Inside the Shoebury 'sex ring' investigation

A little over a month ago, Essex Police made an announcement which prompted a news firestorm. Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh and Police Commissioner Nick Alston issued a joint statement announcing a formal review of the force's investigations into alleged child abuse in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The review was launched after three whistleblowers met with senior police officers and detailed a catalogue of alleged failures by Essex Police and other local bodies.

The story immediately went national, picked up by outlets including the MailOnline, ITV and BBC, which also ran a 12-minute news package on its Essex radio station. But, as the BBC acknowledged, the review had been prompted by a year-long investigation by another media outlet - regional newspaper the Yellow Advertiser. The paper's work made headlines in the trade press, covered by HoldTheFrontPage and Press Gazette, which later ran a second piece on the 'mighty' Yellow Advertiser's 'dogged investigative journalism'. Mr Alston thanked the Yellow Advertiser for its key role in prompting the review. I was the reporter behind that Yellow Advertiser investigation and am continuing to run it weeks after the wider media seems to have forgotten about the whole affair.

In late 2014, I was browsing Essex Council's Freedom of Information webpage, where it publishes information in response to requests from the press and public. The database of recent releases is often overwhelmed by residents demanding details of pothole repairs and the council's part-night lighting scheme, but occasionally you stumble across a gem, such as that the council spent £30,000 trying to recover £50,000 in expenses which turned out to have been legitimately claimed, or that a child was paid £15,000 compensation after a school worker threw a DVD at their head, or that teachers who had sexual abuse complaints upheld against them were never reported to police.

In late 2014 I opened up what looked to be a fairly mundane spreadsheet - a member of the public had requested the release of some data from County Hall's accounts. What I found set in motion a chain of events which culminated in last month's announcement by Essex Police.

Sifting through a list of 600 compensation pay-outs, I came across one made for 'alleged abuse'. Then another one. Then another one. In total, I found 10 pay-outs in 2014 alone for abuse alleged to have occurred on Essex Council's watch in the 1970s and 1990s, nine of them relating to children's social care departments.

I immediately compiled a list of questions for Essex Council to answer in relation to each of the 10 cases. For each one, I requested details such as the gender of the complainant, their age at the time, whether they were in care, when the abuse had first been reported to County Hall, whether County Hall had alerted police, whether anybody had been charged and whether anybody had been convicted. The council's press office refused to answer the questions and forced me to submit them as a Freedom of Information request. On Christmas Eve 2014, I received an email from Essex Council's Freedom of Information department, saying it had refused to answer any of the questions because doing so could identify the victims - a plainly meritless claim.

To check I was on solid ground, I ran the dispute by child abuse charity NAPAC - the National Association for People Abused in Childhood - whose chief aim is to protect and embolden child abuse victims. Its founder Peter Saunders confirmed that as far as NAPAC was concerned, the information the Yellow Advertiser was asking for clearly did not present any threat to the anonymity of the complainants and, he continued, Essex Council's behaviour was 'tantamount to a cover-up'. NAPAC and the Taxpayers' Alliance joined our campaign to uncover the details, which we ran as our first news front of 2015.

That week, I spotted that since I had started asking questions about the 'alleged abuse' pay-outs in late 2014, a member of the public had filed a Freedom of Information request for some Essex Council accounts data which would have included those same 10 compensation claims. Wondering whether the council's response to that resident might contain further details, I downloaded the spreadsheet. I discovered it actually contained fewer details; there was no longer any mention of 'alleged abuse' anywhere in the compensation listings.

By matching up the figures, I could see the 'alleged abuse' pay-outs had been reclassified in the fresh release as 'personal injury' settlements, making them indistinguishable from people who had received money for cut fingers or back injuries. That became a second front page story.

Following our second report mentioning 'alleged abuse' at County Hall, a man walked into the Yellow Advertiser's office and asked to see me. His name was Robin Jamieson. Robin was a retired NHS manager - the former district psychologist for Southend - and he had some information on historic abuse in Essex that he thought I might be interested in.

Robin's information was of enormous public interest value but without corroboration there was little we could do with it. Essex Council's lack of transparency thus far made it highly unlikely, in my opinion, that it would cooperate unless circumstances dictated it had little choice.

We had to wait almost six months but in June those circumstances arose. Robin was invited to a 'whistleblowers event' in a committee room at the Houses of Parliament, organised by child abuse pressure group the WhiteFlowers Campaign. At the event, in front of an audience of MPs, barristers and campaigners, he gave a speech detailing a raft of alleged failures by police and Social Services to properly tackle child abuse in Essex in the 1980s and 1990s.

We sent a copy of Robin's speech to Essex Council's press office and alerted the authority that we would be running a story about it the following week. In actuality, this would have been near impossible without the qualified privilege that a response from County Hall would provide; if they had replied 'no comment', the story would have been effectively scuppered.

But our gamble paid off. The press office responded with a lengthy statement which admitted knowledge of 'some historical child abuse concerns in relation to individual members of staff employed by Essex County Council in the 1980s and early 1990s'. The revelation resulted in another front page story.

We forwarded the council's statement to Essex Police Commissioner Nick Alston and asked him whether he would ask officers to investigate. Describing the allegations as 'disturbing', he promised any alleged victims who contacted his force would be taken seriously. That became a further front page.

After securing this promise, the we continued working on the story behind the scenes. Acting as a go-between, we assisted in the early stages of arranging a meeting between Nick Alston and Robin Jamieson, then remained in touch with both parties as they began communicating directly. Mr Alston was so impressed by Robin's 'eminent credibility' at their meeting that he arranged a second, with the Chief Constable and a senior child abuse officer present. Two new whistleblowers, who had contacted Robin after the summer stories, were also invited. That meeting happened in early 2016, following which, a decision was made to launch a review.

By maintaining communication with Robin, Mr Alston's office and one of the two new whistleblowers - Rob West, a former charity worker turned probation officer - we learned that the focal point of the review would be an investigation into an alleged 'sex ring' which had targeted 'adolescent boys' in Shoebury in the late 1980s. Police had arrested two men - Dennis King and Brian Tanner - in 1989 and each had pleaded guilty and served jail time for child sex offences in 1990.

At their meeting in early 2016, Robin, Rob and the third whistleblower - former child abuse charity worker Jenny Grinstead - had told Mr Alston and Chief Constable Kavanagh that a number of boys who were known victims of King and Tanner had reported abuse by far more men.

Moreover, police had failed to interview a number of other boys who disclosed abuse by the ring to local charities, and even those who were interviewed had mostly not received any of the appropriate aftercare, such as counselling.

A number of the boys, with whom Rob had stayed in touch into their adulthoods, had since died of suicides and drug overdoses, while others were in prison or homeless. Many of the three whistleblowers' claims were supported by contemporaneous paperwork, including a report penned in 1990, which stated the 'active paedophile sex ring' may have had as many as 80 victims.

It took police several weeks to make arrangements with abuse helplines to field calls from anybody who came forward after the review was announced. With the helplines confirmed, the morning of March 8 was earmarked for the announcement. On March 7, deputy editor Steve Neale and I conducted an hour-long interview with Mr Alston. At just past midnight on March 8, we broke the story online. That week, we ran it across pages one, three, four and five of the paper.

