Bartholomew's Notes

***
Sections:

Introduction
The “1961” allegation
The 1990s “brothel” allegation

Further allegations:
Abuse and murder on the yacht
Sex parties in London
Jimmy Savile’s nephew
Supposed association with the Paedophile Information Exchange

Discussion
****

Introduction

From Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:

That’s it then. Sir Edward Heath was a paedophile. It has been on the news for four days, so it must be true. They might just be allegations, but we know there is “no smoke without fire”. The chap was a “confirmed bachelor”, nudge, nudge. They are always a bit fishy, these lonely sorts.

Let us look at the claims in more detail.

The “1961” allegation

Jenkins continues:

…As far as Heath is concerned, there appear to be only two firm allegations. One comes from a man who says he was raped by Heath in 1961 in a flat in Park Lane full of sailing paraphernalia. (Heath had no such flat and was not a sailor then, according to his biographer, John Campbell.) 

The accusation was a sensational front-page Sunday Mirror splash at the weekend. The accuser claims he was picked up by Heath while hitch-hiking to London aged twelve. The man recalls “a very posh place” where there were “photos of yachts on the walls” and “an orchestra’s conductor’s baton”, which (perhaps too handily) are evidence of Heath’s famous hobbies and thus mean that we can discount the possibility of mistaken identity. The man says he realised with whom he had spent the night several years later, when he saw a photograph in a newspaper (an old photo from 1951). The Mirror report refers to “Mayfair” rather than Jenkins’s “Park Lane”; the two designations, when used in a general way, are virtually synonymous.

When I first consulted Campbell’s biography (via Google Books), I thought that Jenkins had been mistaken: page 72 states that Heath had indeed moved to Albany, known as “Mayfair’s most exclusive mansion”, in 1961. However, pages 136 to 137 show that this is an error or typo, and the correct date was 1963. Up until this point he had been living in a “cupboard” flat in Petty France, which is south of St James’s Park. Campbell explains that Heath acquired a seven-year lease for his Albany apartment, lasting up to 1970.

The 1963 date is also confirmed by Heath’s own autobiography (referring to the resignation of Macmillan: “It was at this time that I moved out of the small flat in Petty France that I had inhabited since the early 1950s”) and Margaret Laing’s 1973 biography.

Yet this incorrect 1961 date just happens to be pivotal to the new allegation. It is possible that the journalist, rather than the alleged victim, has extrapolated from “a very posh place” to Mayfair, based on the error/typo, but the Petty France address – described as “tiny” by Campbell and as “little more than digs” – doesn’t seem to fit the bill.

Campbell’s biography also confirms, as Jenkins notes, that Heath took up sailing only in 1966, although he had had an interest in the sea since boyhood.

The 1990s “brothel” allegation

Jenkins also refers to the second allegation:

The other is from an anonymous former policeman in Wiltshire who alleged that a Myra Forde had, in the mid-1990s, threatened to expose Heath as a paedophile if she was prosecuted for running a brothel. She denied the whole story on Wednesday, which perhaps explains why Wiltshire’s police and prosecutor say they were never told of the threat, although they nevertheless held a press conference outside Heath’s former home in Salisbury last weekend.

The story was that plans for a trial were dropped in 1992 because Forde had threatened to “expose” Heath. However, it now transpires that the real reason was because two witnesses failed to give evidence, although Wiltshire police are now looking into whether there was “witness tampering” (a belated change of emphasis which is unimpressive given that the first version of the story came from one its own officers, and even if true does not mean that the case had anything to do with Heath). Forde did apparently claim to know something about Heath and rent boys, although she was convicted three years later without mentioning the matter. A report of her trial from 1995 refers to underage girls, but not boys.

[UPDATE (May 2016): According to a new report:

An investigation has found no evidence a case against a brothel madam was dropped because she threatened to make allegations against Sir Edward Heath.

…The IPCC [Independent Police Complaints Commission] found the case was halted when witnesses refused to give evidence.

It was also deemed unclear whether the comment about Sir Edward had even been made.]

Further allegations

There are also some other allegations about Heath in the media.

(a) Abuse and murder on the yacht

The claim here is that Heath abused children from the Haut de la Garenne children’s care home in Jersey, in particular while taking them on trips aboard his yacht, the Morning Cloud. There were cases of child abuse at the home, and a lawyer representing victims told the Independent:

“There seems to have been this currency that somehow he was implicated, but it was always like pinning down a jellyfish – it was very elusive.”

This seems to be saying that the lack of any evidence is itself a sign of something sinister going on.

A more outlandish variation of the Jersey story is that Heath would sometimes murder the children and dump their bodies over the side of his yacht. One woman on Jersey, named Linda Corby, claims that in “the early 1970s” (which would have been while Heath was Prime Minister) she on one occasion counted eleven children go onto Heath’s yacht but only ten return. She says that she went to police, who told her that they had been told “not to investigate”. One wonders how the ten survivors were persuaded not to say anything, or even to warn their peers not to go on the boat on later occasions. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that Corby simply miscounted. Corby is herself a mother, which allowed the Daily Mail to produce a misleading headline implying that a mother had reported that her own child was missing.

More generally, it is unexplained how Heath was able to dispose of children in this way without anyone filing missing person reports, or dead children washing up ashore, or members of Heath’s crew or security entourage blabbing. According to The Times, based on information from Heath’s navigator David Arnold: “Morning Cloud was a racing vessel, needed at least three people to crew her and had no private space.”

[UPDATE (2017): The Independent Jersey Care Inquiry found nothing to implicate Heath in abuse. According to a witness statement by former deputy police chief Leonard Harper (var. Lenny Harper):

I would also like to confirm, for the record, that during my investigations into child abuse on the island of Jersey, I received no allegations against Jimmy Savile or Sir Edward Heath. I understand that both of these have subsequently been linked to the island of Jersey. I do however know that Sir Edward Heath was a frequent visitor to the island and a member of the boating community.

Harper led police investigation in 2006 into historic child abuse in Jersey. From his various media statements, we can be very sure that if he had something implicating Heath he would have made a big deal of it.]

(b) Sex parties in London

The source here is “Nick”, Exaro‘s star witness in its stories about “VIP abuse”. Nick (a pseudonym) claims to have been raped by VIPs including Leon Brittan at Dolphin Square, and even to have witnessed three child-murders. He also claims to have been abused by Jimmy Savile and Lord Greville Janner. “Nick” says he was raped by Heath “at several venues”, although it’s not clear if these supposedly include Dolphin Square. Again, it is difficult to imagine a group of paedophiles, who depend on tight secrecy for their activities, welcoming an ex-Prime Minister into their midst.

[UPDATE: Later in August it emerged that Nick’s allegations included the claim that Harvey Proctor had been persuaded not to castrate him at a sex party due to Heath’s intervention. More detail here.]

[UPDATE 2019: Nick can now be named as Carl Beech, and his claims have been found to have been fraudulent. More details here].

