TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE

He was a hero fire chief jailed for a sex attack on a young man. It took two years of relentless detective work by his wife to prove his accuser was a fantasist. How COULD the police have got it so wrong?

THE letter was waiting for them on their doormat. Two pages of scrawled handwriting shoved through the letterbox while Lynn and David Bryant were out visiting relatives.

Addressed to Mr Bryant, a retired fire chief who had received commendations for bravery during a 40-year career, the tone was menacing.

It read: ‘Dave, it’s Danny Day. Thirty five years ago I used to collect glasses in the Legion and I am the same one that you and Spinder played darts with in the fire station. (remember!)

‘At 6 o’clock tonight I am going to the police station to report what went on and at 7pm to the national papers. I think it is time you and me had a chat. My number is... I think it’s in your interest to call. One way or another you will pay for what you done in late ’76 early ’77.’

The Bryants were mystified. To Lynn, 53, the letter looked like a crude blackmail attempt. ‘Do you know Danny Day?’ Lynn asked her husband, baffled.

David, 66, had only vague recollections of Danny as one of the teenage bottle collectors at the royal British Legion club where he socialised. Lynn had distant memories of him, too. He’d been a fellow pupil at her secondary school, but in a different class. ‘what does he want?’ she asked. Neither of them had a clue. Alarmed, Lynn phoned the police, asking them come round immediately.

No one came, so Lynn phoned again at 5.30pm only to be told that Danny had been to the police station (before the deadline given in his letter) to make a serious allegation — the details of which they could not divulge — against her husband.

Three days later, officers arrived at their £320,000 cottage in Christchurch, Dorset, to seize the letter as evidence.

Lobbed into their lives like a grenade primed to explode, that note — hand delivered in October 2012 — would mark the beginning of a four-year nightmare.

Danny Day had accused David and another firefighter, Dennis Goodman, since deceased, of taking turns to rape him on a pool table at the fire station when he was 13 or 14 years old, after inviting him there for a game of darts.

Danny later said he’d been inspired to come forward in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. He spoke of a ruined life: the trauma of having his glittering boxing career wrecked, even being deprived of the chance to compete for a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics.

As a result of his claims, David Bryant — who protested his innocence from the outset — was charged with buggery.

Convicted by a majority verdict in December 2013, he was jailed for six years, later increased to eight-and-a-half after appeal judges ruled that the original sentence was ‘unduly lenient’.

He would still be in Dartmoor prison today if Danny Day hadn’t been exposed as a fantasist.

Last week, the Court of Appeal quashed David’s ‘unsafe’ conviction and freed him, with an apology, after medical records revealed that Danny Day, now 53 and living in Bromley, Kent, had sought help from his GP over a tenyear period in relation, said Justice Singh, ‘to what can only be described as his being a chronic liar’. The most extraordinary aspect of this disturbing story, however, is that it was left to Lynn to turn detective and prove it was all a tissue of lies.

It was she, and not Dorset police with all their resources, who unpicked Danny’s false claims by embarking on what she calls a ‘mission impossible’.

Along the way, she was helped by a top legal team who agreed to work for free, convinced — just as Lynn was — that David was the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Up until that point the quest had cost Lynn £120,000 in legal fees, leaving her in debt and at risk of losing their home, not to mention her health and peace of mind.

Today, their living hell is over, but their relief is tinged with bitterness.

David will never get back those twoand-a-half years he spent in prison for a crime he never committed, over accusations that didn’t stand up to proper scrutiny.

‘The day that letter arrived, our whole world was blown apart,’ says Lynn. ‘It’s been a long four years and it’s lovely not to have the weight of the world on our shoulders any more, but there is also anger that if the police had thoroughly investigated these claims in the first place, David may never even have been charged.

‘If we hadn’t refused to let Danny Day win and destroy us with his lies, David would still be sitting in prison today. It makes me feel very bitter to hear Dorset police say they carried out a thorough investigation.’

David adds: ‘The most important part is getting my good name and reputation back. I don’t want to think about Mr Day. I just want to think about Lynn.

‘I’m very conscious of all she’s done for me. It must have been a tremendous strain for her. I want to concentrate on getting back to normal.’

