Finally, they believe I was victim of vile paedophile ring at the heart of the Scottish legal establishment
ON TUESDAY afternoon, at just after 4.15pm, Susie Henderson received a phone call from court, bringing the news she had waited so long to hear: ‘He’s been found guilty.’
Overwhelmed by relief, the 55-year-old managed to ask – through a sudden flood of tears – the question that, in some form, has dominated almost her entire life: ‘So they believed me?’
‘Yes...’ came the answer. ‘Guilty of all charges.’
For Ms Henderson, the verdict brings a long overdue measure of justice.
John Watt, who raped her when she was just a little girl, is set to spend the rest of his life behind bars after being convicted of sexually abusing four children in the 70s and 80s.
But the decision marks something even more profound for Ms Henderson: the first official recognition that her story – a story so vile and shocking as to seem almost incredible – is actually true.
For who would believe, back then, that a young girl could be abused by her own father then passed around his high-profile friends in Scotland’s legal elite to be casually used as their sexual plaything?
And, later on, who would believe the word of a damaged young woman against the testimony of such eminent men – lawyers, advocates, even a sheriff?
Now, following the conviction of one of the men who abused her, Ms Henderson has described the vindication she feels at finally being believed.
Having started a new life away from Scotland, she has waived her right to anonymity to describe the awful ordeal she suffered as child and the legacy of trauma and mistrust it caused her.
She spoke of her anger that some of her abusers are dead and will never be brought to justice – including her father Robert Henderson QC, Sheriff Andrew Lothian and the former Tory Cabinet member Sir Nicholas Fairbairn.
She spoke, too, of her enormous relief, after so many years, at seeing Watt convicted.
And she also revealed her hopes that one more of her abusers – still a prominent figure in the Scottish legal establishment – could yet find himself prosecuted in the courts where he made his name.
Ms Henderson said: ‘I’ve waited 22 years for justice in the case against Watt. Finally I’ve been believed and that means more to me than anything.
‘Being believed by a jury has taken away the awful shame I felt for years – that somehow it was all my fault, that somehow I had asked for it. I don’t feel dirty any more. I can process that what happened was not my fault and that these men were calculated and very successful in their grooming; they succeeded in getting away with it by putting such fear into me.
‘No child should experience that – they should be out playing and having fun and experiencing the joys of life. Being believed is so powerful for a victim of abuse.’
Ms Henderson’s early years are stark proof, if it were needed, that neither the innocence of childhood nor the material comforts of a wealthy upbringing offer protection against paedophiles.
During her childhood Ms Henderson, who was privately educated, lived with her parents in a five-storey Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh’s New Town.
Her father, Robert Henderson, was a formidable advocate who was also known as a flamboyant and charismatic figure both in the capital’s courtrooms and the social circles of the well-heeled legal elite.
But behind closed doors he was a violent drunk and abuser, fre
quently beating his wife and Ms Henderson and threatening to put her in care if she told anyone.
Ms Henderson said: ‘He used to come back from the pub drunk and say to my mother “Oh, I’ll take Susie for a bath” or “I’ll take Susie for a nap”, she didn’t think anything of that.
‘My father would put the fear of death into me. He used to beat me, he killed my hamster, he did horrible things and when you live in that environment and someone tells you to do something, you do it. Abusers are skilled – they shower you with love and kindness then turn evil and depraved, leaving you so terribly confused.
‘Craving that love, you will do whatever you are told to receive it as you don’t want to be beaten or abused.’
Even before she started primary school, her father offered her to his friends for their twisted sexual kicks. Former Tory MP for Kinross and Western Perthshire, Fairbairn was a favourite of Margaret Thatcher in government, but he was also a key figure in Ms Henderson’s ruined childhood.
She said: ‘My dad could be quite a nice person. When he wasn’t drunk or in a vile temper he could be quite loving. But Fairbairn was nasty and horrible and the way he spoke to my mum it was obvious he hated women – hated everything – except maybe other men.
‘He was vile, he was what I would describe as the sort of man who would have a woman for sex, for children and to clean.’
As Solicitor General, Fairbairn would have made decisions on prosecuting other child sex offenders. A prominent legal figure at the time, John Watt – another
Edinburgh QC – was also given access to Ms Henderson to rape and abuse. Ms Henderson recalls being given an ‘instruction’ by her father who then left her alone with the QC to use as he wished.
