Shieldfield: how did it happen?
RICHARD WEBSTER
4 December, 2002
THE SHIELDFIELD CASE, in which two Newcastle nursery
nurses, falsely accused of horrendous sexual crimes, were finally
vindicated in a libel trial after a nine-year ordeal, has already been
extensively documented on this website. However, the full story of
Shieldfield had, until recently, hardly begun to be told.
That situation, which has doubtless already led many people to discount
Shieldfield as a terrible aberration, has now changed. A month or so ago,
quietly and without fanfare, a very significant publication was
distributed to a relatively small number of subscribers. It contains two
substantial articles, both of which probe the roots of Shieldfield. These
articles, because of the nature of the analysis which they present, ought
to be compulsory reading for every director of social services, every
child protection worker, every family court judge and every politician,
police officer, lawyer and journalist with a professional interest in
allegations of sexual abuse and the manner in which they are investigated.
The publication in question was the Autumn edition of the newsletter of
the British False Memory Society. 'The BFMS,' writes director Madeline
Greenhalgh, 'makes no apologies for making this issue of the newsletter
into a special focus on the Shieldfield libel trial . . . [it] carries
articles which take a comprehensive look behind the scenes to reveal
strong links between the Shieldfield and Cleveland crises. We uncover the
part played by the child welfare agencies which until now has escaped
scrutiny.'
After reprinting Margaret Jervis's excellent piece on the libel judgment,
which has already been commented on here, the newsletter breaks new ground
with an article by Tania Hunter entitled
Messages from Shieldfield. At the heart of her analysis of Shieldfield is her assessment of a
judicial inquiry which has exercised enormous influence over the
development of child-protection policies over the last fourteen years - the
1988 Butler-Sloss inquiry into Cleveland.
It might be said that the real problem with the Cleveland report has
arisen as a direct result of its unusual strengths. The report has so many
good qualities that, in some quarters at least, it has been treated almost
as a sacred scripture which is beyond criticism. The judgment in the
Shieldfield libel trial, however, has led Tania Hunter to question it
openly. 'The Cleveland inquiry,' she writes, 'despite all its undisputed
virtues, had one monumental and largely unrecognised flaw which has had a
significant bearing on subsequent events.
'While it acknowledged the part played by doctors, social workers and
therapists in the breakdown of child care services in Cleveland, the cause
was attributed to the inexperience and the personalities of those
involved. Expert witnesses had warned of the dangers of adopting North
American therapeutic disclosure techniques, but the inquiry nonetheless
concluded that the investigative techniques which had proved so disastrous
in Cleveland were safe when used by experts such as Dr Arnon Bentovim and
his Great Ormond Street Hospital colleagues.
'Based on this incomplete understanding, and without the benefit of later
research into children's suggestibility, the Butler-Sloss inquiry
recommended improved training and inter-agency "working together". The
unintended outcome has been that the very people responsible for the
Cleveland affair have been able to perpetuate their practices and are now
established in universities and at the centre of the child protection
system as experts, policy advisers and trainers' [italics
added].
The
view that Shieldfield happened not in spite of the Cleveland report but,
in some respects at least, because of it, is a deeply disturbing one. But
this view is, I believe, essentially correct. The problem in some respects
is simply one of chronology. It is not only that the Cleveland inquiry
took place before ground-breaking research into children's suggestibility
had been conducted by psychologists such as Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck;
it is also that the report was published well before any proper scientific
assessment of the 'anal dilatation' test had ever been made. The
assumption that reflex gaping of the anus in young children indicated
sexual abuse lay at the very heart of Cleveland. By the time this
'diagnostic' test was finally discredited by medical research and shown to
be without any empirical foundation, the Cleveland report had already been
in circulation for some two or three years.
Through no fault of her own Justice Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (now Dame
Butler-Sloss) had, in effect, been compelled to produce her report in the
dark. She simply did not have the benefit of the very scientific research
which would have revealed the true scale of the Cleveland scandal and the
real dangers of the child protection ideology and the paediatric zealotry
which had led to it. Tania Hunter's eloquent analysis of the unintended
consequences of the Cleveland report, and in particular of the role played
by untested forms of 'therapy', is disturbing precisely because of the
large measure of truth it contains.
The same must be said of the article by Margaret Jervis which accompanies
it,
The road to Shieldfield (Part 1).
(To download a PDF version of entire October BFMS
newsletter, click
here.)
Having been a close observer of the development of child-protection
ideology since her days as a staff journalist working for Social Work
Today, Margaret Jervis is unusually well-qualified to piece together
the story behind the story of Shieldfield. In its own way, the account she
gives of the background to the Shieldfield scandal is just as disturbing -
and just as revealing - as that of Tania Hunter.
No doubt the extent to which the 'strategy' followed by child protection
campaigners in the north east was consciously planned, and the extent to
which it was simply an 'accident of zeal', will be contested. What can
scarcely be disputed is that the complex alliance between anxious parents
and zealous professionals which eventually came about at Shieldfield was
extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily dangerous.
In their two articles, which complement one another so well, Tania Hunter
and Margaret Jervis have shed an immense amount of light on the origins of
the entire Shieldfield case. For this reason their articles should be
widely read by all those who work in the field of child protection. One of
the great tragedies of the current polarised state of the debate, however,
is that there will in some quarters be resistance to the insights now made
available by the British False Memory Society precisely because of their
provenance.
As Margaret Jervis herself notes in the first of her two recent articles,
there has been a concerted campaign to blacken the name of the British
False Memory Society. The campaign has been conducted over a number of
years and Judith Jones and her fellow Newcastle activist Bea Campbell have
played prominent parts in it. The effect has been to smear the entire
false memory movement with the misjudgments made by a few - especially by
the psychologist Ralph Underwager.
It was Underwager (who is also a Lutheran minister), who in 1993 gave a
disturbing interview to the Dutch magazine Paidika in which he
appeared to endorse paedophilia as part of God's will. His wife, the
psychologist Hollida Wakefield, also made remarks which were unhelpful to
the cause of those
attempting to oppose the tide of false allegations then running strongly
not only in the United States but also in much of the English-speaking
world.
Although Underwager was immediately asked to resign from the American
False Memory Syndrome Foundation Board, his extraordinary and
ill-considered words inflicted lasting damage on the movement which he had
helped to found. They have been used by some extreme supporters of
recovered memory therapy ever since in an attempt to demonise their
opponents and to misrepresent them as belonging to a paedophile lobby.
(Some insight into the ferocity of the lesser battles that ensued may be
gleaned from an
American website,
run
by journalist Moira Johnston, which documents, in its references the
Columbia Journalism Review, one of the many clashes there have been
in recent years between those who support the idea of 'massive' repression
and those who oppose it.)
In fact the
British False Memory Society
has, like its
American counterpart, attracted support from some of the most distinguished psychologists and
psychiatrists in the country. The credulous acceptance by some
professionals, including some child protection workers, of what amounts to
a black propaganda campaign against this valuable organisation, has
already done great harm. If the lessons of Shieldfield are now to be
learned (and it is essential for everyone that they are) then demonology
must now be displaced by facts and evidence - and by genuine debate.
4
December, 2002
