"I ….came to the view that it would not be possible [to carry out the Review] without looking at what had actually happened to those children and how those children had expressed it. I had thought, in the beginning, it might be possible (particularly early on – before the criminal trial had not been proceeded with). But I realised that it was not going to be possible, because a core issue for the parents was simply going to have to be ignored".

Yet later in her evidence she appeared to be saying that she only reached that state of mind ("where it became crystallised") at the time when the Review Team asked to see the video interviews (in 1996).

1) The Claimants had been acquitted in respect of 11 specific offences relating to the six indictment children.

2) There was no one legally qualified on the Team.

3) They were sitting in private.

4) There was no framework set up by the Review Team to operate within the well known "Salmon" principles.

5) Neither Christopher Lillie nor Dawn Reed was notified of the "charges" which the Team had taken it upon themselves to investigate.

6) Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed were not represented or offered any legal assistance.

7) They had no opportunity to cross-examine, challenge or test the evidence relied upon by the Review Team for their conclusions; they did not even know what the evidence was.

8) The Review Team had no power to compel witnesses or documents.

9) The Review Team adopted as a policy the "child protection approach", so that they would not challenge or probe "evidence" from witnesses. As Moira Luccock expressed it on 1 March, "You are not challenging the person. You are actually accepting that they certainly believe what they are telling you, and you have no reason to doubt that as the investigator".

10) This policy even applied to police and social workers (not least because the police had warned them that they had no power to trespass on the area of police complaints, which was governed by statute, and asked them by a letter not to upset PC Helen Foster who had conducted some of the crucial interviews with children).

11) The Review Team had decided to adopt what Ms Jones described as an "impressionistic" approach to the evidence, rather than analysing individual cases of alleged abuse.

"I have to say this was not primarily set up as a process for considering the guilt or innocence of Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed. I agree – were that to be the prime purpose, you probably would not start here".

"… there was an intention that they should be treated as fairly as other witnesses in relation to the matters set out. But, if I may add, it was not a review which was set up primarily to determine whether or not Mr Lillie and Miss Reed were guilty of these offences. It was a review set up to deal with complaints and concerns raised by parents, which included matters at the nursery…

The question of their culpability, therefore, I suppose would either have to be assumed (which the City Council had done, on the basis of the disciplinary proceedings it had undertaken) – so I suppose, thinking about your question, the fact that the Review Team had almost in effect re-considered it ….

What I am struggling with, I think, is that … the City Council had started from the perspective that they had dismissed Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed for gross misconduct, associated with the abuse, and it was on that basis that the Review Team had been set up. So, in a sense, what the Review Team were doing, by considering again the evidential matters, [was] almost having another look at it. So I suppose, in a sense – I had not thought about it in this context before you asked the question – they gave a fresh opportunity to Mr Lillie and Miss Reed’s case to be considered. I had not thought about it until you put the question to me".

"I asked him … how we would actually deal with the issue of responding to individual complaints and also producing a public report when those complaints were likely to be about people who had been dismissed but already been declared not guilty in court. So he said that we would need to keep coming back to that and see how we progressed. I think he used the words that we were in "uncharted waters".

"Not every infringement or excess of terms of reference would operate to deprive the occasion of publication of the privilege it would otherwise have attracted. However, this was an infringement of a nature and on a scale that fundamentally affected the character of the Report. The Review Team’s findings of sexual abuse of children by the Claimants were not incidental or ancillary. The findings completely dominated the Report".

"… for legal reasons we were advised that the processes, determined by the City Council prior to our appointment, had to be followed, as they were a guarantee of both natural justice for all those involved, and the independence of the Review Team".

"I hope it did not predetermine me to make any decision in relation to them, but I would be clear that I was aware of it."

Miss Page had to battle on and a little later there was the following exchange:

"Miss Page: I understood you earlier to say that you did take into account the fact that they had been dismissed. Are you now saying you did not take into account the fact that they had been dismissed for sexually abusing children?

Professor Barker: If I have misled you, I do apologise. I was aware at the start that they had been dismissed. We then found, when we interviewed people, the reasons for which they had been dismissed. We interviewed people who had been involved in the disciplinary, and looked at the documents in relation to the disciplinary. When it came to us making our findings at the end of the process in which we were involved, those processes then played a part. If we had found, in the course of that, that it was our judgment that they had been inappropriately dismissed, on the wrong grounds, we would have said so".

