "and this became more evident when she had spoken to [the mother of Child 14]". She had informed his teacher at his new school "about Shieldfield" and was met with the response, "Oh not another one". She therefore did not feel "very supported". By 9 February it was being recorded that the mother was self-harming after a break up with her boyfriend. She was described as "very distraught".

  135. By 27 February of that year, however, Child 3 was apparently recounting to Dr McArdle of the Fleming Nuffield Unit that "they put pencils on my bottom". This needs to be seen against the background of what seems to have been persistent questioning at home (how suggestively I do not know) and the usual reservations required in respect of discussions in therapy (see the Cleveland Report).

  136. It is necessary to record an unusual feature about the child’s medical background. He was in nappies until he was three because of a stomach problem. He had two bowel biopsies and also required a special diet. According to Audrey Palmer, he was "not always easy to deal with".

  137. Nearly two years on, matters progressed to the stage where Child 3’s mother was reporting to Judith Jones, shortly after the Review Team had been set up, that Mr Lillie had at some stage stuck a paint brush up his bottom – and it hurt. By this time, of course, three years and six months had elapsed since the boy’s departure from Shieldfield. Ms Jones in evidence referred to the fact (while "trying not to be too indiscreet") that the mother had suffered "emotional difficulties" of her own and had received "some treatment for depression". According to Dr McArdle, the mother had lost much of her authority over her son. There was a vulnerability which "perhaps preceded Shieldfield". The mother described her rejection of the boy following a difficult birth, and Dr McArdle thought this related to puerpural depression. Without making too much of it, that does need to be weighed in the balance. Ms Jones said she found it "a difficult account".

  138. This conversation took place on 9 November 1995. The mother also reported to Judith Jones that she had taken him on a bus to find where this particular act of cruelty was supposed to have taken place. He apparently alighted near St Dominic’s Church and asserted that Mr Lillie lived nearby. Other people were said to go there also (echoes of the paedophile ring) and Miss Reed accompanied them on several visits. This was where she too hurt children. This is not the only example of anachronism in the case, since Mr Lillie did not move to live in the Red Barns district until about 11 months after Child 3 left Shieldfield and was therefore completely beyond the clutches of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. By whatever means, the story of child abuse at Red Barns was clearly doing the rounds. But in Child 3’s case it simply cannot have been true. Ms Jones recognised this, in evidence on 15 February, and thought that paragraph 101 of her witness statement needed to be corrected. She had reported a conversation with the mother of Child 3, in which the child was said to have become agitated on alighting "just in front of Red Barns". She fairly accepted that she had probably jumped to a conclusion by adding those words.

  139. Unfortunately, this non-event is elevated to considerable significance on page 210 of the Report where it was said under the sub-heading "Out of the nursery – the places to which children say they were taken":

    140. "Parents were also surprised at the level of distress and panic some children experienced when they went to these places. Sometimes in the course of a routine journey, a child would suddenly become distressed and identify a place that they said they had been taken to by Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed. One child said that that was ‘where Chris lives, other people go there too. Dawn goes with us and that’s where she hurts children’."

  140. According to Professor Friedrich, the mention of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed was frightening to Child 3 and, for that reason, it is not surprising "that he made very few statements during the time in the nursery". It is interesting that he should put it that way since, so far as I am aware, there were not "very few statements" during that period – there were none. This is just one example of Professor Friedrich’s free-flowing and creative approach to the evidence.

  141. According to notes made following a visit on 10 November 1993, by Kulvinder Chohan and Helen Foster, the mother had spent a good deal of time at the Nursery ("four mornings a week") and she enjoyed the company of the staff. "She was a friend of Chris and Dawn and believed they were the most dedicated members of staff there". What is being postulated here is that despite their "dedication", and their friendliness towards the mother, the Claimants were inserting objects into his anus, and so successfully terrorising him into silence that he said nothing about it for nearly (or perhaps for more than) two years. It could in theory be true, but in order to attach weight to this scenario I would need to know a good deal about how the information was elicited, and also how he came to alight at Red Barns when he simply could never have been taken to Miss Kelly’s flat.

  142. On 13 May the Review Team decided to drop this child from the plea of justification. I therefore need not say anything further. They were ordered to pay the Claimants’ costs incurred in meeting the allegations.

    143. Child 4

  143. It will be recalled that it was with Child 4 that Miss Page began her cross-examination of Professor Barker; hers does represent a particularly striking example of cruelty and perversion if the pleaded allegations are correct.

  144. She was born on 2 September 1990, and was moved into the Red Room in August 1992, just after she had begun toilet training. She was first seen by Dr San Lazaro on 7 July 1993. By that stage, the only relevant allegation she had made was that Christopher Lillie had smacked her bum and "fairy [vagina]". The examination revealed no abnormalities. Dr San Lazaro noted at the time that her mother appeared under some degree of stress because a friend had suffered a mental breakdown. I note also that as early as 19 May 1993 the mother (who was pregnant at the time) needed to calm herself down after attending meetings about abuse at Shieldfield. She admitted to the social worker, Marion Harris, that she "led" the child and put ideas in her head. She also described her as "gobby" and as being ready to "tell anything". Nevertheless, nothing of note was in fact said at that stage. On 6 August 1993, when there was a home visit, neither Child 4’s mother or grandmother had any concerns about abuse. Indeed, the grandmother was expressing sorrow that Dawn Reed had left Shieldfield as she thought she was a "good nursery employee" and had been very fond of her.

  145. Eventually, there was a totally unproductive interview recorded on video. This took place on 18 May 1994 (wrongly labelled 1993). Significantly, the child was recorded on 17 May 1994 as saying in class, "My mummy says Chris and Dawn are naughty". The member of staff also recorded the same day how she had talked to the child about the forthcoming interview. Indeed, this member of staff (Fiona) had actually been to discuss the meeting with Helen Foster and others at 9.00 a.m. that morning. She passed on to the child that she had informed them how clever she (Child 4) was in class. The interview itself is a striking example of how unsatisfactory the interviewing techniques were, especially in the light of the Cleveland guidelines. The child begins the interview quite happily and chats easily to Helen Foster while drawing. Then (contrary to good practice) the mother is brought in. The child has a dummy stuck in her mouth and is rocked back and forth on her mother’s lap while Helen Foster bombards her with questions in a wheedling and cajoling voice. The child is visibly bored and frustrated and becomes as unresponsive as a sack of potatoes. Helen Foster tells her she is there to help children and that her friends at Shieldfield have been to see her and she can help them. But she cannot help children if they do not tell her about what she had described as the "muddles" in their heads. From the child’s reaction to all this, I regard the interview as abusive in itself. Her demeanour was very similar to that of Child 2 in her first interview. It is fair to Helen Foster to record that she recognised that interviewing would be conducted, generally, quite differently nowadays.

  146. When Child 4 was seen by Dr San Lazaro for the second time, there had been another child born to the family and the mother had been in hospital with post-natal depression. This was recorded on 21 February 1994. The child was obviously under some emotional pressure too. On 13 May 1994 Dr San Lazaro was recording that the mother had days when she felt distant from her daughter, did not feel physically attached to her or able to give her a kiss or cuddle.

  147. By July 1994, much more serious allegations about Christopher Lillie had come to the fore and the child had apparently been speaking of a knife in the vagina, which had caused bleeding. (Needless to say, there had been no contact between her and Mr Lillie between the first examination in July 1993 and the second in July 1994.)

  148. The first mention of Dawn Reed was apparently on 17 March 1994 when she said that she had been to a house with "Chris and Dawn". No cutlery was mentioned at that stage. It is vital in my judgment to see all the 1994 "disclosures" by Child 4 and her behaviour against the background of a letter dated 9 August 1994, in which Dr Kaplan, a consultant psychiatrist, reported to Dr San Lazaro that since February 1994, according to her parents, she was "starting to go on about Chris and Dawn". There was a recurrent theme that they had been smacking her on the vulva. There were also from that time various behavioural difficulties including perpetual anger, swearing and touching her baby brother’s genitals. The mother reported that the problems began in February 1994 after she was discharged from the hospital with post-natal depression. This may be coincidence but more likely not.

  149. There was a later history of urinary infection, beginning in November 1994. There was a history too of vulvitus and vaginal discharge. By 1996, Dr San Lazaro was noting erythema or redness and petechial changes over the hymen. She had also been reported as having bled into her underwear. This was three and half years after Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had been suspended, and there was no evidence whatever to link them to these subsequent physical findings.

  150. By May 1997, her mother was still concerned about the possibility of urinary problems. The evidence is that urinary tract infections are not uncommon in girls of that age. The redness and soreness could be explained by itching, scratching or masturbation or, at least in theory, by ongoing sexual abuse. There was a (later) pattern of medical and behavioural symptoms, sometimes associated with sexual abuse, which was described as "far-reaching and prolonged" (in the words of Dr Ward). In the light of the absence of findings on first examination, two to three months after last contact with Christopher Lillie, none of this is likely to have any bearing on the issues I have to decide.

  151. I note elsewhere in this judgment (paragraphs 1181 and 1330) that the impression was given by the Review Team on pages 209 and 217 of the Report that there was physical evidence to validate Child 4’s dramatic allegations of penetration. It is thus important to record that there was not. It is also relevant that the story went on developing as the years went by. In the Panorama broadcast of October 1997, the mother alleged for the first time (certainly so far as the Review Team were aware) that Christopher Lillie was present, and laughing, while the assault was taking place (somewhat reminiscent of an allegation made by Child 14: see paragraph 759 below). It was embellished further on that occasion by the mother adding that "…they seem to have done it a few times". There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that either of these important elements had ever been mentioned before. The Review Team chose not to address the point, but I obviously cannot take the same approach, since it further undermines what was always an implausible suggestion.

    152. Child 5

  152. Child 5 was born on 29 October 1989. She entered Shieldfield on 22 March 1993, attending usually three days a week, and remained there until September 1994. She thus overlapped with Mr Lillie only for the briefest period, since he was suspended three weeks after she entered the Nursery. It is to be noted that during that period she was in the Yellow Room – not under the immediate care of Mr Lillie or Miss Reed.

  153. For the first two visits she was in the company of her mother. The Register shows that she attended unaccompanied only for 7 days during Mr Lillie’s time. He maintained his composure throughout most of what must have seemed to him a distressing time in the witness box, but he was moved by mild exasperation to observe that, in view of what he is now supposed to have done to her, she must have spent most of her time during those 7 days being abused by him.

  154. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that when questioned about Mr Lillie and Miss Reed by her parents (in May and December 1993) Child 5 said that she had no recollection of either of them. Yet on 27 (or 25?) May 1994 she made her first "disclosure", as recorded by staff in the Yellow Room, to the effect that Chris and Dawn had hurt her hand.

  155. She had by this time spent 14 months in the Yellow Room with other children who was "disclosing" serious allegations about Mr Lillie and Miss Reed, who were making visits to the NSPCC for video interviews, and who were undergoing therapy. The talk was therefore of "bums" and "fairies" and the use of crayons. She later stated at home that "Chris put the crayon beside my fairy". The word "fairy" was not used by her at home and it is likely that she picked it up at Shieldfield – along with the notion of a crayon being used for abuse. These two concepts reflect closely what was being said, for example, by Child 23 in her video interview in July 1993.

  156. There then followed over the succeeding weeks and months a litany of allegations involving many of the regular Shieldfield themes (e.g. visits to Mr Lillie’s house, Miss Reed’s house and libraries, and also references to dogs, snakes and threats of death to relatives). None of this has any contact with reality, since it would be very odd if during her seven days in the Yellow Room Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had managed to spirit her away from her carers for abusive visits outside the Nursery - without the connivance of those carers.

  157. In relation to Child 5, Dr Hewitt referred to the virtual absence of any behavioural re-enactment of abusive acts and concluded that it was impossible to say with any level of certainty that she was abused. The Defendants’ "disclosures" expert Professor Friedrich observed that the relative absence of sexualised behaviour would indicate minimal exposure, but considered her statements to be consistent with exposure to a sexually threatening and abusive environment. Having done some "homework" at Miss Page’s request over the weekend of 13-14 April, even he was prepared to concede that he could find no support for this child having been abused.

  158. As to physical symptoms, there is a complicating feature in this case. Child 5 had the misfortune to suffer what must have been a painful straddle injury some time prior to her examination. She had slipped on a climbing frame. It is against that background that one has to assess the significance of the ano-genital findings. There was a substantial trauma to the hymen with a central scar, altered vascularity and a split through the fourchette. There was a wide hymenal orifice and some tissue loss. Dr Ward regards this pattern as more consistent with sexual abuse by means of a blunt penetrative injury.

  159. Dr Watkeys was unable to form a clear view in the light of discrepancies in Dr San Lazaro’s notes and report and of her inadequate description of the hymenal damage. She does, however, make the cogent point that the child was examined in connection with her straddle injury on 18 May and 22 June 1993. Both these examinations thus occurred after any conceivable contact with either of the alleged abusers. On the first occasion, it was not possible to carry out an inspection of her genitals (possibly because of pain or distress), although it had been noted that there was blood on her knickers. On the second occasion, the GP (Dr Kattan) found her anatomy "entirely normal". It is true that there is no detailed description of the genital area on that occasion but, if it was "entirely normal" on 22 June 1993, this would suggest that the injuries spotted by Dr San Lazaro a year later, however they occurred, had no connection with Mr Lillie or Miss Reed.

  160. Dr Watkeys was cross-examined by Mr Bishop on this subject on 24 May. He was putting that the GP could have lacked the experience, knowledge or competence to pick up what Dr San Lazaro observed a year later. As I have noted elsewhere, the diagnosing of hymenal injury is such that even a paediatric registrar might not be up to it. On the other hand, Dr Watkeys made the very telling point that even a GP could hardly miss a split through the fourchette.

  161. In this case there had been some preoccupation with death, but it has to be seen in the context that the child was upset during this period by the death of her grandmother.

  162. This was another child who was withdrawn from the plea of justification on 13 May (the Review Team being ordered to pay the costs of meeting these allegations up to that point).

    163. Child 6

  163. Child 6 was born on 26 January 1991. When she was just under two years of age, on 4 January 1993, she began at Shieldfield in the Red Room under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. She left in October 1993.

  164. One of the particular features of this child is an apparent phobia of doctors. She mentioned "nasty doctors" to her mother towards the end of the Summer of 1993. She also showed a marked reluctance to be medically examined or even to make eye contact with Dr San Lazaro. She was anxious and unco-operative on 3 and 19 November 1993, so that physical examination was not possible. She had been referred by her mother and social workers because of suspected abuse. This came about as a result of remarks she had made shortly beforehand, after leaving Shieldfield. She had pointed to her genitalia and alleged that Dawn had smacked her "jenny" with a spoon. She had also accused both Chris and Dawn of putting spoons up her bottom. Her mother described herself as having been "in denial" up to October (i.e. until she left Shieldfield). The Review Team suggest that these revelations came so late because she only began to describe what happened to her once she could construct sentences. When she became sufficiently articulate at the age of 2 years nine months, she was recalling events which occurred (if at all) between 24 and 27 months of age. Miss Page suggests that there is a possibility of cross-contamination as a result of contact with Child 26 and/or her mother. This is partly because Child 6 incorporated references to Child 26. But this is speculative.

  165. Physical examination was finally achieved only on 5 May 1994 under anaesthesia. This revealed adhesions between the hymen and labia minora extending on to the fourchette. There was a disagreement between Dr Ward and Dr Watkeys as to the significance of these findings. The former considered them, together with her statements and behaviour, as being strongly suggestive of sexual abuse. The latter considered that adhesions can be caused either by abuse or by infection. Not having seen the original notes, however, she queried whether what were described as adhesions might in fact be perihymenal bands (a "normal variant"). This was partly because Dr San Lazaro’s sketch (in so far as it could be relied on) appeared to show a symmetry (at 5 and 7 o’clock), such as is often to be found in congenital features of that kind. The Defendants cite a recent paper (published in 2000) which suggests that labial adhesions may be more significant than previously thought (indicative of abuse). It is interesting, however, that it refers to fusion of the labia to the hymenal membrane "resulting in an asymmetric appearance" (emphasis added).

  166. The mother emphasised the child’s phobias and clinging shyness, which she refused to accept could be attributed to life events, such as concerns about her father in America or the arrival on the scene of a new male partner. Even today, apparently, Child 6 has a phobia about doctors and dentists.

  167. When Miss Reed is alleged to have smacked her with a spoon on her "jenny", others present are said to have been Child 26 and "Chris". Child 26 had been with her throughout her period in the Red Room. One possible confusion is that Child 26 had a brother called "Christopher". In any event, there is no confirmation for this story. Child 26 said nothing about other children being present. Child 6 also mentioned Child 4 as being present on more than one occasion when she was abused. It is true that Child 6 overlapped with both these girls in the Red Room, but neither bears out her account.

  168. The mother spoke of potentially significant disclosures being made over Christmas Day 1993 at the time when they would normally have been having lunch. She had made contemporaneous notes of the child’s disclosures which turned up in the course of the trial. On 20 and 24 December 1993 the child said that Mr Lillie had hurt her with a large pink hammer, as wide as her outspread arms, on the head, the vagina and the bottom. She also mentioned this on 26 January 1994. She described the hammer as having a black hole in one end and as having water coming out of it. This is a description that is unique to her and is thus relied upon by the Defendants as confirming that she was not merely copying some other child’s statements. Moreover, the only other child to suggest abuse with a spoon was Child 2. She left Shieldfield in May 1993 and Child 6 left months later and moved on to a different Nursery from that attended by Child 2. Again, therefore, it is said that there was no scope for copying. Although the mother was attending "all the meetings, the social services meetings", and the "Sunday evening group", she "did not discuss it in great depth".

  169. It is necessary to focus on the fear of doctors and dentists and consider its significance in relation to the question of whether Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed abused Child 6 and, if so, how. There was some reference also to a "nasty doctor" called Alastair (the mother was unable to recall whether this name corresponded to anyone in the GP practice she had used at the time). Of course, if abusers dress up as doctors, or pretend to be doctors, and under that guise set about indecently assaulting children, it would be easy to understand how such a phobia could arise. On the other hand, it is not the only conceivable explanation for a fear of doctors or dentists. Such people, in the nature of their occupations, tend to be associated with fear, pain or discomfort. Much will depend on the child’s particular experiences. Child 6, for example, clearly underwent some distress at and following the unsuccessful consultations with Dr San Lazaro in November 1993. One has to address the possibility at least of iatrogenic harm (analagous perhaps to that discussed in a rather different context by Richard J. Lawlor in Chapter 5 of Expert Witnesses in Child Abuse Cases, eds. Stephen J. Ceci and Helen Hembrooke). I do not find it inherently implausible that Dr San Lazaro could have put the child off doctors, although it does appear that there was apparently some reference to a "nasty doctor" in September 1993 before she ever met her.

  170. It was interesting to note that Child 6 was cited by Dr San Lazaro in her witness statement and on 13 May, when she first went into the witness-box, as one of those in respect of whom she would now express a different opinion. This was because she has changed her views about the significance, or otherwise, of hymenal adhesions:

    171. "Suppose that child walked off the street and was not involved at Shieldfield at all, what would I do with that child? Would I refer that child for a child abuse inquiry? I would not."

    It may be that much heartache could have been saved if a different consultant had been brought in all those years ago. The remark is also telling in another respect; namely, because it seemed that the very fact of coming from Shieldfield had pre-disposed her to finding abuse. This may well account for the unusually high percentage of physical findings which puzzled Dr Watkeys (see para. 384 above).

  171. The Defendants’ case is that on a number of occasions between January and April 1993 Mr Lillie and Miss Reed put their fingers, cutlery and other objects into her vagina and anus. Mr Lillie is also said to have raped and buggered her (or alternatively put their genitals into close contact). The serious allegations of penetrative abuse made by the Review Team in respect of this child have never been withdrawn. They clearly owed a good deal of their early sustenance to Dr San Lazaro, but even though she has changed her mind subsequently the allegations remain on the record. She was not one of the children withdrawn from the plea of justification on 13 May.

    172. Child 7

  172. Child 7 was born on 14 November 1990 and began at Shieldfield in the Baby Room on 6 May 1992. Following an introductory visit, she joined the Red Room on 26 November of that year. She was thus in the joint care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed until the suspensions, when she would have been just under two and a half years old. She was not one of the "indictment children" and the findings at her medical examination on 2 June 1993 were not specific. There was redness and inflammation around the vulva, and a small disruption in the hymen in the posterior margin at 7 o’clock. The anus was slightly lax. None of these findings could be classified as diagnostic of sexual abuse (although, as so often, it is not possible to exclude that possibility). There was no video recorded interview. The Defendants’ case depends, therefore, largely on statements made to parents or behaviour witnessed by them. Both parents gave evidence before me on 19 March. In certain respects it emerged that neither of them was what medical experts sometimes call "an accurate historian".

  173. The first oral statement (which could hardly be called a "disclosure") occurred in August 1993, when she told her mother that a man would come and stab her (i.e. her mother) if she was not a good girl. This is relied upon not so much as direct evidence of any inappropriate behaviour but rather as being consistent with the child having been threatened in some way.

  174. There was then a statement involving Mr Lillie and Miss Reed on 13 October, when the child was answering a question from her father following a nightmare. She said that they had "bitten her legs". She also told her mother that Chris and Dawn had upset a lot of children at the nursery and that they had made her cry. This almost certainly reflects regular discourse between the children at the Nursery about what had been going on. At this stage there is no allegation of indecency or assault so far as Child 7 herself is concerned.

  175. It needs to be noted that in early 1994 Child 7 lived next door to Child 4, and their mothers had been discussing matters. On 17 March of that year Child 4 spoke of going to the library and "Chris" making certain children cry; in particular, Child 7, Child 8 and Child 17. A few days later, on 23 March, Child 7 told her mother that Mr Lillie had hurt her and Child 4 with a big knife. Later the same day she reported that Chris had a big, sharp pointed knife and demonstrated that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had used it on her (running her hand up and down her tummy, and then swishing it about). The disclosures book from the Yellow Room contains an entry for 6 July 1994, recording that Child 4 on this occasion said, "Chris and Dawn stick the knife up my bum and [Child 7’s] bum – up my friends". At the same dining table, on that occasion, Child 7 corrected her by saying "not up my bum; up your bum".

  176. On 27 May Child 4 is alleged to have said that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed smacked a number of children including Child 7.

  177. On 3 June 1994 Child 4 told her mother that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had put her in a bath with Child 7, Child 8 and Child 28. On 23 June 1994 Child 6 alleged that Mr Lillie had hurt a baby and also mentioned other children in that context including, apparently, Child 7.

  178. Accordingly, so far as verbal statements are concerned, allegations are being made by others about things done to Child 7 rather than she herself making such statements.

  179. At the examination by Dr San Lazaro on 2 June 1993, Child 7’s mother informed her that since Mr Lillie’s suspension on 16 April Child 7 had been brighter and happier. She was also apparently readier to go to Shieldfield.

  180. Two of the more striking allegations in relation to Child 7 are focused upon her conduct in January 1994. Apparently, on 16 January that year she insisted on playing doctors with her mother, and made her lie on the bed. She covered her face with a pillow, pretended to stick needles in her and attempted to pull off her mother’s knickers. She then said "I want to do your eyes… Chris did it, Chris did my eyes and Dawn watched".

  181. It is difficult to know what significance this was supposed to have. Both parents said they had raised the subject of sore or red eyes with Christopher Lillie. The father suggested he had been out "on the booze" the night before, but Mr Lillie was non-committal. The mother said that when she raised this subject Mr Lillie replied that he was suffering from conjunctivitis. Neither explanation seems to support an allegation that he had done something sadistic to Child 7’s eyes.

  182. On 23 January, she once again insisted on playing doctors, pinched her mother all over, pulled down her knickers, and made as if to push a tube of hand cream into her buttocks. When asked by her mother if anyone had done that to her, Child 7 replied "yes, Chris".

  183. Mr Lillie explained, in this context, the circumstances in which nursery officers were permitted to use cream on children’s buttocks. He had no specific recollection of using it on Child 7, but he could easily have done so. If they noted any soreness, the procedure was that one of the nursery officers would watch over the child while the other went to the relevant manager, who would then inspect the child’s bottom and approve the use of the cream. Since this child regularly seems to have suffered from redness and soreness, she would clearly be a candidate for such treatment. It would in those circumstances be wrong to assume that the use of cream implied some impropriety. Mr Bishop submitted that the incident cannot simply be explained as a result of Mr Lillie putting cream on the child’s bottom, but the argument ended in bathos:

    184. "If Mr Lillie did put cream on the child’s bottom he would not have been the only one to do so in her life. When asked if anyone had done this to her, Child 7 is clear and says ‘Chris’."

  184. Another submission of Mr Bishop was that the incidents involving "sexual behaviour" with her mother "lasted about 30-45 minutes" and that the child really looked as though she wanted to hurt her mother. It is very difficult to interpret these events because the scenario is such an unusual one. Normally a parent would not permit inappropriate behaviour of this kind to go on for such a very long time. The behaviour was certainly odd, but I cannot construe it as a re-enactment of something Mr Lillie did to Child 7. One of the problems about permitting inappropriate behaviour is that the longer it is allowed to go on the more inappropriate it may become.

  185. On 29 January Child 7 said that she had been in a bath with Dawn Reed – but not with Mr Lillie. If that is indeed what the child said, I find without hesitation that it is untrue. Reliance is placed on what is said to be corroboration for this allegation by Child 4. In June 1994 she apparently told her mother that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had put Child 7 in a bath and that they had photographs taken of them. I have already set out my concerns about Child 4’s own problems in 1994 which, sadly, may have prompted a certain amount of attention-seeking.

  186. It is said that there was other behaviour suggesting traumatic stress while Child 7 was in the Red Room with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. Examples given were regression in toilet training (Mr Lillie’s recollection is that she was still in nappies, although she had begun potty training before his suspension), being clingy, reluctance to go to the Nursery and sleep disturbance.

  187. Dr Sandra Hewitt expressed the view that:

    188. "The rich and diverse patterns of behaviour noted in Child 7’s history is strongly indicative of a child who has suffered trauma as a result of sexual abuse during the period in which she was in the Red Room, and under the care of Dawn Reed and Chris Lillie. No other explanation of Child 7’s behaviours can be found to fit the data".

  188. Professor Friedrich noted that Child 7 was reluctant to speak directly about "what happened to her", tending to suggest that other children were hurt rather than herself. He took the view that the data deriving from her statements and behaviour "clearly indicates sexual abuse and is consistent with the medical evidence that has also been reported".

  189. Unfortunately, the information supplied is not necessarily accurate. Child 7’s mother said in her witness statement that "between Christmas and Easter" (i.e. when she was in the Red Room) Child 7 had redness to her vulva on occasions "which had no obvious cause". Her recollection is somewhat at odds with contemporaneous records. Such redness was recorded in the Baby Room Day Book on 14 October 1992. Dr San Lazaro referred to redness and soreness of the vulva at her examination on 2 June 1993 and, over a year later, when she was tested for sexually transmitted disease on 29 June 1994, she was described as being "still very red and sore". It was a recurring theme which could not be linked specifically to the Red Room. Moreover, it is important to see the redness in the context of what was happening so far as potty training was concerned. Contrary to the impression given by her mother (I am sure quite honestly), Child 7 was not potty trained by the time she went into the Red Room. Also contrary to the mother’s statements, she did not regress in this respect in the Red Room.

  190. These are classic examples of how memory has played tricks with anxious carers so as to lead them to invest various incidents from the past with undue and sinister significance. There is little doubt that this mother was anxious from a very early stage in the Shieldfield "scandal". She described in her witness statement how at the first parents’ meeting she came out in tears because she had become convinced that her child had been abused. Memories are re-assembled and attributed to child abuse in the light of information subsequently supplied. But, in some cases, such as this one, it is possible to demonstrate from contemporaneous records that the truth has been distorted. A standard response to this, made by parents or the Defendants in the course of the evidence, is that the contemporaneous records (in particular, the Shieldfield Day Books) cannot be trusted. This will certainly not wash, however, so far as Child 7 is concerned. There is no reason to suppose that the Baby Room entry of 14 October 1992 was falsely made to disguise child abuse (to be conducted several months into the future). Nor is there any conceivable reason to doubt, in this respect, the entries made by Dr San Lazaro in June 1993 and June 1994. The supposed causal link between child abuse and vulval soreness simply cannot be established.

  191. My attention was also drawn to an interview with the mother reported in the Daily Mail for 13 November 1998 (the day after the publication of the Review Team Report). This further illustrates how the mother’s anxiety had led her to give an account of events which (although no doubt an honest one) simply bears no relation to reality. Some of the inaccuracies she put down to mis-reporting by the journalist, but this seems unlikely in this particular case. Some of the allegations were of a lurid character (I shall not repeat them) and they underline the caution that is required in weighing this parent’s evidence.