(c) Jimmy Savile’s nephew

Two days after the 1961 allegations were published, the Evening Standard had a  follow-up:

Jimmy Savile’s nephew today claimed that a male friend was abused by Sir Edward Heath.

Guy Marsden said the friend was just 14 at the time and the alleged sex attack on him happened at a party in London during the Seventies.

…Mr Marsden, 61, said he and three friends aged 13 to 16 were ferried across London from flat to flat, where sexual abuse took place.

…The roofer, from Leeds, added: “The four of us would arrive at these parties together, then my friend would disappear. I didn’t think much of it at the time, though I knew it was weird.

“He later told us that Ted Heath was an abuser but that he didn’t know who he was at the time. He said it was a year after the abuse took place that he was watching TV and recognised him.”

It’s odd that Marsden failed to mention this amazing relevation in 2014, when he gave a strange account of encountering his uncle among paedophiles in 1968. According to the story as published in the Daily Mail, Marsden and some friends had decided to run away to London, where they were picked up to two men and taken to their flat. By chance, Savile appeared several days later, “with a group of young children and a vicar in tow”:

Guy, thinking his uncle had been asked to find him by his family, was horrified. ‘I thought that me Uncle Jimmy had caught me there,’ he says.

…’These people would pick people up from train stations, as in younger people,’ he explains. ‘We’d then go to their houses.

‘And then the ones higher up the chain would come to these houses to see who they’d picked up to take them elsewhere to do whatever they were going to do with them.’

Because his uncle was Jimmy Savile, Guy thinks word quickly spread that this was one child not to be touched.

Marsden claims that he didn’t understand what was going on at the time, although surely he would have twigged at some point and the new article makes it clear he was told explicitly by a friend that he had suffered abuse.

But what is even odder is that Marsden had only praise for his uncle following his death in 2011. The Daily Mirror ran a piece on how Savile’s money would be going to charity, which included the following:

Nephew Guy Marsden, 57, from Leeds, said: “We don’t think there will be anything in Uncle Jimmy’s will for us. It would be very nice if there was but our family rule was you get what you’ve worked for.

“When we were growing up it was made very clear you didn’t ask Uncle Jimmy for anything, especially not money.

“The main thing he gave us was his time. If anyone was poorly in hospital or in bother then Uncle Jimmy would be there for them.”

(d) Supposed association with the Paedophile Information Exchange

The Sunday People (which publishes online under the banner of the Mirror) has further reported that Heath

…was present at more than half a dozen Westminster meetings of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange.

…A dossier of files compiled by former Labour minister Baroness Castle showed Heath was present at Westminster meetings ­with paedophile rights campaigners from the PIE group.

Heath is said to have attended at least a quarter of the 30 or so monthly or bi-weekly meetings. 

His name is said to have appeared on minutes of the private gatherings, also apparently attended by other MPs, along with scoutmasters and headteachers.

But the Castle files have been ­missing since the mid 1980s.

That “Heath is said” qualification comes very late in an article that begins by trumpeting Heath’s involvement with PIE as being an established fact that the paper has “revealed”.

The co-author of the Sunday People article is Don Hale, a journalist who claims that Castle gave him the dossier in the 1980s but that it had been seized by police before he could make use of it. For some reason, Hale never referred to this incident until July 2014, when his supposed memory of it formed the basis for a Daily Mail article on “the paedophile lobby’s influence in Westminster” during the 1980s. Hale claimed that “16 MPs” appeared in Castle’s dossier, and that “Tory minister Sir Rhodes Boyson, a well-known enthusiast for corporal punishment, and Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph” were mentioned “multiple times”.

A few days after Leon Brittan’s death in January 2015, Hale further alleged that Brittan had been a significant figure in the dossier. This was “revealed” in an article written by Hale for the Mirror, which also included new direct quotes attributed to Castle (who died in 2002) about how Brittan was “a powerful man with many secrets”. The article failed to make clear that the whole thing was based on Hale’s unsubstantiated memories (discussed by me further here).

Why didn’t Hale mention Ted Heath in July 2014? As a former prime minister, Heath’s name would have been a bigger scoop than Boyson or Joseph or Brittan. Yet Hale only remembered Heath in August 2015, around the same time as other stories about Heath were appearing in the media. How can anyone have confidence in such a manner of disclosure?

The Sunday Times reported in March that there is no copy of any such dossier within Barbara Castle’s archive. Hale also claimed that Castle had told him that she had discussed the matter with Jack Straw, who was her former special adviser. Straw told the paper that he has no records to indicate such a thing, and provided a quote:

I have absolutely no recollection . . . of Barbara Castle ever writing to me about an alleged paedophile ring at Westminster (or anywhere else), or ever talking to me about such allegations. Nor was I ever aware that she may have raised such concerns with someone else.

Discussion

It seems quite firmly established that some individuals in the past got away with child abuse due to their status; and recent convictions for historical offences seem to me to be sound (although I regard as repellent Mark Williams-Thomas’ demagogic posture that to raise reasonable doubts is to be a “child abuse supporter”). However, many historical allegations against VIPs and celebrities will forever be impossible to prove or disprove: there are few references to specific dates for which a suspect may have an alibi, and extensive media coverage now makes it very difficult to confirm that allegations from multiple sources are not cross-contaminated. Further, with so many accusers unnamed, it is impossible to make any assessment as to their character.

As such, conspiracy theories flourish – including, of course, the unfalsifiable suggestion that the conspiracy is so vast that any evidence that exonerates a suspect must have been concocted. Rumours about Heath and others have been promoted by conspiracy theorists for years, and the new stories are a boon to David Icke – a man who claims that Heath was actually a giant reptile. Also being cited with enthusiasm on Twitter is the disgraced Michael Shrimpton, who I previously discussed here.

In June, a rally of abuse “victims and survivors” was held opposite Downing Street. It was organised by “campaigners Chris Wittwear and Chris Tuck”, the latter of whom has met Theresa May and is a member of the Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. She appears to be a hard-working campaigner for those whose lives have been blighted by abuse; yet she gave a platform to a conspiracy theorist named Bill Maloney.

A video of the event shows Maloney claiming that recent work to remove asbestos from Parliament is cover for scrubbing DNA evidence of abuse, and he suggested that the invasion of Iraq was to do with Saddam Hussain’s knowledge of UK VIP child abuse. He also accused several public figures (which is why I’m not linking to the video), and he claimed that Jimmy Savile was a Satanist. Tuck described this alarming rant as “brilliant” – perhaps she was just being polite, but such an endorsement, it seems to me, is highly troubling given her position.

(Some details have been amended and expanded)

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While the many lies of Nadine Dorries have been travelling half-way around the world in recent months, the truth has been tripping over its shoelaces; from the Independent:

An attempt to unseat the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has been thrown out by the High Court after two judges ruled that legal documents informing her of the action were sent to the wrong address.

…Gavin Millar QC, acting for Ms Dorries, told the court that Mr Ireland’s solicitors had been labouring under the “misapprehension” that the election petition could be served on a place of work. “It seems to us that a straightforward error was made by the petitioner’s solicitor,” he said.