AwArM, friendly character, Lynn Bryant doesn’t look or sound much like a detective. Softly spoken, she’s spent more than 20 years working in customer services for Bournemouth water, a job that requires pleasant efficiency rather than hard-nosed determination and grit.

But as Lynn recounts her remarkable story, it’s clear she has those qualities in bucketloads. Even she was surprised to discover an ‘inner steel’ she didn’t know she possessed, but — she says — anger can be a powerful tool when it’s directed in a quietly effective manner.

Lynn needed all those reserves when David was summoned to the police station in November 2012, where Danny Day’s statement was first read out to him.

They were so horrified by the accusations, terrified of the stigma they brought, that they considered ending their lives together.

A retained firefighter, David risked his life in the hurricane of 1987 and, again, dealing with an IrA bombing in Bournemouth six years later.

when he retired in 2006, he was made honorary freeman of the borough — a rare honour in recognition of his service to the community.

They have been married for 32 years and don’t have children. Everyone would tell Lynn how lucky she was to have such a wonderful husband.

‘I never doubted David’s innocence. we’ve been together since I was 19. He is the most perfect, kind and placid person. we knew the truth, but we were terrified,’ says Lynn.

‘we thought: “This is going to destroy us. No one is going to believe us, there’s no other way out.”

‘But then we met some friends. One of them said: “I don’t believe one word of it — I would follow you to the ends of the earth.” we felt we couldn’t let them down by giving up.’

Their decision to fight back would prove a Herculean task in a world still reeling from the Jimmy Savile scandal. For years, the late BBC presenter had used his fame to cloak his systematic sexual abuse of youngsters, some of whose complaints were effectively ignored by police or dismissed as fantasy.

In the uproar that followed the truth being revealed, police forces vowed to listen to victims of historic sex crimes, believe their stories and seek justice on their behalf.

The Bryants are convinced Danny saw an opportunity and, motivated by money, targeted David, who was prominent in the community and had often appeared in the local press.

LyNN told the police she had logs and diaries from the fire station that might provide her husband with an alibi for the day or time Danny claimed to have been there.

‘One officer told me victims of abuse were so traumatised they couldn’t be expected to remember the exact time or day,’ says Lynn.

‘It was as if they’d already decided David was guilty from day one. we thought they’d come back and ask David questions about Danny Day’s claims, but they never did.’

In May 2013 — after six anxious months of waiting for police to dismiss Mr Day’s allegations as nonsense — David Bryant was charged with buggery. Lynn received anonymous hate letters telling her she would die for standing by her husband.

All their friends and family, however, refused to believe the accusations. To her surprise, Lynn found almost everyone in the community supportive.

‘No one pointed the finger or said anything derogatory,’ Lynn says. ‘As David’s trial approached, we were cautiously optimistic. It was just Danny Day’s word against David’s. There was no evidence.’

Lynn prayed the jury would see through Danny’s dramatic testimony. She recalls how he furiously denied blackmail, saying he was rich and didn’t need the money.

At one point, she remembers Danny refused to be questioned further by David’s barrister because — as a traumatised ‘victim’ — he felt unfairly under attack.

Lynn collapsed in court when David was found guilty that December, despite there being no evidence to corroborate Danny’s claims. David was released on bail, and the Bryants’ Christmas together at home passed in a ‘blur’ as medical and probation reports were prepared for sentence. Lynn wept when David — branded a sex offender of the worst kind — was led from the dock after sentencing the following month.

David, who was taken to HMP winchester and transferred to Dartmoor three months later, says: ‘I was terrified. I didn’t know what to expect. I was like a rabbit in the headlights.

‘I decided to keep my head down, avoid eye contact with the wrong people, and get on with it. what kept me going was Lynn. I lived for her visits twice a month, and we spoke on the phone every day.’

It was agony for Lynn seeing her husband in prison.

‘we tried to pretend we were at our kitchen table having a chat, instead of in a prison visiting room.

‘I was always in tears when the time came to say goodbye. I couldn’t bear to leave him.’

