Child cruelty claims ruined our lives

Aideen Jones and her husband Denis were accused of mistreating two boys at the children’s home they worked at in Wales in the late 1970s.

But last week a jury acquitted them of all charges.

Mrs Jones, who was given her OBE in 2014 for her work as head of the Southdown Housing Association, said: "Of all the things we could have been accused of it was the worst in the world – murder would have been lesser.

"It was right that we were interviewed about the allegations; nobody is above the law.

“This case should never have gone to court. All the evidence that contradicted the accusations was ignored."

The couple, of Sandgate Close, Seaford, said the case has cost them their jobs as well as £100,000 in legal fees.

Mr Jones, who worked for CAFCASS, which represents children in family court cases, said simple checks should have been made earlier on.

He said: “The main allegation was being made about 1973 to 1974, when we lived in Brighton and York and two years before we moved to Wales.

“A rudimentary check of our tax records would have shown where we were working at the time.”

The couple were arrested in August 2013 on suspicion of indecent assault, and charged in January 2015 with child cruelty.

The allegations - including that they had put boys on a severe punishment routine and let them play with air guns -were said to have taken place when they worked at Pentre Saeson Hall, one of eleven Bryn Alyn Community homes, in Wrexham.

The case was part of the National Crime Agency's Operation Pallial investigation into alleged abuse in care homes in north Wales.

In 2014, John Allen, founder of the Bryn Alyn Community, was jailed for life after he was found guilty of 33 serious sexual offences against 19 victims between 1968 and 1991.

He had been convicted in 1996 of indecently assaulting six boys at his care homes in the 1970s.

In December former Bryn Alyn worker Peter Steen, 75, of Heol y Wal, Bradley, Wrexham, was acquitted of all the child cruelty charges against him, while in February Keith Evans, 71, of Main Road, Rhosrobin, was cleared of five counts of child cruelty and convicted of one.

The Jones' solicitor Chris Saltrese said the couple should never have been prosecuted on the evidence.

Mrs Jones said: "Children have been and are still being abused, but false allegations, and especially historic false allegations, divert resources away from keeping children safe and undermines child protection.

"People who have been genuinely abused are further damaged by those who make false allegations."

The National Crime Agency has defended their "thorough and ethical" investigation, adding: "It was independently reviewed by the Crown Prosecution Service who decided that there was sufficient evidence to be heard by a jury."

WHEN EIGHT POLICE OFFICERS CAME TO ARREST THEM, IT LED TO THE WORST TIME OF THEIR LIVES

DENIS and Aideen Jones were getting ready for work at their Seaford home on one of the hottest days of 2013 when the doorbell rang. 

“We were expecting an Amazon delivery so I shouted down to Denis,” Mrs Jones recalled.

“He opened the door in his dressing gown. Then I could hear all these voices.”

Those voices at 7am on August 22 meant an era they remembered as one of their happiest was about to lead to their worst. 

But when the eight police officers from the National Crime Agency walked through their door in Sandgate Close and arrested them, neither had the faintest idea why. 

“They took Denis away,” recalled Mrs Jones. “Before that he had to take his dressing grown off and he was naked underneath and they checked every item of clothing, making sure there were no razor blades. Then they handed him his underpants and his socks, one at a time.”

She stayed in the house as officers started their search. 

“I had a garden diary and one of the officers poured through it for ages and eventually said, ‘What is this?’ And I said, ‘It’s my garden diary.’ And he said, ‘what are all these numbers?’ ‘The temperature of the greenhouse,’ I replied.”

All they were told at that point was that their arrest involved indecent assault at Bryn Alyn – a community of children’s homes they had worked at during the late 1970s. 

It was a name the couple thought they had left behind when they quit working at one of its homes, Pentre Saeson Hall, in 1982 to come back to Brighton where they had met. 

In 1993 Bryn Alyn’s founder, John Allen, was convicted of abusing children.  A public enquiry followed, but the couple stressed they had no idea that was going on when they were there. 