The initial wider media interest has since dissipated but we continue to run weekly updates and revelations, including details of the 1990 report into the 'sex ring' and the original convictions, the emergence of a fourth whistleblower, tracked down by the Yellow Advertiser, and the fact that evidence and court records from the original prosecutions appear to be missing. We have plenty more ready to go and, with Essex Police's and our own investigations ongoing, this is a story which will run and run.

As for why we continue to pursue this issue when the wider interest has apparently fizzled out, this quote from Nick Alston probably sums it up quite well. During our March 7 interview, he told us: "Many of [the alleged victims] have gone on to have very troubled lives, and that, for me, is one of the great sadnesses in all of this - if there was a missed opportunity to provide safeguarding which might have helped. So there is an opportunity here to see whether any of those people are perhaps prepared to engage again, if not with police then a professional agency, to see whether there's anything, even at this stage, which can be done to help them."

Anybody with information can dial 101 and ask for the Essex Police Child Abuse Investigation Team.

Alternatively, call one of these specialist helplines:

NAPAC - 0808 801 0331.

SERICC (south and west Essex) - 01375 380609.

CARA (mid and north Essex) - 01206 769795.

SoSRC (Southend) - 01702 667590.

National Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse - 0808 800 5000.

Video: Awards Presentation

A short video has been released to me by EDF, sponsor of the Regional Media Awards, of me collecting my award this week.

'Weekly Print Journalist of the Year'

I am very proud and honoured to report that today I was named 'Weekly Print Journalist of the Year' at the Regional Media Awards.

As I reported a few weeks ago, I was nominated for a portfolio of work which included a long-running road safety campaign after the death of a 23-year-old man, and two one-off investigative articles.

The first investigative piece revealed that hundreds of teachers accused of sexual abuse had never been reported to police by the education authority, despite dozens of them having the complaints upheld and receiving professional sanctions. I obtained the data by taking legal action against the Government.

The second told how a Government Jobcentre had unwittingly signed up an escaped life sentence prisoner, fleeing a jail term imposed for a brutal attack with an iron bar, and sent him to work for a local company. Despite using a known alias, his identity was only discovered when he threatened to murder his new boss over a pay dispute, at which his boss Googled his name and discovered him on a Crimestoppers 'Most Wanted' list. Jobcentre staff then refused to give police the dangerous criminal's address, claiming it was 'personal information'.

I was surprised and humbled to win, and must thank my editor Mick Ferris and my mentor and news editor Steve Neale, as well as the whole team at the Yellow Advertiser and all those who have supported me in my career to date.

Wilko Johnson Interview

Two years ago, rock legend Wilko Johnson had just been told he had 10 months to live. Doctors had diagnosed the Dr Feelgood guitarist with terminal pancreatic cancer. Refusing treatment, which would have scarcely extended his life, he announced a 'farewell tour' and embarked on one of the wildest years of his career, playing to enormous festival crowds and recording an album with The Who front man Roger Daltrey. Comprised of his own material, it was Wilko's biggest hit since his number one album Stupidity with Dr Feelgood in 1976. He never expected to live long enough to see it released.

(Click to enlarge.)

Wilko on stage in 2013. 

Picture by Charles Thomson.

But last week I enjoyed a frank and funny hour-long interview with Wilko, who is still very much alive. More than a year after receiving his bleak diagnosis, when experts started to wonder why he wasn't dead yet, he underwent further tests. On closer inspection, doctors told him his cancer had not been terminal after all - only now, after having left it untreated for over a year, it had grown into a three kilogram, football-sized tumour, which had spread to his spleen and part of his stomach. Last summer he underwent a pioneering, experimental operation. Amazingly, doctors removed every trace of cancer - albeit along with his pancreas, leaving him diabetic - and now Wilko is taking his first tentative steps back into the music industry.

Ahead of a comeback tour and a raft of summer festival dates, Wilko was friendly, candid and extremely funny - as he always is. It was not the first time I have interviewed him. In September 2013 I was the first journalist in the world to reveal he was working on a project with Roger Daltrey. At the time, he was expected to die within weeks.

(Click to enlarge.)

Wilko on stage in 2013.

Picture by Charles Thomson

During our conversation, we covered everything from how he writes songs to his nerves about returning to the stage after the longest absence of his adult life. We discussed his time in hospital, including how the mind-altering after-effects of the massive dose of anaesthetic needed for his 12-hour operation led him to stage a dangerous, if amusing, escape attempt when he woke up. Along the way we also discussed his charitable efforts for the hospital which saved his life, and why he isn't angry at the doctors who wrongly told him he was terminally ill.

Wilko also revealed that he is the subject of a new documentary, directed by Julien Temple, who has made music videos for Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston and Davie Bowie. Temple also directed Oil City Confidential, the hugely popular documentary about the origins of Dr Feelgood.

Oil City Confidential Trailer.

It was wonderful to find Wilko on such good form. The last time I spoke to him, 'knowing' - so we all thought - that he'd be dead by Christmas, was extremely sad, not least because he's such a friendly, funny and vibrant man. I look forward to catching one of his comeback concerts.

To listen to the extended interview, including all the bits that simply did not fit in the newspaper, click here. 

To read my interview feature with Wilko, click here. 

To read about the new documentary, click here. 

Awards Nominations

A short note to say I am extremely flattered and grateful to have been nominated for two Regional Media Awards.

I have been nominated for 'Print Journalist of the Year' on a weekly newspaper, and a road safety campaign I ran following the death of a young musician has been shortlisted for 'Community Campaign of the Year'.

Among the articles for which my 'Print Journalist' nomination was awarded were two investigative pieces and one campaigning piece about the above road death.

The first investigative piece was the revelation that hundreds of teachers accused of sexual abuse had never been reported to police by the education authority, despite dozens of them having the complaints upheld and receiving professional sanctions.

The second told how a Government Jobcentre had unwittingly signed up an escaped con, fleeing a life sentence for a brutal attack with an iron bar, and sent him to work for a local company. Despite using a known alias, his identity was only discovered when he threatened to murder his new boss over a pay dispute, at which his boss Googled his name and discovered him on a Crimestoppers 'Most Wanted' list. Jobcentre staff then refused to give police the dangerous criminal's address, claiming it was 'personal information'.

I will find out whether I have won at a ceremony in late February, although just to be nominated is very rewarding, as the shortlist is selected by a panel of experienced journalists.

'Play Virtual, Live Real'; The Murder of Breck Bednar

This week I covered the court case of Lewis Daynes, who was convicted of murdering 14-year-old schoolboy Breck Bednar. This was one of the most harrowing cases I have ever sat in. Some of the details were so distressing they could not be included in my newspaper coverage.

I will upload the full text of my five-page special report as soon as I am able. As far as I can ascertain, this is the most in-depth report which has been filed from the courtroom.

Click the below images, of the report as it appeared in the newspaper, to enlarge. 