She was raped and said Watt had told her she was a ‘good girl’.
The incident stuck out in her mind because she was alone with him, unlike so many of the other occasions when she was abused by men.
Ms Henderson said: ‘I was abused many, many times by different men all at the same time, so Watt was very different for me because he was on his own.’
Although her mother split from her father when she was eight, the abuse continued sporadically on occasions when she visited her father until she was around 12.
Unsurprisingly, the horrific, repeated abuse took its toll on the girl’s mental health, leading to years of misery and rage, eating disorders, self-harm and attempted suicide.
In 2000, she took the decision to report her appalling ordeal to the police.
However, news of her statement became public and, with her father still alive, she felt too threatened and vulnerable to proceed.
In 2012, the death of her father reignited her anger and she found herself devastated – not through grief, but because she would never be able to ‘get him’ as she had wanted to do for so long.
The deaths – unprosecuted and unpunished – of other of her abusers further fuelled her sense of injustice.
Fairbairn became a close ally of Margaret Thatcher. He also had an affair with TV presenter and child abuse campaigner Esther Rantzen.
In 2014, after reading an article in which Ms Rantzen expressed her disgust at Fairbairn being implicated in a Westminster sex abuse scandal at the Elm Guest House, where children were allegedly abused in the 1980s, Ms Henderson went back to the police.
She explained: ‘The article with Ms Rantzen was my trigger for the second investigation.
‘I remember seeing his picture – even though he was dead... they still get to you from the grave.’
Police kickstarted a long-running investigation into Ms Henderson’s claims of a network of paedophiles within the Scottish legal
These men were extremely successful in their grooming
system. In 2019 detectives told her they had found evidence against five men – all now dead – that would have been enough to bring charges.
As well as her father, detectives said they had gathered credible evidence against Fairbairn, who died aged 61 in 1995, as well as Sheriff Lothian and two other advocates, Raymond Fraser and Lawrence Nisbet.
Lothian died at the age of 74 in 2016, having been forced to quit several years earlier after it emerged that he had paid prostitutes to spank him.
Fraser, also an alcoholic, died of cancer in 2002, aged 55, while Nisbet died in 1993, aged 45.
However, police also told her they were pursuing their case against John Watt.
Two years ago Watt was brought from Oklahoma to stand trial in Scotland for crimes spanning 1973 to 1987 including raping and abusing Ms Henderson when she was a schoolgirl and abusing two women and a man when they were children.
Watt, now aged 72, is due to learn his sentence next month.
During the trial Ms Henderson came face to face with her abuser for the first time since her childhood.
At court Ms Henderson was interrogated for seven hours, mostly by Watt’s defence counsel.
Having given evidence from behind a screen she had not laid eyes on Watt since she was a child.
But as she made her way from the witness stand, she was unable to control the outpouring of emotion, and it was at that very moment she shockingly came face to face with her abuser for the first time in decades.
Ms Henderson said: ‘Nobody warned me that I might bump into him at the court.
‘At the very end of my evidence I broke down on the stand. I had cried a wee bit, but then I literally broke down.
‘I had stood for the whole seven hours, my feet were killing me and I thought my knees were going to give way and during the final few questions I burst into tears. I sat down for about two or three minutes before I was ready to continue.
‘When I left the court I went down like a ton of bricks, I was howling. That’s when I saw him – and I had a major panic attack.
‘I was taken into a toilet, I was on the floor – I couldn’t breathe.’
After the trial, she returned to her home in Europe to await the verdict, which was delivered in a phone call from a court official on Tuesday afternoon.
Ms Henderson said: ‘Watt is an abuser and I can now live knowing that all these years of hell have all been worth it and myself and these other people have taken a man off the street.’
After the conviction, Ms Henderson paid tribute to Police Scotland, the Crown Office prosecution team and the support teams.
She said: ‘All through the process, I was treated with the utmost dignity and respect. It’s really important that other potential victims who are considering coming forward to report crimes they realise this.
‘I could not have got through the past few years without their support.’
Now Ms Henderson remains hopeful that Watt will receive a lengthy sentence to pay for what he did.
She said: ‘I hope he gets a long time, it’s better than no time and better than him being able to go back to America and carry on with his life.
‘Nothing will give me back my time but the most important thing is I was believed, he was convicted and he’s off the street and called out for what he is – a paedophile who thought he would get away with it.’
He thought he could get away with it