"We find that there is evidence which suggests that the children were sometimes filmed when they were being abused outside the nursery and we have drawn the conclusion that Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed were procuring the children of Shieldfield nursery for pornographic purposes as well as their own motivations.

In the absence of being able to interview them we have been unable to find either Chris Lillie or Dawn Reed’s personal motivations for their abusive behaviours. However, the indications from the children were that Chris Lillie took every opportunity to abuse them, and Dawn Reed was a party to abuse in particular situations, including during filming".

"As well as enquiring into what had happened, we were also interested to discover evidence – which included opinion – about how and why events had happened. For the most part, we were thus seeking to adopt an inquisitorial, rather than adversarial approach, as such we have adopted an approach similar to that outlined subsequently by Sir Ronald Waterhouse in relation to the North Wales Tribunal:

‘We are not a jury. Our duty is to enquire and our procedure will be inquisitorial rather than adversarial – subject to the important qualification that any person against whom criticism or allegations are made will have a full opportunity to answer’"

"Question: You also lied did you not, in those passages of the Report at pages 20-23 which we looked at this morning in which you set out all the procedures of fairness to witnesses which did not apply, did they, to Chris and Dawn?

Answer: If you are saying there is linguistic ambiguities, if you are saying we were economical with the truth, if you are saying that we lied, you are entitled to say those, but it is my belief that when I read the final Report that we had written and when I read the complaints letters, it is my belief that I honestly believed what we had written.

Question: You did not care what they had to say, did you, because you were going to label them as abusers come what may; is that not the position?

Answer: I feel that in some ways without sounding patronising there would have been – we had to find out what we had to find out, not what we were determined to find out. We had to try and find out what had probably happened and draw conclusions. In terms of my career as a social worker and an academic who is also a social worker, as someone who trained to be a teacher, as someone who has done research into child care, it saddened me that in the case of Christopher Lillie it appeared to be the case in relation to information that we had that a child, an adolescent who had spent time in care had ended up in a position where he had abused children, because I do believe that children and young people who have been through the care system in Britain have to cope with disadvantages subsequent to being in care and sometimes have to cope with quite difficult circumstances when they are in care, and I find it very unappealing to believe that the care system can damage children, but I know that it does. So actually my personal inclination is to feel sympathy without I hope being patronising in relation to people who have been in care. So had I been biased I would have been inclined to have wanted to find information that minimised or reduced the responsibility of your client in that respect".

"Question: At this stage in the process Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed were, as far as you were concerned, second class citizens in terms of the fairness procedures that you thought you owed to witnesses, were they not?

Answer: When we were appointed the very first meeting I had had with Henry Warne and Bob Hassell, I think in the minutes of that meeting the agenda shows that one of the first items that was on that agenda was the need for us to have independent legal advice. It took some time for us to have what we considered independent legal advice. That is no disrespect to the lawyers who were employed in the Newcastle Law, which at that point was the arms length legal service of Newcastle City Council. They had gone for, I think, what was called at that time a purchaser–provider split. So that the initial discussions we had with Mr Warne was that Newcastle City Council understood and appreciated that we wanted to have independent legal advice.

Question: Why do you need to resort to discussions about independent legal advice in order to answer my question, Professor Barker?

Answer: Because if we were desirous of having independent legal advice to pursue our processes, in relation to key items of correspondence, it is appropriate for you to know that we took appropriate advice.

Question: You were conducting this inquiry; you had a duty of honesty; you had a duty of fairness. You accept that, do you not, Professor Barker?

Answer: I accept that we had a duty of fairness to do what we had to do and also to take account of appropriate advice. Had we not, it is my belief taken account of appropriate advice, I could have been criticised and the Review Team could have been criticised for saying ‘well, it is clear, is it not, that you did not take advice?’

Question: Do you understand the concept of fairness? Do you understand the concept which surely is steeped in you as a citizen of this country that before somebody is condemned they should have a full opportunity to defend themselves and to know what it is they are defending themselves against. You do not need legal advice to know that, do you, Professor Barker?

Answer: If you carry on with these letters….

Question: Just answer the question. Can we have a question about you and what you understood?

Answer: That is rather like saying ‘who is going to win the race?’ when you are half way through it.

Question: Do you have an understanding of the concept of fairness, Professor Barker, Yes or No?

