Operation Midland

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012, police were facing mounting pressure to investigate any and all cases of child abuse, particularly of a historic nature, reported by victims either directly to officers, or through interviews with journalists. Growing national public outcry over the possibility of there being more VIP serial abusers concealing their actions, and political campaigns demanding greater action to investigate cases of historic abuse, greatly affected the need for police to step up their efforts. In 2014, journalist Mark Conrad came across an online blog containing allegations of a potential case of historic abuse, created by Carl Beech – a Wiltshire man born Carl Stephen Gass in 1968, who assumed the surname of his stepfather, a military officer, after his parents divorced and his mother remarried. Conrad made contact with Beech to discuss his blog and its contents, in which he was given detailed allegations by Beech about abuse he claimed he had suffered from a group of powerful men, including his stepfather, during his youth. During meetings with Beech, Conrad was taken to various locations and given accounts of what Beech had allegedly been made to endure between 1975 and 1984 at each site. Conrad made further confirmation about his abuser's identities, by showing un-marked photos to Beech for him to identify those he had named. Most concerning for detectives were Beech's claims that he, alongside a number of other child victims of the group, had been witness to three murders – Beech claimed that two children were killed for sexual pleasure, while a third was eliminated to intimidate the other abuse victims – in which he supplied the names of two individuals who he stated had been murdered by the group: Vishal Mehrotra, whose abduction and the subsequent murder in the early 1980s remained unsolved, and Martin Allen, whose disappearance was documented in the late 1970s. though what he told them turned out to be entirely false. In November 2014, the Metropolitan Police announced a large-scale investigation, codenamed Operation Midland, into Beech's claims. The Met recruited a taskforce of detectives and experienced officers, led by Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald, to handle the investigation, and modelled the operation after Operation Yewtree, a similar investigation conducted by police that had investigated several VIPs over child abuse allegations. ==Criminal investigation==

Announcement and political support Once Operation Midland was under way, the police began their focus on the men whom Beech had implicated as being members of a VIP child abuse ring. Those he had named included the former Members of Parliament Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner, the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, former Prime Minister Edward Heath, former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall, the former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service Maurice Oldfield, and former Director-General of MI5 Michael Hanley. While most had long been dead, those still alive were subsequently informed they were under investigation regarding the allegations against them; Proctor himself learnt from his solicitors that the allegation against him included claims that he had stabbed a 12-year-old boy before strangling him to death. By 2015, police were conducting extensive searches for documents and articles that could support the accusations against the accused – the homes of both Bramall in Yorkshire and Proctor on the estate of Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, were searched in March, while the home of Lord Brittan was raided six weeks after his death, with computers, hard drives and documents removed for examination. Suffolk Police's decision to drop the accusations of "Darren" led to detectives within Operation Midland to question the justification of launching the probe into the twelve men based only on the words of Beech's accusations. Their concerns were further increased after another accuser – hidden under anonymity with the name "David" – admitted to detectives that he had been falsely claiming that he had been abused by some of the men stated in Beech's accusation, including Lord Brittan. Journalists for the BBC investigation series Panorama, investigating the inquiry, interviewed "David" over his revelation to police, when it came to their attention. The accuser's actions to come clean to police were derived from personal guilt over his false claims – the accuser had never met the people he named; his accusations were made as merely a joke to begin with; and the claims had been supplied by "two well-known campaigners" he had met. Collapse of investigation Fourteen months after Operation Midland began, detectives concluded there was insufficient evidence and no credible witnesses to support the continuation of investigations against the accused. The statements of those interviewed by police who had worked with the accused provided no support for the accused having been abusers during the 1970s and 1980s, and subsequent interviews with the accused revealed total denial of the accusations made against them: Proctor denied being part of any "rent-boy ring" or attending sex parties with prominent figures, while Bramall denied having "a connection or anything to do with the matters being investigated. It is not in my character or my psyche." Public support for the investigation eventually began to wane after Proctor held a press conference to denounce the police's operation and the allegations against himself and the others, and further after the findings of both the Panorama investigation and those conducted by the Daily Mail. ==Police conduct inquiry==

