Fit Up (27 page)

D
espite the mediation meeting and offers on our part to encourage Hertfordshire Constabulary to settle Jeremy’s claim, they were still stubbornly refusing, and by the end of March 2010, after yet another case management meeting, it had become evident that we were heading for a retrial. I hoped we could be finished with all this one way or another well before 2010 was out but with so many diaries to coordinate and other cases that the legal teams were already dealing with, I could have screamed when I heard it would be as late as January 2011.

Although it wasn’t Jeremy’s fault, I went into a full-on rant about how we had only been married for just four and a half years before police and litigation had come into our normal, peaceful lives. By the time of the retrial they would have been involved for just over seven years and Andre and Leslie had become comfortable acquaintances. In my heart, I knew it was right for him to fight to clear his name but I was beginning to resent being dragged along with his crusade. Looking for blame and the what ifs, my thoughts had gone back in time to 1998 when it was just me and an uncomplicated life. Compared to this living hell, I was happy then despite the lack of companionship. I looked at Jeremy, suddenly feeling very guilty that I had wished I had never met him. I was so caught up in my own simmering resentment it took a while to notice
that there were subtle changes in him also. My disposition was predominantly quiet, patient and resilient with only the occasional passionate outburst – Jeremy, on the other hand, was noisy, a real chatterbox, impatient and, despite being fairly extrovert, lacking confidence. He relied on me always for strength and that was wearing at times. However, he was becoming more quiet and withdrawn and when we did converse it was always about the case. It became that there was little else to discuss and he had taken to spending time on his own, going for a drive, shopping at midnight for nothing in particular or just browsing the internet for information about court cases. I distracted myself by watching television but I could not watch anything to do with police or law and they used to be my favourite programmes.

I had tried to engage Jeremy in other things but was met with terseness, which only irritated me further, and we only communicated with fervour after conversations with Andre bringing fresh news.

Andre had sent to us a copy of a letter that he had written to Grundy regarding preparations and what we would require from her on our side. What did come out of the latest case management hearing was that forensics were now going to be permitted. Challenger had requested it and even though previous judges had not deemed it pertinent to the case, we were glad that Duncan’s report could be disclosed to show Challenger that there was nothing hidden. What a shocker that was going to be in contrast to the Fellows report. Duncan had found nothing incriminating and Challenger had repeatedly suggested to the court that Jeremy had searched the internet for child porn. Andre had asked Grundy to assist in his enquiries of where in the Fellows report this was evidenced by stating times and dates of deliberate searches and details of websites visited, as we had been through it with a fine-tooth comb but could not find anything to support Challenger’s insinuations. By her answering these queries he could then properly instruct Duncan to do a further report on the Tiny computer.

It had also been ordered by the court of appeal that Grundy should be interviewed by Andre about her dealings with Hopkins, but she vehemently declined to give evidence and the legal services of Hertfordshire Constabulary had stated categorically that she did not wish to be interviewed by him and she would not be forced to do so. Thus, she remained forever silent on where the evidence of Jeremy’s trawl for child pornography was gained from and deflected the question by suggesting that our expert could discuss the matter with Fellows when they were to meet to compile a joint report for the court.

We could see by the wording in the exchanges of correspondence between Andre and Grundy that their relationship was deteriorating but each still trying to remain professional. For some reason Grundy was being obstructive about allowing Duncan access to the Tiny computer. ‘Access to the Tiny computer will not be possible’ was her stance, and she said that during the criminal procedure an image of the hard drive was made and that would be sufficient for our purposes! She knew damned well that Duncan had correctly returned this to Hertfordshire Constabulary after the criminal case was over. It appeared they were happy to hand this disk over for the criminal proceedings, but not for the civil proceedings. She explained that to release to us an image of the hard drive would be committing an offence due to copying of alleged illegal images, and that Duncan would be able to access information if he were to travel to their headquarters in Welwyn Garden City. This would not be practical for him as all his tools and references would be to hand at his own office, plus costs would be increased by travelling backwards and forwards from Sussex to Hertfordshire. Andre quoted from a judgment of a previous trial that orders by the High Court must be obeyed, which would be their defence to a possible prosecution. In any case, were Hertfordshire Constabulary really going to arrest and facilitate a prosecution of themselves? It seemed to be a stalling nonsense.

W
hile browsing through the
Daily Mail
online on 9 October, I was drawn to the bold headline, ‘
BARRISTER WHO WAS DRAGGED FROM COURT IN HANDCUFFS WINS £100,000 FROM THE MET
'. I nearly choked on my coffee wondering how he had managed to get that kind of compensation. I was suddenly filled with rage.

The next paragraph described how Challenger had fallen into a diabetic coma in a police cell because the arresting officer had confiscated his insulin medicine, resulting in a trip to hospital. Challenger said he was relieved that the Met Police had settled the case for ‘completely outrageous behaviour'. He had declined to reveal the compensation figure but sources close to the case said it was £100,000 plus printed apologies in various legal media. Jeremy said he would have happily swapped places with Challenger for £100,000 and an apology.