Answer: It is my belief that the documentation that is in front of me in relation to the correspondence which Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed, which we wrote based upon appropriate advice, was appropriate and was fair".

"Thank you for your letter dated 18 April.

I am prepared to disclose in advance the complaints made against your client so that he had adequate notice of the position and is given a full and fair hearing about matters upon which I will be required to report.

I enclose of [sic] copy of the Independent Complaints Review Team’s Terms of Reference which will give you an idea of the range of issues we shall have to cover and you will see from the questions below those which are relevant.

The main complaints from parents are that your client, together with Dawn Reed physically and sexually abused children, whilst the children were attending Shieldfield Nursery; and that the children were taken out of the nursery without permission or oversight.

We would also like to ask questions about how your client was selected and recruited to the Social Services Department, how he was managed and supervised and how he came to work with Dawn Reed.

It would be interesting to hear his views on his earlier contact with the Department and about his prior employment experiences.

I am anxious that in no way is the criminal trial re-visited. Our approach is inquisitional rather than adversarial with the hearing held in private. Interviewees can be accompanied by a friend or legal adviser.

The Review Team will be producing a public report after it has considered the evidence presented to it. I hope that your client will feel able, with your help, to meet with the Team and help further our consideration of matters relating to our Terms of Reference.

(signed)

DR RICHARD W BARKER

TEAM LEADER"

"Question: Professor Barker, that sentence in that letter: ‘I am anxious that in no way is the criminal trial re-visited’, I suggest to you is nothing less than a lie?

Answer: I would have no reason to lie honestly. There is no reason, in my mind, that I could think of why I would want to lie. I was not on a vendetta. I did not know the two people concerned. I did not have any aspiration to overturn a properly made judicial decision, as far as I know. I was simply trying to deal with a complex and difficult situation where a large amount of material had to be dealt with in relation to the terms of reference that had been laid down by us and try to be involved in moving those through those processes in a fair and appropriate way and reach a conclusion that could then be appropriately written up, (1) in a report that would then be made available to Newcastle City Council and (2) in relation to complaints letters that we were empowered and required to complete. So, I honestly do not feel that it would have been any benefit in me trying to do what you are suggesting and it is honestly is not a lie in my opinion".

"No one other than those that perpetrated that abuse can provide definitive knowledge as to how this was carried out and those perpetrators that we know of have declined to talk to us. Therefore what follows can only be speculation based on those aspects of the situation that we do know about placed within a theoretical framework of what is known about perpetrators of child abuse".

"The Report has been checked for accuracy and consistency. Where particular people have been significantly criticised, where possible this has been raised with them in their interview or they have been forewarned prior to publication and allowed a chance to respond".

It is clear that the Claimants received no warning whatsoever. If that is not a "lie", I do not know what is. All these general claims of fairness made in the Report are obviously false so far as Mr Lillie and Miss Reed are concerned. On 22 February, Mr Wardell said that it was the responsibility of the City Council to give advance notice to them of the conclusions. He thought there was an agreement with Mr Warne, Mr Scott or Mr Poll to this effect. He was clearly wrong about that. I am not suggesting that he was dishonest in this respect. I think he was trying to persuade himself that there must be some honourable explanation for having got themselves into this untenable position.

"We have a very interesting picture here, because it is not one that to think is easily explicable, in the sense that ‘why would they need to be in a couple relationship when they were already in a relationship?’ (although a different sort - working in the nursery). They knew each other".

She added:

"They were in a relationship where they knew each other over a long period of time, and none of us knows what goes on within that relationship. They could have been having a relationship that nobody knew about. Who knows? I don’t know".

"The fact that they apparently did not have a relationship outside the nursery is not significant. There is no research evidence to show that such a relationship would have been an inevitable or necessary part of their jointly abusing children, and the way they could come and go from the nursery during work time almost at will meant that they had sufficient time and opportunity both outside and inside the nursery to pursue their abuse of the children together" (emphasis added).

This is a spurious and trumped up justification, after the event, for their failure to address the point. It is hardly likely that there would be any published research on the issue. No one suggested once, during 79 days of this trial, that there was any precedent for a man and a woman engaging in child abuse together when they were not in any kind of "couple" relationship. There was therefore nothing to which research could be directed.