Lynn simmered with anger over the way the police had handled the investigation. Sobbing on the drive home, she raged over the injustice. Instead of falling apart, she decided to direct that energy towards proving her husband’s innocence.

Lynn despaired when their first appeal against conviction was rejected last year.

She then faced homelessness when Danny launched a civil action against David and Dorset council, his employer while he was in the fire service, suing them for up to £100,000

in compensation. Danny wanted a £30,000 interim payment and his lawyers’ fees of more than £40,000 paid up front.

He is understood to have already received an undisclosed payment from the taxpayer-funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.

Waiving his right to anonymity, Danny gave local press interviews, describing how he had suffered in silence for almost 40 years.

He explained that he’d opened an animal sanctuary because he’d lost his trust in humans.

He encouraged more alleged victims of historic abuse to come forward, and thanked police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a ‘sterling job’.

The Bryants hired civil litigation barrister Rupert Butler to fight the civil action — he was so concerned by what had happened to them that he offered to help with the criminal appeal free of charge. He then persuaded Peter Knox QC, head of his chambers, to join him along with junior barrister Rachael Earle. Lynn says that without their help, which would have cost around £70,000, David would not be a free man today.

Mr Butler told the Mail: ‘The horror of the note landing on their mat and thinking how helpless they’d been from that moment on — we realised it could happen to anyone, ourselves included.

‘Police have powers of investigation, but lawyers don’t, judges don’t and jurors don’t.

‘We all depend on the police giving us fair treatment and fair presentation because if they don’t — as David discovered — the dice are loaded against you.’

So they set about examining Danny Day’s claims in detail. Lynn unearthed old photographs that proved there had not been a pool table (on which Danny claimed the sex attack had taken place) at the fire station in the Seventies — it arrived in 1991.

Danny claimed he’d been taken out of the station by a fire exit after the alleged attack, but Lynn found old plans that showed no such exit existed at Devoted couple: Lynn Bryant battled to clear the name of her retired fireman husband David the time. Lynn found old diaries and logs showing that Mr Day couldn’t have been at the fire station when he claimed — it would have been filled with people for meetings. As for Danny’s glittering boxing record, they discovered it had been borrowed from Muhammad Ali. Barrister Rupert Butler was reading an obituary for the late boxing legend when he thought: ‘I’ve read this before — the same number of bouts as Danny Day. If anything, Danny Day’s was slightly better.’ Danny claimed to have confided in a friend two weeks after the alleged attack. Police said they’d been unable to trace this key witness, but David Bryant was amazed to meet him across the landing in Dartmoor prison. He gave a statement denying Mr Day had ever spoken to him of an attack. The smoking gun, though, was found in the independent psychiatric report that Danny’s no win, no fee solicitors had submitted in support of his compensation claim. There, they found references to Danny’s medical records. Between 2000 and 2010, Mr Day had sought help from his doctor for a problem with serial lying.

MR Butler says: ‘Not once did he say to a doctor “I was assaulted in 1976,” despite claiming it hadn’t been away from his thoughts for 35 years. ‘Here he was going to the doctor saying: “Help me, I’m a liar. I have problems in my marriages, I have financial problems.”

‘After the horrendous bad luck of the trial, David got lucky in the most extraordinary way with Danny Day suing him — otherwise we would never have known about those medical records.’

The Bryants are calling for police charges to be brought against Danny for perjury and perverting the course of justice, and will be seeking compensation.

Their legal team want a judicial inquiry, or for the current review into the Met Police’s shambolic VIP child sex probe — triggered by a suspected fantasist called ‘Nick’ — to be expanded.

A Dorset Police spokesperson said yesterday: ‘We take any allegations of sexual abuse very seriously and conducted a thorough investigation in this case.

‘The findings of the investigation were passed to the CPS, who chose to prosecute. We have received notice of the ruling from the Court of Appeal, which we are reviewing in full. We are due to meet the parties involved in late August.

‘We will not comment further until after this has taken place.’ Danny Day declined to comment. Relieved to have her husband home, Lynn says: ‘I don’t ever want another couple go through what we have. I had to keep fighting because it wasn’t true and a lie always comes out in the end.’

Thanks to Lynn Bryant, it did.