This error means that the court will not test the details of how Dorries conducted a thoroughly reprehensible smear campaign against my friend Tim Ireland, who stood against her as in Independent candidate in May’s election. Dorries made a series of reckless and false allegations that ran a gamut from religious persecution of Roman Catholics to financial impropriety and computer hacking, along with grotesque insinuations of a sexual nature, and, of course, the all-purpose “stalker” smear that she trots out against anyone who dares to draw attention to or challenge the appalling behaviour of this most sorry excuse for a public servant.

The ruling is also a gift to various individuals whose dishonest and/or unethical behaviours have been brought to light by Tim over the years. Several of these individuals worked with Dorries to formulate and promote her smears, and one of them (at his own initiative, it appears) posted a website (since deleted) threatening him with a harassment campaign unless he desisted from bringing the petition. This particular individual has in the past been spoken to by police over his actions towards Tim (this was in 2009, when he created a malicious document that included a description of Tim’s then-home address. It was created for the purpose of harassment, and police traced it back to him), and his sporadic abuse since has also included paedo-smears. It really is a scandalous association for a Member of Parliament.

Dorries’ junior counsel, Greg Callus, has written an account of the legal argument that led to the dismissal; it includes the detail that

Mr Ireland’s solicitors sent the petition by first-class post to the office of her constituency Conservative Association on 4 June 2015. However, because candidates for election are individuals (not acting ‘in a course of a business’) they must ordinarily be served either in-person, or at their usual or last-known residence, unless they nominate a place or person or electronic means by which they will accept service.

It was successfully argued that more effort should have been made to find Dorries’ home address, which is a nice irony given that there is strong reason to assume that Dorries would regard such an enquiry as evidence of stalking. It should be noted that although Dorries has a residence in mid-Bedfordshire, it is not self-evident that this is her main home: she told a reporter she had “fled” from this address soon after Tim moved into the constituency (although he had not moved “into her road”, which was one lie that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in September, or even into the same village; and his move was for perfectly valid personal reasons), and she has also been reported as living in Surrey with her partner. Dorries also gave her office as her official address on election materials; and in her role as a company director, she has specified that her service address is a virtual office in London rather than her home.

Dorries insists that the outcome does not mean that she won on a “technicality”, although she is less interested in drawing a pedantic distinction between “technicality” and “solicitor’s error” than in attempting to imply that the case was thrown out due to lack of merit. Thus, according to an obliging statement from her lawyers, Clifford Chance:

This petition was part of Mr Ireland’s continued campaign of harassment against our client. Our client believes that the petition was maliciously brought and had no merit. We are pleased that the right outcome, namely dismissal of the petition, was achieved. Our client was elected with a very clear majority and, with this petition now dismissed (and with the petitioner not having sought to appeal) she can continue with her job of representing the people of Mid-Bedfordshire?.

Some media reports have focused on this: thus one paper ran with the accurate but misleading headline “‘Smear’ claim thrown out” (a better alternative in another source was “Tory MP Nadine Dorries blocks blogger’s bid to take legal action”). Another distortion that has slipped into some reports concerns the fact that the solicitor attempted to rectify the error by giving notice of service a few days later; out of context this was reported by Andrew Sinclair, the Political Correspondent for BBC East, as “Judges threw out case as Ireland was late filing his papers”.

As expected, the deeply unpleasant Paul Staines ran a short post on the Guido Fawkes website, gloating that “Dorries Stalker Faces Ruin After High Court Flop”; Dorries has previously used the site to promote smear attacks against opponents, and Staines hates Tim for his own reasons. Staines likes to appear to have inside information, and so he concocted the completely fictitious detail that “Tim Ireland burst into tears after the ruling”.

UPDATE (later same day): Predictably, the author of the threatening website aimed at Tim had a new outburst shortly after the above was posted, with a stream of abusive Tweets aimed at me. The author – a man with a long history of personal dishonesty and grandiosity, as well as abusive sockpuppeting – has been in private contact with Dorries for some time. It is difficult to believe that she is unaware of his behaviour (she follows his account, and sometimes RTs his Tweets), or that she does know that he is using her false allegations as a basis for harassment.

As part of his goading, he made reference to a police information notice (or PIN, popularly known as a “harassment warning”) that was sent my way following a vexatious complaint made last year by Dennis Rice, a journalist who used to write abusively and threateningly about me and others (most notably, the author Peter Jukes) under the sockpuppet name “Tabloid Troll”. The circumstances of this incident are explained here. Rice is another figure who in is in private communication with Dorries, and in 2013 she heartily endorsed his abusive and thuggish trolling. Again, it is an association that brings discredit to her position as a Member of Parliament.

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From the Albuquerque Journal, at the end of May:

Rep. Steve Pearce… flew alone to Belarus on a mission trip paid for by Capitol Ministries, a Washington-based evangelical group whose website says it “provides Bible studies, evangelism and discipleship to political leaders.”

…Capitol Ministries was founded in 1996 and has started ministries in over 37 state capitals, including Santa Fe. Pearce now holds the distinction of being the first member of the U.S. Congress to address the Belarusian Parliament.

In a telephone interview, Pearce said Belarus is eager to improve relations with the U.S. and had extended an invitation to Capitol Ministries for a member of Congress to address the country’s leadership. Pearce, whom Capitol Ministries describes “as a leading congressional sponsor,” got the nod.

“Generations have grown up with no belief in God,” he said. “They wanted to explore that a bit and they want to become closer to the U.S. They were amazed about the part in my speech about the Founding Fathers and the role freedom of religion played and that it basically drove people to this country and to set up the government.

“They were interested in the whole concept,” he added. “I talked to them about truth and trust and those basically come from the Ten Commandments.”

Capitol Ministries was profiled by Right Wing Watch in 2011; the organization is headed by Ralph Drollinger and his wife Danielle, and its sponsors include “Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Sue Myrick, Mike Pence, Tom Price, Lamar Smith, Joe Wilson and various others”. The Drollingers are also long-time associates of James Dobson, and RWW notes Ralph’s enthusiasm for Tea Party politics.

Pearce’s visit – which the Congressman has since described as a “missions trip” – was also covered by state media in Belarus; Minsk Capital Television writes:

Belarus is interested in maintaining a full partnership with the United States. This was said on May 28 at a meeting of the Council of the Republic Chairman Mikhail Myasnikovich with a US delegation.

It included representatives of the US Congress, the fund “Spiritual Diplomacy” and ex-players of the National Basketball Association.

Michael Morgulis, fund manager of Spiritual Diplomacy, Appointed Honorary Consul of the Republic of Belarus in the State of Florida

A new relationship between the United States and Belarus have begun. We have been working on this for many years and, as we say, step by step, have got many political leaders to reconsider their position. Now they consider Belarus as a perfect and loyal friend, as I wrote in one of my articles.

