Why DID the human rights luvvie quit?
A chum of the Clooneys, he led the VIP child abuse inquiry. Now he and his junior have left in a swirl of toxic rumours
Venice had not seen the like since the days of the Doge: cheering crowds lined the Accademia Bridge while a dozen vintage water taxis processed along the Grand canal, carrying some of the most famous people in the world.
Aboard the lead vessel was screen idol George clooney, whose marriage to British lawyer Amal Alamuddin was being attended that weekend by other members of Hollywood’s liberal elite.
Oscar-winner Matt Damon, supermodel cindy crawford and U2 singer Bono were all on the wedding convoy, along with veteran actor Bill Murray and American actress ellen Barkin.
But who was the slightly owlish gentleman in the tuxedo? A character actor, perhaps? Or maybe Mr clooney’s butler?
in fact, the mystery guest was a superstar in his own sphere: the Left-wing ‘goliath’ of global litigation, Benedict emmerson Qc.
Mr emmerson had ‘invented the human rights industry virtually single-handed’, one admiring fellow Qc told me this week. He was ‘aggressive, modern and transcendentally brilliant’, said another, who otherwise had little time for the maestro’s socialist politics.
The ‘smart and charming’ barrister also has admirers outside his profession.
in Venice, his shipmate Ms Barkin, the star with Al Pacino of the film Sea Of Love — whose most recent marriage was to American billionaire Ronald Perelman — was reportedly swept off her feet by the British lawyer.
The odd couple — Mr emmerson is nine years her junior — were even briefly engaged. And who could blame her? Back in September 2014, when the clooney wedding took place, Mr emmerson was at the height of his powers and reputation. He had founded (along with others) Matrix chambers, the holier- than- thou barristers’ set with the then Prime Minister’s wife cherie Blair in 2000.
He had opposed authority — often in the form of the British State — in a string of controversial headline cases in London and Strasbourg. His career was even said to be the model for colin Firth’s dashing barrister Mr Darcy in the film Bridget Jones’ Diary.
One of Mr emmerson’s favoured juniors was — and continues to be — the glamorous and clever Mrs clooney.
Their most high-profile collaboration came in 2011 when they represented WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange in his fight against extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape and sexual assault.
Mr emmerson had told the court that Assange’s behaviour towards two women who laid charges against him may have been ‘ disrespectful, discourteous or even pushing the boundaries of what they were comfortable with’, but was not a crime.
The grey area of male-female relations was explored by him to no avail. The extradition warrant was upheld and Assange fled to the ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remains today. The bien pensant dream-team couldn’t win them all. But Mr emmerson marched on. Shortly before the clooney nuptials, he was appointed lead barrister for the independent inquiry into child Sex Abuse (iicSA). Given the scope of its remit — 13 strands of public life, from schools to the church of england — the inquiry was expected to become the biggest and most expensive statutory investigation in British legal history.
More laurels for the already heavily garlanded Mr emmerson were expected. And a juicy £1,700-a-day in fees. Two years later, how Mr Emmersons
may be wishing he’d stayed in Venice. And perhaps re-trained as a gondolier.
The gargantuan inquiry has suffered a series of damaging setbacks to its credibility. Three chairwomen have resigned so far; two because of potential conflicts of interest and the third for reasons as yet unexplained.
The original advisory panel of abuse ‘survivors’ was disbanded last year amid vicious infighting. And in recent days the chaotic impression only worsened.
deputy,it emerged elizabeth that ProchaskaMr emmerson’s— the daughter of the Principal of Somerville college, Oxford — had quietly quit the inquiry on September 15 in mysterious circumstances.
The latest casualty is the goliath Qc himself.
in the last fortnight Mr emmerson, 53, was suspended from his duties by the fourth inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay. Prof Jay had ‘become very concerned about aspects of Mr emmerson’s leadership of the counsel team’. Those ‘ aspects’ were not explained, but have been linked to the resignation of Ms Prochaska, 35.
