ABC (A Mother) v The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Warby |
| Judgment Date | 07 July 2017 |
| Neutral Citation | [2017] EWHC 1650 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ16D01073 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 07 July 2017 |
[2017] EWHC 1650 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Warby
Case No: HQ16D01073
The Claimant in person
Cicely Hayward (instructed by Andrew Garthwaite, West Yorkshire Police Legal Services) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 26–28 June 2017
This has been the trial of a claim for slander, arising from allegations of child sexual abuse. The claimant is the mother of the child concerned, a boy who was aged 4 at the relevant times. It is the claimant who made allegations that her son had been abused. The people she suggested might have been involved were the female partner of the boy's paternal grandmother, who was the principal suspect, together with the grandmother and the boy's father who were also implicated by her.
It is because the case involves allegations of this kind that an order was made by the Master for the claimant and the boy to be anonymised, and to prohibit the publication of identifying details. The order requires the claimant to be referred to in any report as ABC and the boy as BCD. It is important to note that the order was made to protect the child, not anybody else. It stands alongside the general statutory prohibition on identification of those alleged to be the victims of sexual offending imposed by s 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, which applies to this case. In this case, as so often, the names and identifying details of family members of an alleged victim must be masked, in order to avoid "jigsaw" identification of the alleged victim.
The claimant first made her allegations that her son had been abused in early March 2015. This prompted an investigation by officers under the responsibility of the defendant Chief Constable. One of the first officers to be involved was a Detective Constable Ian Green, a Child Safeguarding Detective within the Kirklees District. The slander claim stems from a written entry made in GP records dated 24 April 2015. This ("the GP Record") appears to result from a conversation between a member of the GP surgery staff and a social worker named Elsa Newell. The claimant's case, in summary, is that this entry reflects and evidences statements that had been made to Elsa Newell by DC Green some days earlier, in which DC Green accused the claimant of lying to the police and thus perverting the course of justice, or attempting to do so, and suggested that she was criminally implicated in the situation.
The claimant's case is that such statements were made by DC Green maliciously, and that they have seriously damaged her reputation, and have caused her extreme distress and anxiety. In support of her claim for damages, and in aggravation of damages, she relies on the creation of the GP Record and says it is likely that the words complained of will have been, or will in future be distributed and published both within and outside the bounds of the GP practice. She relies on the harm she says that has probably done, or would be likely to do, to her reputation and feelings, and to her relationships with her son and others.
Issues
Some issues as to the adequacy of the statements of case arose at the start of the trial and later on. The issues affected both sides, but the flaws in the defence case were perhaps more obvious and more significant. Following a discussion with Counsel before the evidence began I was asked to and did give permission to amend the Defence to re-state the defence case on truth. A defence of honest opinion was dropped. The trial proper began with the parties written statements of case in a state that was less than perfect, but good enough to allow a fair trial.
The claim as now framed and defended gives rise to five main issues on liability:
(1) Publication. Were the words complained of, or some similar words, spoken and published by one or more detective constables to Ms Newell?
(2) Defamation. I use this word to cover several issues: was the statement complained of defamatory of the claimant (according to the common law and statutory tests); if so is it actionable in slander; and did it cause serious harm to reputation or is it likely to do so?
(3) Were the words substantially true in their natural and ordinary meaning(s)?
(4) Were the words published on an occasion of qualified privilege at common law?
(5) If so, were they published maliciously?
The claimant bears the burden of proof on issues 1 and 2. Issue 3 arises if she discharges that burden. The defendant bears the burden of proof on that issue. If the defendant fails to prove the truth of the meanings complaint, then issue 4 arises. Again, the defendant bears the burden of proof. If the words are shown to have been published on a privileged occasion, the claimant might succeed if she proves malice. That would defeat the defence of privilege. If the claimant succeeds on liability, of course, I have to consider the question of remedies.
Anonymity
Before coming to the evidence and the facts, I should say a few words about the form of the anonymity order in this case, and how I propose to respect the need to anonymise others for the protection of BCD. Anonymization in such cases is designed to respect the privacy of the alleged victim. This can require quite extensive anonymization. A little care needs to be taken in how one goes about anonymising parties and witnesses. The use of a person's true initials can weaken anonymization. Some other methods can cause confusion, and other difficulties.