I previously wrote about Morgulis in 2008, and I noted his enthusiasm for President Lukashenko,* as expressed on the Spiritual Diplomacy website:

I also met with President Lukashenko several times and discussed spiritual subjects with him. He is nothing like the media wants us to believe. He has a capacity for making deep judgments.

Pearce himself is of the view that the notoriously authoritarian country is improving; as he told the Journal:

“I didn’t find the State Department’s perceptions to be accurate,” he said. “They had told me there is no freedom of religion yet the pastors I met with over there said it is a little tedious to get registered but once you’re registered they let you do what you want and don’t break you up or anything like that.”

“I understand they are doing things that are atrocious – and they would admit it,” Pearce said. “But they say they can’t change overnight and I was pretty sympathetic to that…”

Pearce and Drollinger have also now spoken about the visit in an interview with CBN:

In Washington, Pearce attends weekly Bible studies hosted by Ralph and Danielle Drollinger, the founders of Capitol Ministries.

…The Drollingers are Californians who nearly 20 years ago determined that the best way to change policy is to win the hearts of lawmakers for Christ. Since then, they’ve started Christian ministries in 40 state capitals and Washington.

…The Drollingers pushed to get Pearce into Parliament to spark a flame they pray turns into a regular Bible study… They’re also pushing the Belorussian education minister to adopt a curriculum that teaches the Bible as literature to high school students.

…One day after their presentation, the Drollingers received a letter saying the Lukashenko administration is very interested.

“They want to see if we’re trying to lead them down the evangelical road or a certain religion and it’s really not. It’s really written from the perspective of literature,” Danielle Drollinger explained.

The curriculum has been developed by the Museum of the Bible, which is a project under the chairmanship of Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby. Green is well-known as a patron of religious right causes, as noted by Salon last year.

This is a somewhat unexpected turn of events: although Belarus–Russia relations are at times rocky, Lukashenko has close links with the Patriarch of Moscow, and he has expressed his support for Orthodoxy in terms of a contrast with “alien” influences. The situation is very different from Ukraine, where David Barton has recently been making evangelical inroads.

Ukraine has also come under the attention of “the Fellowship” (also known as “the Family”), a discreet American religious group that also operates internationally through bi-partisan political networks. However, Drollinger has expressed a scathing opinion of the Fellowship, published in the form of an Amazon review of Jeff Sharlet’s magisterial investigation The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Drollinger writes:

The Fellowship, if Sharlet’s internal descriptions are correct (and I believe they are from my more than 30 years of interactions with the group), is anything but a Protestant fundamentalist group. Even if his labeling is off, however, his book serves a tremendous purpose in outing a potentially heretical organization that appears to pimp Jesus to politicians throughout the world. In this sense, Sharlet may be right on target.

UPDATE: Pearce’s visit was condemned by Andrei Sannikov, who is Belarus’ “most high-profile opposition figure” and a former prisoner of conscience under the Lukashenko regime:

Con man #Margulis brings #Republican @RepStevePearce to #Belarus to meet with unlawful “MPs”. Stupidity, corruption?

— Andrei Sannikov (@A_Sannikov) May 28, 2015

*Footnote

A US Embassy cable from 2006 describes a press conference with Lukashenko:

His curt answers to Western journalists and scolding of Belarusian correspondents only helped to show the world his bizarre behavior, yet he still received healthy applause from his well-chosen audience and foreign lackeys Q including American citizen Michael Margulis, whom Lukashenko repeatedly mentioned during his remarks as representing the real American people.

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Fake ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem (background here) is still doing the rounds – from the Hill Country Community Journal (Texas):

At the June 25 event at Southern Oaks Baptist Church [in Kerrville], Saleem said… many kinds of jihad are practiced in the U.S. White House.

…Saleem said there is a film on YouTube showing Obama using a Muslim gesture, right hand at his waist over his left forearm, when saluting the American flag. And he said Obama wears a ring that is inscribed “There is no God but Allah.”

…The Muslim Brotherhood sent Saleem to America, partly financed by Saudi Arabia. “My job was to create a clash between blacks and whites, especially recruiting blacks to Islam.”

….Saleem said in Muslim theology there are seven spheres of influence in their work in the United States: family, education, government, medicine, economics, art and entertainment, and media. And the Muslim Brotherhood organization has lobbied in every sphere.

Saleem said, for example, ObamaCare exempted Muslims.

…He listed the three altars of the Muslims: Islam (Baal), homosexuality (Sodom and Gomorrah), and abortion (Malek); and said all three are burning now.

….Saleem said by the end of Obama’s presidency, probably 100 million Muslims will live in America; and Obama made it possible for them to enter through Cuba and have instant amnesty.

Most of this is the same old stuff, although his projection of a garbled version of dominionist “Seven Mountains” theology onto Islam is perhaps new. Further, his claim that his job as a secret Muslim operative in the USA before was was “to create a clash between blacks and whites” seems to be a new adaptation to current affairs, providing a congenial explanation for recent black discontent at oppressive and sometimes lethal “policing” in certain areas. A couple of Saleem’s specific claims have long been debunked: the story of Obama’s Muslim ring was based on a blurred image, while the ObamaCare exemption actually refers to the Amish.

Saleem’s presentation was facilitated by Pastor Greg Young, who recently had a prominent position at an event where the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a law designed to ensure that pastors will not be obliged to perform same-sex marriage services. Abbott also recently appeared on Young’s radio programme, Chosen Generation.

Also speaking at the same event was Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for Liberty Institute; Dys previously featured on this blog here.

Footnote

Today’s date, of course, is the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks in London, in which 52 people were murdered by home-grown Islamic terrorists; the massacres took place on travel routes that a number of my friends were at that time using on a regular basis. The ruthless ideology and the callous mind-set that inspired the killers remains a blight, spreading misery and horror wherever it is found, and countering its baneful influence is today a more urgent task than ever.

However, that does not mean we should be too busy to ignore the various frauds and fantasists for whom an “anti-jihad” pose is an opportunity to spread hate and paranoia, to promote themselves, and/or to make money. This blog has drawn attention to a few examples over the years; my efforts have been modest, although a certain impact can perhaps be measured in abusive counter-attacks and other underhand behaviour I have experienced. Media and police have been hoodwinked; members of the public, including church groups, have had their fears played on or their good intentions manipulated. Clowns like Saleem should be given no indulgence or quarter.

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David Aaronovitch has written an exhaustive response to criticisms of his recent BBC Radio 4 documentaries on Satanic Ritual Abuse conspiracy theories, responding in particular to three complainants:

The two complaints from interviewees were both hosted by the Needleblog, a private blog devoted to the issue of child sexual abuse. The first was made by Tim Tate, author – among many other works – of Children for the Devil: Ritual Abuse and Satanic Crime, published in 1991 (but subsequently withdrawn after legal action). Tate was also co-producer of a 1989 edition of ITV’s prime-time programme The Cook Report entitled The Devil’s Work.

The second complaint came from Dr Sarah Nelson, a sociologist at Edinburgh University and former journalist. Dr Nelson describes herself as a specialist writer and researcher on child sexual abuse.