"I am speaking for myself in that, as I say, I honestly do not recall seeing the medical, and my view would be that I would have wanted to seek further information in relation to that…. I think, in looking at any of the children, we would have wanted to look at the whole range of information that we had available to us, and obviously the medical would be an important part of that…. We had difficulties getting access to a whole range of information and amongst that we had difficulties getting access to a range of medical information. It was not in our discussions with the people who commissioned us, or in the advice that we sought from a range of people, that necessarily the medical information of itself would be pivotal because obviously medical information can describe a variety of things, and that is why we did what we did".

If any of these outpourings are intended to suggest that there was any difficulty about seeing Child 4’s medical findings, that would be manifestly untrue. As it was, Miss Page’s point remained unanswered, because it was unanswerable.

"The only people who really know what happened to the children of Shieldfield nursery are those who perpetrated the abuse. It is highly likely that even the children who experienced that abuse will have some accurate knowledge and some distorted knowledge. This distorted knowledge is likely to have been deliberately implanted by the perpetrators. The implanting of distorted knowledge is a strategy that abusers describe using. This tactic is particularly successful with very young children who have limited knowledge and understanding of the world and thus, when experiencing situations they cannot make sense of, they are likely to accept an abuser’s interpretation of those experiences. As a result of such distorted knowledge, when children try to disclose their experience, they are often not believed as, along with accurate knowledge gained through their own senses, they relate false or distorted information gained from the abuser/s. This distorted information is likely to refer to not only what happened to the child but also, who did it, to whom, where it was done and who had known about it and given permission for it to happen."

This is simply bare assertion or theory. It is not based on any evidence relating to this case. But it seems to have been resorted to by the Team as a reason for explaining inconsistencies among the children’s accounts.

"Another one of our officers had now been contacted by yourselves, requesting her attendance at an interview on a date to be arranged in 1997. The purpose in writing to you at this stage is twofold. Primarily my concern is for the welfare and wellbeing of the officer concerned. I have been made aware of the effects this particularly onerous and stressful investigation had on her, both physically and mentally, and I would question whether, having interviewed the Force Child Protection Co-ordinator and then made arrangements to interview the female officer’s direct supervisor who was, in effect, the officer in charge of the case, there is any benefit in resurrecting this matter as far as WPC Foster is concerned.

If it is considered important to conduct such an interview, and mindful of the consequences on the officer’s health, I would wish that, to enable the officer to prepare herself both physically and mentally, you provide at least one month prior to the proposed interview, a detailed set of questions you propose to put to her, which specifically include any possible complaints that have been made.

The reasoning behind my request is that the incidents referred to occurred approximately three to four years ago; the officer has been involved in many large investigations since and the quantity of material to which she would be obliged to refer precludes any spontaneous answers to detailed questions".

"I can well understand the potential distress that recollections of past events can cause in cases such as this, and can assure you that the team is sensitive to the needs of those who it wishes to interview.

We do however feel that the valuable lessons that would potentially be drawn from WPC Foster’s evidence warrant interviewing her; particularly given her sympathetic approach to the children she interviewed which many parents have commented upon.

It is our policy to provide in detail in writing the areas which we wish to discuss with witnesses, and a witness can choose to be accompanied by a lawyer if they wish".

"… and it somehow seems terribly important to a lot of them that actually we see the pain that the children went through, because it feels so long since those events, to them, and the pain that has gone on throughout that time; somehow the pain of the children at the time became quite lost and the statements that the children made may have become quite lost, with the court denying the children the right to actually say that. So, in some ways, although we cannot re-try Dawn and Chris (and there is no way we would even begin to even want to do that), what the parents are virtually saying is that ‘my children said something important, and it has just been lost, and never been heard or seen’. I think, for the parents, that is really what comes across. That is what they want me to do. So that, if we can say in our report that we have had access to the video-tapes, where we saw for ourselves the children … and this has had a profound effect on us".

That has all the hallmarks of Professor Barker’s style.

"So if we were to say that the focus of our attention is the child and not the way they were interviewed?"

Although he prevaricated for a while on the subject, I eventually asked Professor Barker to say Yes or No to whether there was a quid pro quo for seeing the videos that the Review Team would not criticise the police, to which he replied "My memory is that there probably was".

"Many aspects of the children’s evidence that could be verified and were checked out, proved to be accurate".