    192. Child 8

  192. This boy was born on 30 December 1990. At less than 18 months, he began in the Baby Room at Shieldfield on 26 May 1992. He transferred, after two or three introductory visits, to the Red Room on 21 January 1993. He attended usually for two days a week. When Mr Lillie was suspended, he was still less than two years four months old. When he was medically examined on 10 June 1994, nothing abnormal was revealed. Nevertheless, his behaviour and statements, as subsequently reported, provide evidence for Dr Sandra Hewitt of "the classic hallmarks of sexual abuse". She is ready to conclude that he suffered trauma as a result of sexual abuse when he was in the Red Room, as the content of his dreams revolves around acts associated with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed.

  193. This is based upon the evidence that from about March 1994 (aged about three years two months) he woke up shouting "Don’t hurt my bottom, Dawn". In April he apparently shouted out "Don’t put it up my bottom". This was said by his mother to have happened several times quite spontaneously. Naturally, one has to approach such a very specific allegation with some caution. It is almost too "pat" to carry conviction. It is necessary to allow for over-interpretation on the part of a mother who had become anxious partly as a result of attending a meeting. In evidence, she told me:

    194. "I went to one out of curiosity, I think, really. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to find out what was happening with the investigation …. and parents said things that made me think – that sounded like what my child was doing, and I started to feel a bit alarmed, and I decided that I would no longer send him to the nursery".

  194. Child 8’s baby sitter gave evidence on 15 March and his mother on 18 March. The baby sitter said that in late 1992 or 1993 she noticed changes in the boy’s behaviour. He became easily upset, had temper tantrums, and took to wetting. His mother said that when he entered the Red Room his toilet training either remained static or regressed. He began to talk of monsters and masks.

  195. The baby sitter recounted an occasion (she thought before the criminal trial but in mid-1994) when Child 8 went stiff as a board and asked "Why did they do that to me?" He referred to Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed having pushed a sharp implement up his bottom – she could not recall whether it was scissors or a needle. She said her mind was racing at the time and she was trying to control her emotions. She knew that there had been allegations about the Nursery by that time and that his mother had some anxieties. By this time, of course, the allegations had been in circulation for approximately a year.

  196. It is to be noted that at the end of July 1993 his mother had told social workers that Child 8 had actually liked Chris and Dawn. She also commented, perhaps significantly, that he tended to agree with "whatever you say". It is therefore necessary to recall that he remained at Shieldfield for about a year after the allegations first surfaced (being removed from the Nursery in March 1994). Throughout that time rumours were doing the rounds and Mr Lillie and Miss Reed were being portrayed among the children in negative and frightening terms. For a suggestible child, therefore, there was much to take root and cause alarm. His mother was dismissive of this idea, and was of opinion that "children of that age would not have the intelligence to be able to do that". It is not much to do with intelligence. Young children do tend to be suggestible and to talk about "taboo" topics (as Dr Cameron uncontroversially deposed).

  197. The mother said in evidence that she had liked Dawn Reed and found her friendly and open. Mr Lillie she found "more shifty", as he would not look her in the eye. She found the Red Room had a different atmosphere from that of the Baby Room. It was more subdued but "it was not a contented quietness".

  198. It seemed from her statements made in June 1994 and January 1996 that the child’s behaviour had not seemed disturbed or significantly changed after going into the Red Room. Even in January 1996 the mother said, "… even looking back we cannot say that his behaviour changed". The problems seem to have been noticed after he left Shieldfield (i.e. nearly a year after the suspension) when "his behaviour deteriorated dramatically". Up to that point, the mother had (as she put it) "spent a year in denial". She did not want to know. She viewed matters differently thereafter, especially when she learnt that some children do not readily disclose abuse and that some are afraid to do so.

  199. I was told that the mother (and indeed on one occasion the baby sitter) had attended meetings organised for Shieldfield parents. "Up to ten of us would meet in a pub on a Thursday night, including [the mothers of child 10, Child 22 and Child 6]". One of these had been addressed by Dr San Lazaro. She was also in regular contact with other mothers by telephone in 1994. Those specifically mentioned were the parents of Children 6, 7, 10, 22 and 30.

  200. Child 8 underwent therapy at first with Dr McArdle and later with Mr Rick Telford.

    201. Child 10

  201. Child 10 was born on 3 July 1989 and joined the Orange Room at Shieldfield on 27 August 1991. Dawn Reed was working there at the time and Christopher Lillie joined her on 16 October of the same year. When they both moved to take over the Red Room at the end of February 1992, Child 10 went with them. He moved on to the Yellow Room in mid-June 1992. He generally attended full-time during this period but at some point in the Yellow Room he reduced to four days a week. He left Shieldfield finally on 3 September 1993.

  202. Child 10 was one of the six children in respect of whom the Claimants faced criminal proceedings. The Defendants make wide-ranging and very grave allegations. Mr Lillie is alleged to have inserted fingers or other objects into his anus, pulled at his genitals, squeezed his leg, hit his bottom, punched him, masturbated in front of him, urinated over him, tied him up and threatened to poke his eyes if he told anyone. Miss Reed is said to have been present and encouraged or permitted some or all of these activities. Cogent evidence is required to establish such a litany of wickedness.

  203. When he was examined on 1 September 1993, there were no abnormal genital or anal findings. Nevertheless, this is clearly a worrying case in the light of the boy’s statements and behaviours. Dr Sandra Hewitt was of the view that his behaviours and their frequency strongly suggested trauma arising from sexual abuse in the Red Room. Professor Friedrich referred to his persistent behavioural regression, sexualisation and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which he thought in keeping with the child's "considerable exposure to the care of Lillie and Reed". He observed that as much as any child in the Shieldfield group he combined verbal disclosures with physical positioning as if he were reliving the experience. He found it compelling as an indication of sexual abuse by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. I have already noted, however, at paragraphs 457-460 above how unsatisfactory Professor Friedrich’s approach was to this child.

  204. As I have already discussed, there is a very important factor to be weighed in relation to this child in the form of his subsequently diagnosed ADHD. He had a long term pattern of behavioural problems which presented his (single) parent with a very heavy burden. This pattern was, however, already established before he arrived at Shieldfield. Even his mother used to describe him as "a little rocket". There had been a visit to a therapist before any concerns arose about the possibility of abuse at Shieldfield. The GP had suggested referral to the Nuffield in (she thought) February 1993.

  205. It is clear from the Day Book that he was a handful at Shieldfield from the outset. There were tantrums and, although his mother was reluctant to confirm this, I am also satisfied that there was a regular pattern of aggression towards his peers (mainly in the form of pushing). Dawn Reed made a note on 16 September 1991, presumably because she thought it a good sign, that for the first time he "cuddled a child after hurting them".

  206. When allegations began to be made about Mr Lillie and Miss Reed in the Spring of 1993, Child 10’s mother had no concerns. She thought everyone had gone "barking mad" and that "the whole thing was ludicrous". What is more she wrote letters of support to Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. She wrote to Miss Reed in the following terms:

    207. "Dear Dawn

    I felt I had to drop you a note after hearing of your suspension. When we were told of Chris’s suspension my reaction was ‘nonsense’ – now that you have been caught up in this ridiculous mess, I can only think its all gone far to far. I trusted both you and Chris with my son for a year and never had any worries – and I still haven’t and I would trust you again without hesitation.

    I have told [Child 10] that you and Chris have gone away for a while and he was very sad. He misses you and he misses Chris.

    Dawn, I know all this must be very distressing for you, but please remember there are a lot of us in the Nursery who are behind you 100%.

    We miss you and hope to see you back soon.

    Lots of Love"

  207. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, this mother like a number of others regards herself as having been at that stage, as the jargon goes, "in denial". The social workers were doing the rounds visiting all Shieldfield parents and things really changed for her shortly after she received what she described as her "automatic" visit. She told Isabella Hepplewhite that she did not believe the allegations and trusted Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. Nevertheless, she talked to her "quite a lot about [Child 10’s] behaviour". She added, "but at the end of the meeting I had a very different feeling than I had had prior to it, in that I felt maybe I should consider that something may have happened". A fundamental problem here is that Isobel Hepplewhite was given a description of Child 10’s behaviour which she was only too ready to attribute, at least as a matter of first impression, to child abuse. She wrote a letter to Dr Kaplan, the consultant psychiatrist on the day of the visit. It concluded with the words:

    208. "Since the family was seen as part of the Shieldfield Nursery Investigation and [sic] I would be obliged if you could arrange to see the family and perhaps offer some help and support".

  208. Unhappily what Ms Hepplewhite did not (and indeed could not) know at that stage was that this child was affected by ADHD.

  209. There is no doubt that, quite apart from his behaviour, Child 10’s eventual verbal "disclosures" are among the most striking and lurid of all. It is clearly necessary, on the other hand, to approach them with the greatest caution. The first disclosure was on 16 August 1993 (i.e. 14 months after his moving on from Mr Lillie and Miss Reed). As in other instances in this case, it came about as a result of questioning by the mother at the suggestion of a social worker (Isobel Hepplewhite) who had visited her that very day. He said that Chris was nice except when he had taken Child 10 to his house (and he mentioned a lift). He said that on such occasions Chris had hit him and pulled his hair. There was nothing sexual at that stage. The vehicle for his description was a Sooty puppet. He demonstrated that "Chris goes biff, biff, biff, to Jo".

  210. It is important at this stage to record that there was a "Jo" in Child 10’s day to day life (a female friend of his mother), whose home Child 10 was used to visiting. Jo was someone who had earlier lived in Child 10's home and had babysat for him.

  211. The mother was inclined in her evidence on 11 and 12 March to explain that the child did not really mean that Chris had been to Jo’s home or attacked her. (He had, of course, done neither.) She says that one has to transpose the whole scene so that it takes place in Mr Lillie’s own home and that it was Child 10 he attacked - not Jo. I am not prepared to make that leap of faith. The account the child gives is anchored very much not only to Jo’s flat but also to Jo personally. That story is obviously not founded in fact, and there is no way that any adult can filter out fundamental elements, substituting others, and have any confidence in the final version.

  212. It was submitted for the Review Team, somewhat creatively, that:

    213. "The flat he was taken to by the Claimants could have reminded him of Jo’s flat, he could have been told it was ‘Jo’s flat’, or he could be mixing two separate incidents" (emphasis added).

    The word "could" is used three times, but I have to remember that I am concerned with evidence, rather than speculation, and with probabilities rather than possibilities.

  213. In accordance with Professor Bruck’s preferred practice, Child 10 was interviewed on video shortly afterwards (on 18 August). In the meantime, on 17 August, Isobel Hepplewhite had returned to Child 10’s home with Helen Foster and debriefed the mother on her son’s story of the previous evening. Sooty again played a leading role at the video suite. Helen Foster was supposed to be conducting the interview but the dialogue to a large extent takes place through the puppet. The mother was also present. It appears that he was unable to bring to mind who the teachers were in his "old class", but Helen Foster was persistent: "Sooty says he bets you can remember who the teachers were in the Red Room". The idea that someone’s liberty and whole future career could depend on this level of evidence-gathering is sobering indeed. Despite this technique, Child 10 still was unable to bring either Mr Lillie or Miss Reed to mind.

  214. Helen Foster was undaunted: "I’ll see if Sooty can remember. Sooty says ‘were your teachers nice people?’" The response was not, however, what she wanted. When Child 10 replied that they were, his mother said "He’s lost". Thus both adults present were proceeding on the assumption that he had been abused by the Red Room staff and that it was only a question of finding a way to unlock the information.

  215. Sooty then asked a leading question, "Was one of your teachers called Dawn?" As leading questions so often do, this triggered a more specific response: "Yes. But one of them was Chris". He then goes on to volunteer (apparently) that Chris was nasty and horrible to everyone. These propositions were (naturally for a child of that age) expressed in the present tense. Thus, it is possible that the child was giving his own recollection from the time he was two years of age, or that he was giving an answer he thought the "police lady" and his mother wanted to hear, or that he was reflecting the negative "press" which the Claimants had been receiving at Shieldfield over the last four months.

  216. Through Sooty further details were elicited. It is an obvious risk (borne out by the expert evidence of Dr Cameron) that if a child is invited to enter a dialogue with a teddy bear or puppet he will think he is playing a game and fantasise accordingly. He proceeded to demonstrate the "biffing" he was given by Chris but confirmed that this had taken place at Jo’s flat. In case there was confusion about the location, he re-affirmed that Jo was a woman he visited with his mother. What is thus clear beyond doubt is that once again the child was indeed fantasising. No such incident occurred. Nevertheless, he does assert that he was hurt by the "biffing" in his genitals and bottom. Dawn Reed, incidentally, he acquitted of any involvement.

  217. As so often in these interviews, given the shaky grip of small children on concepts of future and past, the child stated that he was wearing the same clothes during the supposed violent attack as those he was wearing at the interview (at least 14 months later).

  218. Child 10 confirmed that the incident had taken place at Jo’s flat. In due course Helen Foster left the room but permitted the interview to continue (quite inappropriately) with the mother interrogating the child through Sooty. Tellingly, the mother uttered the following words: "And remember what I said it was very important that you had to tell about what Chris did". This certainly does not instil any confidence in the process at all.

  219. Eventually Helen Foster returned. Both adults continued to question the child. Rather curiously Child 10 introduced a new element of fantasy by saying that "Chris" had no hair and no arms (despite being able to "biff"). Nonetheless, by some means or other, he hurt him under his trousers but over his underwear.

  220. Through Sooty Child 10 was asked what Dawn did (despite his earlier denial that she had done anything). This time, perhaps to please his interrogators or to get them off his back, he alleges against "Dawn" also that she punched him at Jo’s flat on the genitals and the bottom – this time over his clothes and underwear. The whole account is fantasy and I propose to treat it as such. (It is always to be remembered that criminal proceedings were brought in respect of this child.) At the conclusion of the interview Ms Hepplewhite recorded what impact the interview had made:

    221. "[Child 10] appeared to be O.K. when the interview was terminated. However, I did feel some concern about mother who described herself as feeling numb and in a state of shock. She very sensibly took [Child 10] into town for an ice cream."

  221. The next day, after a telephone call, there was yet another home visit. The mother was saying at that stage, perhaps significantly, that after the video experience her son was "fine" but she herself was still "dazed". She reported that the previous evening the child had talked again of being in a lift and that there were ghosts but, crucially, she added that he went on to associate his thoughts with something he had seen on television. Although this mother was still able to be reasonably objective, it illustrates how easy it is, once social workers have rattled a parent, for everything a child says to be over-interpreted.

  222. In a rather chilling note, the social worker also recorded on 19 August:

    223. "Intellectually she understands why… she has had to move her position regarding Dawn and Chris from a very different belief, but clearly she finds this worrying in terms of emotion".

    One (perhaps unfair) interpretation of these comments is that the social workers had long since decided that there had been widespread abuse by the Claimants and that they were determined to convert and recruit as many "believers" as possible. As in other cases, this mother found herself putting to one side her judgment based on her own common sense and experience of people and placed her trust in the "professionals".

  223. A second interview took place on 4 October. This was the same day as Child 14’s first interview (the one in respect of which the Review Team falsely claimed that she alleged rape). In the course of that interview she alleged that Child 10 had been on a visit with her to "Chris’s house". He was obviously on her mind because earlier in the interview she asked whether he had been to the video suite that day (as indeed he had). They had been for a time together in the same room at Shieldfield but had just come together again at a new school. Child 10 never confirmed Child 14’s involvement of him in this story.

  224. Returning to Child 10’s second interview, it seems that the objective was to persuade him to repeat something he had said to his mother "the other night in bed". All he would say (Helen Foster having withdrawn) was that Chris had punched him at Jo’s flat – but this time solely on the mouth and head. That would, of course, be serious in itself but it was quite a different account from that given on the previous occasion, albeit equally fictitious. These allegations were only made after a good deal of questioning and at a stage when the child had decided to go home. That would in itself cast doubt on a small child’s allegation, as it might be made purely to bring the process to an end, but it should already have been clear by that stage that the child had no cogent evidence to give.

  225. By December, Child 10 was apparently saying that Chris had pushed his wand into Child 5 in the Red Room causing her to scream. The mother suggested to police that this might be due to the fact that Child 10 was interested in wands at that stage – not least because Sooty used one. He also wanted to be given a wand as a present. It will be remembered that Child 5 was never in the Red Room and only overlapped in Shieldfield with Mr Lillie, in any event, for a few days prior to 7 April 1993. No experts are now prepared to support the suggestion that she was abused, and there has been no parental evidence. Not surprisingly, however, when Child 10’s mother passed the allegation on to them (via her aunt) it alarmed her parents. Child 5 had no recollection of any such incident.

  226. The mother of Child 10 readily acknowledged that one of the subjects on which she had led her son was that of "needles". This followed a conversation with the mother of Child 14. She approached her because her daughter had mentioned Child 10 in that context.

  227. She agreed that she had herself had counselling in roughly the Spring of 1994 and that she had also attended parents’ support group meetings. Parents she met by this means would have included those of Children 1, 2, 14 and 24. She also became friendly with the parents of Children 6 and 30. This all goes to underline the scope for swapping accounts of alleged abuse and particular concepts (such as lifts, clowns, etc.) or sources of anxiety.

  228. She agreed also that she became something of an activist and spoke of her experiences as the mother of an abused child at a conference in 1995. Her participation had been organised by the mother of Child 30. Others who were involved in the conference included parents who had been affected by the Jason Dabbs case. Judith Jones had also participated in organising the conference. The witness regarded her as another local activist. As a matter of fact, she also knew Judith Jones personally through having worked for her (cleaning her home) in 1994 – not something that Judith Jones saw fit to declare before publicly pronouncing the Claimants guilty of having abused Child 10. It may well have made no difference, and both witnesses downplayed the significance of this, suggesting that they had not even discussed the subject of Child 10’s abuse. That may seem unlikely, but I see no reason to disbelieve them on this matter.

  229. Dr San Lazaro was offering advice generally to various parents and the mother of Child 10 found her a calming influence because she understood the nature of why and how children "disclose" (or so she claimed). Unfortunately Dr San Lazaro’s "advice" tended to be a contaminating influence because she had decided at a very early stage that the "alleged perpetrators" had been guilty of multiple abuse and was not averse to spreading ideas from parent to parent. (That was confirmed, for example, by the mother of Child 29.)

  230. The mother agreed that her attitude had changed in August 1993 as a result of meeting the social worker Isabella Hepplewhite. It was only then that she began to think it was possible that her son had been abused by the Claimants. The way she set about questioning her son, however, did not derive from the social worker. It was she who decided to interrogate her son using Sooty. She decided to play a kind of game, involving saying which people were "nice" and which were "not nice".

  231. The witness was referred to her police statement of 23 August 1993, in which she appeared to be saying that it was she who had introduced "bottoms" into the discussion with her son. She did not, however, accept that the police had accurately recorded what she was saying. She was extremely traumatised when she made those statements and may not have been paying very close attention to what the police were writing down (or, by inference, to what she signed). Miss Page was asking her about a sentence which began, "I then asked [Child 10] if Chris had ever looked at his bottom and he pointed and prodded to the bottom area on a teddy he had...". There does not seem to be much scope for misunderstanding that sentence.

  232. It thus looks very much as though the mother introduced "Chris" (but not necessarily "Dawn") into the "nice and nasty" game, and that she too introduced "Chris" into the context of bottoms. She also subsequently (in the following October) introduced the subject of needles following the approach by the mother of Child 14. One can readily see how it all came about and why (mainly as a result of Isobel Hepplewhite’s approach in August) she had become anxious. But, with the benefit of hindsight, one can easily see also how unsatisfactory this process was. In particular, it raises considerable doubt over the weight that should be attached to Child 10’s account on these topics.

  233. The matter does not stop there, however, since once she had started the ball rolling, Child 10 went on to make further disclosures, which I have already described as "striking and lurid". Following the video experience, he spoke of being hurt with a knife in a high rise block of flats. He mentioned also, apparently, masturbation, injections in his bottom administered by Dawn Reed, and of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed with no clothes on, fighting on a bed, and of Mr Lillie urinating on his face. He later said that lots of "Chrises and Dawns" had urinated on his face. He had been buggered by Mr Lillie and said that he had an erection and that "sweeties would come out and he [Child 10] would get some". Dawn and Chris were coming to kill him.

  234. He said that Chris had kissed his [Child 10’s] private parts and that he had seen Dawn with no knickers on, that her private parts were furry and that he [Child 10] had put cream on them. In this context, I am asked to bear in mind evidence to the effect that on 29 December 1994 the child asked his mother not to go round the house in a state of undress as it reminded him of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. I do not know how "undressed" his mother was or how regular a habit this may have been in the home. It is a sensitive area, and I have to be wary of jumping to conclusions about what effect (if any) it may have had on his apparently vivid descriptions of various bodily parts. What is clear is that there was a large element of fantasy in what Child 10 was saying at this period in his life. There was also apparently an instance of exhibitionism when on 18 November he came downstairs (aged 5 years 4 months) without trousers or underpants in order to demonstrate "what the man had done". It is important to remind myself that he left the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed some two and a half years before (and that exhibitionism is a characteristic symptom of ADHD).

  235. Dawn Reed was also alleged to have put a napkin round his mouth and tied him and other children up with coloured string. She had also picked him up and put him in a cupboard with no handle or windows, but that he had turned into a gladiator and killed everyone. He also spoke of Chris and Dawn swapping bodies and heads. None of this has any obvious meaning.

  236. By 1995-1996 he was expressing concern that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had not gone to prison and asked how he could be sure that they were not abusing other children. There seems to be no doubt that he and his mother believe, and always will, that he was regularly abused in the most horrendous ways but the accounts given are wild and implausible. Moreover, there is no corroboration for any of it.

  237. Dr Cameron listed 31 worrying aspects of Child 10’s behaviour and noted how in about 1995-1996 after medication was prescribed for ADHD he responded effectively. He said that impulsivity and disinhibition, particularly indecent exposure, are characteristic of untreated ADHD. His strange behaviour could largely be accounted for by his developmental problems together with certain domestic factors. It seems to me that his verbal disclosures have to be approached in the light of this evidence too.

  238. Child 10 was in the Yellow Room for the whole of the time between the suspensions and the beginning of September 1993. When a child with undiagnosed ADHD is exposed to the rumours circulating that summer and, what is more, to the sexualised antics of Child 87, it is necessary to recognise that one has a very powerful brew indeed.

  239. This case also provides a vivid illustration of how belief in the Shieldfield "scandal" spread from person to person. Just as the mother of Child 10 had originally been incredulous, and supportive of Miss Reed, so too had Diane Wood. She spoke out in very positive terms about Dawn Reed, as I have recorded above. Once, however, the mother of Child 10 had been converted, Diane Wood was also persuaded that Dawn Reed could, after all, be a child abuser. The mother of Child 10 would also no doubt have stirred up anxiety on the part of Child 5’s parents when she mentioned the "wand" episode in December 1993. So too, she herself would have been alarmed by talk of "needles" passed on to her by Child 14’s mother.

    240. Child 11

  240. This child was born on 23 May 1989. She began at Shieldfield on 5 August 1991 with Dawn Reed, who was at that stage not in the Red Room but in what was to become the Orange Room. She was joined there by Mr Lillie on 16 October 1991. The child left their joint care on 2 March 1992, when they took over responsibility for the Red Room, because she remained in the Orange Room. She later transferred to the Yellow Room on 26 August 1992. She generally attended full time, although on some occasions 3-4 days per week. She left Shieldfield altogether in September 1993.

  241. Child 11’s mother gave evidence before me on 25 and 26 March. Like the other parents, she is firmly of the view that her daughter was abused at some stage by the two Claimants. It is something which caused her great anxiety both at the time and over the intervening years. There were times when she found the process of giving evidence in itself distressing.

  242. Like some other parents, one of the sad consequences of coming to believe that her child was abused is that she has tended to blame herself. She was already feeling guilty to some extent, so she told me, because she was embarking on a time-consuming university course with one small child to look after and, after her son was born on 8 March 1992, with two. She was apparently getting a certain amount of pressure from her partner’s parents and her own mother, who rather took the view that she ought to have been looking after the children full-time – at least in the early years. On looking at the Day Books, she also reacted sensitively because she thought that the staff at the Nursery were making too many notes about her and her activities, and not enough about Child 11 or (subsequently) her brother. For example, notes were made from time to time that she referred to Child 11’s eczema and was informing the staff that this might sometimes be a reaction to stress. I am afraid that the mother of Child 11 was unduly sensitive about this issue, since (rightly or wrongly) the Day Books at that time all had a space for remarks under "Parents". This was to enable them to record information which the parent or parents had given to staff, or alternatively matters which the staff wished to pass on to the parents.

  243. The mother of Child 11 is another witness for whom the traumatic experience of the Shieldfield "scandal" has meant that she now views events through a somewhat distorted memory. This is apparent from comparing her own (quite sincere) beliefs as to what was happening with the contemporaneous records.

  244. Two matters in particular stand out. First, although she believes that Child 11 regressed in toilet training and began to wet herself while under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed, the Day Books clearly demonstrate that this problem really began after she left their care. There are many entries, in particular, by Amanda Caisley. The mother responded several times in the witness box by saying that she did not trust the records kept by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. It is a point which others have made. I am conscious, of course, that paedophiles or child abusers can be very manipulative. On the other hand, I have to bear in mind that there are many, many entries both by Mr Lillie and by Miss Reed in various Day Books recording incidents of wetting or soiling and, indeed, other behavioural features of children which could easily be attributable to stress of any kind (including child abuse). There is no reason to suppose that they should be economical with the truth over wetting specifically in relation to Child 11, and her alone. I see no reason to doubt the general pattern which emerges from the written records.

  245. The other aspect of the Day Book entries is that it is quite apparent that Child 11 very much enjoyed the Nursery and, for the most part, got on well with the staff and fellow pupils. It is necessary to take account of the fact that a new sibling arrived on the scene in March 1992, and that this would have been bound to affect her in various ways. She was obviously competing for her mother’s attention at that time, as almost always happens. There is a record on one occasion, just after he began at the Nursery, of the child being rather fixated on her young brother and going to the Baby Room to keep an eye on him. She also picked up a teddy bear on that occasion and treated it as her own "baby". It was also about this time that the problem of wetting became prominent. Mr Lillie and Miss Reed, as I have already noted ceased to be her carers just a week before her brother was born.

  246. Apart from these understandable factors, however, the general pattern is of an intelligent and lively child. It appears from the Social Services file note on 19 May 1993, when the mother was first interviewed, that she was describing Child 11 as an "articulate child who can embroider stories" and, moreover, that "Chris and [Child 11] have a good relationship". The mother was also apparently telling the Social Services on 13 July 1993 that "there have never been any concerns about [Child 11] or her brother". The same message was being conveyed in that month to police officers, when Constable Kinghorn and Det. Sgt. O’Hara visited the mother. Once again, however, the mother now views the historical position rather differently with the benefit of hindsight. Despite all these contemporaneous records, she now says that she did have concerns about Child 11 at that time, and indeed that she had had such concerns from shortly after she entered Shieldfield Nursery. In so far as she was expressing herself as not having any real concerns at the time, she now construes this as her having been "in denial".

  247. It is also to be noted that when she subsequently started making "disclosures" Child 11 claimed to have visited "Chris’s house" with other children whom she identified. These were children, however, who were with her during her period in the Yellow Room. They had not been under the care of Mr Lillie or Miss Reed. It is interesting to note that in a record dated 26 July 1993 Kulvinder Chohan, one of the social workers, was drawing to the mother’s attention that neither Child 11 nor any other child in the Yellow Room would be expected to go out of the Nursery with other members of staff – in particular, Mr Lillie or Miss Reed. She was relaying to her that she would only have been out during the period of the Yellow Room with Diane Wood and possibly with another child. Despite this, the mother of Child 11 now clearly believes that she was taken out by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed and cruelly abused.

  248. It may be relevant that the child began attending therapy at Barnardo’s from 21 September 1993. It was only after this that allegations of indecency or being hurt begin to be made.

  249. For a considerable period of time the mother was reluctant, understandably, to put her daughter through the process of either being medically examined or that of a video recording. Eventually, however, the child was interviewed on video on 24 November 1993. Before that, she had been examined by Dr San Lazaro on 14 October. The relevant entry in her Report of the same date is somewhat confusing:

    250. "Genitalia were noted to be normal externally, but the hymen appeared to be somewhat distorted and scarred with a rather high free edge.

    The findings in this little girl would suggest previous significant trauma to the hymen with granulatory healing. Because the healing is complete, however, the appearance of the hymen could pass as normal, or indeed having a mild congenital abnormality. I cannot be absolutely certain about trauma".