The Lost Interview

In September 2010 I received an email from an aspiring writer called Danielle, asking me to take part in a Q&A about journalism ethics and practices. My heavy work load meant that I didn't complete the interview - carried out via correspondence - until June 2011. By that point Danielle was busy with her own journalism degree and publication was delayed a couple of times. Until tonight, I had forgotten about it.

But I just received an email from Danielle to tell me that at long last - almost 18 months after it was completed - our interview has gone live. Looking over it, I had forgotten how much depth I went into for some of the questions - they are like essays on particular areas of journalism ethics.

Amongst many other issues, I talk to her about why objectivity in journalism is actually often a bad thing, the institutional problems which can lead to farcical reporting and the journalists inspired me - and still inspire me - to do what I do.

Click here to read our interview. 

Meeting Michael Bush

Tonight was the official press launch of 'The Collection of Tompkins and Bush: Michael Jackson Wardrobe'. The exhibition - which will run at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, London, until early next month - features an array of iconic outfits from all of Jackson's world tours as well as his music videos and other public appearances. Each of the costumes on display was designed by Michael Jackson's costume designers of 25 years - Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush.

This evening I had the great honour of being the first journalist in Britain to be taken on a tour of the exhibition. My tour guide? Michael Bush.

The press launch officially began at 5.30 this evening, but I met Mr Bush outside at 5pm, where I chatted to him for about 15 minutes while we waited for the lights inside the gallery to be switched on. When everything was up and running we continued our interview inside as he led me around his favourite exhibits.

The exhibition, which coincides with the imminent publication of Mr Bush's book 'The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson', is definitely an exercise in quality over quantity. The space isn't enormous, but it is teeming with historic designs. You will see the suit Michael Jackson wore for the Smooth Criminal short film. The outfit he wore in the Scream music video. The patented shoes he invented with Bush and Tompkins so he could lean forward 45 degrees live on-stage. The outfit he wore during his 1993 Superbowl performance. The costume he used to open his Bad World Tour. And a whole lot more.

Michael Jackson's Bad Tour costume. Click to enlarge. Photo property of Charles Thomson.

The collection is not complete. Some items displayed at previous incarnations of the exhibition are nowhere to be seen in London. They include Jackson's gold costume from the HIStory World Tour, the suit he wore in 2002 for his last ever live performance in front of an audience and the jacket he wore in his Leave Me Alone music video. Also missing are various signed sketches demonstrating Jackson's involvement in the design process.

This could be because the collection has been split. According to the tour schedule, it opens in Tokyo before it closes in London - so it follows that the missing items are probably on their way to Japan. That said, I've been told that some items will be switched over on October 14th to change things up, so perhaps these missing items will manifest themselves then.

After Tokyo, the collection will go on display in Los Angeles. Then, across three days in November and December, the items will be auctioned off. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity. Mr Bush explained to me his decision to sell off the items in our interview, which will be published next week.

Our discussion ranged from how certain costumes were conceived and created to why Michael Jackson took such a long break from touring between 1997 and 2009. Mr Bush also spoke to me about his work on This Is It in the months before Jackson passed away and, at one point, became choked up as he explained how the death of his partner Dennis Tompkins last December reaffirmed his decision to write the book and take the costumes around the world.

As soon as the interview is published, I will post it here.

Charles Thomson and Michael Bush pose in front of two of Michael Jackson's Bad Tour jackets. Click to enlarge. Photo property of Charles Thomson.

'When Are We Going To Start Being Disobedient?'

A few weeks ago I went to a couple of events at the London Literature Festival. The first was an evening with legendary investigative journalist John Pilger, whose work I have admired ever since I had to write an essay about him when I was studying for my journalism degree.

Pilger's career is now in its sixth decade. His documentary films are some of the most celebrated and respected in all 20th and 21st century journalism. His work on the forgotten victims of the Thalidomide scandal helped secure government compensation for several sufferers who had previously been denied any financial aid. As a war correspondent he has consistently revealed the stories we are never told about our troops' activities in far-flung lands and the devastation they leave behind.

In later years his focus shifted slightly from the atrocities themselves to the media's often biased or simply non-existent coverage of them. Not one to rest on his laurels, he continues to ruffle government feathers. His latest film 'The War You Don't See' - all about the so-called war on terrorism - was banned in the USA.

He appeared on-stage at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall in conversation with BBC's Robin Denselow. Topics ranged from government censorship to the pointlessness of twitter to the 'heroic' Julian Assange. I wrote a report about the event for the Yellow Advertiser, which I'm now uploading here:

‘When are we going to start being disobedient?’ asks John Pilger

(Written: Sat 14th July 2012)

Picture courtesy of Southbank Centre press office. Photographer: Garaint Lewis.

“The institution of so-called mainstream journalism lets people down,” John Pilger said bluntly at the London Literature Festival this week.

For six decades, Pilger’s books, articles and films have revealed the atrocities committed in distant lands by Western governments and the media’s apparent willingness to cover them up.

His most recent film, 2010’s The War You Don’t See, examined Western reporting on the ‘war on terror’ and what the media doesn’t tell us about our troops’ activities.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was banned in America.

Interviewed by the BBC’s Robin Denselow before a sold-out audience at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Pilger said the media is obsessed with immediacy and bombards us with the ephemeral.

“I think we have two goals” he said of the media’s role in society. “One is to do as best we can to try and find out what the hell is going on: ie. Truth.

“Two, I think our job is to call those in charge of so much of our lives to account – and we don’t.”

Part of the problem is the ‘cosy relationship’ between journalists and politicians, he argued – and this stems from budding reporters being taught to seek information from official sources.

“It’s certainly something that those who teach journalists should think about,” he said. “Even the academic side to journalism perpetuates this idea that there is simply a narrow form of journalism and that the main source for journalism comes from above, not from below.

“I think too many young journalists believe that they’re sort of ordained as journalists if they take on a kind of fake impartiality and a skepticism about their readers, viewers and listeners – instead of a skepticism about authority.”

Pilger said this mindset was obvious in the coverage of the Iraq War.

He complained that almost all media outlets had wound up perpetuating the ‘demonstrably made-up’ story about the existence of WMDS because they had fallen into the common journalistic trap of seeking information from ‘authoritative’ sources.

“I think truth is much more important than running the voice of authority,” he said. “It will be an imperfect journey, but getting somewhere near what might be the truth is what it really ought to be about. Not getting the voice of authority versus the opposing voice and calling that impartiality.”

BBC man Robin Denselow attracted Pilger’s ire by suggested that the expensiveness of investigative journalism is a complicating factor.

“Investigations don’t cost a fraction of, say, the Human Resources staff at the BBC,” Pilger retorted, “and the scandal of the management of the BBC and their Bob Diamond impulses. That should all be going into investigative journalism.”

A ‘seismic shift’ is needed in journalism, Pilger continued: “We need a fifth estate – not a fourth estate anymore – in which we stop thinking that journalism that is beholden to the State or to the Corporate State is independent. It isn’t. It’s an extension.”

However, Pilger did not offer any suggestion as to how journalists working independently of the State or the Corporate State might fund their investigations.