The third complaint came in two articles by the journalist and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, hosted by the Open Democracy website, the first being entitled “Analysing Aaronovitch: has the scourge of ‘conspiracists’ become one himself?” And the second “Analysing Aaronovitch: a skeptical narrative.”

Tate’s and Nelson’s objections also made it into the Independent newspaper, which reported their view that Aaronovitch’s scepticism is itself a conspiracy theory.

Aaronovitch’s reply includes a discussion of Tate’s book, as well as of a work by Campbell and her partner Judith Dawson (then Jones) from 1998, entitled Stolen Voices: An Exposure of the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony. Both books are very difficult to get hold of – the former was withdrawn following a successful libel action, while the publishers of the latter (the Women’s Press) decided the text was too risky. The two works show that their authors endorsed very specific claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse that do not hold up to scrutiny, while Campbell and Jones had promoted a explanatory framework – derived from evangelical campaigners – that they had subsequently dropped without apparent explanation or even acknowledgement. This was the claim that Satanists are motivated by a wish to “invert” Christianity, which Campbell and Jones later abandoned in preference for the view that Satanic paraphernalia is simply used by paedophiles to scare children.

Aaronovitch also notes Campbell and Dawson’s reliance on tenuous associations as a way to smear critics, in particular the academic Jean La Fontaine (author of Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England). Campbell noted that LaFontaine had recommended factual writings by Benjamin Rossen, a Dutch academic who had been involved with debunking claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the town of Oude Pekala. However, Campbell and Dawson noted that Rossen was also on the board of a  paedophile-supporting magazine. Aaronovitch quotes Campbell:

“Professor La Fontaine’s orthodoxy on this issue echoes the views of well-known promoters of paedophilia. [Aaronovitch’s italics] Although not relying on his work in her recent findings, she recommended writing by Benjamin Rossen, among others, in a letter to the leading professional journal, Child Abuse Review, this year.”

And then Dawson:

…”‘I don’t want to make a fool of the woman,’ says Judith Dawson, ‘but everybody working for child protection knows about Rossen’s advocacy of paedophilia. That calls into question La Fontaine’s whole attitude to adults’ sexual interest in children. [Aaronovitch’s italics] Anyone who regards Rossen as helpful on these issues cannot have any credibility in this debate.'”

Aaronovitch’s commentary on this:

“That calls into question La Fontaine’s whole attitude to adults’ sexual interest in children.” Says Judith Dawson, the constant companion to almost any article on the subject by Beatrix Campbell. Does it really? And what does Dawson (and, by extension, Campbell) imagine that attitude to be? We get it, though, don’t we? What is being implied is that LaFontaine is somehow “soft” on paedophilia. Perhaps, even, mildly tolerant of it. It is a technique repeated over and over again by Campbell.

Another theme in Campbell’s articles about Aaronovitch – to which he does not refer explicitly – is that scepticism is a form of anti-feminism. Thus Campbell’s attacks include the rather weird sneer that “Aaronovitch is a herald of reason as masculine intuition”, while research into false memories is “anti-feminist resistance”. The bad faith is obvious, and while it deserves noting it requires little comment.

Campbell also criticises Aaronovitch for referring to the recent SRA panic in Hamptstead:

Aaronovitch imputes something eerie about Hampstead, “No one in the mainstream media was biting.” said Aaaronovitch. But a forensic blogger reports, “none but those involved in the hoax was biting, not the police, not social workers…’ and insofar as anyone in the alternative media took it up it was mostly to ‘expose it for what it was…” That’s because they reckoned someone would use it just the way Aaronovitch did.

The Hampstead allegations were particularly bizarre and wide-ranging, and as such they have remained for the most part within the milieu of 9/11 Truthers and what we might call “the David Icke crowd”. However, Campbell happily endorsed a complaint to the BBC about Aaronovitch’s documentaries by a campaigning group called Everyday Victim Blaming, which included the following (emphasis added):

Aaronovitch’s programme on ritual abuse was misleading and inaccurate. It failed to include details of successful prosecutions within the UK where ritual abuse, including satanic ritual abuse, were found to have occurred. Whilst it is true that there is no evidence on satanic ritual abuse as a global conspiracy, there have been 4 separate cases within the UK where satanic rituals were a feature of multi-perpetrator (and multi-generational) abuse: Rotherham, Orkney, Nottingham and Hampstead.

At some point, this was amended:

Aaronovitch’s programme on ritual abuse was misleading and inaccurate. It failed to include details of successful prosecutions within the UK where ritual abuse, including satanic ritual abuse, were found to have occurred. Whilst it is true that there is no evidence on satanic ritual abuse as a global conspiracy, there have been a number of separate cases within the UK where satanic rituals were a feature of multi-perpetrator (and multi-generational) abuse: Rotherham, Orkney, Nottingham. 

Was Hampstead dropped because the claims were simply too fantastical (babies cooked at the local McDonald’s, for instance), or because it’s safer to recycle over old accusations from decades ago?

Aaronovitch’s lengthy essay – of which I have offered just a taster – also includes comment on the current “Westminster paedophile ring” allegations:

I return to what got me into all this – the belief that that the most lurid of the current Westminster/VIP paedophile ring accusations, including child murders in front of of witnesses, seem to me to be replicating the earlier Satanic panic. I have watched as tabloid newspapers have printed uncorroborated nonsense from known fantasists as fact, as single accusers with uncorroborated stories of killings have been given credence by BBC reporters on the basis of “believing the survivors” for all the world, as though Lord Clyde had never reported and Orkney and Rochdale had never happened. As journalistic agencies have turned a buck by ramping up and selling stories that I confidently predict will fail to stand up.

I’ve raised concerns about some of these stories myself, in particular here and here. Campbell apparently believes that taking a critical interest in this way is evidence that one does not care about the reality of child abuse.

Aaronovitch’s essay was published on Barristerblog, a website run by Matthew Scott. Scott has himself faced unpleasant accusations and insinuations from people who ought to know better, as I highlighted just yesterday.

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From Mark Williams-Thomas, on Twitter (30 June):

Barrister Matthew Scott from Pump Court  says Lord Janner is a helpless, senile man who should not be prosecuted… (Here)

The Tweet includes a link to an op-ed by Scott in the Daily Telegraph. Shortly thereafter, Williams-Thomas published a follow-up message:

Just realised who Matthew Scott is -been blocked for ages given his views about child abusers & his small group of pro paedophile  followers (Here)

Williams-Thomas is an investigative journalist; he was responsible for the 2012 Exposure documentary about Jimmy Savile, and he is now a frequent presence in the media as a commentator on the subject of historic sexual abuse. As such, it is alarming to see the casual way that he implies – without a shred of evidence – that Scott’s article was written in bad faith by a man with reprehensible views about sex offences against children.