To illustrate, in the same week that the papers in this case reached me another litigant acting in person chose to anonymise themselves in court papers using the same three letters, ABC. For a while I thought the cases involved the same claimant. Another inconvenience of using the first or last, or the first few or last few, letters of the alphabet is that cases become hard to cite. The issue was covered in the 2 nd edition of Tugendhat & Christie, The Law of Privacy and the Media (2011) at 14.74:
"The obvious inconvenience of the proliferation of cases unimaginatively entitled A v B or X v Y has led the court to develop a protocol whereby any anonymised party is randomly assigned a three letter designation, so that the case may be entitled, for example, DBM v EJP."
It is too late to adopt that practice here, so far as the claimant and her son are concerned. But the considerations above have led me to add the words "A mother" to the letters that designate the claimant. I shall use BCD for the son. The claimant's mother, who has given evidence, will be referred to as GBC, or "the claimant's mother" or "BCD's maternal grandmother". I shall refer to BCD's father as "DDC", and to the paternal grandmother and her partner by those descriptions, or as "GNA" and "GNJ".
Evidence and argument
For the claimant, ABC herself and her mother GBC have given oral evidence. Both were cross-examined by Ms Hayward, Counsel for the defendant Chief Constable. Three police officers have given oral evidence for the defence: DC Green; Acting Temporary Chief Inspector Ian Mottershaw, a Detective Sergeant at the material time; and Detective Constable Sarah Senior, formerly DC Ridge. All were cross-examined by the claimant, who represents herself and has done so with conspicuous skill, efficiency, and economy.
Two lever arch files and one ring binder of documentation have been put before me, and referred to extensively in the course of evidence and argument. All had some relevance, and I wish to pay tribute to the quality of the claimant's paperwork and to her advocacy, both of which have been clear and well focused.
I should say, however, that I have proceeded on the basis that the findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission concerning a complaint made by the claimant are not binding on me, nor are the findings of an investigating officer relating to complaints made by her against individual police officers, including DC Green. I do not, in fact, have any record of the investigating officer's findings, other than indirectly via the IPCC report. In one respect the facts recorded in that report are relevant: there is an issue concerning DC Green's knowledge of the complaints and their outcome, which is relevant to his credibility. But otherwise I have reached my decisions on the basis of the evidence of fact that is before me about the events of (mainly) March and April 2015.
The facts
The following is an account of facts that are largely undisputed. To the extent there is any disagreement or any difference between the accounts of these events that are in evidence it is minor, and what follows represents not just a record of facts that are in evidence but also my findings on such disagreements or differences as exist.
I shall concentrate on the key period of some 7 weeks from 2 March 2015 to 24 April 2015, the date of the GP Record. Later events have relatively little bearing on the issues for my decision.
At all material times ABC was separated from BCD's father, DDC. DDC had a new partner, who had a young son of her own ("T"), who was about the same age as BCD. Orders of the Family Court were in place from about 2014 by which BCD was resident with his mother but his father had contact, weekly. During the periods when BCD had overnight contact with his father, he would have some overnight stays at the home of GNA and GNJ. When that happened, the father would also take T.
On Monday 2 March 2015, ABC rang the police to report that BCD had told her that GNJ had been taking photos of his bottom and penis and applying talcum powder to his penis. That evening, two uniformed officers visited the home of ABC's mother, where she and her son were staying...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Musst Holdings Ltd v Astra Asset Management UK Ltd Astra Asset Management LLP
...will be dismissed: see Raynor v Seabourne Hawkins at paras. 75–77. 605 The case of ABC v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2017] EWHC 1650 (QB) acknowledges the possibility of an inferential case in slander. At para. 67, Warby J (as he then was) said that: “There are good reasons f......
-
AB v The University of XYZ
...of section 1. It also appears to be contrary to High Court authority (e.g. ABC (A mother) v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2017] EWHC 1650 (QB) at 12 If section 1 did not apply, I would need consider whether reporting should be restricted relying on the powers of the Court under......