Julian Assange was about the only media figure to escape Pilger’s wrath.

Describing Assange’s Wikileaks releases as ‘almost heroic’, Pilger accused the media of turning on him.

The backlash came, he said, because Wikileaks illuminated mainstream journalism’s failings.

“It arrived with scoop after scoop after scoop, telling us what we should have been told by investigative journalists and current affairs programmes... That’s one of the reasons, in my view, that Wikileaks caused so much angst and anger amongst mainstream journalists. Because it shamed journalism. It went into areas that journalists had let alone.

“I think what we’ve had is a kind of malevolent Greek chorus about Julian Assange. I think the coverage of Assange is one of the great stains on journalism. You only have to read the truly malign, almost malignant, tweets from well-known journalists. I suppose that’s the value of Twitter, isn’t it? Because out pops what they really want to say.”

Overall, Pilger isn’t especially impressed by social networking sites. Their contribution to journalism, he said, had been ‘utterly exaggerated’.

“Does it help us to make sense of things?” he asked. “I think that’s what’s missing. We’re bombarded by the ephemeral. There’s an avalanche of it.”

Twitter, he said, is just another example of the media’s growing obsession with immediacy – an obsession which breeds homogeny and robs reporting of any real depth or insight.

“I’m so pleased I had nothing to do with the constant voice in your ear when you’re in Baghdad or somewhere else,” he said of his own TV career. “You’re on duty 24 hours a day and you’re being forced to keep something going but there’s no time gap. There’s no time for reflection on what you’ve seen.

“I don’t think that leaves them anywhere to go but to the press conference. To follow where everyone else is going – to cover themselves. You’ve got to cover what the competition is doing.”

For all his complaints about journalism’s current state, Pilger said he wasn’t depressed about its future – because as long as young journalists understand the industry’s problems, they can work around them.

He explained: “The advent of young journalists understanding [the problems], but not giving up on journalism; Learning to navigate their way through systems and challenging systems if that’s possible in these economically strapped times – I think that’s very, very encouraging.”

There is no greater job, he said, than being a reporter.

“I believe very strongly in being a reporter,” he told the crowd, “and being a witness. I think that sense of being a reporter is something that I have always been proud to be – because it’s such a privilege. People allowing you into their homes, trusting you and telling you their stories.”

The event closed with an audience question about the lack of public protest in these turbulent times.

“What has happened to protest?” the audience member asked. “Why are the numbers so low? Where the hell is everyone?”

“I ask that question myself,” Pilger replied. “But it still can happen and it can happen in a mass sense. In those countries where it can’t happen, it does happen – and we should draw inspiration from them.”

He recalled that American activist Howard Zinn once said, "It's not mass civil disobedience that is the problem. It's mass civil obedience."

Before the lights went up, Pilger asked the audience: "When are we going to start being disobedient?"

Charles Thomson and John Pilger at the London Literature Festival.

An edited audio recording of John Pilger in conversation is available for download on the London Literature Festival website.

Jermaine Jackson: Audio Extracts

I will be posting a few audio extracts from my interview with Jermaine Jackson over the coming days. Some will be of segments which were included in the final article, some will be outtakes which had to be cut to keep the word limit down.

I will post blog updates each time a new clip is uploaded. I will also alert readers via my Twitter page and my Facebook page.

Here is the first clip, in which Jermaine discusses media manipulation, the famous 'pyjama day' during his brother's 2005 trial, what Michael would think of his children's increasingly public profile and Jermaine's thoughts on the controversial Cardiff tribute concert.

Jermaine Jackson: An Update

Regular readers will remember that back in October I posted about the first installment of my Jermaine Jackson interview being published on the Huffington Post. I said that when the next installment went live, I'd blog again. The next installment never went live and so I never published a follow-up blog.

This was because of a peculiarity at the Huffington Post. They published part one without question but, after taking more than a week to process part two, emailed to tell me that they had decided not to run it. They gave no explanation and when I emailed them to ask for one, I never received a reply.

About a week later, a fellow Huffington Post blogger attempted to upload a piece about Michael Jackson and got the same response. It took ages to process and was then rejected. When they asked why, they too received no reply.

I have no idea why those decisions were taken, or whether there were anymore. Maybe the editors just had an influx of blogs all uploaded at the time. Maybe they felt the site was too saturated with Jackson-related content given that Conrad Murray's trial was generating daily headlines at the time. Still, though, it wouldn't have hurt to tap out a one or two line email explaining that. Perhaps it was none of the above. Perhaps other forces were at work. In all likelihood, we'll never know.

I sat on the Jermaine interview for several months until my friend Roman emailed me about a new publication he'd launched - The Orchard Times. I offered him the Jermaine piece and he jumped on it.

The delay had its up-sides. Since its AOL takeover, the Huffington Post has introduced a slightly maddening word limit on each entry, which meant I had to chop the interview up into several themed chunks. At the Orchard Times, I was able to post it as a single, flowing piece.

The other up-side was that I got to publish the piece after the Conrad Murray trial. Before the trial, a lot of what Jermaine said about This Is It rehearsals would have been considered insane by many readers, but testimony during the trial vindicated a lot of his words. I have added a post-script which places Jermaine's comments about This Is It in the context of what was revealed during the trial.

Today marks five months to the day since the interview took place. It's a relief to finally see it online. I hope you all enjoy it.

CLICK HERE to read the interview at The Orchard Times

VIDEO: James Brown Press Conference 2006

Having successfully ripped my Sky News appearance from a DVD and uploaded it to the YouTube, I was inspired to pluck another clip from my archive and stick that online for your enjoyment too.

Back in October 2006 I had just begun my journalism degree. I had been a James Brown fan throughout my teens and had seen him live three times. When I found out he was coming to the UK for a BBC concert, I decided to use my new 'student journalist' credentials to apply for an interview.

Most press officers would have simply ignored my email but Adam Dewhurst, who was looking after James Brown during his London trip, was kind enough to reply. He told me that Mr Brown wasn't doing any interviews while he was in the capital but that he was giving a press conference at Camden's Roundhouse a few hours before his concert there. If I wanted to go, he said, he'd put me on the list.

And so it came to be that on October 27th 2006 I found myself sitting in a small room upstairs at the Roundhouse - one of only two non-BBC journalists to be invited - waiting for an audience with my hero: the Godfather of Soul.

Mr Brown was late. I didn't much care. It gave my nerves time to settle. I was green; I'd never been to a press conference before; talk about a baptism of fire.

The other journalists seemed unphased - some actually seemed to view the press conference as an unwanted distraction from their other work. I couldn't understand it. How many people can say they've had the opportunity to pick the brain of the most influential musician of the last century? But their nonchalance subsided as soon as somebody whispered, "He's coming! He's coming!" There was a stunned silence.

Author Jonathan Lethem once wrote of James Brown:

"It is not merely that attention quickens in any room this human being inhabits. The phenomenon is more akin to a kind of grade-school physics experiment: Lines of force are suddenly visible in the air, rearranged, oriented. The band, the hangers-on, the very oxygen, every trace particle is charged in its relation to the gravitational field of James Brown...