  250. I cannot be sure what to make of that. Nor indeed could Dr Watkeys. She considered Dr San Lazaro’s comments on both Child 11 and her brother to be "confusing". She is surprised that she made no drawings of her findings in view of the fact that she was claiming it, in her police statement, to be "highly likely" that penetrative trauma had caused the findings. Dr Watkeys emphasised that, in her opinion, the presence of previous significant trauma cannot be confused with a normal variant. As for Dr Ward, she observed that the physical examination did not satisfy diagnostic criteria for sexual abuse, even though there might have been some scarring of the hymen. This is just one example of Dr San Lazaro overstating the case and "beefing up" her findings for the police statement.

  251. It is important in this context to note that the mother had observed Child 11 on various occasions inserting fingers into her vagina and saying that she enjoyed doing it. When asked by her mother where she had learnt to do this, she referred not to Mr Lillie or Miss Reed but to another small girl in the Yellow Room.

  252. As for the video interview, this was conducted for the most part by Vanessa Lyon, although the mother was invited in when the child was perceived by Ms Lyon as being reluctant to speak. There is a classic passage of leading questions under the guise of summing the position up for "Helen", who was not in the room:

    253. "Vanessa Lyon: You know what? I think Helen’s a bit deaf. You know what? She wants me just to make sure I’ve got everything right, [Child 11]. So can you tell me if I have got this right?

    Child 11: What?

    Vanessa Lyon: This naughty man hurt you with a knife?

    Child 11: Yeh

    Vanessa Lyon: And he was called?

    Child 11: Monster

    Vanessa Lyon: Monster. And he was also called "Chris".

    Child 11: Nothing

    Vanessa Lyon: Chris. Isn’t that right?

    Child 11: (nods)

    Vanessa Lyon: It was Chris, wasn’t it?

    Child 11: Yeh

    Vanessa Lyon: And he used to work at the nursery.

    Child 11: (nods)

    Vanessa Lyon: You’re nodding. So I must be right.

    Child 11: Yes

    Vanessa Lyon: And he hurt you with the knife?

    Child 11: Yes

    Vanessa Lyon: And we must especially remember this – and we’ll speak loudly cause, as I say, I don’t think Helen heard – but it was in a house.

    Child 11: A house

    Vanessa Lyon: And it was a monster’s house.

    Child 11: Yes

    Vanessa Lyon: And Dawn was there?

    Child 11: Yes

    Vanessa Lyon: And was anybody else there?

    Child 11: (shakes head) Just the naughty people.

    Vanessa Lyon: Naughty people.

    Child 11: And a good lady.

    Vanessa Lyon: And a good lady who was called R- R-

    Child 11: R

    Vanessa Lyon: R

    Child 11: Ker

    Vanessa Lyon: Ker

    Child 11: sss

    Vanessa Lyon: R – Ker

    Child 11’s mother: I don’t know that name, do I?

    Child 11: It was a R –

    Vanessa Lyon: R

    Child 11: - and a Ker and a sss

    Vanessa Lyon: Like an ess is that?

    Child 11’s mother: It’s a bit like Rebecca that, isn’t it?

    Child 11: A line with a dot.

    Vanessa Lyon: And a dot.

    Child 11: A line with a dot.

    Vanessa Lyon: Roxi? Rooks, no, I can’t work that one out. But she was nice?

    Child 11: (nods)

    Vanessa Lyon: That’s good. And did anybody else hurt you? I know Chris hurt you. Did anyone else hurt you?

    Child 11: (Shakes head)

    Vanessa Lyon: All right.

    Child 11: Shall I write down the word again – in –

    Vanessa Lyon: You could try, please, yes

    Child 11: And I can cut it out so –

    Vanessa Lyon: We can show Helen, couldn’t we?

    Child 11’s mother: Hm mm

    Vanessa Lyon: What pen are you going to use for that?

    Child 11: This one I wanted – oh I need a pen.

    Vanessa Lyon: OK that’s fine. Start with a clean piece of paper there.

    Child 11: R

    Vanessa Lyon: R

    Child 11: Ker

    Vanessa Lyon: Ker. Hm – I don’t think I know her. What does she look like? What colour hair does she have?

    Child 11: Ginger

    Vanessa Lyon: Ginger?

    Child 11: Flowery dress and ballet shoes. Princess shoes and a –

    Vanessa Lyon: Flowery dress, ginger hair and ballet shoes. Gosh, you have got a good memory. Really good.

    Child 11: Yeh – and um –

    Vanessa Lyon: Was she a grown up lady or a child, children? Was she children – one of the children?

    Child 11: Erm a grown up.

    Vanessa Lyon: Grown up. OK. Ginger hair. Erm, she was there and she was OK.

    Child 11: She was nice lady.

    Vanessa Lyon: She was nice. And Dawn was going to tell the police because – did she – did Dawn see what Chris did to you?

    Child 11: (nods head).

    Vanessa Lyon: Yeh, she did. You’re right. I see you nodding there and you told me before, didn’t you, that?

    Child 11: (nods head)

    Vanessa Lyon: Erm

    Child 11: Doesn’t she look nice in that (indicating doll)?

    Vanessa Lyon: I think she looks nice, but I’ll tell you what, I bet she’s getting cold.

    [There is then a discussion about a doll’s knickers. Then the name of a small boy is mentioned, who according to Vanessa Lyon was said to be present, and Child 11 says nothing happened to him.]

    Vanessa Lyon: You don’t think anything happened. How did you get to this house? Who took you to the house?

    Child 11: Chris

    Vanessa Lyon: Chris took you to the house. Right. How did he take you to the house? Did you walk or –

    Child 11: Walked

    Vanessa Lyon: You walked

    Child 11: Oh, I want to put it like this [putting clothes on doll].

    Vanessa Lyon: So did – was it just Chris? Did anyone else take you to the house or just Chris?

    Child 11: Chris and Dawn

    Vanessa Lyon: Chris and Dawn

    Child 11: But, I was safe with Dawn

    Vanessa Lyon: You felt safe with Dawn. Because – and she was all right to you?

    Child 11: Yeh

    Vanessa Lyon: That’s good. And you went to this house, just you? No other children with you?

    Child 11: Yes

    Vanessa Lyon: Who? Sorry, which children were with you?

    Child 11: [Two boys and a girl are mentioned – but none of the justification children]

    Vanessa Lyon: Right

    Child 11’s mother: [The girl’s name was mentioned].

    Child 11: (nods head)

    Vanessa Lyon: [She repeats the name of the girl and one of the boys] And Chris and Dawn, and you walked to this house, can you remember anything about the house, what it looked like? What colour doors or furniture?

    Child 11: (shakes head)

    Vanessa Lyon: Was there chairs? Can you remember anything about it?

    Child 11: (shakes head)

    Vanessa Lyon: No? Did you have anything to eat or drink when you were there?

    Child 11: Can you read the word? Can you?

    Vanessa Lyon: I’ll show it to Helen but I’m not – I can’t work that out.

    Child 11: Can you know what that mean?

    Child 11’s mother: Can I work out what it says? No, I don’t know that name.

    Child 11: Well, we will have to show it to –

    Vanessa Lyon: And this is the girl with ginger hair isn’t it? Woman, lady, with the ginger hair?

    Child 11: Yeh (plays with doll’s clothes) Right. She’s not having this cardi on.

    Child 11’s mother: It might keep her warm."

    The interview continues to no effect.

  253. In fact, the child seemed cheerful, friendly and good-natured. She was, like so many of the children, primarily interested in playing with the array of toys accessible in the room. She had nothing very much to say at first, but when pressed came out with allegations to the effect that she had been cut by a multi-coloured knife (not "part of Chris") which had hurt her tummy, and that she had been frightened by as many as 10 men. The child showed no anxiety or distress but was making these observations incidentally to the process of playing – as if almost just to get the interviewer "off her back". The descriptions she gave did not match her manner or emotional state at all. Moreover, she said that although "Dawn" was present she had not hurt her but had told "Chris" that she would tell the police about him. None of this carried conviction.

  254. It was interesting that Professor Bruck, who had previously only seen the transcripts, was asked what she gained from actually seeing the children on tape and replied that it had only then became apparent to her how casual or offhand some of the children’s remarks had been. She made the point that some at least appeared to be very much by the way, when the main focus was playing or drawing. It seemed to me that Child 11 provided a very good example of this.

    255. Child 12

  255. This child was born on 15 February 1990. He attended Shieldfield full-time from 1 June 1992 until September 1993, although at one period he was attending four days a week rather than five. He was in the Red Room with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed from the start until 28 August 1992 when he moved to the Orange Room. His first verbal "disclosure" was apparently as early as October 1992 when he began having nightmares, in which he is alleged to have cried out either "Stop it, Chris, Stop it" or "Stop it, Chris don’t do that". On the face of it, of course, very compelling but (as with Child 8) a little scepticism is appropriate. It is not always easy to interpret what a child appears to be saying in sleep. At one stage the mother’s account included her asking what it was "Chris" was doing (after he woke up). He replied "Nothing".

  256. There were no clinical findings to suggest abuse but Dr San Lazaro introduced an element of drama when he visited her on 11 November 1993. She produced a 10 ml syringe and invited him to use it for transferring lemonade from a bowl to a plastic bottle. When he saw it, Child 12 is said to have recognised it and said "I know about that. Chris had one [i.e. at least 15 months earlier]. He used it to make my bottom nice and not sore. He put special juice in it". Again I find myself a little wary of such a "pat" scenario. By that, I am not suggesting that anyone is not telling the truth about what the child said, but I am sceptical of taking it as a spontaneous and unprompted description of an injection by Christopher Lillie. During the Summer of 1993 there was much going on among children and parents, and I need to be cautious about his account being overlaid with what he had heard. The mother’s memory is clearly also unreliable because she put this incident some six months earlier.

  257. A perianal swab yielded haemolytic streptococcus. This is not a sexually transmitted disease but, according to Dr Ward, this was "of interest" since Child 1 exhibited the infection too. It is, however, no longer "of interest", since it was dropped at an early stage of the trial by the Defendants as part of the plea of justification, and quite rightly since it is by no means uncommon in small children. It is perhaps surprising that Dr Ward did not make that clear at the time of her report. It reflects a little on her objectivity.

  258. The background may be of some importance. This child’s mother had been concerned since Mr Lillie’s suspension in April about the possibility of abuse. She took him to her GP who gave her no encouragement. She instigated a visit to Dr San Lazaro on 24 May 1993. Even she had her doubts and noted on 10 June that the child had made no allegations of abuse himself. She told me on 14 May that "I do not think I was impressed enough with this child to even examine him". Moreover, she observed that it was many months since he left Mr Lillie’s care. Rather oddly, however, she referred to him as "the alleged perpetrator" at a time when she had nothing more than an unconfirmed allegation by the mother of Child 22. She agreed with Miss Page that, when she wrote "alleged perpetrator", neither Child 12 nor his mother was alleging that Christopher Lillie was a perpetrator of anything.

  259. The matter was clearly to the forefront of the child’s mind as well as his mother’s, and on 23 July 1993, the day when he was arrested in connection with Child 23, the boy told other children and staff in the Yellow Room that the police had been to see "Chris" because he was naughty. Three days later, when Miss Reed was arrested, he was again giving the "lowdown" in the Yellow Room and saying that they had been taken away so that they could not be naughty anymore. This confirms my anxiety about treating his statements as reliable. Without a clear explanation as to who was feeding him this information, and why, I must remain sceptical. Miss Page suggested that it came from child 23, but there is no solid evidence to support that. At some point around this time he is also recorded as having told his mother that he had people up his bottom.

  260. The first video interview took place on 9 August 1993. Not surprisingly, on this occasion he also referred to Dawn and Chris as having left the nursery and to the involvement of the police. The child’s mother refers to the fact that it was Dr San Lazaro who gave him the information. This, of course, is another warning sign as to her impartiality in these events and as to her role in cross-contamination. After a certain amount of prompting, Child 12 refers to a horrible dog who bit "Chris". This has an odd ring to it, since it rather sounds as though the child has picked up a story involving a dog and given it a twist of his own. He refers to having seen it at Chris’s flat which he visited with Children 36, 48 and 87. There are anachronistic aspects to this story. First, it is necessary to recall that at the time Child 12 was in the Red Room Mr Lillie was not yet living with Miss Kelly in Red Barns or with her dog. Secondly, the other three children he refers to were with him in the Yellow Room in the Summer of 1993 – very shortly before the video interview. Two of them had never been in the Red Room, although Child 48 had briefly overlapped. It thus looks as though a familiar phenomenon is at work here. The child is telling a story which he peoples with his current or recent companions, just as several of the children refer to incidents having happened in the past but when they were wearing their present clothes. As it happens, the incident he describes simply could not have happened. It just does not fit.

  261. There was a second interview on 25 November 1993. This had followed a report by the mother to social workers on 9 November that Child 12 was now saying that he had been in bed with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed and that they had put a needle up his bottom. There was also an anal discharge. All this, of course, was well over a year after he had moved on to the Orange Room.

  262. The second interview was quite short and Child 12 immediately announced that Dawn put needles up his bottom to make it wiggly and Chris put orange juice up it to make it not wiggly. He said it was done in his own home and "with the gun from the doctor’s". It seems as though this account, at least in part, derives from his experience a few days earlier at Dr San Lazaro’s surgery. It was explained by his mother in evidence on 25 April that Dr San Lazaro had actually given her the syringe to take home, so that Child 12 could familiarise himself with it and so that he should lose his fear of it. Whether he had actually displayed any fear at the consultation is not clear, but in any event Dr San Lazaro’s intervention creates a significant question mark over the reliance that can be placed on the "injection" allegations. In any event, it appears that he later denied that anything had happened. Kulvinder Chohan recorded on 28 November the upshot of a meeting attended by the mother and child, Julie Kinghorn and Helen Foster:

    263. "[Child 12] had a cold that day and later went on to say nothing had happened".

  263. In February 1994, when he was just four, Child 12 apparently made further allegations (going back at least 18 months). He told his mother that Dawn had slashed an orange with a knife in his presence and told him that she would put his eyes out if he told what happened to him. Moreover, on this occasion Child 11 intervened and tried to wrest the knife from Miss Reed. This lacks the ring of truth, and once again it is necessary to recall that Child 12 and Child 11 did not overlap in the Red Room but had been together in the Yellow Room. They then moved on to the next school which they attended. They were also friends and indeed still are. Thus, it appears to be the same phenomenon at work again. A story is told about the relatively distant past but the characters are from the present or recent past.

  264. It is also significant that the lurid story about Dawn Reed slashing an orange came in the immediate aftermath of watching a highly unsuitable film called Jumping Jack Flash.

  265. The story found its way into the Newcastle Journal on 28 November 1998 under the heading of "Legacy of fear for young victims of nursery nightmare". The film was said to have caused the boy to begin screaming uncontrollably. His mother is quoted as saying "Dawn Reed used to stab at an orange and threatened to do the same to his eyes. You never know what is going to trigger off flashbacks to the horrors they suffered". In the course of the mother’s cross-examination, she was shown certain extracts from the dialogue. It was full of swearing, sex and violence of a rather outlandish variety which could well be harmless for teenagers or adults but which was quite capable of frightening a child of four, or stoking up his imagination, or a combination of the two. The mother’s recollection was that the film had been shown before the evening watershed and therefore must have been heavily edited. That was somewhat vague, however, and the point remains in my judgment a telling one.

    266. Child 14

  266. It is by now obvious that Child 14 is at the heart of this case, as she was in the criminal proceedings. As Holland J explained, she was the oldest of the indictment children, she had yielded physical findings consistent with penetrative abuse, and she gave rise to the most serious charge facing Mr Lillie (i.e. rape). Although she was put forward as the strongest prosecution case in the 1994 proceedings, the present Defendants do not rate it so highly. Child 14 has now slipped to third place behind Child 24 and Child 23.

  267. She was born on 17 November 1988. She began at Shieldfield on 21 January 1991 and left the Nursery on 22 July 1992. She had not been under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed since 19 February 1992. (Thus, when Dr Sandra Hewitt asserts that she spent "over 2 years having some contact with Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed", it would seem that she has misinterpreted the facts. Joint care was from 16 October 1991 to 19 February 1992.)

  268. Child 14 was first examined by Dr San Lazaro on 8 October 1993 (i.e. 20 months later). A confusing feature of the evidence relating to this child is that there are discrepancies between the available medical records. The medical notes show the presence of moderate hymenal loss with thick fibrotic changes and a complete tear at the 4 o’clock position. In her police statement of 23 October 1993, Dr San Lazaro describes a tear at the 5 o’clock position plus one anterior to that (itself not on the diagram). As Dr San Lazaro put it herself in the witness box, "It is regrettable … All of this is a substantial professional lapse, I would have said".

  269. Dr Watkeys found the records confusing. She did not understand what is meant by the phrase "thickened fibrotic changes". One interpretation would be that it referred to scar tissue throughout the hymen – but this seems unlikely in view of her other record of tears. Dr Watkeys was also puzzled by reference to partial tearing and whether this was supposed to be additional to the complete tear (or tears, as the case may be). Nevertheless, there are potentially significant indicators of hymenal damage. On the other hand, such findings as there were relating to her anus were not indicative of sexual abuse.

  270. It was agreed by all concerned that Child 14 came from a home environment in which a significant level of domestic violence was encountered. On one of the controversial videos, her mother is seen to have a black eye. That is merely part of the background. Of course, it is not suggested on behalf of the Claimants that a child from a violent home cannot experience sexual abuse outside it. That would be ludicrous. On the other hand, domestic violence can sometimes be a contributory factor towards disturbed and even sexualised behaviours. It cannot be simply left out of account. Furthermore, it is clear that she had behavioural problems, including violent temper tantrums, prior to entering the nursery. Her mother was finding this difficult to cope with.

  271. No significant disclosures or behaviour were noted until May 1993. (This was at or about the time of the suspensions, when rumours and speculation first became rife.) It appears that the mother of Child 14 had been told about Christopher Lillie’s suspension by a neighbour, the mother of Child 92.

  272. At about this time Child 14 apparently invited a cousin to kiss her on or near the vagina and declared, "You see it on videos". Explicit videos are commonly available nowadays and it is possible that she had heard about such matters in gossip at school. What I am invited to conclude is that this comment provides in itself evidence that she had been present at some unspecified location, and time, when a pornographic video was made during which oral sex had been recorded. That seems to me to be fanciful. Some of the allegations about "Chris’s house" in this case are said to relate to Red Barns; but it is important to note that Child 14 left the nursery months before he moved there. Furthermore, Mr Lillie said that no child, nor any member of staff, had ever been to his earlier address in a different part of Newcastle. Miss Reed said she had no idea where he had lived before. There is not one scrap of evidence that any child had been taken to any other of his addresses.

  273. Her other comment in May 1993 was that a boy had been to Chris’s house. This could, for all I know, have been a reference to allegations being made at the time about Child 22. But, at all events, there is no allegation so far of any assault upon herself.

  274. By September 1993, Child 14’s mother was expressing anger that no one from Social Services had been to see her to discuss what was going on at Shieldfield. On 24 September, according to her mother, Child 14 was alleging "Chris" had at some time placed his "wiggy" near Child 35’s "Mary". It is necessary to see this against the background that Child 35 was a close friend of Child 14 and was at the same school. Moreover, the mother of Child 35 was present on the first two occasions when social workers talked to the mother of Child 14. Be that as it may, Child 35 did not corroborate what Child 14 said about her. Ms Jones accepted that in cross-examination on 15 February.

  275. There was still no allegation by Child 14 that anything untoward had happened to her. She did say, however, that she had been on one occasion to Chris’s house with Dawn and Moira (Martin), but nothing to the effect that anything unpleasant had happened there. Three days later, these allegations were repeated, but she added that other children were present, including Child 35 and Child 10. Child 10 did not corroborate her account either.

  276. On 15 September her mother had reported to social workers that Child 14 had said nothing about misbehaviour at Shieldfield. The first "disclosures" emerged after a home visit by Vanessa Lyon and Marion Harris, who had encouraged her mother to talk to her about the matter, and to use suggestive techniques such as drawing and the naming of body parts. The difficulty is to know, at this distance of time, what passed between mother and daughter and how, if at all, this influenced subsequent disclosures. What is clear from Social Services records is that the mother’s memory was shaky to say the least. At various stages, she suggested that Child 14 had gone to Shieldfield aged 14 months (she was actually aged 26 months) and that she left in December 1992 (in fact it was July).

  277. On 23 September 1993 the mother was expressing quite strong antipathy to Christopher Lillie, whom she claimed to know from childhood. She said that he came from a dirty family and that she had not wanted him changing Child 14’s nappy. She also suggested that Christopher Lillie and/or his sisters had been taken into care because of sexual abuse. There is no evidence to support this. The Review Team took another line (i.e. that he had probably suffered child abuse while in care). There may be a considerable element of ex post facto reasoning about this. Certainly Mr Lillie denied having known her as a child, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. It was on the next day that Child 14 was making disclosures. By this time her mother had told her that Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed were in prison and could not hurt anyone.

  278. The first video interview took place on 4 October 1993. Up to that point, no one apart from the mother had heard what Child 14 had to say. I have already pointed out that the allegation on page 41 of the Report is inaccurate in suggesting that Child 14 referred on this occasion to being raped and to being video taped.

  279. What she did say was that she had been to somewhere described as "Chris’s house" where there were two dogs, cats and hamsters. She said that Child 35 came with her.

  280. By this stage it had already emerged that the child was supposed to relate to the interviewers something described at home as "the business" or "the biz". This seems to be the term used to cover whatever it was that she was supposed to say about Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed. Time and again, however, it was clear that she was unwilling or unable to recall what she was supposed to say. She was asked to say something that was "silly or naughty they shouldn’t have done". What this first elicited was that Christopher Lillie had said that he was in charge of the Nursery and that he could "wipe her bum". She said that she would not be very pleased and he therefore refrained from doing so.

  281. Asked if he did anything else, she said not. It then emerged that the child had been told that "Chris had been naughty" and "went to jail". This shows that there was a background of negative stereotyping underlying "the business" that she was supposed to relate. That information can only have come from an adult, as indeed her mother had already admitted to the Social Services on 27 September 1993.

  282. When she was asked what she had to tell, Child 14 said she could not remember. There were confused accounts of going to a house with Amanda or Moira (from Shieldfield Nursery) and Chris and Dawn. But nothing unpleasant or improper happened. She seemed also to be saying that there were other children present (Child 35, Child 10, Lucy and Sam). None of this was corroborated by any other person, child or adult.

  283. Several times she exculpated Dawn Reed, saying that she "done nothing" and "wasn’t silly". She should be let out of jail: "Say Dawn can come out today".

  284. She did make allegations about Christopher Lillie taking his trousers down and holding his "wiggy". There were leading questions, designed to get the child to suggest an erection, but she said it was pointing neither up nor down but at Child 35. Mrs Saradjian found this very compelling evidence, displaying independence on the child’s part. The trouble is that there is no corroboration at all from Child 35. Also, it is alleged to have taken place at Shieldfield Nursery. The idea of Mr Lillie moving around at Shieldfield Nursery with his trousers down does not sound very compelling. Even if he escaped the observation of his colleagues, it would have presented something of a risk. If spotted, it would have taken some explaining. This did not trouble the Review Team because it had emerged in the Jason Dabbs case that abuse can happen in a busy environment even in the presence of colleagues. Presumably, however, this would require watchfulness and discretion – rather than the abandoned exhibitionism attributed to Mr Lillie by Child 14.

  285. During this first interview, Child 14 was obviously aware of the broader context, since she enquired whether Child 10 had been to the video suite that day (as indeed he had). She, Child 10 and Child 35 were all at the same school at the time.

  286. Professor Bruck was of the opinion that there was at that stage no justification for taking the matter further or subjecting the child to another interview.

  287. Nevertheless, Child 14 had a second video interview on 13 October. In the meantime, the examination by Dr San Lazaro had taken place. Although the child made no allegation of abuse to her, the physical findings led her mother to press her further. She told her that she knew something else had happened at the Nursery and apparently elicited an allegation of rape from the child, which she reported to Social Services on 11 October.

  288. At the second interview, in due course, Child 14 alleged that Dawn Reed had been silly. There was an incident in the toilets at Shieldfield, when Mr Lillie and Child 35 were supposed to be present, and Miss Reed had stuck needles up their "bums". Asked what she was wearing on this occasion, she said her green trousers and "this top". The needle had gone under her trousers but over her pants. The same thing happened to Child 35, who was crying; meanwhile, Chris was supposed to be laughing. She also claimed to have seen them put a needle into Child 10’s bottom. (He did not offer any confirmation either as to having been present on such an occasion.) The needle was described as a "toy" one or "pretend" one.

  289. Child 14 was asked again what had happened at Chris’s flat, and she said "nothing" but she did confirm that she had been there with "Chris, Dawn and Moira". There is no confirmation from Moira Martin; indeed, she was not even asked about it by the Review Team.

  290. Child 14 had clearly been talking again about "the business". She offered to show Helen Foster where Chris lived, but her mother would have to come: "If Mummy doesn’t tell you, I’ll forget". This is obviously highly unsatisfactory. Where this trip would have led is something of a mystery. Had it taken them to Red Barns, it would clearly have been anachronistic, since Mr Lillie did not move there until six months after Child 14 left Shieldfield. When she gave evidence, her mother said that she thought the child must have been referring to another named road, where she had told her she had been taken to a house with a black door. That particular road and a "black door" had first appeared on the scene six months earlier in the allegations being made by the mother of Child 22 (see below).

  291. After further questioning from Helen Foster and Vanessa Lyon, it was alleged that "Chris put a needle up me and all" (also up Child 35’s bottom). At this point, contrary to what she had already said, she added "Dawn just did nothing, because Dawn was in the class". This interview dragged on for 78 minutes (far too long) and her mother was allowed to badger her to tell Vanessa and Helen "the business". But nothing was forthcoming.

  292. Despite Child 14’s resistance to coercive questioning, over that length of time, Vanessa Lyon and her mother contend that the child did allege rape during the journey home. What prompted this is not clear. Vanessa Lyon regards it as quite spontaneous. She was driving and just coming to some traffic lights. She looked in her mirror and could see the mother and child in the back seat. They were sitting close together but she saw no whispering or any exertion of influence upon the child.

  293. On the other hand, when she was later pressed to repeat this on tape, she said it was not true and "just stupid jokes".

  294. I am asked to bear in mind that in the first and second interviews the child asserts that "they" or "Chris" had told her not "to tell" because she would not see her mummy and daddy again.

  295. Next came the highly controversial third video on 22 October. During the criminal proceedings, the police originally only disclosed two video interviews. Whether this was by oversight is unclear. It is contrary to good practice to subject children to three such interviews, save in exceptional circumstances. When one of the defence lawyers spotted something on one of the tapes, suggesting that Child 14 had been to the suite before, an earlier video tape (the first one of 4 October) was revealed. It had also been withheld at the time of the disciplinary proceedings by Vanessa Lyon.

  296. At the third interview, there is the startling comment by Child 14 that she has been told by her mother that, if she does not "tell the business", Christopher Lillie can come out (i.e. may be released from custody). This is very worrying, because that was indeed the very day on which there was a bail application. It was in fact successful, and Mr Lillie was just leaving Durham Prison when he was re-arrested because Child 14, at the end of the interview, finally came out with an accusation of rape. It looks, therefore, as though someone was exerting pressure on the child to make this grave allegation on the basis that, if she failed to do so, Mr Lillie might come out and do further harm. So far as Miss Reed was concerned, as in the first interview, Child 14 exonerated her completely.

  297. The matter dragged on and Child 14’s mother was brought in to encourage her to say something. She was told, "Then we can go to town and have presents". She is pressed repeatedly to say what they wanted to hear. She asks to go home and, at that point, the tape blanks out. After a 13 minute gap, the tape resumes and Helen Foster claims that she had been next door to check, and the tape had not been switched on. She asks Child 14 to tell her again what happened when Chris took his pants down.

  298. Even at this stage, the child shows little interest in "the business" and is much more interested in play. She constructs a "choo choo train" in which Helen Foster takes her place and Child 14 goes up the train collecting tickets.

  299. It is true that Child 14 claims that Chris put his "wiggy" in her "Mary" and it felt "tickly". This was hardly spontaneous, however, since it was only elicited by a grossly leading question from an exasperated Helen Foster: "Chris put his wiggy where?" She then talks again about going to his house with Chris, Dawn, Amanda, Child 10 and Child 35. The interview finally terminated with her mother saying, "Now they can’t hurt nobody anymore". (The implication is clear; now the child has finally delivered the allegation of rape, bail will be revoked. That is exactly what happened.)