Twenty-four hours after his suspension, Mr emmerson, a divorced father of four, had also resigned. Then the shutters came down.
He AnD Ms Prochaska, a Labour Party activist and women’s rights campaigner who is also at Matrix chambers, separately signed ‘non-disclosure agreements’ so they could not reveal the reasons behind their departures.
That silence has not prevented speculation about the reasons behind their exits. An internal investigation into Mr emmerson’s behaviour was dropped as soon as he left.
His departure attracted a mixed reaction from alleged abuse victims.
Some were ‘distressed’. Others were clearly not: ‘ Somebody break out the champagne. emmerson FinALLY suspended!!!’ tweeted one. ‘Yippeeee. See ya Ben,’ posted another.
Mr emmerson is said by one supporter on the inquiry to be ‘exhausted and fed up’. He is glad to walk away from an inquiry which was bending under the weight of its own remit, racked by internecine warfare and looking more and more ‘out of control’.
Yet he leaves under a cloud of toxic rumour concerning his own behaviour behind the scenes — and, it was revealed this week, not a penny in severance pay, unlike the inquiry’s third chair, Dame Lowell Goddard, who received £80,000 in pay and allowances when she resigned in August. So many rumours flourished — fuelled by BBc2’s newsnight, which suggested there were ‘ serious problems’ in the working relationship between Mr emmerson and his junior Mrs Prochaska — that fellow Left-wing legal icon Baroness (Helena) Kennedy of the Shaws Qc was moved to issue a statement of support. it did little to quell the hearsay. The peer said she was aware of the alleged reason for Mr emmerson’s suspension but it ‘does not correspond with my experience of Ben’. While often robust in his professional dealings, Mr emmerson denies having problems with colleagues. indeed, he has now instructed the Left-wing solicitors Bindman to protect his reputation and, unusually, has stopped takingOne can calls only from imaginethe media. what sport Mr emmerson would have in court if an establishment figure behaved in a similar fashion. But then he has long been a man of contradictions. Michael Benedict emmerson is no cradle-socialist. Rather, he turned away from a Home counties background which was conservative in every respect. His father was the finance controller of the London Stock exchange. Brought up a strict catholic, emmerson was a boarder at the Douai School in Berkshire which was run by the adjacent Benedictine Abbey. ironically, a number of the school’s former staff were later convicted of child sex abuse offences and it closed in 1999. The culpability of the Benedictines in their response to such offending is now central to the catholic strand of the abuse inquiry.
WHEN i asked recently about the part paedophilia played in his alma mater’s demise, Mr emmerson replied: ‘i didn’t even know the school had closed after sex abuse scandals involving pupils and staff/ teachers. i thought it had closed down after an affair between one of the monks and an adult female parishioner.
‘That all happened a long time after i was there, of course.’
After leaving Douai, Mr emmerson studied at Bristol University and was called to the Bar in 1986. He made his first major mark the following year when he co-authored a report, commissioned by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and a number of trade unions, into the policing of the 1986 Wapping Dispute at the news international headquarters (when war broke out between the print unions and Rupert Murdoch).
His fellow author was another young barrister called Anne Shamash. The two were part of a ‘ brilliant young generation’ of civil rights lawyers who emerged during the nineties.
They married and have four sons, but separated some years ago. Ms Shamash is now an immigration judge and has refused to comment on her ex-husband’s travails.
in 1999, Mr emmerson was named Human Rights Lawyer of the Year, nominated by Lord irvine of Lairg (who was, of course, mentor to Tony Blair when he was a young lawyer, and was later elevated by Blair to be Lord chancellor. Piccolo mondo, as they might well say!). Within months he had taken silk and helped change the legal landscape.
By then Blair’s new Labour government had passed the controversial Human Rights Act, which was to come into force in October 2000 and enshrine the european court of Human Rights in UK legislation.
in April 2000, the formation of Matrix chambers was announced. Twenty-two of London’s leading left-of-centre civil rights barristers had come together — or been headhunted — to form a super cohort. Mr emmerson, the undisputed expert on the new legislation, was among
them, along with Cherie Blair. Further accolades came his way.