"I'm also struck by the almost extraterrestrial quality of otherness incarnated in this human being... He's in his midseventies, yet, encountering him now in person, it occurs to me that James Brown is kept under wraps for so long at the outset of his own show, and is viewed primarily at a distance, or mediated through recordings or films, in order to buffer the unprepared spectator from the awesome strangeness and intensity of his person. He simply has more energy, is vibrating at a different rate, than anyone I've ever met, young or old. With every preparation I've made, he's still terrifying."

The description is an accurate one. A room full of cynical journalists, bemoaning James Brown's lateness and its impact on their deadlines, fell into a deferential hush as soon as he came into view down the corridor.

Mr Brown was in pain throughout his trip to the UK. In an article titled 'Jawedfather of Soul; James Brown ignores dental op agony at Scots gig', Glasgow's Daily Record reported that Brown had undergone dental implant surgery just days before flying to the UK and was "in so much pain he had to avoid talking and rinse his mouth with salt water just hours before going on stage."

Brown's cheeks looked sunken - the teeth he had in didn't fit properly. They were holding the fort until his final set were finished and inserted. It was when Brown attended a dental appointment two months later to have the final set put in that he was told he was too ill for surgery and sent to hospital with pneumonia, where he died shortly afterwards.

His voice was hushed, his speech difficult to decipher. It's not obvious in the below clip how quiet his voice was because he was speaking directly into a BBC microphone, but at 1m18s you'll notice a significant change in audio quality. This was because reporters were complaining that they couldn't hear Mr Brown's answers to their questions, so a door was closed.

The press conference was roughly fifteen minutes long, in which time Mr Brown discussed what to expect from his concert that night, the need to get children interested in playing instruments again and the negative impact that violent hip-hop imagery has on young people and on society in general.

Being as green as I was, I was too timid to shout my way through the other reporters and ask a question, so Mr Dewhurst kindly offered me the floor. I took the opportunity to ask Mr Brown about the album I knew he'd been working on, then known to fans as 'World Against The Grain' (it later turned out to be 'World Funk Against The Grain'). I got an answer I didn't expect.

During his lengthy response, Mr Brown spoke about the new track 'Gutbucket', in which he blasted hip-hop artists for their violent and misogynistic lyrics. This led to a discussion about the degradation of the music industry. Finally, though, he made some troubling comments. "Somebody's gonna have to die before we get that out," he muttered about the album. "I won't say much more than that."

He concluded, "We would love to get that out, but we need help." As he said the word 'help', his voice cracked - perhaps through emotion, perhaps because he was battling intense oral pain. Either way, to hear the notoriously proud James Brown publicly stating that he needed help was bizarre; as somewhat of a James Brown archivist, it is the only occasion I'm aware of on which Brown has ever publicly exhibited anything approaching weakness.

The comments prompted an uncomfortable silence and Mr Brown's personal manager, Charles Bobbit, leaned apologetically into the assorted microphones and said, "You should get that some time next year."

"I remember that press conference," Mr Bobbit would later tell me. "It was as if he had a premonition. I guess it came true, huh?"

Mr Brown's comments that night divide those who surrounded him. Some believe that those in charge of Brown's estate never intended the album to be released while he was alive and that his death was suspicious.

According to family sources, when Mr Brown's son-in-law told the National Enquirer he believed Brown had been murdered, he was shot dead days later and $500 was found in his pockets, ruling out robbery as a motive. Another family member told me last year that when they started asking questions, they were told, "that I could go missing and that there are a lot of swamps in Georgia."

Others, though, say the album simply wasn't finished and that Brown had a tendency to exaggerate, perhaps amplified on this occasion by pain medication he may have been taking to counter the agony caused by his dental surgery.

This month, former trustee of Brown's estate, David Cannon, is due to stand trial on numerous counts of mismanaging the James Brown estate both before and after Brown's death. Perhaps some answers will be provided by those proceedings.

The press conference was shot in full but never aired. The only footage broadcast on TV was the two-minute skit I have included below. My question was included but Mr Brown's answer, unsurprisingly, was not.

I didn't take many notes - I wasn't sure about the etiquette of breaking eye contact with James Brown as he spoke to me, so I maintained eye contact for the duration of his answer and scribbled down what I could when he finished. Those notes have long since been lost.

A few years ago I tried to obtain the unedited footage of the press conference but was told by the BBC that this skit was all they could find.

Although Mr Brown seemed troubled, I remain grateful to Mr Dewhurst for inviting me to that press conference. As it turned out, I would never have had another chance to speak to Mr Brown. He died less than two months later, on Christmas Day 2006.

My encounter with James Brown prompted my research into his final album, which produced my Guardian Award-winning article, 'James Brown: The Lost Album'. James Brown book-ended my career as a student journalist. In my first month of studies, I attended that press conference. Just over three years later, shortly after I graduated, I was handed my Guardian Award.

Though this footage is brief, and my own on-screen appearance amounts to about two seconds, this is a video I will treasure forever - and I'm glad to finally be able to share it with you all.

More influential than the Beatles; Meet George Clinton

George Clinton onstage at the Indigo2, 2007
Picture: James Newman

"Do a search for the greatest rock bands of all time and you won't see mention of Parliament-Funkadelic. I know that rock critics like to fight over whether the Rolling Stones or the Beatles deserve the number one spot but in my eyes neither of them can hold a candle to what P-Funk brought to the music. As far as I'm concerned, P-Funk rocked harder than all of them combined... It's funny that the greatest rock group is always assumed to be white."André Torres - Editor-in-Chief, Wax Poetics

News of George Clinton's hospitalisation shocked music lovers around the world this week but perhaps none more so than me, for the hospitalisation came just days after I enjoyed a 75-minute interview with George, during which he seemed to be perfectly fine.

Alarm bells sounded among funk fans after Bootsy Collins reported the news on his facebook page and asked his followers to pray for George Clinton's recovery. Fortunately the hospitalisation wasn't too serious - a staph infection was discovered in George's leg as he underwent a routine check-up. He's already checked out and is now busy preparing to embark on yet another international concert tour.

The level of media interest was surprising given that George Clinton is one of the most unsung music pioneers still walking among us. Fusing the hard funk of James Brown with the psychedelic edge of Sly and the Family Stone and the blistering rock of Jimi Hendrix, George and his group Parliament-Funkadelic cultivated a groundbreaking sound.

According to Rolling Stone their output, which "[mixed] funk polyrhythms, psychedelic guitar, jazzy horns [and] vocal-group harmonies" was "some of pop's most adventurous music of the Seventies." Their unique sound ultimately laid the foundations for much of the hip-hop that now dominates the musical landscape.

Despite achieving three platinum albums, Parliament-Funkadelic never quite reached chart blockbuster status. Nonetheless, their danceable beats and affirmative lyrics resonated with a huge audience and today they're considered one of the most influential groups of the last century.