  300. In her evidence before me, the mother said that she would have had no idea about the bail application that was taking place that day. She may well believe that to be true in 2002, but if that were the case, it would be difficult to explain the remarks I have quoted about Mr Lillie "coming out" and "hurting" people.

  301. Miss Foster was asked about this in her evidence on 22 May. She had no recollection of whether the mother knew of the bail application; nor of when she herself had known about it. There are various comments in the transcript which make it, in my judgment, quite clear that the mother did know about the bail application. The most likely candidates for informing her would be the police officers in the case. As to Miss Foster, she recollected turning up for the re-arrest of Mr Lillie outside Durham Prison. But she did not appear to recollect anything of what I described to her as the "race against time".

  302. She produced quite a detailed note of the end of the third Child 14 interview and also records that within 10 minutes she had gone to the Infirmary to collect a report from Dr San Lazaro (in fact dated the following day) and that, thereafter, she went to Durham Prison, but she does not appear to recall what might appear to be the obvious links between those events. I found this quite a difficult area because, just as on the many hours of video tape, Miss Foster presents as a likeable, kindly and straightforward person. She was frank about the defects in the interviewing process in 1993 and how differently things would be done today. She was also frank about the risks of cross-contamination between the various accounts and speculations in this case. But on the "race against time" I was less convinced.

  303. It is important to record what she said in her notebook about the circumstances in which Child 14 at last came out with her allegation of rape. As Holland J recognised, this cried out for close inquiry. It is clear that the child terminated the interview (or so she thought) and said to her mother "Let’s go home". The tape then fades out at 11.38.11.

  304. At this point Helen Foster records that there is a "break for toilet facilities". This is not consistent with the transcript, which appears to show that the interview had ended. Her note then continues:

    305. "11.42 Resumed video interview. Message received on ear-piece that video equipment was not working. Left video room, liaised with [Social Workers], checked equipment, appeared in working order but it hadn’t been switched on.

    11.51 Resumed interview with equipment on!

    12.10 Interview concluded. Two video tapes taken from machine one selected as master tape, sealed. Second video tape and two audio tapes to be working copies (B/77/93). Retained by me.

    12.20 To RVI, witness statement signed by Dr Lazaro."

  305. Vanessa Lyon also dealt with this in her evidence. She had no clear recollection after so long an interval. But she did say that she was in with the video camera at the point when the interview resumed. The child was recalling to Helen Foster that she had been raped when Vanessa Lyon was embarrassed to note that the video equipment was not working. Hence the need for re-enactment.

  306. This was not a satisfactory passage in the evidence. Vanessa Lyon was at pains to distance herself from the video equipment and to say how untechnical she was. She could not even switch on her own video equipment at home. This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that there were various Shieldfield interviews when she herself was operating the camera (e.g. Child 19 and Child 21).

  307. I do not wish to be unfair to either of these women. Neither claims to have a clear memory of what actually happened. Mr Bishop submits that it is clear that there was simply a glitch in that an entirely voluntary "disclosure" was taking place, but not recorded for the prosaic reason that the untechnical Mrs Lyon forgot to switch on the machine. Holland J clearly thought this gap cried out for an explanation. It still does. In light of their memory lapses, I am not prepared to conclude that either Miss Foster or Mrs Lyon was lying. Nevertheless, I am not prepared to "buy" the explanation that somebody "forgot" to record Child 14 all of a sudden and spontaneously making the most serious allegation in the Shieldfield story (i.e. that which resulted in a charge of rape). What happened between 11.39 and 11.51 on 22 October 1993 is unlikely now to be finally resolved, but what is clear is that it triggered Mr Lillie’s re-arrest at Durham a couple of hours later at 14.10 hrs.

  308. The Memorandum of Good Practice makes clear that there should be "a record of what occurred during any interval(s), including all periods away from the interviewing facility". This is obviously because it may become "…important to be able to demonstrate that the child was not prompted or coached between interviews". It has not been possible to demonstrate that in this instance, where it was especially important to do so because of the demonstrable history of pressure on this child and her previous resistance to making the allegations.

  309. Mr Bishop wanted to introduce an expert report after closing submissions to explain how the video and recording equipment in the suite actually worked. It was to the effect that one could look through the viewfinder and see and hear what was going on in the interview without the equipment actually recording. Unfortunately this evidence could not be agreed and I decided that it would not be right to take this into account without giving Miss Page an opportunity to explore it fully. I do not therefore propose to attach any weight to it (just as I decided to ignore Professor Bruck’s post-trial supplementary report). In any event, Mrs Lyon did not have any recollection, nine years on, of actually looking through the equipment.

  310. In the meantime, Dr San Lazaro had apparently put together a report between 12.10 and 12.20, in double quick time, which was compatible with the allegation of rape made between 11.50 and 11.55. In fact, her relevant witness statement (at least in the typed version) appears to be dated the following day. Dr San Lazaro has no recollection of this incident which, if it happened, is rather surprising in view of its importance in the criminal proceedings and the "race against time". It is possible that she jotted something down "from memory" (as she did with her generic report to the C.I.C.B.) but it is not now feasible to come to a firm conclusion.

  311. One can have no confidence in this flawed process at all. I have already cited what Professor Bruck said generally (at paragraphs 409-416 above). She described Child 14’s third interview as one of the most coercive and abusive interviews she had ever reviewed, with no consideration being shown for the child’s feelings. After the 13 minute gap, she appeared to her to be quite different in demeanour, i.e. "totally subdued by her interrogators".

  312. One does not need to be an expert to recoil at the whole exercise. I agree with Professor Bruck’s assessment that "the evidence that was produced was so tainted that it is unreliable". Despite this, the Review Team described the child’s evidence as powerful and compelling. They praised the interviewers and publicly stated that there were no leading questions. The clear implication is that there was consistency over three interviews, when obviously there was not.

  313. It seems that three days after Mr Lillie was re-arrested at Durham the child was telling her mother that she had been in bed with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed who were indulging in mutual oral sex and using a vibrator. A little later, in November, she added that she had been rubbed all over with a vibrator herself and had been put in a bath after she had been in bed with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed after making videos.

  314. On 16 November 1993, Child 14 referred to the name of a man with a certain disability (which I do not need to spell out), and to a woman with red hair. The mother of Child 23 had provided the names of these persons to Child 14’s mother. They were obviously relayed to Child 14, who identified them as having been involved in some way in abuse. The police investigated this and found no evidence for it whatever. The Review Team knew this. Nevertheless, the smear was incorporated into the Report at pages 211, 213 and 269.

  315. Following the final "disclosure" of 22 October, the social services records disclose over several months various demands made by the mother for money from the local authority. She wanted to be paid for telephone bills, costs of re-housing, decorating, a kitchen unit, a shower unit, rubber sheets, a new bed, a washing machine, a wardrobe and a floor covering. She received a number of payments. I do not believe it would be right, however, for me to draw the inference that the pressures on the child were financially motivated. I have to assess the evidence in a broader context.

  316. The child appeared in 1997 in two television programmes when she was aged eight. One was a Channel 4 programme called Death of a Childhood and the other was the Panorama programme about female abusers. She was seen in shadow, but would be recognisable to those who knew her. She was invited to recount for the public at large the details of the abuse and rape she was alleged to have undergone more than five years before.

  317. It was obvious that Mr Wardell was shocked (perhaps naively) by the fact that these broadcasters had been party to such exploitation. It is indeed difficult to understand what could be gained by her reliving such horrible experiences. It appears that money again changed hands, but the mother said she could not remember how much. She thought it was probably no more than a "token" sum, in each case, to compensate for the use of her home for filming.

  318. The motivation for putting the child through this is hard to follow. The mother explained in cross-examination that it was not revenge, but rather a desire to overcome the injustice her daughter had suffered through the criminal justice system by proving to everyone that she could give a cogent account. Miss Page cast doubt on this evidence by referring to unguarded remarks she had made to Professor Barker:

    319. "I know where Chris is living now and we have been watching it, and you feel tempted to do something, but we have been told that he is under surveillance and we cannot do anything about him yet. But we will get to know when he is not under surveillance, and then we’ll see what will happen then".

  319. In the light of this Miss Page suggested to her that vengeance must have been a significant factor. This was again denied. I do not need to decide what the motive was, since it does not really affect my task.

  320. It is desperately sad that the events at Shieldfield can have had such an apparently all consuming effect upon a family. But the truth is that the account that Child 14 was giving, when she was nearly nine, was quite different from what she had said earlier. That may not be very surprising since she was purporting to recall events when she was two or three years old. What is more worrying is that in the unedited interview I was shown, with Su Pennington, Child 14 on several occasions said that she could not remember what happened. She did not appear to be in any distress, but merely smiled rather shyly when she said she had forgotten. In due course, she came out with the allegations of abuse (including rape) but they were now different. They located the incident not at Shieldfield but at a house reached by a metro journey behind a red (not black) door. Curiously, there is nothing in the mother’s witness statement about this version at all. Miss Page asked whether this was because the mother did not believe that version. No clear answer was received. The mother’s position was that she believed everything her daughter had told her (clearly taking no account of contradictions or inconsistencies).

  321. Miss Page also called upon the Review Team, through Mr Bishop, to make clear their position on the plea of justification. They preferred, however, to keep a low profile. They did not wish to adopt any of the 1997 versions. I see no reason to ascribe this to any scruple or fastidious judgment on their part. They were quite prepared to allege against Mr Lillie and Miss Reed anything they felt they could get away with, but even they must have recognised that they could not adopt contradictory positions and would simply have to plump for one or the other.

  322. As I have already recorded, Mr Wardell’s position about the Panorama programme was that it did not affect their thinking about the credibility of Child 14’s evidence. They tried to put it out of their minds.

  323. As to the Channel 4 programme, this involved a dramatic reconstruction of the Child’s distress. She was referred to as "Louise" and the mother as "Jenny". The child is shown holding Barbie dolls and stroking one of them. She then portrays a pretend nightmare, calling out "Mum, Mum". The mother comes into the bedroom, asks if she needs to go to the toilet and carries her. She is described by her mother as prone to depression and is portrayed as rolling about with a large teddy bear. She refers to her peers as "going around dead happy, but I’m like the only one going around dead sad".

  324. Her mother describes how the child, at the time she was in Shieldfield Nursery, had "a lot of cystitis" and sores, but she put this down at the time to "fizzy pop" and to the fact that "I left her in a wet nappy all day". The implication is that, with the benefit of hindsight, the explanation is that the cystitis and sores were caused by abuse "by two staff members at this nursery - one of them male".

  325. Like the other children, Child 14 had made no contemporaneous complaint. This was covered in the programme by the child explaining that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had threatened her: "They says, keep it a secret. I didn’t tell them because they said … not see your mam or dad or your family any more". The commentator adds that it was therefore over a year before "Jenny" suspected.

  326. The mother is quoted as saying:

    327. "When I picked up the paper, and I seen they were arrested straightaway alarm bells was ringing in my head. I asked Louise if anyone had ever been silly in her nursery and she then went on to say that the male member of staff had exposed himself to her… and then she went on to say he’d done other things to her".

    (The arrests were in July and Child 14 said nothing until mid-September).

  327. The child then describes being taken to a place with a red door where "they did things but I don’t like to talk about it – like they had a big camera".

  328. The mother was clearly less inhibited. She went on to describe how Dawn Reed had inserted a needle into her vagina, by way of introducing a relaxant. She told how photos were taken, a video recording was made, and how oral sex had taken place. This despite the child’s persistent (and spirited) insistence on exonerating Dawn Reed (e.g. "Dawn done nothing. Say Dawn can come out today").

  329. There was then shown an extract from the child’s first video interview of 4 October 1993. As I have already described, there was no allegation of misbehaviour against Dawn Reed and no allegation of assault involving herself. Despite this the Review Team falsely summarised it at page 41 of the Report as containing allegations of rape and the use of a video camera, as though they had completely muddled up her 1997 allegations with the 1993 version (while claiming to have put the 1997 allegations out of their minds). At all events, her mother described for the Channel 4 viewers why on 4 October 1993 "she didn’t really say very much". Her explanation for the child’s reticence was, "She didn’t know what she could tell them and, like, what she could be, like, trusted to tell them". The daughter added, "It’s a bit embarrassing, like, because you don’t know them".

  330. Chief Inspector Campbell Findlay then contributed by saying that he did not agree with Holland J’s decision. Then Child 14 expresses her view about how child evidence should be approached in the criminal courts: "If I was a judge, I would let children have one chance. Then if they didn’t think they were telling the truth, they just wouldn’t get any more chances". It is difficult to make much sense of this, since I have no idea what she meant by "any more chances" but it reflects an attitude to be found among various adults in the course of this case (including Mr Wardell). The approach taken is that if one does not believe the child’s remarks if they could be construed as allegations of rape, sadism or indecent assault (rejecting any inconsistent or exculpatory statements), then one must be dismissing the children as dishonest.

  331. I am not going to comment further on these broadcast items. Suffice to say, they have done nothing to change my view either as to the weight to be attached to her three video interviews in October 1993 or as to the Review Team’s misrepresentations about them. In the light of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 and the Lord Chancellor’s order of 1993, relating to children’s evidence, all of the material I have referred to above is admissible. It is all a matter of weight for the fact-finding tribunal. I would like to make it clear, therefore, that I have no confidence in any of the allegations of misconduct made by Child 14 or her mother. The concerns expressed by Holland J so clearly in 1994 remain as valid today and nothing revealed subsequently has gone any way to allay them.

    332. Child 15

  332. Child 15 is an interesting case. He was seen playing quite happily on the video recording of the visit to the soft play centre on Mr Lillie’s birthday in June 1991. He was born on 7 May 1988 and attended Shieldfield more or less on a full time basis between 3 September 1991 and 25 August 1992. He was never in the Red Room with Mr Lillie or Miss Reed or under their care in any other room. There were no medical findings. When Dr San Lazaro went into the witness box, Child 15 was one of those she first mentioned in respect of whom she had changed her mind.

  333. This child’s first disclosure came in February 1996, when he was nearly eight years old and no less than three and a half years after leaving the Nursery. It happened in the course of therapy at Barnardo’s. It may well be, therefore, iatrogenic (see Chapter 5 by Richard J. Lawlor in Expert Witnesses in Child Abuse Cases, eds. Stephen J Ceci and Helene Hembrooke).

  334. What he actually alleged was that Mr Lillie had hurt his genitals by rubbing hard, and this happened many times. The mother was visited by police officers in October 1993 and she told them that she had no concerns about her son. She has not provided evidence for these proceedings. It appears, therefore, that she may well be an example of what Dr Cameron described in his evidence about the group phenomenon – a parent standing out against the group belief (see paragraph 487 above). It is true that Professor Friedrich asserted that, "He had internalised this fear of Lillie and Reed to such a degree that he continued to be acting as if he were under threat even several years after discharge from the nursery", but I am not prepared to give this any weight at all. It is bare assertion.

  335. Inevitably, the time came when the allegations about this child were dropped by the Review Team – albeit somewhat late in the day, on 13 May. The usual costs consequences followed.

    336. Child 17

  336. This child was born on 2 May 1990 and entered the Nursery in September 1992 in the Red Room, where he remained in the care of Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed until their suspensions. He continued to attend Shieldfield Nursery until September 1994 (usually for two days a week). He was living with his father, who managed to care for him largely on his own.

  337. No concerns were expressed until 13 months after Mr Lillie’s suspension. At this point, Child 17 was in the Yellow Room with a number of other children who had already made allegations of abuse. In particular, Child 23 was in the room with him. She by this time was already undergoing therapy under Mr Rick Telford.

  338. On 17 May 1994, she blurted out in class (at the age of 4 years and 3 months) the curious sentence "[Child 17] has got bad feelings". There is an apparently full manuscript record of what then passed between them. She then said that he had bad feelings because of "what happened to him". The boy appeared to be taking no notice, when Child 23 went on to tell "Gillian" (the relevant member of staff), "Chris and Dawn tickled [Child 17’s] fairy bum with a crayon and hurt him and poked him". The boy looked angry and denied it. The Defendants argue that he over-reacted and that his anger shows that Child 23 had hit the nail on the head. I do not see why it is not explicable as embarrassment or confusion at personal and intrusive remarks made in front of a member of staff. Even very young children can feel awkward and embarrassed at such comments.

  339. The phrase "bad feelings" sounds as though it comes straight out of Child 23’s ongoing therapy. This is borne out by a document in the bundle relating to her. It is a letter of 13 June 1994 in which Mr Telford, Head Occupational Therapist at the Fleming Nuffield unit, records how she had been attending weekly since 21 March 1994. He said "[Child 23] has been able to talk to other Shieldfield children telling them to go to the Nuffield to get rid of their bad feelings". From this it emerges clearly that Mr Telford was proceeding on the assumption that abuse had taken place at Shieldfield and he implied that Child 23 (and perhaps others undergoing therapy) were being encouraged to go out and bring in others with "bad feelings".

  340. It is clear from the Cleveland Report, and indeed common sense, that a distinction has to be drawn between spontaneous disclosures emerging in the course of a properly controlled interview and what might be said in therapy. (See also the observations on iatrogenic harm by Richard J. Lawlor in chapter 5 of Expert Witnesses in Child Abuse Cases, 1998, eds. Stephen J. Ceci and Helene Hembrooke.) It appears that a further danger would be that of one child’s therapy experiences being communicated to others, particularly if a child has been encouraged to go out and "cold canvass" other children who may have been abused or generally proselytise for the perceived benefits of therapy.

  341. The other "disclosures" emerged not only at the Nursery, in conversation with Child 23 and Gillian Smith (whom the Review Team did not interview), but also at home with his father. References were made to Mr Lillie having thrown "a crayon down the hill" and to Child 17 having been to Christopher Lillie’s house. He also told his father that Chris and Dawn had been "put in a cage" – this is obviously something deriving directly or indirectly from adults and might fairly be classified as "negative stereotyping".

  342. There is no doubt that "crayon" allegations figured significantly in what Child 17 said, in particular suggesting that crayons had been used on Child 4 and Child 5. There were also references to people dying. Most notably, accordingly to Gillian Smith’s record, he referred to Child 23 having died, when he was actually talking to this child on 18 May 1994. This is quite likely to be a confused recollection of what others had alleged about Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed, rather than something that they had told Child 17. The Defendants invoke his reference to death as evidence of his having been threatened over a year earlier, but he appears to have placed some emphasis on the fact that, whatever Chris and Dawn had said about people dying, nobody had died. In so far as it is wise at all to place reliance on what children of this age are saying, such comments are as consistent with scepticism as with succumbing to threats.

  343. Sure enough, within days of his first "disclosure", someone from the Social Services turned up together with Constable Helen Foster. Matters developed from there.

  344. It is important to note that Child 17 was in communication not only with Child 23 but also with Child 4 and Child 5. Child 4 was talking about Chris and Dawn being naughty on 17 May 1994 (the very same day as Child 23’s reference to "bad feelings"), and she had just been referred for therapy because of her poor relationship with her mother. This does not seem to have been implemented until August. Child 5 did not begin therapy until later in the year, but she too began to "disclose" in May 1994 and in due course began to talk of "crayons" and "fairies" – both concepts which could have been picked up from Child 23.

  345. The scope for cross-contamination is obvious and needed to be carefully addressed. This is now recognised quite explicitly in the Review Team’s closing submissions. Mr Wardell appeared rather grumpy at this suggestion, and thought it wholly unrealistic that this could have happened. The long dialogue, as apparently recorded by Gillian Smith on 17 and 18 May 1994 (but never explored by the Review Team with her), had all the "hallmarks" of reflecting genuine disclosures by Child 17, so far as Mr Wardell was concerned. If there were commonly recognised hallmarks whereby to judge accurate disclosures, life would be much easier for paediatricians and other professionals involved. Unfortunately, there are not.

  346. In the Review Team’s response to Child 17’s father, on 11 November 1998, they told him that they had seen medical evidence that a number of children, including Child 17, had suffered sexual and other forms of abuse during the time that they had a place at the nursery. This is somewhat surprising since Dr San Lazaro had said, following an examination on 13 June 1994, that Child 17 was "overtly normal" and that "minor changes that were seen could not be specifically attributable to trauma", and were probably normal for him. She was, I think, referring to his anus. Dr San Lazaro is generally not backward in making findings of penetrative abuse, and it is noteworthy that she definitely did not do so in the case of Child 17. She acknowledged the "possibility" of significant damage having been inflicted in the past, but no more. I find it difficult to see how that could be said to be fairly reflected in the Review Team’s letter of 11 November 1998. But Mr Wardell saw no inconsistency. A "possibility" was enough for him. He was content to equate that with "medical evidence" of sexual abuse. This time it was not Dr San Lazaro "beefing up" her findings; it was the Review Team. Nevertheless, by the end of the case, Child 17 had been relegated to a position three from bottom of the Review Team’s list of likely victims.

  347. There were behaviours in Child 17’s case to which significance has been attached - rather more than to his "relatively few" disclosures (Professor Friedrich). The behaviours were described by Dr Sandra Hewitt as "not rich with specific detail", but involved some element of sexualised behaviour at the Nursery.

  348. Various examples of incontinence are relied upon from the Day Books occurring between 2 years 4 months and 2 years 9 months. But these are difficult to pin down as indicative of sexual abuse. As to "sexualised behaviour", he was spotted on 1 February 1994 licking toys and equipment. The Day Book also records licking or kissing of other children on 14 and 21 June of the same year.

  349. On 11 May he was noted to be observing a girl’s bottom. On 22 June it seems that another child was seen on top of him making what were interpreted as sexualised movements. By 28 June he was recorded in the Yellow Room disclosure book as claiming to having had cars, bricks and crayons put in his bottom.

  350. It is submitted that although Child 17 "did not make a disclosure until May 1994 when he was in the Yellow Room, his disclosures cannot be explained simply as ‘Yellow Room Contamination’". I would not "dismiss" his statements at all, but I do regard the powerful contaminating influences in that Room, at that time, as impossible to ignore.

    351. Child 18

  351. Child 18 was born on 22 October 1989. She is one of those who started life at Shieldfield under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed before they moved to the Red Room. She had joined them on 5 November 1991 and moved with them into the Red Room at the end of February 1992. She progressed to the Yellow Room on 22 September 1992.

  352. Her first "disclosure" came seven months later in April 1993. She was thus one of the very first to disclose, if that is a correct interpretation. She appears to have said to her mother while in the bath the somewhat enigmatic remark "Someone playing with us didn’t hurt my bum". She was asked a leading question; namely whether it was a lady teacher or Chris. She apparently replied "Chris" (it can only be "apparent" because there was no parental evidence adduced). Other allegations appear to have been made at about the same time to the effect that her mother was not to wash her in the perineal area because Chris had punched her there. A few weeks later, on the other hand, she was touching herself between the legs and said that she had learnt it at the nursery. By September 1993 there was the very serious allegation that while Miss Reed had held her legs Mr Lillie had held her head; and they had tickled her vagina. By this time, she had been out of their care for just over a year.

  353. In January 1994 the story was that she had been to the seaside with Dawn and Chris (presumably some 18 months earlier, or more). Another unidentified male had been present. She had been held upside down and sand was put in her "Nicky" (vagina).

  354. There was the by now familiar cluster of "traumatic stress behaviours" (e.g. clinginess, wetting, fear of lifts and monsters). There was also said to be a reluctance to go past Red Barns. As with other children, however, any such reluctance can only have been induced by other people investing Red Barns with some sinister significance, since Child 18 left Mr Lillie’s care over three months before he moved to Red Barns.

  355. Genital and anal findings were of no significance. No parental evidence was given and, on 13 May, the child was duly dropped from the Review Team’s defence of justification. They were ordered to bear the costs.

    356. Child 19

  356. Child 19 was one of the children in respect of whom charges of indecent assault were brought. She was born on 7 February 1990 and entered the Nursery, in the Red Room, on 10 September 1992. She moved on to the Yellow Room a few weeks before her third birthday. (Thus, when her GP wrote in July 1993 that she "was in the class taken by the accused person for almost 1 year until Easter 1993", that is simply inaccurate.) She was withdrawn from Shieldfield in July 1993. She was therefore present during the three months following Mr Lillie’s suspension. It is necessary, however, to take account of the fact that her attendance was more sporadic towards the end and that for the first three weeks of June 1993 she was on holiday in the United States.

  357. Her mother had a meeting on 3 August with a social worker and Helen Foster, during which she was given advice as to how to question the child. The introduction was by reference to her daughter’s earlier complaint of vulval soreness. It is significant, however, that the mother had told the social worker that this had occurred some time after Easter (i.e. several months after moving to the Yellow Room). The Review Team have suggested that, on a proper reading of the Social Services records, the mother’s account embraced soreness earlier. The mother at the time seemed to believe that she had moved to the Yellow Room at Easter. She was putting the soreness "since moving to the Yellow Room". Thus, it could have been earlier. The Review Team also submit that soreness while in the Yellow Room was consistent with Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed having taken the opportunity for abuse while she was in the Yellow Room. This is somewhat unfair on Miss Reed, however, since the child did not accuse her of doing anything. Furthermore, vulval soreness in itself is an unsure guide to abuse.

  358. Her mother, who gave evidence on 11 March, readily acknowledged that there was nothing unusual in a small girl about such a symptom. Nevertheless, having asked the child on 3 August if she could remember having a "sore fairy", the mother then asked her if anyone had touched her while she had been at Shieldfield. She said "They call him Chris". She apparently said that she had been touched "inside". It is a slightly curious way of describing him and Miss Page suggests that it might reflect the fact that Child 19 had been exposed to a good deal of talk in the Yellow Room over that summer about Chris and Dawn and what they were supposed to do to "bums" and vaginas. On the other hand, it is submitted for the Defendants that "They call him Chris" is simply a local (Geordie) expression equivalent to "His name is Chris".

  359. Another contributory factor could well be that the mother (obviously through understandable anxiety) had asked her in the previous May whether anyone (or possibly "Chris") had ever touched her at the Nursery. For example, the mother told the police on 6 August 1993 that when she heard of the suspension she asked her daughter "outright if Chris had ever touched her fairy". Although Child 19 denied this at the time, it could have sown a seed which accounted for her answer in August.

  360. On 10 August there is the first of two video interviews. Helen Foster made no progress and therefore the mother was invited to join in questioning her daughter to try and elicit the "disclosure" made to her on 3 August. The next stage was that an aunt was invited to come in and the police officer left the room. This was unsatisfactory to say the least. The child was subjected to leading questions, pleading, ticking off and the offer of rewards. These included clothes for a Barbie doll, a "sleep-over" with her aunt, and "a McDonald’s". Despite all this, there was no disclosure of sexual abuse. Moreover, there was actually no indication of her resisting because of fear or threats. She asked to be allowed home. She was told, variously, to stop being silly, to stop telling fibs and that she would not be allowed home until she gave the required information. Still nothing came of it.

  361. On 12 August 1993, there was a medical examination by Dr Alison Steele which revealed a notch at around 9 o’clock. It is agreed by the experts that this would not be diagnostic of sexual abuse.

  362. There was a second video interview on 2 November 1993. She opened by saying, "I’m going to tell you all about Chris". She was asked who he was, and replied "My other school". She said that he touched her "fairy" and that it happened inside. She was asked on how many occasions, and said "yesterday". She referred also to the fact that "the police got him". That is a recurring theme in the Shieldfield investigation. Manifestly, it could only come from an adult. There is some confusion apparently, since she describes Chris and Dawn as though they were other children.

  363. The nub of Child 19’s disclosure on 2 November was that whatever it was happened in the lavatory at Shieldfield. What "Chris" did was to put his finger outside her knickers; it did not hurt, and he said "sorry". This took place in the presence of "loads" of other children. He was fully dressed and nothing else occurred. She was not threatened or told to keep it a secret. She told her mother as soon as it happened. She, like other children, referred to Mr Lillie as being "in a cage where the policeman’s took him". That is also a phrase that seems to have been in common usage in the Yellow Room. There is nothing that would appear to qualify as "a clear statement by the child" (see paragraph 387 above). Dr San Lazaro, however, told the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board that the earlier statement (in August 1993) represented a "clear statement indicating that she had been traumatised in the vaginal area".

  364. It is true that she also appears to have given an account involving a finger "inside" her in response to further questioning by Helen Foster but she also said he "put his hand in". When asked where, she twice indicated her waist. She later told Dr Fundudis in therapy that he had touched her on the "fairy" when "on the toilet". But this seems to me to be neither spontaneous nor unequivocal. The Defendants argue that her disclosure remained "pure" and "demonstrably untainted at least into January 1994". I am afraid I do not know what that means.