“It was probably one of the happiest times of our life,” said Mrs Jones. 

“The children were a bit of a paradox, they were allowed to be quite wild, but legitimately wild. 

“So whereas in inner-city Liverpool wild meant stealing people’s cars or vandalism, wild in Wales meant rope trees and being outside.”

Surrounded by officers in their home, the couple tried to think where the allegation had come from.

They recalled children's homes in Wales being on Newsnight the year before, when a former resident of local authority home Bryn Estyn, Stephen Messham, said he had been abused by a senior Tory politician (he later admitted that was wrong). 

Mrs Jones said: “We were vaguely aware of that, but because we had never done anything wrong, we never thought it had anything to do with us.”

Not so for the officers from the National Crime Agency.  Operation Pallial had been set up in response to the flood of similar complaints received after Mr Messham’s TV appearance. 

After hours of interviews, Mr and Mrs Jones were sent home on bail.  The arrests, albeit without their names, hit the local headlines in the following days. 

“The first thing I did was call my employer,” said Mrs Jones, who was then head of the Southdown Housing Association, which provides housing to people with learning disabilities or mental health problems. 

She was put on gardening leave and eventually resigned.  Her husband was also put on gardening leave from his job with Cafcass and eventually made redundant. 

Threatening chatter online, meanwhile, made them afraid to stay at home.  When they were finally charged in February 2015, it was not for indecent assault, but child cruelty. 

“I mean it is the complete, complete opposite to everything that we had ever worked for,” said Mrs Jones.

“All of our lives we had either worked with children or vulnerable adults, and all of our lives those jobs had been about safeguarding people.

“Of all the things you could have accused us of, it was the worst in the world – murder would have been lesser.”

The allegations included that they had let youths play with air guns, that she had hit a child and forced him to stay spread-eagled against the wall as a punishment.

Over the next year, the couple devoted their time to gathering the evidence to clear their name and finding former residents and workers to help their case. In between it all, she was awarded an OBE. 

On March 10, after a nine-day trial, they finally heard the words not guilty repeated seven times by the jury foreman at Chester Crown Court. 

“We were crying, the jury was crying,” Mrs Jones said. 

Now, they are trying to rebuild their lives, focusing on their much loved garden which they have often opened to the public.  Both describe the experience as strangely surreal.

Mr Jones said: “We were both asked during the trial was our arrest embarrassing.

“And I think I said it destroyed our lives; we managed to talk about destruction of reputation. 

“Then during the cross-examination of Aideen, he said ‘I put it to you that with all the wonderful things you have done in your life, you spent 40 years atoning for Bryn Alyn’. 

“It’s like you cannot do charitable things unless you are somehow atoning.”

AN OBE WHILE UNDER ARREST

AIDEEN Jones was awarded an OBE while she was under arrest. 

The honour was for services to people with intellectual disabilities through her work as head of the Southdown Housing Association. 

She had climbed the ranks since joining as its third member of staff in the late 1980s. 

She said she debated whether to accept the award amid the police investigation, but decided to go for it knowing she had done nothing wrong and having taken legal advice. 

“Going to the investiture, we were nervous,” she recalled. 

“We thought if there were cameras and things, but Karren Brady was getting hers on the same day, so we were OK.

“When I was receiving it, the man behind me was a prison governor and next to me also receiving something was a man who worked for the National Crime Agency.”

By that time, however, she had resigned from Southdown Housing Association, having been placed on gardening leave.

She said: “Although it was personally awarded to me, it was for my lifetime’s work at Southdown and I dedicated it to them.  “Had I been working, it could have been quite a coup for them.”

Her husband had moved into youth justice during his career, including working to reduce the number of young people in prisons and working for the Labour Campaign for Criminal Justice. 

He also wrote his PhD on the history of youth justice up to the time of Tony Blair’s government.