In response, Scott asked Williams-Thomas to explain “What are my ‘views about child abusers’ that led you to block me Mark?”; Williams-Thomas did not deign to reply, although he did later confirm that he was not suggesting that anyone who follows Scott on Twitter must be “pro paedophile”. Presumably, though, we should be warned that anyone who expresses agreement with Scott’s views is at risk of being so accused. Inevitably, Williams-Thomas’s Tweets inspired enthusiasts to post abusive and defamatory comments about Scott, and Williams-Thomas hasn’t felt the need to discourage such behaviour.

Scott’s op-ed decried the recent decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to subject Janner to a “trial of the facts”. As he explains:

The procedure was introduced in a 1991 Private Members’ Bill by the Conservative MP John Greenway in order to protect those rendered unfit to plead through mental illness, who were forced to either plead guilty or be detained in a mental hospital.

So it is something of an irony that a procedure originally intended to protect the vulnerable should now be invoked to put a patently senile man before the courts.

…Lord Janner may well be a guilty man; it may well be that the CPS ought to have prosecuted him years ago. But he may also be innocent; indeed, the law presumes him innocent. The injustice that may have been committed by failing to prosecute him when a fair trial was still possible cannot be righted by committing another injustice now.

…Alison Saunders [the Director of Public Prosecutions] was right. Such a prosecution will serve no reasonable purpose. The trial now threatens to be a revolting spectacle in which a criminal court – egged on by sections of the press and MPs who should know better, compensation-seeking lawyers, and internet commenters, many of whom are motivated by undisguised anti-semitism – will be employed for no purpose other than further to traduce a man who can do nothing to defend himself.

I share these concerns, and it looks very likely that the CPS caved in to forces that it has a duty to resist: political and public pressure. Indeed, a leader attacking Saunders in the The Times blithely includes the observation that “Mrs Saunders underestimated the desire not only of the alleged victims but also of the wider public to hear the allegations aired in a court of law.” But I don’t see how it is Saunders’ job to “estimate” what “the wider public” think about things; indeed, taking such a factor into account would probably hinder objective decision-making. I’m sure that it would be easy to whip up popular support for a posthumous trial of Jimmy Savile, but that wouldn’t make such a thing sensible – and putting on trial a man whose mind has been destroyed by Alzheimer’s amounts to much the same thing.

Scott has also come under criticism for raising the spectre of anti-semitism. This can be over-stated: it is perfectly reasonable to believe that Janner has a case to answer, and that past opportunities were missed due his status, without indulging in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. However, internet searches for “Janner” + “Jew” yield results that are unedifying, including fringe conspiracy sites that are widely cited on Twitter by those who claim to be drawing attention to “establishment coverups” and the like.

There are also concerns about Exaro News. Anti-Jewish comments have been posted by readers as comments on the site, and on at least one occasion an anti-Jewish statement has been silently edited by the site owners. This was spotted by Scott in April; a reader who described Janner as “another rich Jew” had his comment amended to “another one”. This helps to obscure the reader’s anti-semitism, but it is a less than satisfactory way of dealing with the problem.

Exaro also recently published a bizarrely pointless article headlined “Revealed: How Lord Janner Lobbied for Israel as Backbench MP“. Janner had a long-standing association with the Zionist Federation, and served as the body’s president for a time; of course he “lobbied for Israel” at every opportunity, and the word “Revealed” in the headline is gratuitous and absurd. Given that the head of Exaro News, Mark Watts, used to work for Iran’s Press TV, one is left with an troubling impression.

The claims against Janner that will be heard before the court concern allegations relating to Leicestershire; the “trial of the facts” will not include further allegations made by Exaro‘s star witness “Nick”, which relate to claims of VIP conspiracies in London. Scott has also been critical of Exaro‘s general approach to publishing details of “Nick’s” various allegations [UPDATE 2019: Nick can now be named as Carl Beech, and his claims have been found to have been fraudulent. More details here].

Scott has also recently attracted crank criticism on Twitter due to comments he made in a radio documentary about the recent “Satanic Ritual Abuse” scare in Hampstead. The Hampstead allegations were so extraordinary and excessive that they were shunned by most commentators on organised sexual abuse, although their primary promoter, a woman named Sabine McNeill, had formerly worked with John Hemming MP.*

Footnote

*The Hampstead accusations also recently featured in a two-part radio documentary about Satanic Ritual Abuse scares by David Aaronovitch. A campaign group called “Everyday Victim Blaming” made an official complaint to the BBC about the programme, on the grounds that SRA is true. Details of the complaint were posted to the EVB website, and included an endorsement of the Hampstead claims. However, this element was recently silently edited out from its website.

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Fake memoir Satan’s Underground still being sold by publisher

At the Daily Beast, Pat Blanchfield compares the ethnic fraud of Rachel Dolezal to Bruno Dössekker, a Swiss man who posed as “Binjamin Wilkomirski”, a Holocaust survivor:

Reading between the lines of Bruno Dössekker’s actual biography, you can’t also help but notice several early traumas, from his abandonment by his mother to numerous, extremely plausible suggestions of abuse while in that orphanage. It’s here that Wilkomirski/aka Grosjean/aka Dössekker’s story and that of Dolezal converge—and where we can get a hint of what might have motivated both of them, if only in part.

Both figures present themselves as persecuted individuals, horribly victimized—and they co-opt the experiences of the victims of actual historical traumas to that end. Why? Because our compassionate and proper first impulse should be to believe them first and vet them later—as our own country’s history of moral panics over Satanic Ritual Abuse underscores, for better or for worse.

In fact, one of Wilkomirski’s biggest defenders, a woman who claimed to have met him in the camps, actually turned out to be a fake survivor of both the Holocaust and Satanic Ritual Abuse…

The link takes us to the Wikipedia entry for Laurel Rose Willson, who posed firstly as Lauren Stratford, and then as Laura Grabowski. The material in the entry is derived from investigative articles (here and here) by Bob & Gretchen Passantino and Jon Trott, published by the evangelical Cornerstone magazine in the 1990s. Trott was also the co-author (with Mike Hertenstein) of Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal, which exposed how Warnke had lied about his past in a best-selling Christian paperback in which he had claimed to be a former high-level Satanist. Selling Satan also contains an account of Willson’s Satanic Ritual Abuse claims (on pages 271-279).

Dössekker’s bogus memoir and its subsequent debunking received considerable journalistic and literary interest at the time; however, his association with Willson for the most part gained only passing attention. The two corresponded, and it would be fascinating to know the dynamic: clearly, Willson recognised Dössekker as a fellow-fraud, and by allying with him she was also helping herself – but was this ever explicitly acknowledged between them?

Willson’s first book as Lauren Stratford was entitled Satan’s Underground, and it was published in 1988 by Harvest House, a well-known US evangelical publisher. She was championed by Johanna Michaelsen, who claims to be an ex-occultist and who is related by marriage to Hal Lindsey. Lindsey himself had achieved fame as the best-selling author of The Late Great Planet Earth, which linked current affairs and the Cold War to Biblical prophecies, and he had followed up with Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, on the evils of occultism. Evidence that Stratford’s book was a hoax provoked bitter criticism from Michaelsen and Lindsey, who asked why evangelical journalists would want to debunk an evangelical book that had led people to Jesus.