  365. Since none of this amounts to very much, more reliance is placed on behaviour. In particular, it is said that there was regression and daytime wetting. There were occasions when the Nursery provided different clothes when she was picked up, but some of this could be accounted for by other factors such as playing with water. But there is very little in the Day Book about wetting, except two entries for 18 and 25 February 1993, after she was in the Yellow Room. This seems inconclusive.

  366. I should also bear in mind that she had said to her mother that she loved "Chris" and that he loved her. It is unclear how these statements came to be made or what her affect was at the time. It does not necessarily imply anything sexual or improper. Similarly with another of the behavioural symptoms. There was apparently some cheekiness and answering back to her mother. If that were taken to be a symptom of sexual abuse, no adult would be safe.

  367. There was also mention in the mother’s witness statement of nightmares starting while Child 19 was at the Nursery, although this was not apparently mentioned to the social workers at the time. An obsession with dying was another factor relied upon, but this does not seem to have been mentioned either.

  368. By 6 June 1995 Dr San Lazaro was writing that the child had not shown serious signs of emotional disturbance earlier on, but that psychiatric assessment had revealed that "the family have been highly stressed by this incident and that [Child 19’s] statements had altered her mother’s feelings towards her". She added that it was difficult to know "how these children will behave within the background of anger, recrimination and loss of trust that has been generated by this incident".

    369. Child 21

  369. I heard evidence from Child 21’s mother on 12 and 13 March. There is no doubt that she believes her daughter was abused by Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed. She was controlled and dignified in the witness box, but I believe she found it a stressful experience and it took considerable courage for her to go through the ordeal. An incident that has clearly stuck in her mind over the years, and to which she attaches significance, is that she found her daughter when she went to collect her one day in the lavatories at Shieldfield. She was standing outside the door of a cubicle near the washbasins with her knickers round her ankles. Meanwhile, Mr Lillie was still inside the cubicle wearing rubber gloves. As she entered, the mother heard Mr Lillie say "Now wash your hands, [Child 21]".

  370. When, cross-examined, it emerged that the mother had been unaware all these years that the staff had been required to wear disposable rubber gloves when taking the children to the lavatory. In some way she seemed to associate the use of rubber gloves with child abuse. She said she thought, remarkably, that everyone at the Nursery was toilet-trained and that Christopher Lillie was not "authorised to be with children in the toilet". Needless to say, this was all in retrospect. She had seen no reason to make any complaint at the time. There is nothing in this point at all. The mother felt uneasy about the incident with hindsight and, given the atmosphere that later developed at Shieldfield, one can hardly blame her, but there is nothing of substance in the episode.

  371. The child was born on 31 August 1989. The mother knew that two of her nephews had been to the Nursery, and had no problems, and she was therefore happy to send her daughter. She began in the Baby Room on 21 October 1991 and moved to the Red Room in February 1992 just before Christopher Lillie joined Dawn Reed there. She normally attended three days a week from 10 until 3. The child left the Red Room in August 1992. This means that, for whatever reason, the social worker Marion Harris was wrong when she recorded on 24 May 1993 that Child 21 had been in the Red Room "since October 1992".

  372. She left in the summer of 1993 and moved on to another school in September. At some point thereafter (which her mother did not specify), she began to talk about how she and other girls at the school had been inserting pencils into their vaginas. By 16 September 1993 she recounted that Mr Lillie had inserted scissors in her anus and that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had inserted scissors in each other’s "bums". She was by now four years old and purporting to recall an incident which, if it involved being taken out of the Nursery by the Claimants, could only have happened when she was aged two. Although the Defendants only suggest that there are "reasonable grounds to suspect" that some of the abuse occurred outside the Nursery, it is hardly feasible to suppose it could have happened on the premises.

  373. On 28 September 1993 she alleged to her mother that Chris and Dawn had taken "all the children" to a flat or house which "stunk of dog shit". On this outing, apparently, Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had stripped off and wet the bed. Child 21 had been raped by Mr Lillie and she [Child 21] had bitten Miss Reed’s vulva. The very grave allegation the Review Team make is that Miss Reed was present when the child was raped by Mr Lillie and that she herself forced the child "to perform oral sex on her". She is also said to have been threatened that her mother would die if she revealed the abuse. These allegations need to be assessed with care. (It will be remembered that Child 21 was not one of the six "indictment children".)

  374. There is a medical report from Dr San Lazaro dated 24 September 1993, which revealed a small disruption to the hymen in the 3 o’clock position. Otherwise, there were no abnormalities either within the hymen or the anus. Dr Ward agrees that there was nothing diagnostic of penetrative abuse. It is theoretically possible, according to Dr San Lazaro, that a two year old could be raped and still retain an intact hymen. It is also, according to her, possible that scissors could be inserted in a child’s bottom without leaving signs of damage. I am concerned, however, with probabilities – not with fanciful possibilities. The small disruption in the hymen is consistent with no penetrative damage and also with prodding with a pencil (although I cannot be sure that the insertion of pencils occurred, if it occurred at all, prior to the medical examination). I have to remember, in any case, that the expert evidence is that self-injury in that area would be highly unlikely because the hymen is so sensitive and such activity would be very painful. It is in all the circumstances, therefore, unclear how far (if at all) a pencil was inserted.

  375. Dr San Lazaro’s findings came under the spotlight on 16 May. The report of the examination, which took place on 24 September 1993, records her as giving "a very good history of trauma". That gives the clear impression that she had "disclosed" to Dr San Lazaro. On closer inspection, it emerged that this was not the case and that what she had originally recorded was "finger at vaginal area" as something indicated not at this interview but beforehand to the mother. (This is a very important distinction, as becomes apparent when one focuses on how that information came to be imparted to the mother.) Dr San Lazaro said: "I cannot explain that. It is too long ago for me to remember what happened".

  376. Miss Page then turned to physical findings. There was recorded a small disruption of the hymen at 3 o’clock, but the hymen was otherwise normal. Dr San Lazaro agreed that terminology was used in a rather confused way, accepting that "disruption" was sometimes used to describe a normal variant or non-specific finding. It was put to her that a 3 o’clock "indentation" or "disruption" was not significant. Dr San Lazaro’s evidence was that she must have excluded a "normal variant" because she reported whatever it was as "diagnostic of minor trauma". That is not satisfactory. It has about it a kind of circularity. It is especially unsatisfactory given Dr San Lazaro’s lack of objectivity and admitted proneness to let emotion cloud her judgment. I would not trust her findings without corroboration, save perhaps in the case of "barn door" certainty (to use her expression). This is certainly not such a case.

  377. Rather surprisingly, this child was deemed on 26 November 1993 in need of screening for a sexually transmitted disease, but this was not carried out until 30 March 1994. Dr San Lazaro wrote to her mother on 26 April with the negative results and observed, "You will be relieved". Miss Page wanted to know why her mother had been kept in suspense over this concern, for some four to five months, when there was no evidence of any relevant symptoms in November 1993 (i.e. fifteen months after leaving the Red Room). There was nothing in the notes to suggest grounds for concern. Rather startlingly, Dr San Lazaro said in answer:

    378. "Miss Page, I think that if we look back on every piece of minutiae over the years, we are going to find matters which appear at times irrational. I cannot account for what appears to be aberrant from time to time in these records. I can only speculate that we thought it was important – that she must have had symptomatology for me to have reported it…".

    This hardly instils confidence in her findings. Dr San Lazaro may be prepared to speculate but I am not permitted to do so.

  378. By the time Dr San Lazaro came to write to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, on 1 December 1994, she had "beefed up" her findings in a remarkable way. By then she was describing a tear in the hymen compatible with an object having been inserted.

  379. She admitted that she used the words "tear", "disruption" and "scar" interchangeably and "… sometimes even to describe something normal". There is no consistency at all and I cannot place any reliance on Dr San Lazaro’s claim to the C.I.C.B. that she had found a "tear compatible with an object". In the light of her records from the examination a year earlier, it is clear that this was one of her customary "overstatements" by way of advocacy. She also informed them that Child 21 had been in contact with a paedophile ring. She had no evidence of that but lent the claim her professional authority.

  380. The allegations that Child 21 was making by September 1993 are so implausible and lurid that I could not accept them as accurate without some element of corroboration. There is none. It is necessary to remember that she remained from April to August 1993 in the hot house atmosphere at Shieldfield, where rumours and stories were flying around. Indeed, she was a "victim" in the Yellow Room of the highly sexualised Child 87 who was one day found astride her simulating intercourse. The Defendants submit that "children were not talking amongst themselves and copying one another". This is said to be demonstrated by the fact that none of the children Child 21 was in contact with at that stage repeated what she said (in particular, Children 10, 11, 19, 23 and 27). I agree that there is no direct badge of copying, but it is putting it too high to say that it has been shown that children were not talking amongst themselves. That seems contrary to the probabilities.

  381. Although her "disclosures" had certainly hotted up by September, her video interview on 6 August 1993 was rather more low key. She raised the subject of Mr Lillie and clearly knew that she was there to talk about him. She also used the expression (that one sees elsewhere) that he was "locked in a cage". An adult had obviously been giving her negative messages about him prior to the interview. The mother accepted that she had probably told her that the police had "Chris" and that she was safe from him.

  382. In the interview she alleged that he had "smacked us" and, importantly, that this took place when other teachers were there (Patricia and Diane). Yet again, there is no confirmation from the relevant staff. She seems, therefore, to have been locating the alleged incident in the Nursery itself, and no reference was made to any outside location. Considerable pressure was exerted by Helen Foster and the mother and various inconsistent answers were given. She denied that anyone had touched her "minnie" but was pressed further by Helen Foster, who asked her "Do I need to talk to any more silly people who have touched your minnie?" She replied "Teddy". Helen Foster and her mother then tried to get her to say she had been touched, and she was invited to draw a naked man and show what bit of his body he used to touch her "minnie" with. She asked for a handkerchief to blow her nose and that was the conclusion of the interview. Meanwhile, she was chided for being "silly" and at one point (perhaps for the sake of being left alone) she made the meaningless allegation that "Chris" had "cut me bum off". There was no second interview.

  383. It defies belief that the Review Team could possibly assure the public that the questions were not in any way leading.

  384. Considerable reliance is placed on Child 21’s behaviour. Dr Sandra Hewitt offered the conclusion that "the combination of behaviours related to trauma and atypical sexuality are strong indicators that Child 21 suffered trauma as a result of sexual abuse during the period she was in the Red Room" (i.e. between 2 February and 9 August 1992).

  385. Professor Friedrich found her clear demonstration to her mother of having been "sexually touched" very convincing. It is necessary, however, to see this in context. In or about April 1993 she was asking her mother to check her bottom, and her mother asked her who wiped her bottom at the Nursery. She replied "Chris". This obviously would not have been current information by that time. She had for the last eight months been in the care of four other (female) staff at the nursery.

  386. Up to that time, perhaps surprisingly, the mother seemed unaware that Mr Lillie had any specific responsibility for her daughter. This despite the fact that she had been directly under his (and Miss Reed’s) care for as long as six months during the previous year. This lack of awareness may possibly account for the inaccurate information Marion Harris was given on 24 May 1993.

  387. The demonstration of "sexual touching" was carried out in response to a quite specific question from the mother as to how Christopher Lillie "had wiped her bum". The child then demonstrated what in some other circumstances could easily be interpreted as "sexual", but it is quite wrong to leave out the important context of the question asked. Once again, I find Professor Friedrich wide of the mark.

  388. As to other aspects of behaviour, it is worthy of note that neither bedwetting or nightmares were mentioned to the police when a statement was taken (by Helen Foster) on 20 August 1993. Moreover, it is appropriate to have some regard to the best contemporaneous records that we now have in order to see how far current memory is borne out. In this case, the Day Books do not appear to disclose a serious regression in day time bladder control. There is only one entry for Child 21 (on 9 March 1992). The mother was very frank in saying that she kept no notes at the time and could not be sure as to dates. As in other cases, in attempting to assess the probabilities, I must allow a considerable margin for the influence of hindsight.

    389. Child 22

  389. This boy was born on 20 November 1990. He entered Shieldfield in May 1992 and was transferred to the Red Room in September of that year. Known for some time as "the Index Child", his statements to his mother on 7 April 1993 were the first to raise the spectre of child abuse at Shieldfield Nursery. He suggested to her first that "Chris" had hurt his bottom and then, by way of demonstration, that "Chris" had inserted his fingers into his anus and hurt him. This appears to have arisen because the mother chose that day to ask him why he was upset when she took him to the Nursery. That was, as it happens, the very day that Jason Dabbs was given saturation coverage in the media. His mother reported the matter to the police over the Easter weekend (on 11 April) and police inquiries developed from there, culminating in the collapse of the criminal proceedings 15 months later. When the matter was raised with Mr Lillie for the first time, all he could think of by way of a possible explanation, if indeed he had hurt the child’s bottom, was that he had done so accidentally in the course of a nappy-change. He was suspended on 16 April.

  390. The child was seen by Dr Shabde on 15 April and by Dr San Lazaro on 29 April 1993. Dr Shabde recorded that the physical findings were normal and that there was no evidence of anal penetrative trauma. The only apparently unusual item of note was that he had been on iron tablets since about December 1992 (aged just two) for treatment of anaemia. These can sometimes lead to constipation with associated soreness. (It may be significant that the mother was reporting to the GP in May 1993 that since Christmas he would only go to the lavatory on "odd days".) During the examination, Child 22 did confirm to Dr Shabde that "Chris" had hurt him, but he gave no further detail. It appears that, on the day after he was seen by Dr Shabde, Child 22 visited his GP because of a history of abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting (first apparently noted on 15 February 1993). There were no abnormal medical findings. By way of background, it seems that relations between the mother and the GP had not been altogether happy. In a referral letter with respect to anaemia, following a visit to the surgery the previous month, on 16 March 1993, the GP described the mother as "extremely anxious and indeed often aggressive". (She herself, it seems, had a history of anaemia and suffered thyroid problems for which she was receiving medication. It was accepted that this would have had a significant adverse impact on the reliability of her memory.)

  391. By the time Child 22 was seen by Dr San Lazaro on 29 April, his mother was reporting further allegations and behavioural changes. He had been exhibiting episodes of "trance-like behaviour" when visiting a park. Since there was a normal EEG, this was perceived as likely to be of emotional origin. He referred to being frightened of a "black door" and had been noted (by his mother) to kneel and put his bottom in the air during nappy-changing. Something similar was later to be described by the mother of Child 1, who also made reference to "black doors". Significantly, however, her observation of the phenomenon took place the very morning after a visit from the mother of Child 22.

  392. Child 22 also alleged that an object had been inserted into his anus. No formal statement was taken from the child, as he was perceived as not being of sufficient maturity. Dr Shabde thought this unfortunate, since in her opinion he would have been articulate enough for the purpose.

  393. Nevertheless, on 16 April there was a recorded interview with the boy, those present being his mother, Helen Foster and Mr Waterworth of Social Services. Nothing was forthcoming of any significance although he was asked many questions including if all his "bits" were OK and whether he had anything that was sore. He said that his tummy was. There were many attempts by Helen Foster to get him to identify the person who had changed his nappies at school. Eventually he was asked whether it was "Chris", to which he said "yes". He was then asked whether he liked him changing his nappy, to which he also said "yes".

  394. He was then asked specifically whether it hurt when he changed his nappy. He replied that it did. Later he was questioned as follows:

    395. "Q: Do you know your teacher Chris at the nursery school?

    A: (Nods)

    Q: Has he ever hurt you?

    A: He hasn’t

    Q: He hasn’t. Has anybody ever hurt you?

    A: No

    Q: Somewhere where you didn’t want them to hurt you? (a curiously phrased question in itself)

    A: No

    Q: I thought you said somebody had hurt you at nursery and you didn’t want to go back.

    A: No."

  395. The interview yielded no evidence of abuse. In so far as he was claiming to have been hurt (as opposed to denying it), the context is clearly that of nappy changing. Yet at page 101 of their Report the Review Team summarise the interview by saying merely that "… at that point little of evidential value emerged". That is only a fair summary if one proceeds on the basis of ignoring evidence favourable to Mr Lillie.

  396. The Defendants submit that it is hardly surprising that the child did not repeat his "disclosure" on video because he was only 29 months old and was in the company of people he did not know very well. It is necessary to bear in mind that he did not simply clam up. He answered the questions but exonerating Mr Lillie. What hurt was having his nappy changed. Nobody seems prepared to acknowledge the fact that it is possible to interpret the video interview and the earlier remarks to members of his family as compatible in this respect.

  397. There are obvious difficulties of interpretation here. Pain associated with nappy-changing could be caused by accidental injury, or be linked to the history of diarrhoea and abdominal pain. On the other hand, abdominal pain and diarrhoea could have a psychosomatic origin. This could be brought about by anxiety or emotional disturbance of any kind. That would include stress flowing from sexual or physical abuse, or from some other origin. Conversely, constipation caused by iron tablets can lead to discomfort or pain.

  398. I have already noted that the mother herself was undergoing some stress at the time, as recorded in the GP’s notes; indeed, on one occasion she was described as "frantic". Whether these factors communicated themselves to the child can only be a matter for speculation.

  399. There was disagreement as to this child’s comprehension and articulacy. Dr Shabde thought him, for his age, articulate. Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie did not. They commented upon his tendency to parrot what he was told, in the sense that he did not always answer a question but would repeat the last words of the question. Dawn Reed was cross-examined by Mr Bishop about these matters. She said he had poor language skills, comprehension and vocabulary. If she tried to explain that he should not be aggressive, or point scissors at other children, he carried on doing it. He would mimic the play of others but not join in.

  400. There might seem little point in my attempting to adjudicate on such a difference of opinion. It would be an issue on which subjective impressions could easily differ and the matter can, in any case, only be of marginal significance in the case of a two year old. Yet the Review Team sought to attach importance to these differing views. On page 30 of their Report, they actually appear to be accusing Mrs Eyeington of dissembling over Child 22’s speech. I am quite satisfied that this was unwarranted. Moreover, I do not simply have to rely on the evidence of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed for judging Child 22’s speech quality at the time. Dr San Lazaro asserted in her generic report of November 1994 that it was because of "his poor language development" that the investigation was inconclusive. There is also the contemporaneous comment of Helen Foster, "He was unable to talk clearly or form sentences". Moreover, she confirmed that view in the witness box on 22 May. Similar remarks were made to the Review Team in January 1997 by Detective Inspector Campbell Findlay. He may not have been in a position to make a personal judgment about it, but it does seem clear that there was at least a genuine difference of opinion. Dr Shabde gave evidence on 21 May and stuck to her guns but nothing of significance emerged. (I should add that the boy has done very well at school in the intervening years and there is no suggestion that he was in some way intellectually impaired.)

  401. When assessing the reliability of Dr Shabde’s opinions about Child 22, I must also bear in mind that in her report of 21 April 1993 she was hopelessly wide of the mark in recording that there was no history of behavioural problems. I do not say this in a critical way. She could only proceed on the information she was given.

  402. There was no consistency in the mother’s descriptions of Child 22’s behaviour over the relevant period. It is entirely clear to me that during the first few months at Shieldfield, spent in the Baby Room, there were constant behavioural problems which cannot conceivably be attributed to abuse by Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed. Also, his patterns of sleep were poor before he even arrived at the Nursery.

  403. In the Red Room, to which he was moved because of these recurring behavioural problems, they continued, in the sense that it was regularly being recorded that he was showing aggression to his peers and also to dolls and toys. Ironically, his mother was initially reporting that the move to the Red Room had led to some improvement.

  404. In her statement of 26 April 1993, she was saying, "[Child 22] seemed to enjoy attending nursery and got on well with Dawn and Chris. He was always happy to go to nursery and was willing to talk about what he had done". She suggested in the witness box that she was in no fit state to give a statement on that occasion, but Helen Foster denied this and said it would have been quite unprofessional to take a statement in such circumstances. I can see no reason for the mother to have been so confused as to say that the child got on well with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed if she meant to say the opposite. The mother then placed her son’s change in attitude at somewhere between 20 November and 25 December 1992. He had entered the Red Room in September 1992. The account she gave to Joyce Eyeington was consistent with this. There would thus seem to have been more than two trouble free months with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed so far as the mother was then concerned. The Review Team, however, at page 30 of their Report shifted his changed behaviour back in time to the point where he entered the Red Room. It may be unfair to conclude that this was done to make the story fit their conclusions, since the mother’s account varied significantly over the years and they may have opted for a later version.

  405. It is crucial to understand that, according to this early account of the mother, the child seemed not to be too well in the run up to Christmas 1992. There was vomiting, coughing and a sore tummy. He began to complain of a sore bottom at about that time, and this continued while he was attending the nursery after the Christmas break. On one occasion his mother noticed blood in the nappy and, not unreasonably, linked this with what she describes as a "weeping" sore at his anus. She applied cream and decided that if she saw any further blood this would merit a visit to the GP – "but it was fine". The significance of this is blindingly obvious. It was part of Mr Lillie’s responsibilities during this period to change the child’s nappy and, if he was suffering from a sore bottom (and, for good measure, what his mother described as "loose stools"), there would be plenty of scope for Mr Lillie to become associated in his mind with pain or discomfort at the time of nappy changes. Mr Lillie’s first thought, when Joyce Eyeington put the accusation to him in April, was that he might have hurt him inadvertently when performing that task. Far from being a lame excuse, it seems eminently reasonable as being the likely explanation. Furthermore, it ties in with the child’s video interview of 16 April.

  406. The mother rejected that explanation in her police statement on the ground that the child had not mentioned Dawn Reed as also hurting his bottom. This reasoning is bizarre to say the least. Her logic appears to be that since both Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie were responsible for changing Child 22’s nappy from time to time, if he made a statement involving only one of them the allegation must relate to some other activity than changing his nappy. It is, of course, in any event a complete non sequitur. It is also to be noted that the fact that Child 22 did not mention "Dawn" on the same occasion as "Chris" has not inhibited anyone subsequently (including the mother of Child 22) from implicating her in the abuse as well.

  407. One of the mother’s most startling allegations was made from the witness box on the morning of 22 March, when she asserted that even the boy’s anaemia had been caused by sexual abuse. She said that they were making him bleed so much through repeated acts of buggery. All I need say is that this hardly squares with the medical evidence. More importantly, however, the suggestion was just plucked out of thin air in the middle of what I can only describe as a rant. If nasty allegations of sadism could be conjured up so readily in the witness box, I cannot believe that greater restraint has always been maintained in less formal surroundings.

  408. By 12 May 1993, the mother appeared to be telling journalists that Child 22’s personality had changed dramatically since 7 April. If this was indeed the case, then one explanation might be that he was reflecting her own stress and anxiety arising from her "discovery" on that very day that he had been abused. She is recorded as telling a Brenda Hickman (Crime Reporter of the Journal) that:

    409. "My son complained that a man had ‘hurt’ him and he has gone through a complete personality change… His temperament has changed drastically. He has nightmares and gets aggressive."

  409. Consistent with this would be a GP note made in May 1993 under the heading "Other Symptoms of Disturbance" to the effect that "All since Easter 1993".

  410. After the interview with the journalist, the mother told the Review Team that Campbell Findlay came round and told her off. He told her "No bull shit. I don’t want you talking to anyone".

  411. The police had to pay her a visit at the end of July 1993 in order to warn her against putting words in people’s mouths. By that time it had been decided that there was no sufficient evidence to justify criminal proceedings in respect of her son, but she seems to have remained active in spreading her views and suspicions. She had, for example, visited the mother of Child 23 at the beginning of May and caused her to worry about her daughter. She also supplied Mr Lillie’s address, with the result that Child 23’s father went round and assaulted him. She also visited the mother of Child 1 on 26 June and expressed her concerns. Indeed, by the time of their July visit, the police were fearful that she might be jeopardising the whole investigation. Whether their visit was at all effective, and whether it was made sufficiently early, I am unable to tell at this distance of time.

  412. When the spectre of child abuse first loomed over Shieldfield, following the allegations of Child 22’s mother from 11 April 1993 onwards, not everyone took it seriously. For example, the father of Child 7 said on 19 March 2002 that he thought nothing of it at the time because she regarded herself and her child as the centre of the universe. She was always kicking up a fuss about something. Her own daughter apparently commented that she was sick of hearing about it. Others, of course, especially in the wake of the Jason Dabbs publicity of the previous week, felt bound to act upon her allegations (i.e. the Newcastle Social Services, the police, the City Council and Mrs Joyce Eyeington). As Patricia Thompson put it in her statement:

    413. "… we were mindful that we needed to think in wider terms than just Child 22. The allegations had been against a member of staff at the nursery and it was possible that this could be another incident of multiple abuse. I had been involved in the Jason Dabbs investigation as a Senior Social Worker in the office dealing with the investigation and it was fresh in our minds. We obviously kept an open mind as to whether this may have been the start of another multiple abuse case."

  413. I am reminded in this context of the words of Lord Nicholls in Re H at page 592, where he said:

    414. "The task of social workers is usually anxious and often thankless. They are criticised for not having taken action in response to warning signs which are obvious enough when seen in the clear light of hindsight. Or they are criticised for making applications based on serious allegations which, in the event, are not established in court. Sometimes, whatever they do, they cannot do right."

  414. For whatever reason, it has become clear with the benefit of hindsight that the mother of Child 22 is a completely unreliable "historian". Her accounts changed radically over time. For example, she was not even consistent over what (if anything) she knew by 11 April about the Jason Dabbs case. She told Joyce Eyeington that when her son first complained on 7 April she was hesitant about following it through because the police would think she was a neurotic mother who had read about Jason Dabbs. It appears that she told Joyce Eyeington that she had not even read about it. According to Mrs Eyeington’s memorandum of 25 April, she had heard about it but was not interested. The truth is, of course, that if she was worried on 7 April for the reason she gave, she must have known at least something of the Dabbs case at that stage. If this was so, she would be no different from the majority of Newcastle’s citizens since the Jason Dabbs case was big news that very day. This timing could be just a very remarkable coincidence but, realistically, it seems to me that the Jason Dabbs publicity must at the least have been a contributing factor in turning her thoughts to child abuse on 7 April. What she now says is:

    415. "Although it is difficult now to remember, I have no clear recollection of being conscious of reading any press report about the Jason Dabbs case prior to my son’s disclosure to me".

  415. It was in the mother’s statement of 26 April 1993 that the notion of the "black door" first appeared on the scene:

    416. "Whenever we leave the local park to come home, we have passed a house with a black door. As soon as [Child 22] sees any black door, this one in particular, he started getting very upset and agitated. On another occasion [Child 22] didn’t want to go up a particular street with black doors, he seemed to lose his speech and start talking funny and when he calmed down he said. ‘I don’t want to knock at that black door’. I asked him what he meant and he said ‘because there is a lady who looks like a man who scrubs me’. I didn’t know what he meant and just left it. On another occasion we were out in the street and happened to see a man knocking at a black door and [Child 22] wouldn’t let us go by and we had to go a different way. On another day [Child 22] has mentioned a ‘dafty man who hurts him because he’s a naughty boy and it’s his fault’. I tried to reassure [Child 22] that he wasn’t a naughty boy. [Child 22] then said that he couldn’t tell me what had happened ‘he can’t tell and doesn’t remember’ and he says he doesn’t want to remember".

    She then said that by that stage she believed that something terrible had happened to Child 22 behind a black door. The mother gave no less than six specific addresses with black doors, five in one road and one in another. Police checks on the residents proved negative. Black doors were also mentioned by Child 1, Child 11 and Child 14 in due course.

  416. By the time the mother of Child 22 was interviewed by journalists on 28 November 1998, she was dating the child’s behavioural changes back to May 1992, when he started at Shieldfield. This is hardly consistent with the account she was giving in April 1993 and, in particular, with the history she must have given to Dr Shabde on 15 April for her to conclude that there was no history of behavioural problems. This point was picked up in a letter from one of the doctors in the GP practice on 6 May 1993, who pointed out that Dr Shabde’s note did not accord with their knowledge of the patient.

  417. As the mother frankly acknowledged, she had for some time been suffering from a thyroid problem which can affect the memory. Moreover, she accepts that her memory was suffering for this reason at the end of 1992. She claimed, however, that medication had subsequently brought these problems under control. There are some records, however, which suggest that she sometimes failed to take her tablets.

  418. On 20 May 1993, there is a note to the effect that she was telling Pat Thompson that Christopher Lillie was paid £100 for taking children from the Nursery to be abused by paedophiles. This she apparently based upon a passing remark made by the child when the milk lady came to the door. When she asked how much she owed, Child 22 piped up "£100". The milk lady responded laughingly that she wished she could collect such a sum. It seems a long step for the mother to conclude from this casual exchange that the only reason why her son could have mentioned £100 would be that Christopher Lillie had been demanding similar sums for supplying the children for paedophiles. It is not difficult to understand how a mother in such circumstances might fear the worst, but I cannot possibly treat this allegation as having any rational basis or evidential weight. It is another product of a fevered imagination. Patricia Thompson, the social worker, told her that it was dangerous to jump to such conclusions, but it was her view that the mother of Child 22 "had already made her mind up about what had happened".