Flourishing in the early 1970s, P-Funk's music was often laced with political commentary but delivered it in a far less divisive way than 1960s protest songs like James Brown's 'Say It Loud, I'm Black And I'm Proud'. Instead the tunes often focused on music as a uniting factor. P-Funk sang of 'One Nation Under A Groove'. Music could make barriers melt away into insignificance; 'Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow' read their 1970 album cover.

Even the compositions were about unity. When Bootsy Collins migrated to P-Funk from James Brown's revue he brought with him the concept of 'the one': the one-and-three beat Brown popularised during the 1960s and early 1970s. "When everybody's playing it in unison instead of harmony, it's as one," George said in 2010. "That's strong... It's in unison so it's like it'll be around forever. It's in your genes... Then we're all together as one... The entity of one as a life form - as life. One DNA. I'm for you, you for me. We for trees and we for the planet."

In a stroke of genius, Clinton devised a distinct, space-age image with which the band's music became synonymous. Dressed in otherworldly costumes and starring in comic strips on their album artwork, the group presented themselves as a band of black superheroes - an empowering and cutting edge move so far ahead of its time, in fact, that we're now halfway into 2011 and there's still never been a major movie about a black superhero (bar Hancock, in which the black superhero was an inept drunkard).

By fusing searing social commentary with radio-friendly grooves and comic book imagery, Clinton and his band were able to rail against social ills in a non-threatening way. Clinton's ideology crept past the same DJs who dropped James Brown from their playlists when he released 'Say It Loud'. 'Cosmic Slop' became a club smash, filling dancefloors all over America, despite telling the story of a woman who becomes a prostitute to feed her children.

Combining their pioneering funk-rock fusion and their distinctive visual presentation, P-Funk enjoyed enormous success as a touring act, selling out stadiums throughout the 1970s with an elaborate concert experience in which Clinton would descend in a million-dollar spaceship to bestow the gift of funk upon his audience. That spaceship - the mothership - has now been acquired by the Smithsonian.

Often dismissed as clownish figures at the height of their fame, in more recent years George Clinton and P-Funk have been acknowledged as some of the most respected and influential musicians of all time. From Prince to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (who recruited George in 1985 to produce and write for their album 'Freaky Styley') a lot of the biggest acts to have emerged since the early 1980s have cited P-Funk as one of their greatest influences. In 1997 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2009 George was handed the BMI Icon Award.

P-Funk's influence on several generations of hip-hop musicians is self-evident in the number of times their music has been sampled, which runs into the thousands. In fact, P-Funk are thought to be the second most sampled act of all time, beaten only by James Brown. Academic Vladimir Gutkovich has described them as "the key predecessor of hip-hop music."

Indeed, there is a very strong argument to be made that George and P-Funk have had more impact on the contemporary musical landscape than even the Beatles. Wax Poetics editor André Torres wrote in 2006:

"While most critics want to put the holy trinity [Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin] on a pedestal, with the world domination of hip-hop culture and the large role that P-Funk has played in the sound of hip-hop, I dare say that P-Funk's impact can be felt much more strongly thirty years later than that of those three bands. When I asked Dr Dre, the quintessential post-modern producer who has changed the course of pop music three times in two decades, who he listened to growing up and was his biggest influence, he said P-Funk. Not the Beatles."

Presently, though, George is troubled. While his pioneering music continues to form the basis for so much contemporary output, he's getting the props but he's not getting the cash. Like many black musicians of his era, he was hoodwinked by the very music industry figures who were supposed to be looking out for his best interests.

George's financial problems began in the 1980s and have continued on-and-off ever since. In 2005 a court ruled that a man called Armen Boladian had forged George's signature on numerous documents in order to falsely assert ownership of some of George's masters. The masters in question were returned to George but Boladian still controls much of the P-Funk catalogue and George contests his ownership of those masters too.

George's investigations into the corporate skullduggery around him and his music have turned up what could be one of the biggest known conspiracies in the history of the music business. His losses over the last 25 years or so could total as much as $100million. Just one sample can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and George is one of the most sampled artists in music history. For more than two decades artists have been paying for the rights to sample his work and that money has been landing straight into other people's bank accounts. But the injustice doesn't even end there.

His albums hop labels when he's not looking. At an album signing a few years ago a fan handed him a CD he'd released on Sony and he noticed that instead of saying 'Sony' on the artwork, it said 'Westbound'. He'd never sanctioned nor profited from this apparent re-release. Somebody else was getting paid for it. There's more, too.

Type George's name into iTunes and you'll notice that a lot of his tracks show up as having been written by 'George S. Clinton'. That's not George Clinton. Every time you buy one of those tracks, somebody else gets paid for it.

During a recent trip to the US Copyright Office, arranged by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, George discovered documents showing that his songs had been repeatedly re-registered without his knowledge or permission, with original songwriters missing and new songwriters added.

Deceased P-Funk members' catalogues had been re-registered as though they were still alive, years after they passed away. At one point somebody went to NYC to re-register George's entire catalogue in one hit. George has even obtained a signed declaration from a man who says he was paid thousands of dollars to pretend he'd written some of George's material.

George's legal disputes are ongoing with no resolution in sight. The scale of the battle facing George is almost beyond comprehension. It could take years to unpick - meanwhile, other people continue to profit from his record sales and samples.

Outside of this troubling issue, though, George remains upbeat. At 69-years-old, he is appalled by the mere mention of retirement. He plays roughly 200 gigs every year and is horrified by the idea of stopping. He loves gigging and the proceeds allow him to pursue his often overlooked humanitarian efforts. Just last year he was involved in fundraising efforts for Haiti and donated 25% of all future P-Funk royalties to the Barrack Obama Green Charter High School in his home town of Plainfield, New Jersey.

During our interview we also covered more emotional topics. In the last year and a half he has lost his son and his mother, as well as P-Funk bandmates Garry Shider and Phelps 'Catfish' Collins. He told me how getting onstage 200 nights a year and spreading his positive message helps him to cope with the loss. He also spoke candidly about the aging process, his periods of drug abuse and checking into rehab with Sly Stone, with whom he's recently been in the studio working on new music.

There was more positive chat, too, including discussion of a planned Motown album and a flash drive in the shape of George's hand, the finger of which will plug into your home computer giving access to almost every track the group has ever recorded, including demos and live recordings.

Despite this week's health scare, George is still very much alive and kicking. He works constantly in the studio down the street from his home and is about to embark on a grueling concert tour around America and Europe. These aren't rigid, untaxing oldies gigs either. P-Funk gigs are perhaps the best value for money around. George and the band routinely play for three hours or more and the shows often consist of long improvisations. No two gigs are the same.

In the background George is relentlessly pursuing years of unpaid royalties for himself and his P-Funk collaborators as well as restored ownership of his masters. He also intends to start a legal fund for artists facing similar copyright problems and has agreed to give lessons at the Barrack Obama Green Charter High School, teaching music students how to avoid getting ripped off in the same way. So fear not, funkateers - it's going to take a lot more than a staph infection to slow him down.

For news on the publication of my interview with George Clinton, keep an eye on my blog. For details of George's upcoming gigs, click here.

