It was good journalism which helped to secure justice in Caldwell case Acts of indecent exposure must never be downplayed
◆ Blowhards who never miss a chance to attack the ‘gutter press’ forget the importance of investigative reporting, writes John Mclellan ◆ A significant proportion of men who expose themselves – like Sarah Everard’s killer – go on to commit other serious
In its short life, Police Scotland has an unenviable record of serious problems. Like the Metropolitan Police, maybe it comes with the territory of being a big force, but unfair or not, the impression of lurching from one crisis to another is hard to dispel. The undetected deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell on the M9, the malicious prosecutions of Rangers administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, the ongoing inquiry into the death of Sheku Bayoh, bullying allegations against former Chief Constable Phil Gormley, and what looked like a campaign to make life difficult for the new chief Jo Farrell have reflected badly on the service.
Perhaps it’s obvious to point out you know about them because journalists wrote about them and they featured heavily on TV and radio news, but it’s no exaggeration to claim that not only might you never have heard of Iain Packer, but the killer and serial rapist might still be free to commit more awful crimes were it not for journalists.
For nearly 20 years after his arrest and subsequent release for the murder of prostitute Emma Caldwell in 2005, despite clear evidence pointing to his guilt, he was responsible for a further 19 serious sexual assaults. Justice finally caught up with him last month when he was convicted of 33 charges against a total of 22 women, including Ms Caldwell’s murder and 11 rapes. Now 50, he was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 36 years.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain wasted little time in ordering a police investigation the same day and Justice Secretary Angela Constance announced a judge-led public inquiry to uncover why it took so long to end Packer’s sickening spree. Ms Farrell has already said there will be full police co-operation and all her predecessors are in the frame, particularly Sir Stephen House, who was chief constable of Strathclyde Police from 2007 until it became part of the unified force in 2012 which he then led until 2015 before handing over to Mr Gormley for his unhappy two-year stint. But his successor Sir Iain Livingstone, credited with stabilising the force, will be very much in the spotlight having been the deputy chief from 2016 before taking over in 2018.
The Caldwell family believe a “toxic culture of misogyny and corruption” in Strathclyde Police meant women who spoke up against Packer were ignored because the investigating officers were determined to nail a gang of Turkish men who were cleared after the case collapsed, but only after a two-and-a-halfyear investigation costing £4 million. The Sunday Mail exposed Packer in 2015 and then editor Jim Wilson told sister paper the Daily Record last week that the police and Crown Office “did nothing because it was professionally embarrassing to admit mistakes and put them right”, while Conservative MSP and former Sunday Mail journalist Russell Findlay has made accusations of police corruption.
While focus will inevitably fall on early phases of the botched investigation, there must be a thorough examination of the events immediately after the Sunday Mail’s publication of overwhelming evidence because, instead of arresting Packer, the police launched an illegal investigation to discover if officers had been leaking information to the paper. It was another stain on Police Scotland’s reputation, for which it was subsequently forced to apologise.
It’s an understatement to say the public does not hold newspaper reporters in high esteem, but day in, day out they perform a valuable public service for little recognition. It just goes with the territory. While the broadcasters with the glamour of reporting from Westminster, Washington and war zones get the attention, even the best newspaper reporters are unknown without a television profile. People of a certain age might have heard of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, but probably because the Washington Post reporters who exposed the Watergate scandal were played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men.
You won’t have heard of them, but Jim Wilson and his deputy Brendan Mcginty (both of whom I count as friends) have earned a place in the journalists’ hall of fame for exposing the truth about Packer. They were convinced the evidence they amassed from reliable sources was conclusive, but they knew accusing someone of murder if they turned out to be innocent could cost them their jobs, so rather than putting a reporter in the line of fire, they wrote the story themselves, running full details of Packer’s criminality across nine pages, and asking why police had ignored what should have been obvious for nearly a decade. Their work is at least on a par with the Daily Mail’s exposure of the gang of racist thugs responsible for the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
It took nearly four years for the BBC to follow up the story with a documentary in which Packer denied he was responsible for Emma Caldwell’s death, and while the interview by Sam Poling which has featured widely on TV bulletins since the conviction was unquestionably powerful, it is by no means certain it would have taken place had it not been for the Sunday Mail and the bravery of Jim Wilson and Brendan Mcginty.
Having succeeded Jim Wilson as editor, Brendan Mcginty again found himself in official crosshairs when then Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf approved an unsuccessful legal bid to halt publication when the paper was about to expose the shocking events leading to the death of prisoner Allan Marshall in Saughton Jail. And it was its political editor John Ferguson who revealed the exodus of SNP members last year, the aggressive false rebuttal of which led to the downfall of ex-chief executive Peter Murrell.
So the next time you find yourself nodding when some blowhard attacks the gutter press, remember it was journalists who made sure there was justice for Emma Caldwell.
Day in, day out newspaper reporters perform a valuable public service for little recognition. It just goes with the territory
What happens when you read the words ‘indecent exposure’? For women (and some men), images will spring unbidden into their minds of a time they’ve been ‘flashed’ or sent unsolicited pictures. A flippant word, ‘flashed’ doesn’t convey the fear, shock, and flight, fight or freeze reaction that accompanies the event.
I’ve been having conversations with my female friends recently and it’s been a sobering experience. We’d all experienced it, usually as teenagers in school uniform, being confronted by an adult male with an erect penis. Our memories are undimmed. The men who do it enjoy the fear, and victims are often chosen to enhance that feeling of power; someone caught unawares or where they can’t escape the sight. Wayne Couzens, the police officer who murdered Sarah Everard, had a history of sexual crimes, including indecent exposure.
Women don’t often go to the police. Of the conversations I had, only one friend reported it. I didn’t, partly because of embarrassment, shock and youth. Why is it often dismissed as more of a nuisance than a sexual offence? Partly because of the origins in law (the Vagrancy Act 1824) but language matters too.
‘Flashing’ sounds fleeting, but for the victim, it is anything but. Culturally, men in macs exposing themselves has been a staple of ancient sitcoms, reduced to something comical. I’m glad that’s consigned to history. Exhibitionism disorder is a common ‘paraphilia’ – persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviours of marked intensity. Around 30 per cent of male sex offenders are exhibitionists and many have other paraphilias. It is underresearched and under-reported.
This should worry us. A 2014 evidence review found that between five and ten per cent of men who commit this offence go on to commit other serious sexual assaults. The biggest risk factor is where there is a cluster of other antisocial behaviours alongside it. Some 25 per cent of those convicted of the offence did it again; it's a behaviour that can be challenging to change.
In this brave new world of the internet, flashing has a new form. That’s a whole other thesis. Yet good intelligence and police work can often identify the perpetrator. This is a high-risk crime, the offenders are literally demanding to be seen. We are a highly surveilled country and, with skilled interviewing and documentation around geography and behaviours, perpetrators can be found.
With my friends, incongruous laughter accompanied sharing our experiences. Not because it was funny, but because the shock had stayed with us, it’s nervous laughter. We weren’t touched, but no contact doesn’t mean no impact. Being forced to play a part in someone else’s fantasy – the lack of control, the expression of their power, and our resulting powerlessness – is damaging. This is compounded when the violation is downplayed as harmless or minor.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. An honest and public conversation that acknowledges the harm of any incident and the potential as an indicator of escalating behaviour is an important step towards protecting victims – and away from normalising this experience as a rite of passage for many women.