  419. I have little doubt that Pat Thompson was correct, but this unhappily introduces a real problem as to how reliable the mother’s evidence is in relation to any behaviour or disclosures she reported. She was quite obviously looking for signs of abuse in her own child, and trying to find evidence of it from other Shieldfield children. That may be quite understandable, but it poses a real danger of over-interpretation both for her and for others.

  420. The mother seems to have become obsessed with the notion of a paedophile ring. I would not dream of criticising her. Like many of the parents, this horrendous notion had a profound effect on her life. Moreover, there is no doubt that there were various people over the succeeding years who were prepared to cultivate this belief so that it took a firmer and firmer hold. One of them was Dr San Lazaro. But I must approach the issue in the light of the evidence, rather than seeking to empathise with their fears and suspicions - and evidence is there none.

  421. The child one day in October 1993 pointed to a picture of a well known singer and said that this man had hurt him. It was obviously untrue, but the mother sought to invest it with significance by concluding that a local resident of similar physical appearance must have been abusing him on the procurement of Mr Lillie. She found out where such a person lived, and proceeded to spread the story that he was a paedophile. The police pursued the suggestion and, as I have noted elsewhere, found nothing whatever to support it. The mother of Child 22 believes it to this day, and no doubt always will. She asked rhetorically in the witness box how her child could possibly have described to her that the man had a downstairs flat with a bed in the front room, if he had not been taken there for abuse. The answer was, however, not far to seek as Miss Page pointed out. The witness had to accept that she had kept the house under watch and had herself peered in through the windows. At one stage she described the occupant as "a big fat slob" and added, "when I think about him having my child, I could kill him". I am not suggesting that she is dishonest, but I have to proceed on the basis that she has been irrational and obsessive about it.

  422. Another common feature in the behavioural symptoms noted by the Defendants is the reference by various Shieldfield children to clowns and masks. The origin of this theme is, once again, to be found in the account of this mother. She passed these notions on to others. It seems to derive from an incident at Child 22’s birthday party in November 1992. It was noted by those present (the mother and aunt of Child 22) that some of the children present from Shieldfield were upset by the female entertainers wearing clowns’ masks. It seems that later the same entertainers reappeared wearing animal heads. This too apparently caused upset. From the video, it certainly would appear that Child 1 was upset. There may have been others.

  423. What is puzzling is how this is supposed to be linked to child abuse. Children aged two could be upset by clowns or people wearing animal heads if they were not used to it. There is nothing very surprising about it. I fail to grasp the logic which requires me to assume that the fear stemmed from their having been abused by other adults, in other unspecified places, who happened to be wearing clown masks. Such a link requires to be established by solid evidence.

  424. Libraries played a significant part in Child 22’s disclosures. He was in the Central Library one day when his mother asked him to be quiet because they were in a library, whereupon he began screaming and had to be taken out. From this I am invited to infer that he was screaming because he associated the concept of a "library" with abuse. Other children have also mentioned "libraries" or "libraries with few books" as places where abuse is supposed to have taken place. The explanation is said to be that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed took children to places for abuse but described them to the victims as "libraries" to give a colour of respectability in case anyone asked where they had been.

  425. This child apparently mentioned an occasion when Mr Lillie left him at a library after he had eaten his pie and hurt his genitals. He also referred to Mr Lillie having taken his clothes off but Dawn Reed putting them back on. He was two and a half years old at the time the allegation was made (3 June 1993) and obviously younger at the time of the supposed incident. He is also supposed to have been encouraged by Miss Reed to give Mr Lillie oral sex. This all sounds horrendous, of course, but my difficulty is to know precisely how these statements came to be elicited and the extent to which the mother’s anxieties and obsession with sex abuse might have been communicated to the son. These concerns certainly seem to have conveyed themselves to other adults (e.g. the parents of Child 1 and Child 23) and thus contributed significantly to the dynamic of the "Shieldfield scandal".

  426. This is a factor to be given particular attention in view of the child’s tendency to mimic and parrot what others have said (echolalia). It is said that the Claimants have invented this characteristic in order to discredit the child. I do not accept that. Both Claimants have a fairly detailed recollection of his mannerisms and behaviour. That is not surprising in view of the enormous impact he had on their lives in April and May 1993 (and indeed subsequently) but I do not find anything in the contemporaneous documents obviously inconsistent with their accounts of him in evidence. Their evidence on these matters I found persuasive.

  427. By November 1993 Dr San Lazaro was reporting that Child 22 was making dramatic and bizarre allegations. From having said on 16 April that he had not been hurt (or, if he had, only in the context of nappy changing), the story has become totally different. He was apparently claiming to have been tied up and had a drill inserted in his genitals and/or anus. This was after months of pressured questioning about abuse and I am not persuaded that it was in any way to be relied upon as a voluntary and unprompted disclosure. It is just fantasy.

  428. Ms Jones in her evidence put it more diplomatically. She had no difficulty accepting this child’s early disclosures but said "As time went on, it would be difficult to judge how far you could place weight on some of the later disclosures". Unfortunately, however, one looks in vain to find any such caution or discrimination reflected in the Report itself. Moreover, I need to focus on how late is "later". Judging by the assessment of Pat Thompson (that the mother had made up her mind at least by May), I should be wary of her claims from a very early stage. She clearly kick-started the rumours about a paedophile ring very early in the inquiry and passed them on to others. It is a pity that Ms Jones and her colleagues did not exercise caution when addressing the source of those allegations. The mother was still active in promulgating the wickedness of the Claimants in 1999 when she apparently received £250 from "Best" magazine for her story. This was published under the heading "My Son’s Courage" and told how she had uncovered "the most shocking child abuse scandal of the decade". She was quoted as saying:

    429. "I was frightened at how violent my thoughts towards them were, but I had to learn to control my rage. My only consolation is I believed every word [Child 22] said and acted immediately. [Child 22] is proud of his part in uncovering the abuse – he thinks his bravery saved the other children. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth … So, for now, I’ve told him that Lillie and Reed have been locked up forever. The inquiry team told me [Child 22] was a hero. If he’d not spoken up, who knows how many other innocents would have suffered? But the ordeal has destroyed our family. My husband couldn’t talk about it and has left me".

    Child 23

  429. Child 23 was born on 27 February 1990. She was at Shieldfield for about two years until August 1994. She was in the Red Room, under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed from 1 September to 20 November 1992. Her mother gave evidence on 27 March. I found her to be a careful, moderate and truthful witness. She told me that her daughter had got on with both the carers and appeared to enjoy being at the Nursery. She was moved up relatively quickly to another room because, as Mr Lillie explained at the time, she was not obtaining sufficient mental stimulation in the Red Room.

  430. Child 23 was examined by Dr San Lazaro on 20 July 1993 (three months after Mr Lillie’s suspension). This followed the mother’s having heard of allegations of sexual abuse at the Nursery, originally from the mother of Child 22 who called on her out of the blue on Saturday 1 May. That very evening her mother questioned her as to whether anyone had touched her bottom. She is now unclear as to exactly how she put it, but there seems to be little doubt it was a leading question in some form. In May 1993 she was recounting it to social workers as "Did anyone touch your bottom?" By July it was "Has anyone touched your bum or your fairy?". Child 23 alleged that "Chris" had touched her on or near the vulva and that she did not like it. She said he tickled her bum "hard". It is said that she illustrated this to her mother by reference to a doll, which she had in her hand, by tickling it between the legs. It is only fair to record that the Review Team attach particular significance to this "disclosure" because they say that it cannot be explained as bare assent to a leading question or as parroting a phrase the mother had used. It is the child who is said to have used the notion of "tickling hard" quite spontaneously. At all events, the mother made no record of what the child said on 1 May; nor did she report it to Pat Thompson until 17 or 18 May.

  431. The Review Team rely upon the account given by the mother of this first "disclosure" to Mrs Saradjian on 29 November 1995. But Miss Page points out that there are three new elements that have crept in over the two and a half year interval. First, the account now incorporates a reference to Dawn Reed as well as "Chris". Secondly, the mother’s question (and therefore the child’s answer) includes a reference to being "hurt". Thirdly, there is one of the most unpleasant allegations adopted by the Review Team against these Claimants. The suggestion is that the child is supposed to have told her mother that they had threatened her that dogs would scratch her vulva if she told anyone. It is strange that this nasty allegation should only see the light of day for the first time in November 1995. Everyone accepts that it is right to trace back the allegations attributed to children to the proper time and context in which they were first uttered (if at all). That is certainly what the Review Team were advised to do by Professor Davies. In the light of the later significant accretions, it is especially important in the case of Child 23 to focus on the nearest contemporaneous account.

  432. At interview with Dr San Lazaro, the child is supposed to have confirmed the allegation and told her that Mr Lillie had used a crayon. This is of some importance, because it has been argued on the Claimants’ behalf (i) that Child 23 was the source of the other references to crayons being used for insertion, and (ii) that Child 23 had answered in her video interview of 12 July by reference to a crayon for the simple reason that this was what her eye happened to fall upon when she was asked by the interviewer what had been used to hurt her.

  433. Between her first disclosure on 1 May and the interview of 12 July there seems to have been some pressure on the child. Her mother, for example, told the police that she had "checked her story" on a couple of occasions. It is not possible for anyone now to determine the content of those conversations, but it is obvious that whatever was said could have had a significant impact on later accounts given by the mother and daughter. What is more, her father had reacted quite emotionally to her first statement (understandably so). He clearly got angry and, having obtained his current address from the mother of Child 22, went round to Red Barns on 10 May and punched Mr Lillie. He was also claiming as early as 18 May (to Joyce Eyeington) that Mr Lillie was supplying children to a local paedophile ring. This is highly likely to have derived mainly from the mother of Child 22. But, given all that was happening, it would be reasonable to assume that this highly charged atmosphere would have impacted on the child prior to her interview.

  434. At the time of her first "disclosure" on 1 May Mr Lillie had already been suspended but not Miss Reed. By the time of the video interview, Miss Reed too had been suspended. It was during the interview that Child 23 first made any allegation against her. For Miss Reed she was, of course, the "Index Child". She too is then accused of "tickling".

  435. This interview Dr Cameron did not believe had about it the "ring of truth". She seemed too uninvolved and (like, for example, Child 11) not to show any sign of mentally reliving an unpleasant experience. He spoke of the distinction between historical truth and narrative truth. His comments about her general affect in interview are naturally entitled to considerable respect, in the light of his experience, but I should not lose sight of the principle that the assessment of witnesses (even in these circumstances) is ultimately for the judge as the tribunal of fact. My own reaction was similar to that of Dr Cameron.

  436. Attention has been drawn to a discrepancy between Dr San Lazaro’s type-written statement and her manuscript notes. Dr Ward pointed out that the allegation that a member of staff had put a crayon into her vulva and caused bleeding into her knickers appears in the former but not in the latter. Miss Page emphasises that, if a child had indeed told her in interview that a member of staff had done this, then it should have been carefully recorded. Anyone who knows anything about child abuse would know (as I have discovered from the evidence) that it is elementary to make a record of a clear and unequivocal allegation of abuse made by a child – especially one as startling as this. Dr San Lazaro agreed that there should have been a "better record". She said that she dictated the statement "on the spot" and the manuscript notes were merely an aide-memoire. I am left in the position that I cannot be confident as to how much additional information (if any) came from the child, when talking to Dr San Lazaro, over and above what emerged in her recent video interview. Dr San Lazaro is unfortunately prone to glossing or muddling things she has been told and, in some cases, attributing statements to children which came from adults (a classic example being the burning of Child 1’s underpants).

  437. Looking back at earlier events, the mother then remembered behaviour on the child’s part pre-dating Mr Lillie’s suspension, which is now relied upon with hindsight in support of the allegation of abuse and especially of penetrative injury. At the end of October 1992, the child complained of soreness in the genital area and a reluctance to use the lavatory at least by herself. The GP’s note of 15 October 1992 records a 2-3 day history of abdominal pain and also pain on passing urine. There was no evidence of infection. There were also respiratory problems at about that time but, more significantly, on 18 December 1992 it was noted that the child seemed always to have thrush, and cream was prescribed for associated soreness. A similar problem was recorded much later, in July 1995. That fact naturally must weigh heavily in the balance against drawing an inference that earlier such problems (i.e. before 20 November 1992) should be attributed to abuse by Mr Lillie.

  438. In view of how common urinary problems are, and vulval soreness, it is manifestly important to focus on timing before attributing it to child abuse. The Review Team in their Report refer to "a number of children" developing urinary tract problems from trying to retain urine and others developing problems with constipation. They lump these symptoms all together and seek to give the impression that they are attributable in every case to "being afraid of going to the toilet". Thus the perception arises that these common childhood problems derive from abuse having occurred in lavatories at Shieldfield.

  439. The mother was also referring to incidents of nightmares prior to Christmas 1992 and to her complaining of a hissing or scraping noise in her bedroom. This may be a case where memory is unreliable to some extent. In May 1993 the nightmare scenario was being placed at around Christmas 1992, which would be a month after leaving the Red Room. Now the recollection is that the nightmares were happening during the Red Room period but cleared up by about Christmas. It may not matter greatly, since the nightmares apparently occurred fairly closely together in time.

  440. Another possible area of confused memory relates to day time wetting. The Red Room Day Books do not provide any confirmation for this problem. They may not be wholly accurate but, if it was a persistent problem in the Red Room, experience of the Day Books suggests that there would be a record at least of the general pattern. The mother recalls one instance when Dawn Reed reported to her that Child 23 had "wet herself again". She explained that this had come about through playing with water. Dawn Reed added, according to the mother, that she (Dawn Reed) was liable to wet herself when playing with water. The mother thought this remark odd. If it happened, and I have no reason to doubt it, it sounds as though it was a light-hearted off-the-cuff remark intended to reassure the mother that there was no particular significance in the episode.

  441. It seems that on 25 October 1993 Child 23 referred to having been in Christopher Lillie’s flat with Child 2 and they were both naked. The two children did not, however, overlap in the Red Room. There was thus no opportunity for Mr Lillie to spirit them both out of the Nursery at the same time and take them to the other side of Newcastle where he then lived.

  442. One aspect of Child 23’s behavioural patterns that is worthy of note is that she does not seem to have been upset about anything at the school. She was even, as her mother accepted, "unfazed" by the medical examination. That very much ties in with Dr Cameron’s observation about her video interview. There does not seem to have been any problem in getting on with Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed when she was under their care. The mother did say that after she had left the Red Room she proved reluctant, on one occasion, to go back to be temporarily looked after. But she recognised that this might have been because her daughter had settled in her new environment and felt she had outgrown the Red Room.

  443. There was damage to the hymen apparently diagnostic of penetrative abuse. There was, however, a further episode of bleeding into her underwear on 3 December 1993 (months after any contact with Dawn Reed or Christopher Lillie). She then had a small denuded area on the labia minora, which was thought to be the source of the bleeding. The mother dismissed this, however, as being due to the child’s using soap in the vaginal area. This was not an explanation that impressed Dr Watkeys. Dr Ward observed, "The aetiology of the bleeding remains unsolved but was likely to be traumatic caused by either Child 23 herself or another individual".

  444. It is also to be borne in mind that Dr Desai, who examined her on the December visit in Dr San Lazaro’s absence, noted that there was no other evidence of trauma. This would appear to be inconsistent with what Dr San Lazaro had recorded. I have very much in mind that Dr Desai, being less experienced than Dr San Lazaro, could have missed something, but it naturally raises a doubt as to the quality of Dr San Lazaro’s findings in respect of a "barn door" child.

  445. That is not, however, the full extent of the diagnostic problem in connection with this child. Miss Page relies on "extremely serious inconsistencies" in Dr San Lazaro’s records. It is said that this is one of the cases where she "beefed up" her findings for the benefit of a police statement. She there refers to a "central deep tear", whereas her contemporaneous records appear consistent with a "partial" tear or tears. There was no reference on that occasion to depth. Moreover, Miss Page argues that it is possible to misinterpret a normal variant as a "partial tear". She goes so far as to suggest that the phraseology "deep tear" must have been a fabrication. I am not able to conclude that it was dishonest, although I am only too well aware of Dr San Lazaro’s accepted role of "advocate" for the children. I am especially cautious, for that reason, in the cases where she has put something different into a later account such as in a police statement or C.I.C.B. report.

  446. Dr San Lazaro indicated 3 partial tears on her printed form and also ticked "gross hymenal loss", although her drawing does not appear to show such loss. Nor does it show a "deep tear". Miss Page submits that at this distance of time, and in view of the inconsistencies in the documents, I cannot be satisfied whether there was one tear or more, or if whatever tear there was could be classified as "partial" or "deep", or whether there was in fact loss of tissue. It naturally raises a doubt as to loss of tissue, and the existence of a deep tear, that Dr Desai spotted nothing abnormal on her December genital examination. Dr San Lazaro did, however, describe her as "the paediatrician who had no know-how in observing the hymen. …I do not say that of Dr Desai of my own knowledge. I just know that junior and middle grade paediatricians, and indeed the consultant paediatricians of the RVI and in most district hospitals, recognise that they are not experts at displaying or identifying injuries to the hymen".

  447. Another factor of these records giving rise to doubt as to the nature of the findings is that Dr San Lazaro referred to lateral "nodular scarring". This is quite possibly a record of a nodular but congenital feature rather than scarring caused by trauma.

  448. Professor Bruck pointed out, in relation to this child, that she was one of those who mentioned a variety of other identifiable adults being present when the incidents occurred. One, in particular, was said three times to have been there when "Chris" hurt her bum with a crayon. That particular person had nothing to do with the Nursery. This is a point which fundamentally undermines the reliability of the child’s accounts. It is inconceivable that Mr Lillie would have abused her in the presence of that other person. There are undoubtedly elements of confusion and fantasy and it is impossible to conclude now (as Dr Ward and Dr Watkeys confirm) how or when the child incurred such trauma as Dr San Lazaro detected.

  449. Mr Bishop argues that even if Child 23 had been abused by some other person, in or about December 1993, this would not prove that she had not also been abused by the Claimants. This is to address the burden of proof in a rather misleading way. It is for the Defendants, surely, to prove that despite the possibility of abuse by some other person Child 23 was in fact abused by Mr Lillie and/or Dawn Reed. In view of the obvious measure of agreement between Dr Ward and Dr Watkeys, I do not see how that could be achieved. This is one of many factors underlining the importance of eliminating all other possible candidates before attaching such abuse to Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed.

    450. Child 24

  450. Child 24 was one of the six "indictment children". She was also, by the time of closing submissions, placed in the forefront of the Defendants’ case on justification. She was their strongest example of child abuse by the Claimants. She was born on 14 August 1989 and began at Shieldfield, in the Baby Room, on 21 October 1991. She moved to the Red Room on 21 February 1992 and from there to the Yellow Room on 3 September 1992. There were two visits to the Red Room on 1 and 3 September but, otherwise, her last visit had been at the end of July 1992. Her final day at the Nursery was 5 February 1993. Thereafter she apparently had no direct contact with other Shieldfield pupils. There was clearly an unhappy family background to the extent that she had a father who was sometimes given to violence - although not against her directly. She did, however, begin her interview on 30 July 1993 by telling Helen Foster of an occasion when she was frightened by her father (and apparently some "friends") kicking the door. Thereafter, although she liked to see him, contact apparently ceased.

  451. Her mother gave evidence on 11 March. She was a quiet and moderate witness who seemed to me to be clearly doing her best to recollect the events she was asked to recall. In respect of Child 24 there was found "unequivocal evidence of previous trauma compatible with full penetration through the hymenal orifice" (Dr Kate Ward). She was examined under anaesthesia on 18 November 1993. There was found apparently a central deep transection throughout the width of the hymen at 6 o’clock. There was also nodular scarring of the hymen which was gaping (that in itself is not significant since she was anaesthetised). Also, disruption of the hymenal margin was noted at 3 o’clock. Both free edges were thickened, and there was marked attenuation. Things were not quite so straightforward, however, as they appeared to be.

  452. On 16 May Dr San Lazaro was questioned about her findings. In her police witness statement she purported to record a deep central scar on 12 December 1993. A further lateral indentation was noted at 3 o’clock. This is to be contrasted with the medical report prepared shortly beforehand following examination under anaesthetic on 18 November. There the description was of "at least two deep tears" with accompanying nodular scarring. She accepted that there were inconsistencies and that she would do better now, but Miss Page suggested that in 1993 (six years on from Cleveland) no one could have been in any doubt about the need for scrupulous care and accuracy in recording findings. This would perhaps be especially so in the case of criminal proceedings – Child 24 being one of the indictment children. Dr San Lazaro accepted it was embarrassing to see errors of this nature.

  453. Miss Page submitted that such was the unfortunate state of the records, coupled with Dr San Lazaro’s lack of objectivity where Shieldfield was concerned, that I cannot be satisfied that Child 24 did exhibit diagnostic signs of abuse. I am naturally doubtful, but I believe I should accept that there was evidence of penetrative damage. I cannot find what it was exactly, because of Dr San Lazaro’s inconsistent records. But, unless she imagined or invented the whole thing, it does look as though there was some scarring. It could just be nodules, but I think scarring seems more likely. When or how it occurred is quite another matter.

  454. She was also asked why she did not take the opportunity while the child was under anaesthetic to crystallise her findings by photography so as to record the evidence of penetrative injury. She said it was not commonly done in those days.

  455. Dr Sandra Hewitt described her as showing early and prolonged signs of traumatic stress behaviour and of unusual sexual behaviour. Professor Friedrich referred to her ability to demonstrate penetration and other indications of inappropriate sexual knowledge. There was also the worrying feature of self-injurious behaviour (biting her arms or scratching her legs if upset).

  456. It seems that her mother first learned of what had happened at Shieldfield from a friend ("JT"). This led to her questioning Child 24 about Shieldfield on a Bank Holiday at the end of May 1993. She told her that she knew someone had been "naughty" at the Nursery and it would be all right to talk to her about it. She went quiet at first and then spoke of going to a library and a flat with Chris and Dawn. She described Mr Lillie as wearing boxer shorts, of an old woman with a horrible face and of a dog called "Shelly". She mentioned other children being present, whether on that occasion or on other occasions. Children mentioned were Child 2, Child 8, Child 22 and Child 23.

  457. Much weight is attached by Mr Bishop to the fact that Child 24 appears to have described Mr Lillie’s dog as "cream, brown and black". There are, however, a number of factors to be borne in mind:

    458. a) The only dog Mr Lillie was associated with at the relevant time was Miss Kelly’s. He had only just begun going out with Miss Kelly by July 1992 when Child 24 passed out of his care, and did not move in with her (and her dog) until the following December. At the relevant time, he was living in West Newcastle.

    b) The dog was called Ben – not "Shelly".

    c) The dog was essentially black, with brown patches, and a token bit of cream on the chest (barely visible from photographs).

  458. It emerges from Marion Harris’ note of 22 June 1993 that the first broaching of the subject by the mother went as follows:

    459. "…asking if she remembered and liked Chris and Dawn. Mother said, ‘I know Chris is a naughty boy, police have got him and he cannot get you’. [Child 24] agreed Chris was naughty – said she sometimes went to the library and also spoke of going on the bus to a house – there was a dog, possibly called Shelly …and there were big people and an old woman present. [Child 24] said Chris took his clothes off in front of the other people and smacked her on the bum – he had no clothes on".

  459. It is to be noted that in this (the earliest) record there is no mention of boxer shorts. It is recorded also that, apart from being present, no allegation was made against Dawn Reed. Moreover, it is most unfortunate that the mother got off on the wrong foot (by Cleveland standards) by negative stereotyping. I cannot possibly be confident that the allegation of Mr Lillie taking all his clothes off was volunteered rather than prompted by a leading question. This child was bombarded by leading questions that summer (as emerges from the video interviews) and there is no reason to suppose that the first questioning by the mother was any exception.

  460. It is noteworthy also that the (by no means uncommon) assertions about the police having "got" him are generally intended as reassurance. Normally reassurance is required if a child is reluctant or unwilling to say something. Since this formula was introduced on this occasion, that would tend to suggest that the child was not willing (at first) to make allegations.

  461. I cannot ignore, either, the evidence that Child 24 did not overlap in the same room at Shieldfield with Child 8. Moreover, there is no evidence that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed ever took any children out of the Nursery, on their own, who were not in their direct care. Child 22 and Child 24 only overlapped on the 1 and 3 September 1992. Child 23 and Child 24 appear to have overlapped (if at all) for a maximum of 2 days, but a different two days (i.e. not 1 and 3 September 1992). It is therefore not a practical option for those identified children to have gone out on such a trip.

  462. Boxer shorts first appear on the records in a police statement of 16 August 1993. The statement appears to be something of an amalgam, however, as it also has the formulation (already seen in June 1993) that "Chris took his clothes off in front of other people and smacked her on her bum.".

  463. There is another statement of the mother’s which is of some interest. This refers to a statement of 25 November 1993, but is itself undated and unsigned. This gives a different account of how the mother came to learn of the Shieldfield suspensions: "I found out about the allegations of abuse through a network of friends originating from information from [the mother of Child 23]…. I only found out about the allegations in June 1993 and using my own initiative I contacted the RVI to say my daughter may have been abused… Social Services only became involved when they were contacted in turn by Dr Lazaro and I received a visit from Vanessa Lyon alone and it was after that that my name went on the mailing list and so I was kept informed about other meetings which were being held. My third complaint therefore is that Social Services Department took no steps to notify me that my daughter had been at risk of abuse whilst at the nursery".

  464. This document appears to me to throw doubt on the notion that there was no scope for cross-contamination of ideas before Child 24’s first allegations, and also to reduce the likelihood that her allegations were unprompted, spontaneous and freely volunteered. It is true that the mother now denies the accuracy of the document, but the doubt remains. I cannot assume that someone simply made up its contents out of nothing.

  465. Her mother took her first to the hospital casualty department and then social services staff visited her and arranged for an examination by Dr San Lazaro. There were two video-taped interviews. The first was on 22 June 1993. It is an unfortunate aspect of this interview, as Professor Bruck pointed out, that the interviewers used the word "naughty" more than 50 times. (I make it a total of 76 times.) All this elicited, however, was an allegation that, "He smacked my bum".

  466. This is difficult to interpret because on one view a child will sometimes, in response to pressure and negative stereotyping, come up with the worst thing he or she can think of (i.e. smacking). On the other hand, as Professor Bruck acknowledges, children who have been sexually abused sometimes begin to disclose by reference to physical abuse such as hitting or smacking.

  467. The allegations of sexual abuse came later. Sometimes this can happen as a result of interviews suggesting such matters or supplying sexual information to the child. Naturally, however, one is sceptical of such an attribution in the case of a child with apparently diagnostic physical findings.

  468. I return to the first interview and to other unsatisfactory features of it. It lasted for an hour and a half (clearly excessive). It also involved the unacceptable pressure, from one point, of three interviewers (the police officer, the mother and the friend). The child resisted all pressures (including the offer of a "McDonald’s") to "tell" that Chris and Dawn had done anything "naughty". The pressure continues despite her claim to have a headache. The most that emerges is a smack of the "bum".

  469. It has to be remembered that she left the Red Room some nine months before (aged 3), and that it is by no means entirely clear that she recalls "Chris and Dawn" as members of staff. In particular, one of the things she recalls is that "Chris can’t do his laces" (which might suggest that she is thinking of another child). It is necessary to bear in mind, however, that another parent suggested that the idea of not being able to do up shoelaces was a means of belittling Christopher Lillie suggested by Dr San Lazaro, for the purpose of making him seem less frightening. This is something of a problem. Not only is it a form of negative stereotyping, but it is conceivable that it would bring Christopher Lillie to mind artificially when the child might otherwise have forgotten him to a greater or lesser extent.

  470. There was a ten minute supplemental interview a short while after the long one concluded (or possibly as a continuation of it). This was conducted by the mother’s friend. Child 24 seems bored by this time and only interested in playing. She said, variously, that she was wearing the same dress as she had on at the interview, that Chris had his clothes on and that he had them off. Dawn was present when Chris smacked her, but on this occasion she described the smack as being to the head rather than the "bum". She was then released for the "McDonald’s".

  471. A further interview took place on 30 July when Mr Lillie was said to have poked her in the "bum" and vagina. She linked the incident also to Child 2, who is said to have been given the same treatment. She also made the comment that Child 2 would have to come back for interview. That clearly reveals that some communication had taken place as to what had been going on. It would be quite unrealistic for me to treat Child 24 as having been beyond the scope of cross-contamination since 5 February. In the course of this interview, despite several attempts by Helen Foster to encourage Child 24 to say differently, she nevertheless said persistently that when the incident happened she was wearing her dress and knickers. There then followed a grotesque series of questions by Helen Foster:

    472. "Q: What clothes did he [Chris] have on?