(Click to enlarge)
Charles Thomson and George Clinton at the Indigo2, 2007
Picture: James Newman

Radio Silence

It's been more than eight weeks since I last blogged and this is only my fourth entry since January. The reason is that I've thrown myself into my work of late - albeit a different type of work to what many of you are familiar with.

For the last five months I've been spending, on average, between three and five days per week at my local courthouse. During this time I've witnessed pretty much every stage of the legal process - arraignments, trials, sentences, appeals and more. The trials I've sat through have encompassed everything from rape to child molestation, domestic violence to perverting the course of justice, indecent exposure to actual bodily harm.

The idea came to me during dinner with a friend who is ensconced in his exams to become a barrister. As part of his course he'd spent a period of time shadowing a judge at the local courthouse and was telling me about the interesting cases he'd witnessed.

It occurred to me that the courthouse was potentially an untapped source of local and national news stories; who knew what was going on inside that building? I certainly wasn't reading anything about any of the cases my friend had observed in either the local or the national press. I decided that if nobody else was going to write about them, I'd give it a shot.

Often fascinating and occasionally disturbing, the past five months have been revelatory, to say the least. I've embarked on an exploration not only of the court system and its workings but also the courts' relationship with the media and, sadly, the media's failings which it comes to reporting on our justice system.

I've seen prosecutors force defendants to stand trial on the flimsiest of evidence and not be held to account for their arrogance. I've seen judges let off paedophiles with minor sentences when their offences could easily have merited several years behind bars.

I've seen one person convicted of a crime which I saw no evidence that they'd committed. I also witnessed 'churnalism' in action when a news agency journalist showed up for twenty minutes of a three week trial and then had their story circulated internationally.

The first trial I sat through was a fascinating introduction. A local man stood accused of domestic violence resulting in actual bodily harm to his then pregnant girlfriend. Giving evidence for the prosecution, the claimant sobbed repeatedly as she claimed that the defendant had attacked her and attempted to kill her unborn baby. But as she underwent cross-examination it became clear that her claims just didn't stack up.

Photographs of her injuries didn't tally with her description of the alleged assault. She claimed to have had her head smashed repeatedly against a wall and a door, as well as receiving numerous blows to the head and face from the defendant's fists. She even said that the defendant had bitten her hard on the cheek - but police photographs showed only two or three small marks on her face; no large bruises, no cuts and no bite marks.

Her version of events changed repeatedly between her police interview, a deposition she gave in order to prevent the defendant from visiting his child and then her courtroom testimony during his trial. On the stand she seemed to strategically omit certain claims she'd earlier made to police, which she knew were unsupported by any evidence.

These included a claim that the defendant had torn her nipple during the alleged assault and her shirt had been 'covered in blood'. The nipple injury was neither noted nor photographed by police and the bloodied shirt was nowhere to be found, even though she'd gone to the police within hours of the attack having supposedly taken place.

Her allegations were further undermined when a police officer took the stand and testified that the defendant had been helpful in his police interview and his story, unlike the claimant's, had remained consistent. He had not only waved his right to remain silent but also his right to a lawyer, telling police he'd done nothing wrong so he didn't need one. He even volunteered his mobile phone to officers for analysis and police found that the confused text messages he'd sent the claimant tallied with his claim that he didn't know why she'd disappeared with all her stuff that morning.

Significantly, the police officer noted upon the defendant's arrest, less than 24 hours after the alleged incident, that he had no cuts, bruises or markings to his fists or any other part of his body.

Two defence witnesses testified that the claimant had a history of self-harming and could have self-inflicted the handful of injuries she actually exhibited when she contacted police. Both testified that the claimant had told them she'd previously spent time in the Priory Clinic receiving treatment for drugs, alcohol and self-harm issues.

Attempts to obtain the claimant's Priory records were derailed when the clinic informed police that they'd recently switched to a new computer filing system and couldn't look far back enough to check whether she'd been a patient before the alleged attack. It emerged, though, that she had been treated for self-harm issues at the Priory after the alleged incident.

Further doubt was shed on the claimant's version of events when a defence witness testified that she'd seen the claimant on the morning after the alleged attack but before she went to police. The witness testified that the claimant's hair had been tied back that morning and she hadn't displayed any visible injuries.

The defendant's belief, he said on the stand, was that his girlfriend had decided that she didn't want to be in a relationship with him anymore but knew that the child would ensure his continued presence in her life. Her solution, he posited, was to fabricate the assault because it allowed her to obtain a court order preventing him from seeing his child and therefore from seeing her. In the months since she'd left, his child had been born and he had no idea what it was called or even what sex it was or whether it was healthy.

A jury of six men and six women took roughly one hour to acquit the defendant on the third day of his trial - but he was less concerned with the verdict than he was with the health of his 80-year-old grandmother, who was in hospital after crashing her car that morning on her way to court to support him; a journey she'd never have embarked on if the borderline deranged prosecution hadn't gone forward in the first place.

I was relieved to see the defendant acquitted because the doubt in that case was beyond reasonable. At the very least, the claimant appeared to have fabricated aspects of the alleged assault but some evidence, such as the defendant's lack of injuries, strongly suggested that the incident was simply the product of her imagination.

It could easily have gone the other way, though. Some crimes - particularly crimes against women and children - are emotive. You have only to mention them and the jury is already horrified. All it takes is a good prosecutor (or a bad defender) or even for the jury to simply look the defendant up and down and decide that he looks like the type - and things can go awry.

During my first few weeks at the courthouse I realised that I was, generally, the only journalist in the building. If I hadn't been sitting in that courtroom and the verdict had gone the other way, nobody would have known that a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Moreover, there are five courtrooms at my local courthouse so for every trial I watched, up to four more were potentially going ahead with nobody present to keep an eye on proceedings.

My next trial showed me that even when journalists do show up to watch a trial, they're not necessarily fulfilling their role properly. The defendant was Emma Smiter, a former Police Community Support Officer who stood accused of leaking sensitive information, including the name of a sex assault victim, to a journalist and then perverting the course of justice.

Smiter's first trial for misconduct in a public office had begun in 2010 but was disbanded after documents she produced as part of her defence - namely two blogs which she claimed were the source of her information, as opposed to police computers - were found to have been faked.

A subsequent investigation found that the blogs had been created just days before her trial began but were backdated to the time of the leaks, and that they'd been created on a computer in Smiter's home under a user profile called 'Emma'. She was charged with perverting the course of justice and her trial was rescheduled for late February 2011. She was convicted on March 16th and sentenced in April to twelve months in jail, of which she will serve six.

I sat in the courtroom for almost the entirety of that trial, missing only the first day or two because I was watching another case down the corridor. For the overwhelming majority of the trial, I was the only journalist in the courtroom.

I was the only journalist to sit through Smiter's testimony from beginning to end. I was the only journalist to witness the key testimony of her father, a senior police officer. I was the only journalist to sit through the closing speeches and the judge's summing up. But despite having sat through more of the trial than any other journalist and despite the national interest in the trial, I couldn't sell a story on it. Why? Because I was scooped by a news agency who scarcely attended any of the proceedings.