In 2010, he was made a deputy High Court judge. The position of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism came the following year and he became a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal in 2012, when he successfully defended the former prime minister of Kosovo from war crimes charges. It was during time spent in the Balkans for that case that he developed a taste for the local alcoholic firewater raki.
There was one setback during that brilliant run. Mr Emmerson was considered the favourite to become Britain’s new judge at the European Court of Human Rights, but his candidature was unsuccessful.
Some said his failure was down to a Right-wing plot. One Conservative MP quipped: ‘If you’re trying to rein in the human rights industry, you don’t appoint its equivalent to [hard left union boss] Len McCluskey.’
But that disappointment was nothing compared to the child abuse inquiry fiasco which has so damaged his golden reputation.
Mr Emmerson had trouble with socalled core participants in the inquiry — individuals or organisations granted a formal interest in the work of the inquiry — long before his fall. Some of them were questioning the stories and motives of others. The atmosphere was poisonous and Mr Emmerson struggled to maintain control.
These splits were laid bare early last year when Sharon Evans, an abuse survivor and member of the advisory panel, told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that the barrister had bullied her.
Mr Emmerson denied the charge and was later cleared. He accused Ms Evans of being unprofessional and indiscreet and called for her to be sacked. He was backed by the Home Office and soon afterwards the panel was disbanded.
By then, the first two chairwomen, Baroness Butler-Sloss and former London Lord Mayor Fiona Woolf had stepped down because of perceived conflicts of interest. During these interregnums Mr Emmerson often had to steer the ship.
When the third chairwoman, New Zealand High Court judge Dame Lowell Goddard, quit in August, the inquiry had become a legal shambles.
Now we know that yet more was happening behind the scenes. But what exactly? Mr Emmerson won’t say. Not surprisingly, Mrs Clooney backed her friend.
‘He is one of the most intelligent and talented lawyers I have ever worked with and he is one of the leading experts in the world in the field of human rights,’ she said.
‘His resignation leaves a huge gap that will be very difficult to fill.’
Alas, Cherie Blair — with whom Mr Emmerson founded Matrix — is unlikely to be so generous with her words now.
She left the chambers in 2014 to form her own company, Omnia Strategy. In recent months she found herself on opposing sides from Mr Emmerson and his loyal junior Mrs Clooney. The latter pair are representing Mohamed
Nasheed, the imprisoned former president of the Maldives — while Mrs Blair is acting for the government which deposed him and has been accused of numerous human rights violations.
Mr Emmerson’s contempt is clear. He has said of his former colleague: ‘Ordinarily, in cases inside this country, barristers are bound by the rule that they must take any case, regardless of their views of the merits of the case, and regardless of whether they would rather be acting for the other side.
‘ That rule doesn’t apply in international cases. The way that a lawyer in this country can say, I had no choice or no right to make a choice, that doesn’t apply in international proceedings.
‘It follows that those who make a choice must take responsibility for the choice that they make. I’m not going to speculate on motivations here, although no doubt many would be able to figure that out.’
[A Mail investigation recently revealed that the Maldives government had paid Cherie’s firm more than £2,000 a day — and that Omnia had also been paid more than £200,000 of its total fee by a man accused by the Maldives authorities of being a terrorist and conman, and now wanted by Interpol.]
FOr its part, Omnia Strategy said Mr Emmerson’s comments were ‘inappropriate’.
Human rights advocacy is dog eat dog, it would seem. Meanwhile, at the child sex abuse inquiry, the focus has shifted away from the victims of appalling crimes and onto the reported difficulties between Mr Emmerson and his colleague Ms Prochaska.
‘No one with any reputation would touch the inquiry with a bargepole now,’ one QC said last night. ‘Only has-beens or someone yet to make a name for themselves. It is a poisoned chalice.’
What comes next for Mr Emmerson remains to be seen. Perhaps, now he has time on his hands, he could audition for a role in his chum George Clooney’s next film.