    A: Don’t know.

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Q: Have you seen Chris’s willy?

    A: No

    Q: Have you seen anybody’s?

    A: No

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Q: Can you tell us what they look like?

    A: It looks like a bum

    Q: Like a bum?

    A: No, fairy

    Q: Like a fairy? And have you seen Chris’s?

    A: [Non-committal]

    Q: And where have you seen Chris’s?

    A: Don’t know".

    Despite the child’s negative response the officer persists:

    "Q: And when you saw it, what did it look like when you saw Chris’s willy?

    A: [No response]

    Q: What did Chris’s willy look like?"

    A: [No response]

    There then follows this sequence:

    "Q: [Child 24], when you saw Chris’s willy, was it sticking up like that, like up to the ceiling or was it pointing down to the floor?

    A: Up.

    Q: Up? And what else did it look like, apart from pointing up?

    A: Bum".

  472. In responding "up", she was giving the answer she perceived was required. This was a travesty and was thoroughly irresponsible. It is the sort of behaviour that can lead to the gravest miscarriages of justice. Helen Foster persisted and asked the child if anyone else had seen it. She replied that Child 2 had and, asked if Dawn had also seen it, she assented to this too. Having badgered the child into apparently assenting to an erection, she then tries for ejaculation as well. This only results in a series of quite meaningless answers about black urine.

  473. As if this were not bad enough, the mother is then brought in to participate in the interview and, shortly afterwards, the friend ("JT"). After a good deal of questioning by the officer, the mother and the friend, Child 24 is prepared to say (implausibly) that Mr Lillie inserted all his fingers into her vagina. This resulted from a question by the mother "Did he use all his fingers?". Helen Foster then intervened and asked "Did it go inside?" This brings a nod. She herself had been unsuccessful for well over a half an hour. The sexual assault allegations she was desperate to extract only emerged once the mother’s friend came into the room. She got things moving briskly by asking the child without further ado to show how Chris had poked her. The mother then elicited the allegation that all his fingers had been used. One is left with the overall impression that she is going along with any suggestions put to her (as happened, for example, with Child 27).

  474. As so often, when addressing the children’s interviews, I find myself wondering how the Review Team could conceivably have assured their readers that there were no leading questions.

  475. Both interviews are tainted by the pressure to which the child was subjected and the "disclosures" elicited appear to be neither consistent nor freely volunteered. It means that I can give them very little weight. Furthermore, if all this took place on camera, I can see no reason to have confidence in the proposition that on earlier unrecorded occasions there was a scrupulous avoidance of such pressures.

  476. There was then an incident on 2 August when the child escorted various adults to premises to which it was being suggested that she had been taken for abusive purposes. Vanessa Lyon recorded, "She showed us a flat where she was taken by the alleged perpetrators". This led nowhere.

  477. The position in relation to Child 24 is especially unsatisfactory. On the one hand, it looks as though there was evidence at least indicative of penetrative trauma when she was examined in November 1993 (14 to 16 months after leaving the Red Room). Yet there are "embarrassing" errors and inconsistencies which throw the medical findings into a state of uncertainty. Moreover, the interviewing process was truly hopeless. It is thus impossible to come to any clear conclusion as to what happened, when or who (if anyone) was involved. What is clear, however, in my judgment, is that there was no opportunity for this child to have been taken by Mr Lillie or Miss Reed to Red Barnes (where the dog lived) as early as July (or even September) 1992; nor could she have gone on any such trip with Child 8, Child 22 and Child 23 who were identified by her as having been present.

    478. Child 25

  478. Child 25 is one of the oldest concerned in this litigation. She was born on 20 December 1986 and attended at Shieldfield between January 1989 and August 1991. In those circumstances, it is not surprising that Mr Lillie said that he had no recollection of her at all. Although he worked on a temporary basis for some of the time she was there, any contact would have been at most sporadic. It does appear, however, that Miss Reed overlapped with her while in the Red Room. She remembers Child 25 as having behavioural problems and as being something of a "bull in a china shop", but only recalls her in the Baby Room. She thought it highly unlikely that she or Mr Lillie would ever have been left alone with her.

  479. There is no doubt that this child has had a difficult life, to some extent connected with the fact that her mother suffered from manic depression. She has herself exhibited extreme behaviour, and was in due course diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She was also for a long time suffering from vulval soreness and urinary tract infection. Her problems pre-dated her time at Shieldfield and also have continued thereafter until the present time. Indeed, at one stage her father was of the opinion that her extreme behaviour had settled down as a result of her regular attendance at Shieldfield. It appears that there came a time when she had to attend Shieldfield more or less daily because of her mother’s problems. Her father agreed in his evidence on 18 March that it may very well have been at the time when her mother was admitted to hospital in March 1989 because she was suicidal and depressed.

  480. The father’s attention was drawn to a letter dated 11 July 1989 from Dr S Wressell, a senior registrar in child psychiatry, who was reporting to her then GP that she had spoken to Mrs Eyeington at the Day Nursery, who had in turn described a change in Child 25’s behaviour over the last few months:

    481. "Initially she was irritable, not very responsive towards adults, had a short concentration span and would not share toys. She has however, become much more settled with good relationships with peers and adults and enjoys appropriate nursery activity. There have been short periods when she has needed firm supervision because of aggressive behaviour towards other children. Careful monitoring linked these episodes with either mother’s hospitalisations or a move of house."

  481. There were episodes during her time at Shieldfield when she was having trouble with urinary tract infection, because of E-coli, and later the same year with thrush.

  482. It would clearly be a serious mistake to tie in any of child 25’s extreme behavioural symptoms with sexual abuse at Shieldfield Nursery. It is true that, when he read of the Shieldfield problems (probably the criminal proceedings) in the newspapers, her father understandably made a connection with the benefit of hindsight but, as I have already indicated, it is impossible to make any such link with confidence because the patterns of eccentric behaviour seem to have been a regular feature of her life from a very young age.

  483. As for medical findings, Child 25 was seen first by Dr San Lazaro in July 1994 (almost three years after she left the Nursery). She seems to have given the child’s mother the impression that there was some evidence of abuse. Certainly the mother reported to Edna Davis of Barnardo’s that "Dr Lazaro had found physical evidence that [Child 25] had been sexually abused". This must have added greatly to her pre-existing stress and anxiety. She apparently found labial adhesions and nodular scarring at 11 o’clock. Dr Ward has pointed out that, although Dr San Lazaro’s conclusion that there was a well healed trauma was reasonable in the light of medical knowledge at the time, subsequent publications would tend to diminish the significance of her findings. Furthermore, by the time Dr San Lazaro saw this child, her mindset had long been fixed along the tramlines that the mere fact of having been to Shieldfield constituted some evidence of abuse in itself (as she seemed to admit in relation to Child 6). Her report of 11 July also contains the muddled and uninformative sentence: "Her history of repeated reviews both by the psychiatrists and with renal problems does suggest a history which looked at in retrospect is highly suspicious of repetitive trauma to this little girl".

  484. In any event, it was being noted at least in March 1994, when she was seven years old, that she was stripping off her clothes in an uninhibited way in front of people and regularly touching her private parts. Whether this originated because of her persistent vulval irritation can only be a matter for speculation, but it cannot be ignored in this context.

  485. Against Child 25’s unusual history, it is very difficult to attach much weight to the opinions expressed by Dr Sandra Hewitt and Professor Friedrich.

  486. Dr Hewitt offered the opinion that:

    487. "The pattern of behaviours in Child 25 strongly indicated that she suffered trauma as a result of sexual abuse during the period she was in the Red Room".

  487. Professor Friedrich referred to Child 25 exhibiting self injurious behaviour, sleep problems and stereotypic drawings that had a strong trauma link. He added:

    488. "It seems very likely, and is also supported by the medical evidence that also exists, that Child 25 was severely traumatized as well as sexually abused while in the care of Lillie and Reed".

    This is yet another of Professor Friedrich’s wild and irresponsible assertions. The child simply never was in the joint care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. Furthermore, as with Child 10, the diagnosis leaves ADHD totally out of account.

  488. Because they were only disclosed late, I assume that neither of these experts had the benefit of the child’s medical records. Indeed, Miss Page herself only obtained them over the weekend immediately prior to the father giving evidence on 18 March. Those background records clearly put a very different complexion on the child’s behavioural patterns. Neither of them was asked in cross-examination about Child 25 or, specifically, as to whether their opinions would have been revised in the light of the unusual background. Having seen those experts give evidence, I do not think I would have found their answers to such questions particularly helpful one way or the other. In my judgment the background is clearly critical.

  489. As to the "stereotypic drawings" referred to by Professor Friedrich, it is certainly the case that Child 25 seemed to be drawing a great many clowns at one stage during her life. In particular, it emerged from Barnardo’s reports dated 3 May 1994 and 20 February 1995 that she appeared to be drawing clowns frequently for pleasure. The entry on 3 May 1994, for example, states, "[Child 25] enjoys making things and drawing things – mainly clowns, people and houses".

  490. It is also clear that she had a fear of monsters for a considerable period of time. Her psychotherapist, Edna Davis, recorded on 23 February 1996:

    491. "From the beginning [Child 25] made her agenda clear, she was having bad dreams and was afraid of monsters and wanted to do something about this".

    Indeed, much attention was given during her therapy to helping the child in "confronting her monsters". She received assistance from her mother and sister in doing this. There is, however, no evidence to link this child’s problems with monsters or her apparent obsession with clowns to either Mr Lillie or Miss Reed.

  491. There is a note from Barnardo’s (Barbara McKay) recording the meeting of 3 May 1994 between herself, Edna Davis, Marion Harris and Child 25’s mother, in which it is observed that the mother "explained that [Child 25] has not actually disclosed sexual abuse". There is a further note of Edna Davis dated 26 January 1995, in which she summarises the play therapy undertaken to that date with Child 25. The conclusion is recorded as follows:

    492. "While [Child 25] has been unable to talk about what has happened to her; possibly for fear that her mother will die; [Child 25] has shared a good deal with me. It is clear to me that [Child 25] was traumatised, this together with Dr Lazaro’s findings leave me in no doubt that [Child 25] has been sexually abused".

  492. It does seem, however, clear that there is no unequivocal statement of abuse by Child 25 that can be attributed to Christopher Lillie or Dawn Reed. The adverse conclusions drawn by experts so far appear to be based on behaviour, which is much more likely to be explained by the other factors I have mentioned. The case provides a vivid warning about jumping to conclusions on an incomplete story.

  493. By the end of the trial Child 25 had been placed last in the Review Team’s list on the basis that she represented their weakest case. That is perhaps not surprising, but she remained in contention to the bitter end. She was never withdrawn. What is said is that:

    494. "Clearly the evidence in relation to this child cannot alone result in a finding of sexual abuse against Ms Reed or Mr Lillie. However, the medical findings, coupled with the fears and behavioural deterioration of Child 25 whilst at Shieldfield … and the fact that because of the hours she kept at the nursery Mr Lillie and Ms Reed would have had access to her even though she was not officially under their care, in the context of the totality of the evidence of the children, makes it [sic] more likely than not that Child 25 was sexually abused at Shieldfield, and was abused by Christopher Lillie and or Dawn Reed".

  494. Resort to the concept of "the totality of the evidence" illustrates the backs to the wall nature of the case. What is perhaps the most unpleasant aspect of it, in the light of the mother’s background, is expressed in the following submission:

    495. "Child 25 makes very limited verbal disclosures, the common theme of which appears to be that she was threatened with the death of her mother. Given her mother’s obvious fragile mental state it is not surprising that this threat was more effective in silencing Child 25 than other children in the case".

  495. During a therapy play session in 1994 it was recorded:

    496. "At one point [Child 25] told her mother, Barbara and I that someone had told her … when she was a baby at school that if she didn’t do what they wanted her mam would die. [Child 25] told us that she didn’t do what she wanted. [Child 25] didn’t tell us who this person was."

  496. I believe I am being invited to infer from this material that Miss Reed tried to abuse her and threatened that her mother would die, but it would appear from the statement that no abuse actually took place.

  497. Reliance is also placed on a Social Services diary sheet entry of 29 June 1994 (reporting a phone call from "Alison") to the effect that Child 25 had said in play therapy "that she is frightened that if she says anything her mum will die and talks about being hurt by Chris and Dawn". These are described as the "key disclosures", but play therapy disclosures are notoriously unreliable and I cannot possibly have confidence that "Chris and Dawn" were mentioned as a duo entirely spontaneously. That is particularly so in the case of a child who never experienced them as a pair at all. It is much more likely to have been suggested in some way.

    498. Child 26

  498. Child 26 was born on 11 November 1990. She began at Shieldfield in the Baby Room on 26 February 1992 and, after three introductory visits, moved to the Red Room on 26 November 1992. She remained there until the suspensions and beyond, finally leaving the Nursery in November 1993. It is obvious that she was therefore in and around Shieldfield following the suspensions and during the period of anxiety and rumour. (Somewhat confusingly, perhaps, she had a brother called "Chris".)

  499. It was against that background that her grandmother spotted her (in September) bouncing a teddy bear between her legs. The grandmother questioned her about this (in what terms is unclear) and the child said words to the effect "tickle, tickle here", while pointing to her vagina. She was asked who had "done that" to her (certain obvious assumptions being made), and she replied "Chris and Dawn". Up to this time, according to Dr Ward, there was no history of disclosure, physical symptoms or behavioural disturbance. Dr Hewitt describes the record as "sparse". Once, however, behaviours began to be recorded, she was prepared to classify them as associated with traumatic stress. I have referred already to the logical flaws in this process when summarising the evidence of Dr Cameron, but in any event Dr Hewitt was prepared to make the leap and to conclude that "the pattern of behaviours indicates that Child 26 suffered trauma in the Red Room". This is one of a number of conclusions that look remarkably positive for a witness who denied that she was in a position to make any diagnosis.

  500. This child (or at least someone with the same first name) was mentioned by Child 6 as having been present when her "Jenny" was smacked by Dawn with a spoon. It is certainly the case that the two children overlapped in the Red Room from January 1993. Child 26 herself, however, does not mention any other child as having been involved in abuse.

  501. In her medical report, Dr San Lazaro claimed that Child 26 during interview on 1 October 1993 "pointed to the vaginal and anal area and said that she had been hurt there by Chris". The actual notes of the interview, however, do not record that any identified person (let alone Mr Lillie) had been responsible for hurting her. Had the child identified Mr Lillie, it would have been her first "disclosure" of an indecent assault by him and, therefore, vital to record at the time. So much is elementary.

  502. Dr San Lazaro’s evidence on this (on 16 May) was, "I am not sure that everything that she said was recorded. I cannot be sure with this passage of time about the accuracy. I cannot be sure of whether something is missing or not".

  503. Miss Page asked her to explain whether the inconsistency was just "appalling sloppiness" or "mischievous embroidery". She said that she would not have reported something the child did not say but that her records were "less than adequate". Unfortunately, that will not do. There are too many other examples of "embroidery". It may be that she honestly believed what she wrote at the time she wrote it. From my point of view, however, that makes little difference. For whatever reason, she just cannot be relied upon to provide reliable data for the experts to interpret.

  504. Another allegation in her report of 8 October was that the child had "also mentioned being taken to another house from the school". It purports to record a disclosure from the child going to an important part of the Review Team’s defence of justification. I asked Dr San Lazaro where this came from. Her only reply was, "I am afraid that might not be in my notes as well". In other words, it is impossible to say whether the child said this to Dr San Lazaro, or a parent reported the child as earlier making some such claim, or whether it is simply another example of the doctor’s "beefing up" her reports as a creative "advocate".

  505. Miss Page turned to the physical findings. The report referred to an "awkward shaped hymen". She naturally asked Dr San Lazaro if this was merely a mis-transcription in the process of dictation and whether it should actually read as "orchid shaped". At first the witness denied this. She said it reflected "a hymen which was not smooth and crescentic but was, in a sense, angulated" When it was pointed out that she had actually ticked a box for "orchid shaped", she then accepted that this was how the report should read. That would mean, she said:

    506. "That is crescentic – that there was enough redundancy to produce material which was proud of the hymen. I cannot describe it. It is a hymen which has not become so atrophic that its outer edge is clearly defined as crescentic or annular. It means it ascends as a sleeve."

  506. The significance of this was the need to try to understand which she had found and in precisely which location. She described "nodular scarring and disruption at the left anterior edge at around the 3 o’clock position". The drawing she had made was similar to that for Child 21. Miss Page suggested that they could both be described as a "squiggle at 1 o’clock". In the case of a crescentic hymen, notches are apparently quite common in the "horns" of the crescent (i.e. at about 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock). That is an important piece of information because a disruption at either of those points could be perfectly normal. Also, as Dr Watkeys confirmed, notches and indentations can be confused with tears.

  507. The position remains unclear. Nevertheless, at the time the doctor was prepared to conclude that some penetrative damage had occurred to the hymen, supportive of the intrusion of a finger. It is impossible to be sure about this. I am inclined to think that this was over-interpretation of a nodule or notch.

  508. Another difficult problem is that she recorded "swelling/redness ++". If there was swelling, this would positively suggest a need to eliminate the possibility of ongoing abuse. There had been no opportunity for Mr Lillie or Miss Reed to interfere with her for many months. It would be a reasonable interpretation of her notes that there had indeed been swelling (as opposed to simply redness). Dr San Lazaro, however, thought she had probably simply intended to record redness and had forgotten to cross out "swelling". We cannot now tell. If there was redness alone (even "++"), this could have a quite innocent explanation. It is to be noted that she had earlier that summer been taken to her GP with genital soreness and urinary symptoms.

  509. Child 26 was one of those who dropped out of the case on 13 May when the plea of justification was withdrawn (with the usual costs consequences).

    510. Child 27

  510. Child 27 was born on 20 February 1990 and began at Shieldfield on 18 November 1991 in the Orange Room but under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. He moved with them to the Red Room on 2 March 1992. He moved on in mid-November 1992 and left Shieldfield altogether in July 1993. Mr Lillie had no recollection of him.

  511. He was not examined by Dr San Lazaro but by Dr Steele. She found no diagnostic signs of physical abuse, but as Dr Ward points out this does not exclude the possibility. She also referred to behavioural problems such as chronic soiling and enuresis, as well as disruptive and challenging behaviour. She fairly made the point, however, that these could have been related to problems within the family. There was regular violence in the home, for example, but the mother made clear that, even though his father was "quite nasty" to him, he would "never have physically hit him".

  512. The Defendants make no allegation against Miss Reed in relation to this child, but she has a clear recollection of him because he would just stand and wet himself or dirty himself where he stood. She had to sluice him down on one occasion in a bath on the Nursery premises. She described in evidence how she always thought he was crying out for something, but she did not know what it was.

  513. One of the points made on the Defendants’ behalf is that the "sluicing" of Child 27 did not find its way into the Day Book. I am invited to take that into account in the context of the Day Books being incomplete. There is no doubt of that. On many occasions the Day Books are brief and uninformative.

  514. The principal focus of the Defendants was the child’s limited verbal accounts to his mother (not recorded on video). The first allegation seems to have been in August 1993 just after leaving Shieldfield. He was apparently referring back at least nine months to the period when he was aged between 21 and 33 months old. What he said was that "Chris" had flicked his "bum" with his fingers and turned his penis round with his hand. Later the same month he repeated the allegation, and said that he did not like "Chris". He also placed the incident in someone’s room who might have been either "Diane" or "Dawn". It is difficult to know what to make of this, bearing in mind the long gap and questionable reliability of a child’s memory over such a period.

  515. Moreover, the nature of the allegations cannot necessarily be characterised as sexual. As with several of the children, it is essential to remember that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed would have had legitimate and routine reasons for touching the children in the genital and perineal region – especially having regard to his incontinence. The boy had, of course, been in the Yellow Room during the Spring and Summer of 1993 when parents and children were anxiously concentrating on the subject of sexual abuse. It is not therefore possible to attach with confidence the sinister significance to his remarks which they might merit if taken in isolation. Professor Bruck made the important point that sometimes, with statements that adults "imbue with a lot of meaning", it takes "a very skilled interviewer" to follow up and to try to understand exactly what the child is saying. That was, of course, not available in the present case.

  516. Child 27’s mother gave evidence on 12 March. She was a calm and quiet witness - so quiet in fact that she had to be positioned in the well of the court in front of counsel so that they could hear what she was saying. Her evidence was low-key and straightforward. She said that the child was wetting and soiling himself every day when he first went to the Nursery and that she regularly had to bring back dirty clothes. There was one occasion when Dawn Reed told her that "he needs a good smack" (although Miss Reed does not accept that she would have said that). After a few weeks he began screaming and crying when he went to the Nursery, and so she decided to "put him in full-time thinking he would settle". He had always been a bad sleeper but the problem worsened while he was at Shieldfield. There was also "a chronic problem of aggression to his peers". (He had, for example, hit his brother over the head with a hammer.) There was in addition a speech development problem, for which he was receiving help from a speech therapist at the Nursery and which was being monitored while he was in the Red Room. She remembered the meeting at which parents were told that a member of staff had been suspended because of allegations of child abuse. She was naturally shocked.

  517. When the child began to talk about the Nursery some time later, "he was pushing on the thigh of his leg saying he was doing that to my bum".

  518. There were clearly elements of fantasy in what the child had said to his mother. For example, he told her that he had been to Mr Lillie’s mother’s house, that she now lived in London and that she "had a green budgie". Mr Lillie’s mother had, of course, died many years ago. One could no doubt go through a speculative exercise of constructing an alternative scenario; for example, that he had been taken to someone else’s house and abused there (with or without a budgerigar). But it would not be evidence.

  519. The child said that the house was in the Battlefield area near St. Dominic’s (close to Red Barns), but once again it is necessary to recall that the child left Mr Lillie’s care before he moved to Red Barns (albeit only a few weeks before).

  520. He appears to have alleged to his mother that Mr Lillie ejaculated over his stomach, but the court has to be wary in receiving such information from an anxious parent because of the possible overlay of interpretation based on adult experience. Nor does one have the full context of the conversation and how the allegation came to be made. He also alleged that "red stuff – he thought it must have been blood – came out of his own".

  521. A particular problem so far as this child’s disclosures are concerned is how they came to be elicited. It appears that in August 1993, on first contact with Social Services, Kulvinder Chohan and Julie Kinghorn were advising her to question him "about whether he had been upset or hurt by anybody". Unfortunately, his mother has no clear recollection of how she or her mother questioned the boy.

  522. A potentially significant entry in the Red Room Day Book for 28 October 1992 was made by Dawn Reed. She recorded that Child 27 was tearful while being changed after he soiled his pants. She noted redness around the anus and asked if he was sore. She then noted "Tears came down [Child 27’s] face. There did not appear to be a reason for this". I do not believe that this was a cunning double bluff on Dawn Reed’s part to divert attention from her abuse of the child. The mother also gave evidence about an occasion when he had a sore bottom and said that after she heard about the allegations in the Spring of 1993, "It all fitted in". It appears, however, that her own mother had raised the possibility of abuse earlier because of the sore bottom: "She like wondered to herself if anything could have been done to him, but she thought it couldn’t because he was in the nursery and like – and he was only like in her care, my care and the nursery’s care". This conversation may be one reason why with the benefit of hindsight the child’s mother thought it "all fitted in".

  523. At about the same time, after the rumours of child abuse began doing the rounds at Shieldfield, her then husband (whom she had married in 1992) took to drink. "He was drunk continuously 24 hours a day … and he was overdosing". She said that during this period "he was nasty to all my kids". Later in 1993 the mother and children left him and went to a refuge. This is an especially sad example of the fallout from the Shieldfield "scandal" if the mother’s evidence is correct (and I have no reason to doubt it). The husband had himself been abused in care and began drinking because he could not cope with the possibility that his own son had been abused. Things went from bad to worse, the marriage broke up and eventually the husband died in January 2001.

  524. Given this very distressing background, it is worthy of note that Dr Steele recorded her thoughts as follows on 12 August 1993: "I have little doubt that [Child 27] has suffered sexual abuse whilst in the care of the male nursery worker under investigation despite the lack of clear physical signs". It is unfortunate that she should have leapt to such a conclusion without taking full account of the other seriously disturbing features of the child’s life that could account for the symptoms on which she based her judgment. She actually went on to say, "However, it is difficult to assess how much of his behaviour is due to this and how much is due to considerable problems within his family". The Defendants are now prepared to acknowledge that one explanation for Child 27’s behaviour might be the family situation, but they draw attention to the possibility that children with problem families are targeted by paedophiles who hope that unusual behaviour will be put down to the domestic situation. In this case, however, the bulk of those problems post-dated the Claimants’ suspensions from Shieldfield and the explanation thus carries little conviction. Indeed, the boy had left the Red Room six months before that. His father’s drinking and violence largely stemmed from the sex abuse allegations.

  525. We all watched the video interview with Child 27 on 11 April in the presence of Professors Bruck and Friedrich and Dr Cameron. It yielded nothing at all. Professor Bruck described the boy as "catatonic" for a large part of the interview. Julie Kinghorn was supposed to be the interviewer but she handed over to the mother until she re-entered the room and terminated the process altogether. She explained that she was doing so because the stage had been reached where he was simply saying "yes" to everything he was asked. So far as I have observed, that is the only example of a police officer recognising this hazard and acting on it. It illustrates, of course, the fundamental difficulty about the Shieldfield interviews as a whole. How is one supposed to distinguish between a genuine allegation and a child saying "yes" for the sake of a quiet life? The short answer is that in the absence of corroboration one cannot.

    526. Child 28

  526. Child 28 was born on 25 February 1991 and joined Shieldfield in June 1992. She first entered the Baby Room and joined the Red Room in January 1993. She left the Nursery finally on 29 July 1994. Her parents both gave evidence on 25 March. The mother told me that she had settled in well after about two weeks in the Baby Room but shortly after going into the Red Room she became "clingy".

  527. The first symptom she noticed was sleep disturbance; she wanted to come into her parents’ bed. But this she placed in mid-1993. She also noticed masturbation and Child 28 from time to time was observed trying to insert beads from one of her games into her vagina. Other behavioural factors referred to were aggression and excessive wetting.

  528. There is no video-taped interview in the case of Child 28 and I am left therefore with behaviour and statements as reported by others. It is necessary to be cautious in both these categories of evidence as to when things occurred and whether there were other aspects of the child’s circumstances at the relevant times to contribute to them.

  529. The mother was quite agitated and anxious in giving her evidence. This unfortunate history has clearly had a considerable impact on her, as it has in various ways on most of the parents. Understandably so. Two of her suggestions from the witness box suggest that these anxieties may have taken their toll in distorting her perceptions. First, she alleged that Mr Lillie and Miss Reed used to tranquillise her daughter for the purpose of sexual abuse and, indeed, that there were times when she noticed that she was still tranquillised when she picked her up from the Nursery (although she appears to have done nothing about it at the time). She referred also to a reluctance to go in a bath in February 1995, and this she attributes to Mr Lillie and Miss Reed having given her cold baths to rouse her from the effects of their tranquillisers.

  530. The second particularly striking suggestion, when she was being asked about the Red Room Day Books, was that they are simply not to be relied upon because they are later forgeries. The implication seems to be that Dawn Reed wrote them up after her suspension either for the first time or as substitutes for the originals. Either way this highly unlikely scenario would require the active co-operation of other members of staff in the wake of the suspensions. I can give no weight at all to this proposition.

  531. This is a case in which worrying "disclosures" from the child were made much later which are now relied upon as accurate. It is necessary to approach them with caution as some of them seem to have been triggered by therapy. This was because of a referral by Dr San Lazaro on 18 October 1994 – for the very reason that the child had made no allegations. As the Cleveland Report makes clear, such material can often be misleading. In March 1995, for example, the child referred to being kicked downstairs by "Daddy". This is two years after the suspensions. It is suggested that it cannot relate to the child’s father, and is in that respect unreliable. I am quite prepared to accept that. But I do not see why I should convert it into an allegation about Mr Lillie. If the statement is unreliable, it cannot be given weight for any purpose.

  532. It is important to have regard to such contemporaneous material as remains available. On 13 October 1994 the mother’s account was that Child 28 had enjoyed attending Nursery throughout. She also recorded that there was only one aspect of her behaviour that caused her concern while she was in the Red Room and that was masturbation. What she now says is that there were "so many symptoms". She relates how the child became clingy and distressed after going into the Red Room, but that was not the contemporaneous account.

