R (Siddall) v Secretary of State for Justice
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Leveson,Mr Justice Sweeney |
| Judgment Date | 16 March 2009 |
| Neutral Citation | [2009] EWHC 482 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/5189/2008 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 16 March 2009 |
[2009] EWHC 482 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
The Rt. Hon Lord Justice Leveson
The Hon Mr Justice Sweeney
Case No: CO/5189/2008
Stephen Cragg (instructed by Hodge Jones and Allen for the Claimant
Hugo Keith (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 24 th February 2009
Lord Justice Leveson:
1. On 29 th July 1999, following a trial in the Crown Court at Leeds, the Claimant John Siddall was convicted by majority verdict of two offences of indecent assault in relation to RW and offences of indecent assault and indecency with a child, PW; he was acquitted of three offences of indecent assault in respect of a third girl JF. He was sentenced to a total of four years imprisonment and his subsequent application for leave to appeal against conviction was refused. On 10 th August 2000, he applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (“CCRC”) who, on 8 th December 2004, referred his convictions and those of Ian Brooke (who had been convicted of offences in relation to RW and a fourth girl AMS) to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) (“CACD”). Following a hearing over two days on 23 rd and 24 th May 2006, on 15 th June, the CACD quashed the convictions both of Mr Siddall and Mr Brooke ( [2006] EWCA Crim 1353).
2. By letter dated 22 nd January 2007, Mr Brooke applied to the Secretary of State pursuant to section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (“the 1988 Act”) for compensation for wrongful conviction. On 8 th May 2007, the Home Secretary decided, without admission of liability, to make payment to him and (in accordance with the usual practice) consulted an Assessor to determine the amount to be paid.
3. Thereafter, on 12 th June 2007, Mr Siddall also applied to the Secretary of State. This was considered on behalf of the Secretary of State for Justice (to whom this responsibility had by then devolved and to whom I shall refer as the Justice Secretary”). By letter dated 3 rd March 2008, the claim was rejected in these terms:
“While he [the Justice Secretary] accepts that Mr Siddall's convictions were reversed on the basis of a new or newly discovered fact, he is not of the opinion that they were reversed ‘on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact showed beyond reasonable doubt that there had been a miscarriage of justice’. In particular, he does not think that it is beyond reasonable doubt that your client has suffered a miscarriage of justice, in the sense that he should not have been convicted (see the speech of Lord Bingham in R (Mullen) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] 1 AC 1, as applied in R. (Clibery) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWHC 1855 (Admin), R. (Harris) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWHC 3218 (Admin) and re Boyle [2007] NIQB 88).”
4. With the leave of the single judge, Mr Siddall challenges that decision primarily on the grounds that he should not have been convicted and that his case falls fairly and squarely within Lord Bingham's approach, but also on the separate basis that the Justice Secretary provided insufficient reasons why he had not been so accepted (especially having regard to the acceptance of Mr Brooke's claim) and that, in the absence of any reasonable justification, it was irrational and unlawful to treat the two cases differently. In argument, it was accepted that this essentially boiled down to the two issues —whether the case fell within Lord Bingham's approach and, even if it did not, whether it was unlawful to treat the two cases differently.
The Factual Background
5. Mr Siddall was employed in the 1980s as an unqualified full time care worker at Rivendell Children's Home, operated by Kirklees Local Authority, West Yorkshire, which catered for vulnerable and emotionally damaged children. On 2–3 nights a week, he was required to sleep on the premises in a staff room equipped with both desk and bed.
6. It is sufficient briefly to set out the allegations in relation to each of the three complainants in Siddall's case. First, JF (who was 27 at date of trial) was at Rivendell from June 1985 to January 1986 when she was aged 15. She admitted that she regularly ran away from the home. She described three instances of indecent touching but the judge withdrew the first count from the jury and the jury were unable to agree on the two remaining counts. In the result, on the Judge's direction, not guilty verdicts were returned on all three counts.