The news agency was present for perhaps three days out of the three week trial, covering the opening of the prosecution case and the opening of the defence case but none of the evidence. By the time the verdict was handed down on March 16th the news agency hadn't been on the scene for roughly a week. However, when the case was called for verdict, a journalist from the organisation - who hadn't attended a single other day of the trial - appeared in the courtroom just for the twenty-minute verdict reading. On the way out of the courtroom, she stopped me and asked, "Sorry - do you know what the charges are in this case?"

Despite the fact that this journalist had witnessed a grand total of twenty minutes of Emma Smiter's three week trial and didn't even know what charges Smiter had been convicted on, her copy was syndicated internationally. Meanwhile I, having witnessed the trial almost from beginning to end, couldn't sell a story. Here's why.

Newspapers pay subscription to news agencies or 'wires', whose copy arrives in the newsroom electronically and is technically already bought and paid for, whether they choose to use it or not. In an era of falling circulations, downsizing and dwindling freelance budgets some newspapers, when confronted with a choice between detailed freelance copy or superficial wire copy, will choose the wire copy for budgetary reasons. Why buy a freelancer's version of the story when you've already paid for the wire copy?

The wire copy didn't do the trial justice. The case was fascinating and the news agency didn't have even 10% of the information I had. I even had an exclusive post-trial briefing with the head of Hertfordshire Constabulary's Anti-Corruption Department. None of it got published.

In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies discusses in detail how freelance reporters have suffered as a direct consequence of the increasing corporate ownership of newspapers. The knock-on effect has been that the quality of journalism has suffered, particularly the coverage of Britain's court network.

Just twenty years ago, most courthouses in the country would have had a reporter in them most days filing copy with news agencies and newspapers. Now entire regions are covered by just one or two freelancers dividing their time between dozens of courthouses.

This is alarming. It is absolutely vital that our courts operate openly and transparently. That's why members of the public can walk in off of the street and sit in on almost any trial in any courthouse in the country. Scrutiny is supposed to keep prosecutors and judges in check but with nobody documenting what's going on inside our courthouses, innocent people could be convicted on a daily basis and we'd never know anything about it.

In the past few months I've seen prosecutors pursue cases which were flimsy to the point of being farcical. Prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to just pursue anybody they like by virtue of their status. Every person is innocent until proven guilty but I've seen prosecutors put people on trial with literally no compelling evidence of their guilt - and in one of those trials, they won (more on that shortly).

I've seen judges get away with some pretty bizarre behavior too. On two occasions I've had stories published in national newspapers about judges letting off child sex offenders with ridiculously light sentences.

A teacher who downloaded child porn onto a school laptop and then ferried it between school and home got off without even an hour's community service, despite a previous judge recommending custody. Another man with almost 5million child porn images, who described collecting the pictures as his 'hobby', was eligible for more than five years in prison but was sentenced to just thirty months, of which he will serve only fifteen. That story made front page of the local paper.

Click to enlarge

By far the most disturbing experience thus far, though, has been the case of Terence Ruddigan. Mr Ruddigan was 21 years old when a jury at my local courthouse convicted him of seriously assaulting a doorman at a local bar. I believe Mr Ruddigan's conviction was a miscarriage of justice. I sat through his trial from beginning to end and didn't see the prosecutor offer up one piece of evidence or one reliable witness proving Mr Ruddigan's guilt.

Police failed to conduct vital forensic analysis which could have cleared Ruddigan, but the necessary tests were never carried out and no explanation was offered as to why. On grounds of 'hearsay', prosecutors were allowed to cover up evidence in a police officer's statement that a witness had told police Ruddigan wasn't responsible for the altercation, but police failed to take the witness's details or follow up that lead. The jurors never got to hear about that.

The only witnesses who fingered Ruddigan as the attacker all gave completely contradictory versions of events. The only 'eyewitness' whose testimony stood up to scrutiny was the victim, who never saw his attacker.

One witness claimed to have had a conversation with Mr Ruddigan while he was locked in the back of a police car with the window rolled up - a nonsensical claim which Ruddigan legitimately blasted as untrue. Another witness said he had absolutely no recollection of ever attending the identity parade and picking out Ruddigan as the culprit - a bizarre claim that nobody in the court had ever heard from any witness in any previous trial.

The identification evidence itself was tainted. The ID parade was held a full three months after the attack happened and events in the interim seriously called into question its validity. Just days after the assault - before Ruddigan had even been charged with a crime - police attached his mugshot to a 'Behave Or Be Banned' poster and circulated it to all local bars - including the scene of the crime. At that bar, staff were required to observe the poster before work every day and memorise the faces so they knew who to pay attention to during opening hours.

In other words, before attending the ID parade the eyewitnesses spent several minutes every day for three months staring at Mr Ruddigan's face and memorising it as that of a troublemaker. When they eventually attended the ID parade - which was based on pictures rather than a line-up - the mugshot they saw was the same mugshot that appeared on the poster.

Ruddigan took a further blow when it turned out that his previous solicitors had omitted vital information from his defence case statement, which made it appear that he was making up his defence on the spot. It was later shown via legal documents that Ruddigan's testimony had indeed been consistent and the fault was that of his solicitors, but by that time he'd already taken a beating from the prosecutor during cross-examination.

Outside court Ruddigan also told me that his previous solicitor had obtained and showed him CCTV of another person fleeing the bar after the attack, but he had no idea where it was now that he'd hired new counsel.

A predominantly middle-aged/elderly jury took several hours to convict 21-year-old Ruddigan of smashing a glass into the head of the doorman. The conviction was, in my opinion, unjust. Ruddigan was convicted in the absence of any CCTV or physical evidence connecting him to the crime and therefore solely on the highly questionable testimony of several bar staff members whose evidence was at best contradictory and at worst outlandish.

Miss Recorder Hudson, who presided over Ruddigan's trial, seemed aware that the prosecution was a flimsy one. The usual sentence for similar assaults tends to be around eighteen months in prison but when it came to sentencing Terence Ruddigan on April 5th 2011, Hudson commended his 'dignified' manner and gave him a suspended sentence and a community service order.

Nonetheless, this conviction will remain on Mr Ruddigan's police record for life. Moreover, for the next eight years he will be forced to disclose this conviction to prospective employers, which could severely impede his job prospects. But at least Terence Ruddigan was lucky enough to be sentenced by his trial judge. Another judge, not knowing the details of the case, might easily have sent him to jail.

How many Terence Ruddigans passed through my local courthouse before I started attending? How many pass through right under my nose every week while I'm sitting down the corridor in another courtroom? How many pass through our unwatched court system every week because corporate ownership and shrinking circulations are chaining newspaper reporters to their desks and forcing hardworking freelancers out of the industry? How many every year?

It's a genuinely troubling question and one which will hang in the air until corporate newspaper owners see fit to begin reinvesting in good journalism and unshackling reporters from their desks so they can venture out into the world and start fulfilling their most vital function - scrutiny. In a world where prosecutors are publicly embarrassed for pursuing pathetic prosecutions, we'll see a lot less of them.