With no sufficient evidence being uncovered or credible witnesses being located by detectives working within Operation Midland, and growing criticism that the investigation was becoming a baseless "witch-hunt", the then–Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, ordered in February 2016 for an immediate inquiry into the operation to be conducted, a month before its conclusion. Retired judge Sir Richard Henriques headed the inquiry by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to determine the overall conduct of officers and detectives during Operation Midland. An extensive check was made into several areas, including how thoroughly police had looked into the allegations they had received from Beech, the treatment detectives had given to those accused by him, and the manner in which evidence had been acquired. Henriques' findings, released in his report in November 2016, uncovered several errors that the Metropolitan Police had made in their investigations, amongst which were: • A failure to conduct a background check on Carl Beech – Metropolitan Police were unaware he had approached Wiltshire Police two years previously, over claims that he had been a victim of abuse from Jimmy Savile. The inquiry showed that such a check would have alerted detectives that his story to them in 2014 had inconsistencies and could therefore have been identified as being false. • Unfair treatment of the accused – a police policy designed to protect the identity of victims and not their abusers, was chiefly blamed for the group being harshly treated during the operation. The inquiry found that despite the lack of evidence to support Beech's allegations, the accused men were subjected to unwanted media attention after their identities were publicly disclosed, while detectives presumed them guilty without just cause. • A failure to prioritise the search for important witnesses – detectives failed to secure those connected to the accused in the initial weeks due to Beech claiming discomfort on his alleged abuse, while they wasted time seeking out others of significant relevance to the investigation. Those connected to Beech had not been contacted after considerable time, while the search to cross-out possible names connected to those Beech had identified in his accounts as being murdered wasted months of police time. • Search warrants were not legally valid – inaccurate and/or false information was supplied by detectives requesting these from magistrates. The inquiry found that these warrants were severely flawed, as detectives had failed to double-check the information supplied to them by Beech and vouched for him as a "credible" witness, thus invalidating the raids they committed against the homes of the accused. Analysis Henriques's report condemned the actions of the Metropolitan Police, and voiced support for, amongst other things, providing anonymity to suspected abusers until sufficient evidence had been found. In regards to those accused and investigated by the police, Henriques made it clear in his findings that the men had been "all victims of false allegations" with it firmly noted that the "presumption of innocence appears to have been set aside." The IOPC made clear that, from these mistakes uncovered, future public accountability and reassurances needed to be addressed by British police, with recommendations for possible audio recordings of court hearings for search warrants and renewed efforts to balance the acceptance of a victim's allegations with the objective need to investigate such claims. In response to the findings made in the report, Hogan-Howe admitted that, in his opinion, the mistakes and errors that occurred during Operation Midland stemmed from an over-reaction to "apparent mistakes back in 2012 relating to revelations of very serious and serial child abuse, a mixture of public outrage and propaganda" which "put immense pressure through the Home Secretary, on the police". However, the decision by the IOPC to excuse detectives, and thus not prosecute any officer for their mistakes in Operation Midland, were heavily criticised by Proctor and several politicians – they believed the IOPC had failed in not pursuing charges on possible misconduct in order to maintain that detectives acted in "good faith" with their investigations. Henriques himself noted that, despite his findings and general acceptance of the mistakes made, the inquiries made by the IOPC had been "flawed". ==Investigation impact==

Damage to victims The overall impact of Beech's allegations created considerable damage towards the lives of the men investigated by police. For some, the damage ruined their reputations and their trust with the police; Proctor called on Hogan-Howe to resign in the midst of the calamitous police operation, stating that Operation Midland "has had a disastrous effect on genuine complaints of child sexual abuse, both present and historical. I think it has been incredibly counterproductive ... And when they established the truth – some time ago I think – they were too afraid of each other and the media to pull the plug." Financial costs For the Metropolitan Police, the cost of belatedly investigating Beech's allegations was severe. Over the eighteen months that Operation Midland was in effect, detectives spent over £2 million; The case was settled in 2019, the defendants paying him £900,000 in compensation and legal costs. ==Police action==

Assessment of Beech allegations One of the significant errors detectives made in Operation Midland was to fully accept the allegations made by Carl Beech without objectively investigating the credibility of his claims. As the operation began to reach its conclusion in March 2016, the taskforce began to re-check the accounts given by Beech, and slowly began to unravel his deception. Unknown to the Metropolitan Police at the time he made his allegations, Beech had previously attempted to submit a claim of abuse to Wiltshire Police in 2012, in the wake of the Savile scandal: his claim at the time alleged that his stepfather, along with Jimmy Savile and a group of unidentified men, had abused him considerably. Perversion of justice investigation Toward the end of Operation Midland's lifespan, police had begun to doubt Beech's allegations. Beech began to distance himself from the Metropolitan Police, cancelling interviews and withdrawing his further co-operation with detectives. On 2 November 2016, the Metropolitan Police contacted Northumbria Police to investigate Beech over a possible charge of perverting the course of justice. These offences took place whilst he was co-operating with Operation Midland and simultaneously working for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Whilst on bail, Beech failed to appear at Worcester Crown Court for trial and fled to Sweden in 2017, evading capture for two months by residing in the far north of the country, using multiple aliases: an extensive manhunt led to his capture and subsequent extradition back to Britain. In December, the reporting restrictions in the case were lifted, allowing him to be publicly identified. In May 2019, Beech was placed on trial at Newcastle Crown Court, but denied the charges against him, continuing to pursue claims that his allegations were true despite the evidence to the contrary. Beech was found guilty of all charges, and sentenced four days later to 18 years in prison. ==Sources==