However, as Trott and Hertenstein relate (page 278):

…as public pressure mounted, the publisher backed down and – after printing 133,409 copies of Satan’s Underground – withdrew the book and its sequel, I Know You’re Hurting. A statement released on January 26, 1990, failed to mention any reason for removing the books from circulation other than they were controversial… Some time later, Harvest House quietly released the rights to Satan’s Underground to Pelican Books, a Louisiana publisher.

And a look at the website of the Pelican Publishing Company shows that Stratford’s books are still available, along with a rather partial bio-blurb that hasn’t been updated since her death several years ago:

Agencies such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Cult Crime Impact Network, and the National Coalition Against Pornography have used Ms. Stratford’s expertise and experience in recognizing satanic ritualistic abuse. Ms. Stratford also provides valuable assistance in the counseling and treatment of survivors of satanic crimes and child abuse.

…Ms. Stratford, a member of the Los Angeles County Women’s Commission Task Force on Ritual Abuse, helped edit the country’s first government-sponsored information booklet on the topic. She is also a member of Make Today Count, an international support group for people with life-threatening illnesses, and has organized a support group called Victims Against Sexual Abuse…

I have a copy of the Pelican edition of the book, printed in 1993: it comes with a foreword by Michaelsen and an Aferword by three clinical psychologists: Lyn Laboriel, Catherine Gould, and Vicki Graham Costain. There are also a number of endorsements: from Kenneth Wooden, a reporter with ABC (“a work of national importance”); Hal Lindsey (“absolutely incredible and true”); Judith Reisman, the notorious anti-Kinsey obsessive* (“only too credible… it is even more crucial that we listen to her story”); Mike Warnke (a “story… that needs to be told); Larry Jones (“literally a godsend); and the psychologist Gould, who described her as “a survivor twice over. She has survived not only the horror of ritual abuse, but also a vicious backlash aimed at discrediting both her and her story”.

This was before Willson/Stratford reinvented herself as Laura Grabowski, which one would have thought would have been the last straw for even the most bone-headed enthusiasts. Yet so far as I can see there have been no mea culpas from those who promoted the original fraud and attacked the investigators, and the blurbs are still visible on a 2003 re-issue viewable on Amazon. Pelican also sells her follow-up book, which comes with a Foreword by Stormie Omartian, author of the best-selling Power of a Praying… series.

Footnote

*Reisman’s anti-Kinsey polemics have brought her into an association with the British journalist Tim Tate, and the two shared a platform in Croatia in 2013. Tate’s 1991 book Children for the Devil: Ritual Abuse and Satanic Crime recently came under renewed attention due to a passage featuring an interview with a vicar about allegations of ritual abuse against an unnamed MP.

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UPDATE (30 July): The election petition has been rejected by the court, on the grounds that notice was served to the wrong location. Notice was delivered to Dorries’ constituency office, which was the official address given on her election materials (aside from the one leaflet which, illegally, did not have any address).

The best account so far is an article by Chris Green in the Independent. It includes the detail that:

Gavin Millar QC, acting for Ms Dorries, told the court that Mr Ireland’s solicitors had been labouring under the “misapprehension” that the election petition could be served on a place of work. “It seems to us that a straightforward error was made by the petitioner’s solicitor,” he said.

Dorries’ lawyers also argued that this address is usually unmanned.

It should be noted that (a) her “address for service” in relation to her company, Averbrook, is a virtual office in London, indicating that she does not want to be served at home; and (b) that although she maintains a residence in her constituency, she has also been reported as living with her partner in Surrey. It seems that the two judges – Mr Justices Baker and Popplewell – were unswayed by these considerations, and others.

Of course, Dorries and her associates (including her lawyers, Clifford Chance) are misleadingly attempting to portray the outcome as evidence that Tim’s complaint had no merit, when in fact it was not tested by the court.

***

Barrister Greg Callus announces on Twitter:

Two parliamentary election petitions have been issued in England & Wales, challenging Tory victories in (1) Mid Bedfordshire; and (2) Woking / The respective MPs are Nadine Dorries and Jonathan Lord. The petitioners (both candidates) are Tim Ireland and Ruth Temple respectively.  [1, 2]

The petition relating to Dorries is a subject of some interest to me, for reasons that I previously explained here.

In response to the news, Dorries has pointed to the fact that she won the election with a majority of 23,000, whereas Tim received just “a few hundred votes”. In the same Tweet, she has mocked “bitter losers”. Meanwhile, Tim has drawn attention to Section 159 of the Representations of the People’s Act, which is concerned with “any corrupt or illegal practice in reference to the election”.

Candidates who stand for election are required to follow certain rules designed to protect the integrity of the electoral process. Voters should not be misled by disinformation about candidates; and those who wish to stand for election ought to be able to do so without being intimidated by the threat of vilification based on lies. There is no exemption from these rules for candidates whose success is virtually guaranteed because they are running for a particular party in a safe seat; nor is “open season” allowed on independent candidates who are unlikely to win or affect the final outcome.

Dorries’  behaviour during the election

As I have written previously, Dorries did not respond well when Tim announced his decision to stand for election earlier this year. It should be noted that this wasn’t a campaign fixated on Dorries – his theme was against corruption in politics, as manifested, for example, by the failure of the Conservative Party to remove activists who had smeared a Liberal Democrat as a paedophile in earlier election, and by the dishonesty of the Conservative Party chair, Grant Shapps.

However, Dorries claimed that Tim was standing in order to stalk her: she laid out a series of allegations on her blog, in which she named me as Tim’s “accomplice”. Much of her post consisted of claims made by other individuals, although nothing was documented properly and these other accusers remain anonymous (those of us in the know, though, are aware that the accusations are without substance).

She also lobbied for him to be excluded from hustings events, and when she was rebuffed by Churches Together in Shefford she declined to take part in one event. She did, though, send supporters (including two of her adult daughters), who made a scene and attempted to distribute a scurrilous leaflet lacking contact details (a breach of electoral law) – this extraordinary disruption has been described by Tim’s partner Sue, who blogs and Tweets as Humphrey Cushion, here. One of those involved in the stunt (a former intern who had worked for Dorries in Parliament) published a justification on Twitter, although he later deleted his Tweet, during a police investigation into the matter.

The police investigation (updated)

News of the on-going investigation was reported a few days ahead of the election by the Sunday Mirror, although the article was quickly deleted; Dorries said that it had been taken down because it contained “mis information” (sic), although she didn’t make clear what was meant by that exactly. It turned out that she had lodged a complaint with IPSO, the press regulator, which was in due course thrown out – full details here.

The Sunday Mirror later reported the outcome:

Tory MP Nadine Dorries has settled a row over her election campaign after a complaint against her was rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The complaint was referred to the CPS, who this week decided there was not sufficient evidence to proceed.