7. RW (who was 28 at date of trial, and had first started making disclosures to the police about sex abuse in December 1996) was at Rivendell from October 1985 until May 1986 when aged between 13 and 14. She provided a 40 page statement dated 19th December 1996 setting out a catalogue of abuse she had suffered from the age of In her evidence she said that she had been placed in local authority care after suffering sexual abuse by a member of her family. On one occasion she had been naughty and was told to go to the upstairs staff room. Mr Siddall had kissed and cuddled her. He locked the door and the next thing she remembered was lying on his bed and having sex with him with him on top of her. This was the subject of an allegation of indecent assault (presumably because of the potential difficulty of proving the absence of consent). The second incident of sexual intercourse also took place in the upstairs staff room. In total he had sex with her either 3 or 4 times but she was not sure. The incidents always took place when he stayed over in the staff room bed, and probably occurred over a 4–5 week period before she was moved from Rivendell to another home called Westfields for assessment.
8. Finally, PW (who was 25 at date of trial) arrived at Rivendell in December 1987 when she was aged 13 years. The two other complainants RW and JF had left by that time and there was no contact between them. She recalled one occasion when at around 3.00 am she had a really bad headache and went crying to the downstairs staff room to ask for tablets. She sat down opposite the appellant and he made a lewd or rude suggestion and said that she could smoke confiscated cigarettes if she played with his penis. She did not at first but then felt as though she had to, doing so for about ten minutes. She gave further evidence that, during this incident, the appellant was squeezing her breast through her pyjama top. These were the indecency and indecent assault allegations.
9. In March 1997, following the complaint made by RW, Mr Siddall was arrested. When interviewed then, and subsequently, he denied all the offences. In evidence, he repeated these denials saying that he could not remember any of the complainants. The only memory he had was of going to the police station with RW following her complaint that she had been raped by, apparently, two taxi-drivers outside Rivendell. He would not have touched JF indecently. The most he would do was to pat a child's head to reassure them. He certainly never touched a child on the bottom and agreed that it would be inappropriate to touch a child's thigh. He was not normally a very tactile person. All three women were lying. He could not think of any reasons why they would want to make up allegations against him. These were the issues that the jury had to resolve.
10. Meanwhile, the police were pursuing similar enquiries against Ian Brooke in relation to allegations of sexual abuse in 1986 both in relation to RW and a different girl AMS at a different residential facility, Westfields Assessment Centre. He was tried in April 2000, after Mr Siddall, and was acquitted of one count of indecent assault in relation to RW but convicted of two offences of rape and one of buggery in relation to her, and three offences of indecent assault and one of rape in relation to AMS.
11. After the appeal process had been concluded, both Mr Siddall and, later, Mr Brooke, sought the assistance of the CCRC. Mr Siddall advanced a number of complaints concerning the three alleged victims, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police investigation. Save in respect of the new material, these complaints were rejected. In particular, in relation to the police, it was alleged that they had withheld relevant information from the defence and failed to investigate the allegations properly. Although the CCRC went on to identify new material which it had obtained, it made clear that previous allegations of rape did not appear to have been disclosed to this police investigation and, as regards the complaint, concluded (paragraph 6.21):
“The Commission's review has uncovered no evidence of improper behaviour on the part of West Yorkshire Police in the manner in which they investigated the allegations made against Mr Siddall. In the absence of any such evidence, or leads for further investigation, the Commission has no basis on which to take this matter further.”
12. As for the additional material which had been amassed by the CCRC, it was summarised by the CACD under four headings (at paragraph 23) as follows:
“(A) Allegations of rape made by RW but not disclosed by RW in the course of her disclosures to officers responsible for Operation Clyde (the relevant police investigation into incidents at Rivendell and Westfields) and Operation Care (another investigation in relation to a care home on Merseyside to which RW was subsequently sent). These allegations derived from information contained in...
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