He was also quoted as saying that it had taken six months for the Met to bring any charges against him and that they had only dropped the case in January, five months and three weeks after his arrest. Then he went on to whine about the business he had lost due to potential clients looking up his name on the internet to find pictures of him in handcuffs and that the treatment by the Met Police had been outrageous.

What angered me most was the amount of compensation Challenger
had received from the public purse and the idiotic Met Police for making such a mistake as to confiscate his insulin and then not monitor him during his incarceration which, in turn, led to them being sued. On top of that, they were dealing with a barrister who knew his way around the law and went for the easier option of settling out of court.

Then there was the sheer hypocrisy of how long he thought his case had taken and the worry about his reputation and the resultant loss of business. Compared to Jeremy and a lot of other people, he had an amazingly quick and successful ending to his case after his arrest last July. Try waiting years, matey, with your business going down the tubes and being constantly referred to as a paedophile, I thought. Now that was something to feel outraged about!

From that morning Jeremy's screensaver was changed and Challenger's pay day did nothing to improve our views about police behaviour or the judicial system.

A
lthough Jeremy was updated with copies of emails and correspondence between Andre and Grundy there was, fortunately, little involvement from us during the summer months. I had insisted that Jeremy visit the doctor again as he was always tired, wavered from happy to moody and would well up too easily. These were typical signs of depression and they had always been evident in some measure since his arrest. To please me he did make an appointment but refused to take the prescribed drugs as he wanted to remain ‘in control’. There was the option of counselling and he said he would look into that. I had to leave him to decide what he wanted to do as I could not force him. Although I emotionally struggled at times, I did not feel I needed any help because I could sound off to my friends.

By the end of August, Andre had interviewed DS Bob Willcox, the author of the Standards Improvement Document who clearly remembered talking to Hopkins and Fouhey in order to create the report. He said he could not have done it without their cooperation and was willing to be a witness for us if required. After Andre had told him about the history of Jeremy’s case, Willcox hoped we would win.

Jeremy was also asked to do a second statement which would go to the support of assessing damages if he was to succeed at the retrial. He
said his interview with Andre was kind of cathartic because he had the opportunity to sum up all the injustices that had been done to him. The list of these injustices both saddened and angered me:

If they thought they had a good chance of winning the case, why resort to intimidation and undermine the legal aid? The Landslide point was revealing as we had been pressuring Grundy to produce evidence that refunds had been authorised to Jeremy as it had been apparent all along that they had this information. Challenger had blocked this by telling the court that it would take hundreds of hours to trawl electronic records to find this information. So, I thought, because it would take a long time, the police had not bothered to look and went for the easier option of wrecking someone’s life. Obviously the police had not expected to now be in this position and with hindsight it is now clear that they would have hoped that Jeremy would have buckled early on under the pressure by accepting what the police would have described as the ‘relatively minor’ charges laid against him, but Jeremy wasn’t going to accept anything that he hadn’t done. They had picked the wrong person this time. It was certainly a sad indictment of the conduct of a police officer backed by his legal representation.

O
ctober soon arrived and preparations to bring Jeremy’s case to its second trial intensified with the continued heated exchanges between
Andre and Grundy. Our quiet backseat time of involvement over the past few months was over. What was worrying was that it had been hinted that Hopkins was unwell and may not be able to attend the retrial. This would obviously be a problem for us, and we needed further information from Grundy.

Andre had some homework for us and asked us to investigate cases that involved Hopkins and Operation Metropolis, which meant internet searches, looking at local papers, court appearances and any other sources of research. The reason for this was to test Hopkins’s experience, as at the previous trial we were led to believe that he was naïve and had left the department in 2004/5 to work on a murder inquiry. Prior to this, he had no knowledge of such cases and yet he was now claiming that he had been deeply traumatised by his involvement in Operation Ore cases due to the unpleasant images he had seen. I was better at this sort of task than Jeremy who quickly lost interest if nothing came to light in the first few minutes. Research took time and patience but, unfortunately, on this occasion I could find nothing useful. I did not know it then but my dogged persistence for discovery would soon be rewarded before the start of the trial.

Leslie had returned from a long sabbatical and had been brought up to speed with the information that Andre had gathered and was seeking his advice, especially as there were still problems with disclosure from the police. He decided it would be a good idea to offer the police a chance to settle the case rather than spend time, effort and expense on a retrial. It was with that in mind that Andre sent Grundy a letter on 15 October containing a Part 36 offer for the sum of £45,000 and a request for an apology. Jeremy and I were not happy about this low sum as we had taken years to get to this stage and it nowhere near compensated for our losses. It was explained that as aggravated damages had been struck out, we were unlikely to get a much larger sum or, worse,
it could possibly be less. We did not have to concern ourselves for long, however, as Grundy, on behalf of Hertfordshire Constabulary, declined to entertain the offer.