Dorries has referred to this outcome as evidence that the petition does not have merit, despite previously having lamented the CPS’s failure to bring prosecutions. She has also stated, in reference to the second Sunday Mirror article, that she “didn’t even know until SM told me”, which again is a rather ambiguous comment.

Tim has lodged the petition despite having a received an anonymous threatening message warning him not to so, as he explains here.

Excursus

I know nothing of Ruth Temple or why she has filed complaint against Jonathan Lord; however, Lord has featured on this blog previously, in relation to his failure in 2006 to deal with two activists who he knew had smeared a Liberal Democrat election candidate as a paedophile. Coincidentally, that was also a matter that Tim first brought to light.

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From Charisma:

[Robby] Dawkins, author of Do What Jesus Did: A Real-Life Field Guide to Healing the Sick, Routing Demons and Changing Lives Forever, saw a resurrection from the dead at his April meeting in Northern England. In fact, he was leading the prayer.

The drama started just as he announced the title of his message. That’s when congregant Matt Catlow’s face contorted. His hands withered up and he starting twitching. Sitting next to him, Catlow’s mother started screaming for an ambulance.

…It looked hopeless as Catlow’s pupils become fixed and dilated. According to Dawkins, he heard the death rattle—the sound a dying person makes when fluids accumulate in the throat and upper chest—and then it stopped. Dawkins says the doctor was checking his pulse while he had his hand on the man’s heart. The mother screamed out: “He’s dead. He’s dead.” The doctor confirmed no pulse.

“As I continued to pray I began to bind the spirit of death and say, ‘You can’t have him!’ I began to declare the resurrection life of Jesus Christ over him. People were beginning to get a bit restless but then I could hear his breathing start to recover and his color started to return,” Dawkins says. “His lips that were purplish black started to get less dark. His eyes stopped being fixed and dilated and started to move. We rolled him onto his side at that point to allow his tongue to fall forward, but he was starting to come round.”

Dawkins is from Aurora in Illinois, and he is a pastor with the Vineyard network of “Third Wave” neo-Pentecostal churches. His ministry is endorsed by Bill Johnson, a leading figure in neo-Pentecostalism, and his book is published by Chosen Books, an imprint of Baker Publishing.

The story of Catlow’s “resurrection” has been doing the rounds for a few weeks, but a the puff-piece from Charisma has brought to wider attention. On Facebook, Dawkins boasts (and that’s not too strong a word):

So the Charisma article on the resurrection in England has official gone viral on Social media. 43,000 shares (FB alone has 24,000 likes) since it came out 24 hrs ago. My book Do What Jesus Did shot to number one in 3 best sellers categories. It’s at Number on in Evangelism.

I’ve had cessationist and atheists send messages of unbelief and hate. So everyone knows I have a full Dr.’s Report of that night in my possession (but because of threats the Dr. Received, I took it down from social media). But far out weighing that are people feeling empowered to raise the dead. Thank you Jesus!

On Twitter, Dawkins has also thanked a publicist at Chosen Books for bringing the story to Charisma.

It’s unclear what the doctor’s role could have been; clearly, he would been able to provide only a very informal assessment at the time, so one wonders about the nature of the “full Dr.’s Report”. But by invoking “cessationist[s] and atheists”, it seems that Dawkins wants to focus on the philosophical argument over whether such a story might be true, rather than the actual evidence of what occurred at the church on the night in question.

An alternative account, also on Facebook, has been posted by someone who says that she is Catlow’s sister; although her name is not given, the page includes a photo of Catlow with what appear to be family members:

…Although i wasn’t there at the meeting, my mother and many extended family and friends were. We come from a Christian background, my father is married to a pastor and the family attends church regularly….

Matthew had a stroke about a year ago….

Regarding the ‘death’… what Robby is telling everyone is not true. It has since been MEDICALLY proven that Matthew had suffered an epileptic seizure which often can display similar signs of someone dying. TWO nurse family friends of ours both had their hands on Matthew throughout and not once lost his pulse. So no, Matthew did not die…

The author also says that the pastor of the church (Inglewhite Congregational Church) has since “apologized to his congregation for allowing Robby into their church”, and so has the doctor for his part. For some reason, the Charisma report declines to mention the name of the church.

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Over at Zelo Street, Tim Fenton (recently profiled by the Guardian) reveals details of a nastygram from Griffin Law, sent on behalf of free-speech “libertarian” and commentator Harry Cole:

We are instructed by Harry Cole… We refer to various untrue, defamatory and malicious statements made by you about our client online that have caused and continue to cause our client to suffer damage to his reputation such that those statements amount to actionable libels and malicious falsehoods. As those statements include statements of fact as to criminal wrongdoing on the part of our client, those libels are actionable per se. This gives rise to a claim in damages and a right to interim injunctive relief against you.

Moreover, your course of conduct with regard to our client is manifestly contrary to the provisions contained in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. You have unreasonably and wantonly caused and continue to cause our client to suffer from considerable alarm and distress. This also gives rise to a claim in damages and a right to interim injunctive relief as against you.

The libel angle here is nothing new – Paul Staines and his associates have been using Griffin Law to send out such threats for years, while simultaneously striking a free speech pose and railing against the spectre press regulation. Staines, who is Cole’s boss, justifies the hypocrisy by explaining that his reputation is his property. However, the complaint of “harassment” appears to a new strategy.

First, as regards the alleged libel. Although the letter refers to “various untrue, defamatory and malicious statements”, the missive focuses on one particular item: that at the start of March Tim had posted a photograph that appeared to show that Cole had illegally killed a swan with a hunting rifle. It turned out that the photo had in fact been mocked up by a parody site, and so Tim withdrew the post and his commentary on the subject. As Tim now shows in his new post, Cole and Staines had themselves linked to and promoted the parody photo, and at the time seemed to think that it was all a bit of a laugh.

And second, as regards the supposed harassment: I do not for a moment believe that Cole has experienced “alarm and distress” by anything that Tim has written. Tim’s regular jibes and debunkings may have prompted annoyance, and perhaps even anger, but there is nothing on Zelo Street that comes close to the vicious smears and creepy intrusion that are the regular stock-in-trade of Staines’ operation.

However, vexatious complaints of harassment do have advantages over libel threats: bringing a libel action remains extremely expensive, and victory does not always mean vindication as regards public opinion; by contrast, filing a civil claim for harassment is much cheaper, and the accusation carries a stigma of unreasonable behaviour. Alternatively, one can make a complaint to police, which is free, and then cite the resulting police procedure as spurious evidence of criminality (examples of this practice here and here).

It seems to me that a reasonable person in command of the facts as they relate to a particular case will be able to make a sensible judgement about whether a particular behaviour crosses the line. One example of actual harassment might be, say, sending someone anonymous bullying letters as a way to inform them that you know where they live. Tim has received several of these, posted from EC1 in London and sent in the name of a mysterious “Blog Complaints Commission”. The letters refer to posts concerning Staines and his associates, and the name reflects a phrase that Staines used as far back as 2010.

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