  533. The medical findings were explored on 16 May with Dr San Lazaro. She was examined in October 1994 (some 18 months after Christopher Lillie was suspended). She appeared to have recorded a complete linear scar at the 5 o’clock position, but went on to attribute what she saw to a "previous transection". She said it was "well healed" and that "in months to come it will probably not be visible". There is a degree of subjective interpretation about this, as to which I have to be wary in respect of Dr San Lazaro. She would know of the lapse of time since the child had last been in contact with Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. This could well have played a part in her deciding that what she was looking at was a "well healed" scar.

  534. I have to be particularly cautious in the light of her claim that it would probably in future not be visible. Miss Page put to her that a complete transection would never heal to obscurity. This was on the instructions of Dr Watkeys. Dr San Lazaro would not give a straight answer. She said, first, "I believe that certain types of injuries to the hymen can heal to obscurity" but was pressed further and was prepared to say, " I think that a complete transection in a pre-pubescent girl can heal to disappearance". In so far as Dr Watkeys differs on that important proposition, I prefer without hesitation the evidence of Dr Watkeys. The possibility thus begins to emerge that what Dr San Lazaro actually saw was not evidence of transection at all, nor a scar, but a natural linear indentation.

  535. The holistic approach led Dr San Lazaro to assert boldly that Child 28 had unequivocal signs of penetration to the hymen; that a considerable time had elapsed since the incident; and that there was no suggestion of ongoing trauma to her. The whole description is coloured by her assumption that the child had been penetrated by Christopher Lillie at least 18 months earlier. In other words, she starts off with the presumption of what her evidence is adduced to prove. Even Dr San Lazaro accepted that it is impossible to age any lesion and that the timing of a penetrative injury would have to depend on history rather than clinical findings.

  536. She readily concluded in her "Medical Evaluation and Opinion" that there had been "gross exposure to multiple abusers". This was four months after Mr Lillie and Miss Reed had been acquitted of the criminal charges. There was a total lack of professional objectivity.

    537. Child 29

  537. Child 29 was born on 13 March 1990. She began at Shieldfield in the Baby Room on 19 March 1992 and moved to the Red Room in the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed on 19 June 1992. She left at just under three years of age on 26 February 1993 for financial reasons. There was no oral disclosure of sexual abuse on her part and no video interview. The matters relied upon by the Defendants relate mainly to behaviour.

  538. She was examined by Dr San Lazaro on 26 October 1993, who found nothing diagnostic of sexual abuse. There was, however, at the 5 o’clock position some degree of hymenal distortion, together with thickening, adhesions and altered vascularity. Dr San Lazaro considered the possibility of these findings relating to something congenital but thought that past trauma was the more likely explanation. The reason the child’s mother was given for this was a non-medical one, namely that Child 29 had been under the care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed. This provides a further clear warning about Dr San Lazaro’s objectivity. Dr Ward pointed out that a report by Berenson in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2000, 182: 820-834, has suggested that notches and altered vascularity are no more common in abused that in non-abused children.

  539. The mother of Child 29 gave evidence on 25 March. (By coincidence she also happens to be stepmother to Child 18.) Miss Page in cross-examination invited her to consider the fact that in October 1992 her partner had moved in to live with them and that, for the first time, Child 29 found herself (aged two and a half) having to share her mother’s attention with someone else. The child within a couple of days showed aversion to the partner. The mother admitted that she originally put this down to natural jealousy. She may well have been right to do so.

  540. One of the main behavioural symptoms relied upon was regression in bladder control. There was regular daytime wetting and also at night. This was challenged by Miss Page by reference to the Red Room Day Book. As in some other cases, this mother would not accept these as an accurate record and she preferred her own recollection that the day time wetting became a regular feature in the Red Room, and it required her to supply extra pairs of knickers. It was virtually an everyday occurrence, she believed.

  541. She went so far as to suggest that Christopher Lillie had written the records up after her daughter’s departure (presumably therefore at some point between 26 February and 16 April 1993). The theory presumably is that, in order to disguise what he must have known were symptoms of his abuse of Child 29, he deliberately wrote a false record to downplay the wetting. That is altogether fanciful. It would have been difficult to achieve without the connivance of management at the Nursery and, in any event, it does not accord with the general pattern of Day Book entries, whereby neither Christopher Lillie nor Dawn Reed was reticent about entering details of wetting and the need for changed clothes.

  542. Miss Page also suggested that hindsight had influenced her thinking on the matter. The mother told me that she had been on courses about child abuse over the intervening years in order to be able to offer her daughter support. That is, of course, one factor that could have enabled her to attach a different significance to earlier patterns of behaviour. Miss Page drew attention to another contemporaneous record, namely the notes of a meeting with Kulvinder Chohan dated 4 November 1993 when she had actually told her that Child 29 had liked her time at Shieldfield and, indeed, on some occasions had proved reluctant to leave. She talked in a positive way about Mr Lillie and Miss Reed after she had left, and on one occasion actually went back to pay them a visit.

  543. Another aspect of the child’s behaviour thought to be significant is that she came to show a fear of clowns. Her mother said that she had been to a circus in April or May 1992 when she had seen clowns without any adverse reaction. But, later that year, it seems she developed a phobia which meant that she would not go near them. It is difficult to assess this, since one has no idea how often or in what circumstances the child would have encountered clowns. It is a recurring theme in this case, and so far as some children are concerned it seemed to focus on what happened at Child 22’s birthday party in November 1992. So far as I am aware, however, Child 29 did not attend. There was an occasion when she said that Chris had "put a clown to the window" but it conveys nothing significant to me or, so far as I can gather, to her mother or anyone else. In these circumstances, I cannot draw any inference adverse to Mr Lillie. There is no evidence that he ever dressed as a clown, still less that he did so in circumstances involving abuse. The mother attached significance to this issue because Dr San Lazaro told her that other Shieldfield children had similar fears. Once again, Dr San Lazaro is stepping outside her purely professional role and contributing to the general dynamic of the Shieldfield "scandal".

  544. Child 29 is also said to have developed an aversion to men in beards and was frightened at Santa’s grotto in 1992. Her mother was under the impression that Mr Lillie had dressed up as Santa Claus for Christmas 1992. Others too have spoken of children being frightened of Santa Claus at various stages. This may be connected with the fact that some press coverage referred to Mr Lillie dressing up as Santa Claus or included photographs of someone dressed up as Santa Claus under the false impression that they were of him. In fact, he never did so. She also said that there was some point (presumably between June 1992 and February 1993) when Mr Lillie grew a beard. I am not aware of any other evidence about this. In any event, none of this takes matters any further so far as sexual abuse is concerned.

  545. Reference was made to Child 29 having drawn children with sellotape over their mouths. Her mother was asked what significance she attached to this in the context of the present case. She did not attach any significance to it. Accordingly, I do not propose to do so either.

  546. Apparently, on 8 February 1994, a psychotherapist called Dr McArdle expressed the view that Child 29 might have been physically assaulted rather than sexually. She had at some stage alleged that Miss Reed had smacked her. This does not square with the account given to Kulvinder Chohan as to the child having enjoyed her time at the Nursery and being keen to go back. In any case, it is quite apparent to me that it would be contrary to Miss Reed’s nature to smack or hurt a child. She told me on several occasions, with some feeling, that she had never smacked a child. I believe her. Moreover, it was so contrary to the practice and culture at the Nursery that I do not believe it would have gone unnoticed. None of her colleagues has suggested anything violent in her behaviour towards children. Indeed, the picture I have from the evidence is that she was a very calm even-tempered person.

  547. Other familiar Shieldfield themes were mentioned in the case of Child 29 too. There was a strong dislike of lifts, for example. Whereas the child had got into a lift without any trouble when she was two and a half years old (which would be September 1992), her mother later had to drag her into a lift to get her to the dentist. I have to ask myself whether it is more rational to explain this by positing that she had been taken by Mr Lillie and Miss Reed to some unidentified block of flats for sexual abuse, and acquired her dislike of lifts for that reason (on an unspecified date or dates between September 1992 and February 1993), or by concluding that she did not want to go to the dentist. In the state of the evidence before me, I would think the latter the more plausible explanation. But what matters is that her fear of lifts, taken by itself, does not provide me with evidence of sexual abuse against either of the Claimants.

  548. Yet again, the subject of injections cropped up. Child 29 is said to have a fear of injections. When she was given a pre-school booster at the age of four (i.e. some time after March 1994) she "flipped". Again, however, this does not provide me with evidence of sexual abuse in itself. If there were evidence, in other cases, of the Claimants injecting children to facilitate sexual abuse, it would be easier to infer something comparably sinister for Child 29. But the scenario has simply not been proved. I was told by Dr Cameron that it is commonplace in young children to react strongly against needles, syringes and injections. He also told me that there are valium-based drugs which can be used to enable a doctor (or indeed anyone else) to carry out painful or intrusive procedures on patients without their being aware of it, at the time or later. He entered the important caveat, however, that the administration of such drugs requires skill and, what is more, it would very difficult to use such drugs in the case of a small child because the dose would be so difficult to judge. Either it would be too low, and would have no effect, or too high and the child might die. This evidence was unchallenged. Such drugs could only be available over the counter on prescription or, presumably, from some illicit source. Police inquiries threw up not a scintilla of evidence to support this sinister hypothesis.

    549. Child 30

  549. Child 30 was born on 26 September 1990. He began at Shieldfield at under two and a half years of age in January 1993. He was in the joint care of Mr Lillie and Miss Reed until the suspensions. He left the Nursery altogether in January 1994. I understand that he normally attended no more than one day a week. He usually attended roughly from 9.30 a.m. to 2.30 or 3.30 p.m. Miss Page put to the mother that he attended nine such sessions only prior to Mr Lillie’s suspension when he was present, and she did not demur. Those dates were as follows: 11, 18, 25 January ; 1 and 15 February; 15, 22 and 29 March; 5 April 1993.

  550. When examined by Dr San Lazaro on 11 June 1993 she found nothing diagnostic of sexual abuse. Such anal characteristics as she found were non-specific (flattening of the skin folds and pigmentation). Dr Ward, therefore, emphasised that it was important to take account of the whole picture. She, together with Professor Friedrich and Dr Hewitt, consider that his sexualised and self-injurious behaviour do point to a probability of sexual abuse in the Red Room.

  551. Here is another child who is said (like Child 10 and Child 22) to have been tied up and had knives put in his bottom. It was also suggested (to his mother on 31 October 1993) that "they" poked his eyes with their fingers and banged his head with both hands. Doing something to the eyes is an allegation raised also in connection with Child 7. I was told that two of the mothers with whom Dr San Lazaro was in regular telephone contact were those of Child 7 and Child 30 (see paragraph 670 above). Whether there is any connection I have no idea, but it is clear that unfortunately Dr San Lazaro was not averse to passing on allegations between parents (see e.g. Child 29). The mother has a diary entry for 11 July 1993 to the effect that Dr San Lazaro had phoned and "no bones about it – something has happened".

  552. Child 30 was interviewed on 28 July 1993 (shortly after the arrests in respect of Child 23). There was nothing revealed about Mr Lillie or Miss Reed. He was even contradictory as to whether he recalled them at all, although it would be surprising if he had forgotten them altogether after three months. He declined to say that "Chris" had ever done anything "nasty" or that he "didn’t like". When he was asked if he liked "Chris" at one point, he said "no". But it appeared that he did not like his current teacher (Catherine) either. The interview amounts to precisely nothing.

  553. In November 1993, he said he had been locked in cupboards, and mentioned a white ambulance and a bed being cranked up. Mr Bishop suggested in cross-examination that perhaps there had been a hospital bed, capable of adjustment, on the floor above the Shieldfield Nursery but that led nowhere. It may conceivably be relevant that Dr San Lazaro has an adjustable bed for examinations in the Lindisfarne suite. She described this in her evidence on 13 May. Of course, I cannot conclude that this is what the child had in mind, but it is at least something from his direct experience rather than deriving from a speculative scenario.

  554. On 30 November 1993, a number of striking allegations were made to his mother, including that "Chris and Dawn go like a fish". He claimed to have blown a raspberry on Mr Lillie’s private parts. That is clearly a potentially important allegation. He is also said to have "proffered" his bottom to his mother (a phrase used by Professor Friedrich in relation to Child 1). That is much less specific and any significance it may have depends so much on context (as with Child 1). There was apparently an occasion when his mother threatened to spank him and he backed away with the words, "No, no smacking bum, bum" – I do not find that either surprising or sinister. Marion Harris was told about this by the mother on 22 June 1993.

  555. There are other troubling behaviour traits, in particular an unusual focus on his own genitals including apparently smacking himself in that region. He is also said to have put his finger in his brother’s bottom and to have reported crayons being inserted in his own anus. However equivocal some of the other children’s behaviour may have been, this child does appear to have been exhibiting behaviour that can be described as "sexualised". Dr Hewitt described the quality of the behaviours she had seen as "significant and atypical".

  556. His mother gave evidence on 25 April. She was asked about Child 32 whose mother had been a friend of hers at that time. This was because Child 30 mentioned that child as having been present when he was taken somewhere in a white ambulance. He said that "they" hurt Child 32. In testing the plausibility of any such scenario, Miss Page pointed out that the two children overlapped in the Red Room only on 15, 22 and 29 March and on 5 April. If there were any opportunity for them both to be taken out by Mr Lillie in a white ambulance (an inherently unlikely occurrence in any case), it would have to have occurred on one of those days. There is nothing to corroborate it whatever. It is, however, necessary to bear in mind that the two children did spend a good deal more time together after the suspensions (during the time Newcastle had become a "rumour mill", as it was put to Professor Barker on 17 May). By now, the phenomenon is familiar of children "disclosing" stories involving their current or most recent companions but not necessarily grounded in reality.

  557. The mother of Child 30 was one of those who were told by Dr San Lazaro that her son had a streptococcal infection that was very rarely found. There is no reason whatever to suppose that it was indicative of sexual transmission. Apparently Dr San Lazaro did not tell her that it was, but instead of putting her mind at rest she left the information hanging in the air as a source of anxiety. Moreover, in January 1996 the mother was clearly linking the infection with abuse at Shieldfield in the course of her interviews with the Review Team. She said that he had suffered physically from a bleeding bottom as well as a lot of stress.

  558. It is perhaps also relevant to note that Child 30 had been attached to Christopher Lillie and tended to call him "Daddy", as he did most men with whom he came into contact.

  559. The mother said she was aware of the possibility of sexual abuse, not least through having done a certificate of education herself. She regarded the extent and nature of her son’s unusual behaviours as indicative of some form of trauma. An example she gave is of going on a holiday in the Lake District in April 1993 when the child checked in all the cupboards. There was also a later incident recorded in her personal notes in June 1993 when the child was upset at a story in which a bear was shut in a cupboard. I do not find it possible, however, to conclude from these incidents that they show that Dawn Reed had shut him in a cupboard as part of a pattern of abuse.

  560. The child also reacted adversely on different occasions to the noise from a fizzy drinks machine and from a pneumatic drill. Not in itself significant, but I believe I am being asked to infer that this is consistent with one or other of the Claimants having used a vibrator in his presence. There is no conceivable evidential basis for doing so.

  561. Like other parents, this mother went through great stress and anxiety during 1993 and later. It is entirely understandable. She recorded as much in her diary, for example on 28 July 1993. It seems that little was done to put her mind at rest. On the contrary, there was a general tendency towards raising awareness of child abuse. By 21 October 1993, she was meeting Marietta Higgs through a parent from the Jason Dabbs nursery. In 1995 she attended the Nursery Crimes Conference addressed by Mrs Saradjian.

  562. There was a sore anus on 14 September 1993. There was a reference by the child to a knife in the bottom. As experts have pointed out, however, children at that age may describe a soreness in the bottom as being like a knife. The expression is not necessarily to be taken literally. Miss Page pointed out that it appeared that he might have been suffering from worms at the time. There was also a reference to knives on 29 October 1993.

    563. Child 31

  563. Child 31 is the youngest of the children, having been born on 7 September 1992. She attended in the Baby Room, two days a week, from the age of five months until she was eighteen months old. Because of her immaturity, there is virtually no verbal disclosure and certainly no video interview. The evidence relied upon is partly behavioural and partly medical findings, the significance of which was fundamentally disputed by the experts. When Christopher Lillie was suspended, she was just over six months old. Because she was in the Baby Room neither Mr Lillie nor Miss Reed has any recollection of her.

  564. Child 31’s mother was the first parent to give evidence, having been interposed in the course of the Claimants’ case on 28 January. There is no doubt that she has believed for many years that her child was subjected to penetrative abuse by Christopher Lillie on one or more occasions during the first year of life. It takes little imagination to envisage the strong feelings that such a belief must have engendered. Her evidence, however, did not betray this in any way. She was calm, dignified and clear. What she had to say was primarily relevant to the behavioural changes she noticed in the child, but there was also the negative evidence to the effect that she knew of no opportunity for her to have been abused over the relevant period other than at the Nursery.

  565. One of the puzzling features about this case is that all seemed well until about September or October 1993, when she returned to Shieldfield after an extended holiday in Central America over the Summer. There was sleep disturbance and at least one bad nightmare. There were also cries during her sleep. Two weeks after her return to Shieldfield, there was also noticed aggression and bad temper. There had apparently, however, been no cause for concern prior to Mr Lillie’s suspension in April nor in the six months following (equivalent to fifty per cent of her life). It is possible, of course, that the return to Shieldfield sparked memories of earlier abuse in that environment which had hitherto been suppressed. But it is impossible to conclude that this was in fact the case. It involves speculation or theorising on incomplete information. It is one of those cases where I am invited to see the symptoms in a wider context. If there were an established pattern, or even perhaps one proved instance, of Mr Lillie trying to penetrate babies, then it might be argued that they are likely to be attributable to that same perversion. In the absence of such evidence, however, one has to focus on the case in hand.

  566. Central to the Defendants’ case are the medical findings. Dr San Lazaro and Dr Ward are of the view that these reveal evidence diagnostic of penetrative abuse.

  567. The child was examined on 15 October 1993. Dr San Lazaro recorded a thickened, wide hymenal orifice with deep disruptions at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. Miss Page drew her attention, however, to the drawing which did not appear to be showing deep tears – nor was it labelled with a description. The witness was asked, therefore, whether she would interpret it as showing notches, clefts, indentations or partial tears. In particular, one has to have in mind that there is sometimes a tendency in features which are congenital to find a natural symmetry. That is so, for example, with hymenal bands. Where symmetrical features appear, the possibility of something congenital should at least be addressed. Dr San Lazaro admitted, not surprisingly, that she could not remember how representative the drawing of her findings actually was.

  568. There was another sketch which the witness said must have been a "practice" drawing. She believes that she was trying to see how best she could define what she had seen. She added, "This is a child who has the oestrogen effect on the hymen and I think it must have been terribly difficult to draw". She agreed that Miss Page was correct when she put to her that all that one could gather, combining all this together, was that there were present disruptions at 3 and 9 o’clock which were neither such as to reach the base of the hymen nor in the posterior portion.

  569. She put quite clearly to Dr San Lazaro that there simply was no indication of penetrating injury. She accepted that it was difficult:

    570. "Children of this age have maternal oestrogen on board. The hymen at this age is frilly. It does have redundant tissue around it… It can have the appearance of having tears in it" (emphasis added).

  570. The witness added that she was sure that she would have taken care to establish that they were indeed disruptions because it was not something she would want to believe. On the other hand, she acknowledged that it is usually quite difficult to look into the hymenal orifice and to examine such small babies "because of the amount of tissue around".

  571. Dr Watkeys, on the other hand, is prepared to conclude as follows:

    572. "I would have said that these findings were completely normal for a girl of this age, with two normal indentations which do not reach the base of the hymen. The thickening may be due to the persistence of oestrogens. Therefore it would be my opinion there is no indication here of penetrative injury".

  572. It is therefore clear that the medical evidence is to say the least equivocal, giving rise to opportunities for genuine difference of expert opinion as to their significance. The case provides just one illustration of how little is really known about this tiny and variable membrane. Because of the oestrogen factor, it tends to be fleshy and more difficult to assess in children of this very young age.

  573. Returning, therefore, to the behavioural evidence, I need to take account of the comments of Dr Sandra Hewitt:

    574. "Something very powerful and dysregulating has happened to disrupt her emotional homeostasis. She regulates when away on a family holiday but returns to anger, fear, and disruption when she is back at Shieldfield. This type of disturbance is not common, nor is it random. It is a classic response of a child who is very fearful. Child 31 displays multiple signs of Traumatic Stress Behaviours, clearly indicating that she is experiencing some form of trauma. The primary adverse response of Child 31 to elements in her environment is to nappy changing. This is coupled with her marked sleep disturbance. Child 31 has suffered some form of trauma during her stay at Shieldfield, the content of which appears to be centred around nappy changing times, bags and strangers. Verbal accounts will be needed to anchor the source of the trauma".

  574. There is in fact no direct or reliable evidence that Mr Lillie changed Child 31’s nappy. Nor is there anything to link him with bags. Nor is there any verbal account to "anchor the source of the trauma". Moreover, there is nothing to explain the long gap in time before any behavioural symptoms emerged.

  575. In so far as there is some evidence from other children (Child 6, Child 23 and Child 18) which could be interpreted as suggesting that a baby (even a baby with fair hair) was present at a location outside the Nursery I have to discount this. There is no evidence to support the proposition that a baby could have been taken out of the Baby Room and gone missing for an hour or two without any of the staff noticing. However chaotic the administration at Shieldfield was, or may have been, no criticism has been levelled at members of the Baby Room staff. I was told that it was a very high staff/baby ratio (sometimes even one to one). The idea that a baby could have simply gone missing is fanciful. It is equally fanciful to suggest that Mr Lillie and/or Miss Reed could have taken a baby out of the room and abused her in the presence of or with the connivance of any of those staff members.

  576. The Defendants’ case therefore must depend upon the abuse having been carried out by Mr Lillie in the Baby Room itself with a stealth comparable to that of Jason Dabbs. Since he was never authorised to carry out the task of nappy changing, this allegation turns upon the fall-back theory of the crayon inserted up the leg of a nappy and/or of elasticated training pants. Of course, if one is determined to find Mr Lillie guilty of causing penetrative injury to Child 31, there are various theoretical means that one can construct whereby this could have been carried out. That is not, however, the process I am engaged upon. I am looking for evidence upon which to conclude that he probably did so. I will return to this theme of elasticated pants shortly when considering the evidence of the Claimants themselves.

  577. I should add that on 21 March the mother of Child 22 claimed that she had seen Christopher Lillie changing nappies a number of times in the Baby Room. I do not accept that as an accurate recollection. It does not accord with the rather strict rules about the handling of babies, and in other respects I have noted that the mother Child 22 cannot be accepted as an "accurate historian".

  578. In therapy, Child 31 referred to "Chris and Dawn" but it is important to note the evidence of Dr Cameron in this context. He described it as "out of the question" that Child 31 could then give a verbal account of any abuse which occurred when she was a baby of no more than six months old. That evidence would surprise no one with even the most cursory knowledge of child development. I accept it.

  579. What this demonstrates, however, is the downside of therapy for supposedly abused children (as recognised in the Cleveland Report). The child can only have acquired the belief that she was abused as a baby from being told about it at a later stage.

    580. 9) The evidence called for the Claimants on the abuse issue

  580. Unlike the Review Team, I have had the opportunity to consider the sworn testimony of the two Claimants as to the allegations of abuse, including their cross-examination on behalf of both sets of Defendants. The criminal proceedings in 1994 never reached the stage when they would have had the opportunity of giving their accounts, and accordingly this is the first time that their case has been heard. The Newcastle Chronicle had reported parents as expressing the wish for Mr Lillie and Miss Reed to be subjected to cross-examination. That has now happened.

  581. It is nowadays to some extent unfashionable to focus on a witness’s "demeanour", but there comes a point when the fact-finding tribunal has to decide by some means whether or not particular testimony is or is not credible. It is not always possible to account for such findings by reference solely to logical analysis. Jurors are often told to apply their common sense and general experience of people in coming to their conclusions on the evidence. I must obviously do the same.

  582. Miss Reed was in the witness box for six days (from 18 to 25 January), for most of that time under cross-examination. She was cross-examined by Mr Bishop for over three and a half days, and by Miss Sharp for one and a half days. Much of this exercise was unproductive, as it consisted of "putting" the Defendants’ case that she had participated in multiple child abuse, including rape and buggery, whereas her response was that nothing untoward had happened. Miss Sharp isolated four instances of what she described herself on 24 January as "lies" for the purpose of undermining Miss Reed’s credibility. It is right that I should address these individually.

  583. First, it was said that she lied during a police interview about whether she had seen Mr Lillie’s dog at the Nursery. In fact, he never possessed a dog himself but was often to be seen with a dog called "Ben" belonging to his girlfriend, Lorraine Kelly. He was living in her flat from December 1992 and took her dog for walks. Miss Reed was asked in a police interview whether he had brought the dog to the Shieldfield Nursery. Her reply was that she had not seen it. That is ambiguous, in the sense that it could have meant that she had never seen the dog at all, or merely that she had not seen it at the Nursery. Miss Sharp’s suggestion was that it meant the former, and that this must have been a deliberately false answer to the police officers. This was on the basis that she told me she had seen the dog - on one occasion only (just outside the Nursery premises).

  584. It was put to Miss Reed that, if she had in 2002 a clear memory of a dog outside the Nursery that was "black, shaggy and overweight", it was odd that she had not mentioned it to the police when she was questioned in 1993. I do not find this point impressive. First, the answer given was ambiguous, and could certainly be reasonably construed as an answer to the actual police question, namely "Has he ever had his dog into the nursery?" Secondly, I cannot see how it would profit Miss Reed to tell the police that she had never seen the dog if, as she told the court in these proceedings, she had seen it once outside. There would be no point.

  585. The second "lie" attributed to Miss Reed related to the circumstances in which Mr Lillie had, on one occasion, taken Child 1 out with him when he was going back to his flat to collect something. According to his evidence, in this court, Mr Lillie was on his way to his flat because he had forgotten some item and simply offered, on the spur of the moment, to take Child 1 with him to settle him down and take him off Miss Reed’s hands. But, as Miss Sharp points out, that was not what Miss Reed told the police when questioned in interview on 26 July 1993. She was asked on that occasion whether she would tell the officers if she knew of anything improper that Mr Lillie had done. She replied in the affirmative. She went on to explain, at the officers’ invitation, why it would be important for her to do so. She replied by saying, "If something like that had happened, then that person should not be working with children". Yet she did not tell the police that Mr Lillie had taken Child 1 to his home. She had only informed them that, "The only way we could settle him [Child 1] was to take him out for a little walk, and we would take turns the two mornings [Child 1] was there." She further explained that, "Usually we just walked along the shops".

  586. It was suggested by Miss Sharp that if she knew, at that time, that Mr Lillie had taken Child 1 to his home on one occasion, she should have told them. She replied that she thought she had told them. Miss Sharp then pointed out that when interviewed by two journalists, Mr Webster and Mr Woffinden, in December 1998, she told them that she had no recollection of Mr Lillie taking Child 1 to his home. She was asked, therefore, how it came about that she had no such recollection 1998 but a clear memory in 2002. She thought the explanation might be, on reflection, that she had read it somewhere. Miss Sharp was putting to her that she must have picked the information up years after the event, from the two journalists in 1998, and had not been told at the time by Mr Lillie that he was taking Child 1 to his flat (contrary to her evidence in 2002).

  587. It was further suggested that Miss Reed was now backing Mr Lillie’s own account (i.e. that he had told her where he was going with Child 1 before he left the Nursery) when knowing it to be false. The motive for this, as put by Miss Sharp, would be to protect herself since, as she accepts, if Mr Lillie was guilty of abuse, she would have been bound to know of it.

  588. It is obvious that Miss Reed cannot have been giving an accurate account to the journalists in 1998 and to the court in 2002. Either she remembered Mr Lillie telling her that he was taking Child 1 to his flat, or she did not. Is it more likely that she made a conscious decision to lie to the court in 2002 to back up Mr Lillie’s story, or that she took the information on board from her 1998 interview and, by the time she produced her witness statement, had come to believe that it was part of her own knowledge of what had taken place six years earlier?

  589. I think the latter is more likely (especially since she had not read Mr Lillie’s statement before going into the witness box). I think Miss Sharp was hitting the nail on the head when she put it to her "… the information that Chris had taken this little boy on his own came from either Mr Webster or Mr Woffinden".

  590. Thirdly, Miss Sharp turned to the subject of Child 23. She had been asked by police (in the July 1993 interview) if she had taken Child 23 out and, if so, whether it would be recorded in the Nursery Day Book. She replied that she could not remember if Child 23 had been taken out of the Nursery (although children certainly were taken out on a regular basis). She did, however, add that