Further, at page 269, they claimed that they had been told by police that they had found evidence relating to one of the identified individuals which "was not strong enough to be used in court".

"…..is it not the case that at least one of the police, although they said they could not find proof, believe that the children had been abused by other people outside the nursery and implied that they believed that Lillie and Reed [were] involved in some pornographic creation type activity which involved some type of sexual activity?"

Thus it seems that any police confirmation for these two serious allegations (the paedophile ring and pornographic filming) rests on unspecified "implication".

"Question: Now that is readily comprehensible without legal advice as well, is it not?

Answer: Given the way we were dealing with it, given the way we were looking at matters on the basis of a balance of probability, given the information that we had and without any disrespect to this ruling, obviously we did have information – we did have information that Mr Justice Holland, if that is the right way to describe him, did not have. We had information from the nursery that he had never seen; we had information from witnesses that he had never seen; we had medical information that he had never seen and I am not – in saying that – I am not being disrespectful or wishing to comment critically on his ruling because it is my understanding, it is a perfectly proper and appropriate ruling in relation to those videos and in a sense for me to say it was perfectly proper is in a sense overstepping the mark because I am not legally qualified, which is precisely why we needed the advice that we did – not to smuggle anything out into the public domain under the cover of inappropriate cover but to try and deal with it appropriately with the appropriate advice".

1. If a child says that she has been raped, or had a knife stuck up her vagina, and yet she has an intact hymen and no signs of abnormality, one just resorts to the proposition (in general terms, of course, unassailable) that the absence of physical findings does not mean that abuse has not taken place;
2. If a child makes no allegations about anyone abusing him or her, then it is probably explicable on the basis of terrorisation by the supposed abuser;
3. If a child exonerates a person voluntarily, despite pressure and leading questions, then she is saying the opposite of what she means (i.e. that the person exonerated actually did abuse her);
4. If a child is peppered with leading questions over three hours of interviews, then one can include in one’s report the cavalier and unsupported conclusion that there was no evidence of leading questions;
5. If a child says that she was taken out and abused at Christopher Lillie’s house accompanied by another member of staff, and that is not borne out by that member of staff, then it probably means that the abuse took place in the nursery in the absence of that member of staff.

"Question: You substituted your own view of the video evidence of this child and you completely suppressed any reference to what the Judge had said about it, did you not?

Answer: That was certainly not the intention.

Question: That is what you did, was it not?

Answer: That was certainly not the intention."

I am not sure what this means. If the omission was unintentional, that presumably implies that the Review Team intended to include reference to the Judge’s concerns but forgot. I have no doubt whatever that they were omitted deliberately because it would require careful analysis, on the basis of evidence, for those concerns to be satisfactorily answered. They knew that was impossible.

"I mean that seems to me to be something that it would be very difficult to do in this context."

"Question: You managed to do it; you managed to sum it up and convey it to the public. Are you not prepared now to account for how you arrived at that statement?

Answer: Well, the sum total, right. What the child said seemed – she seems to be a child that was able to distinguish truth from lies, she seemed to be a child with good verbal ability; she seemed to be a child who was able, over the course of those videos, to recount matters that a child of that age would not have known about; she seemed to be a child who could describe things that had happened to her. It was obviously the case that there was confusion in some of the things that she said and she did contradict herself at times and that had to be considered carefully. But if you looked overall at the three videos and related that to the medical information in relation to this child and you related that to the fact that abuse appeared to have occurred in the nursery and outside and probably other things I cannot call to mind now, but if you put all those things together it did appear that what the …. That what the child was saying was an account of her being abused by Christopher Lillie and to a lesser extent Dawn Reed".

"Yes, I think the way we were coming at it was in a sense that if that material had been presented to a child protection conference. So if the child protection conference was looking at whether or not – it is slightly difficult because it was not quite like that obviously, but if a child protection conference was looking at whether or not it was safe to leave a child with a family, it would look at it on the basis of the information that was presented and on that basis had the information on the videos been looked at by a multi-disciplinary child protection conference it was our view, and it was an honest view, that is what was the child was saying. So rather than wearing a criminal hat beyond reasonable doubt, we were looking at it in a child protection conference type basis".

"For instance, over three videos Child 14 gave some indications that she had been abused by Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed which I noted, I also noted that she sometimes contradicted herself. She was also at times insistent that Dawn Reed had not done things to her. The videos were not conclusive one way or another".