Bramall’s blast over ‘stupid’ Met abuse probe
FIELD Marshal Lord Bramall, the D-Day veteran falsely accused of child sex abuse, has spoken of his anger at how long it took for police to clear his name.
The former head of the Army received an apology from Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, who admitted his force was wrong to raid the 92-year-old’s home over false paedophile allegations made by a man known as ‘Nick’.
He also said sorry for the length of time it took to drop the investigation into the alleged VIP paedophile ring, which was only pursued to protect the force’s reputation.
Lord Bramall’s wife died before the mistake was cleared up.
The police knew Lord Bramall was innocent from ‘very early on’ but continued to investigate him because they didn’t want to be accused of giving him ‘preferential treatment’, the former soldier said.
Lord Bramall said the investigation was ‘inordinately and unnecessarily long’ and caused great distress to him and 93-yearold Lady Bramall, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘ Sir Bernard has apologised for the search of the house. He said they should never have searched the house.
‘The Commissioner also apologised for the inordinately and unnecessarily long time they took to complete the investigation. Although police knew from very early on they had no case to answer they couldn’t stop investigating because they didn’t want to be accused of not investigating it properly.’
Because of the delay in clearing his name, Lady Bramall, the daughter of a brigadier–general, went to her grave last summer not knowing that her husband would be cleared. Lord Bramall, known to friends as Dwin, short for Edwin, said: ‘It didn’t come into their consideration that my wife was dying.’
She also had to endure her home being searched for ten hours by 20 officers, many dressed in overalls of the type worn by forensic experts. He added: ‘ She was downstairs when they came in. She kept on saying “What are they doing here?”
‘She kept on saying: “Have I done something wrong?”’
It was early in the morning when the raid happened and Lord and Lady Bramall were eating breakfast in the kitchen.
Lord Bramall did his best to reassure his wife of 66 years, taking her from room to room, comforting her.
The search, on March 4 last year, went on for ten hours, with its details subsequently leaked to now-discredited news website Exaro. The website has since been closed down. Lord Bramall last night welcomed the apology. He said: ‘As someone, among others, who has suffered great distress and whose reputation and integrity has been questioned as a result of the misguided Operation Midland, I am very pleased to have received this apology.
‘As I understand it Sir Richard Henriques in his independent report will severely criticise the Metropolitan Police although I have not seen that report.
‘It wasn’t just Nick’s baseless and totally unbelievable claims that did the damage. It was the police taking notice of them. We now know Nick to be a complete fantasist.’
He added: ‘I have never complained about their right to investi- gate inept, me and but possibly about improperthe stupid,way they carried out the investigation.’
He believes it was the pressure placed on the Home Office and the police by the Jimmy Savile scandal which produced a witch-hunt culture, ‘in which child abuse, particularly historic child abuse came to be dealt with entirely differently to other criminal offences’.
He said: ‘I hope that Sir Richard’s report will ensure that in future totally innocent people are not allowed to suffer in the way I and my family, as well as many others, have been forced to do.’
Lord Bramall was cleared of the allegations in January this year. But a letter sent to the Military Cross holder was a grudging acknowledgement there was no evidence to charge him, rather than that he was completely innocent.
He was told that the inquiry could continue if ‘further information’ came to light. On Wednesday, Lord Bramall finally won an apology from police, nine months after the case against him was closed. Sir Bernard had refused to say sorry in January.
‘[The Savile scandal] produced a witch hunt culture in which child abuse, particularly historic child abuse, came to be dealt with entirely different to other criminal offences,’ Lord Bramall said. ‘However, the police, more concerned with their own public relations, should not have succumbed to that pressure.’
‘Baseless and unbelievable claims’