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12/12/01 - Whiting played the system,
then killed
by Harriet Arkell and John Sturgis
Five years before he killed Sarah Payne, Roy Whiting
carried out an almost identical attack. That time the
victim survived despite suffering appalling abuse. A
psychiatrist who assessed Whiting for the court reported
that he was not a paedophile. Whiting was sentenced
to just four years for the kidnap and abuse of the girl.
On his release less than two and a half years later,
the authorities did nothing to stop him killing Sarah
even though they had been warned he was still dangerous.
Harriet Arkell and John Sturgis report. Technically
he was right ... Dr Anthony Farrington was the medical
expert who six years ago told a judge that Roy Whiting
was not a paedophile.
In 1995 Whiting had grabbed a girl off the street in
Crawley, driven her away and sexually assaulted her.
The case was identical to what was to happen to Sarah
Payne five years later in almost every respect bar one:
his first victim escaped with her life.
When the case went to court, the comments by the psychiatrist
about Whiting not being a paedophile - which was technically
correct under the letter of accepted guidelines at the
time - were relied upon by his barrister as part of
his defence. Whiting received a relatively lenient sentence.
The story, which the Sarah Payne jury was not allowed
to be told about for legal reasons, began at 2pm in
March 1995 in Ifield, the Crawley suburb where Whiting
had his workshop. Three young girls were playing in
the street when a red Ford Sierra drove up and a man
got out. It was Whiting.
He tried to grab all three, ordering them into his car.
Two managed to get away but one, a nineyearold who lived
nearby, did not and was bundled into the back of the
car. Whiting drove off at speed, taking her on an intricate
tour of small country roads. The child tried but failed
to open the back door which had been closed with child
locks.
Then she begged to be told where she was being taken.
Whiting shouted at her to shut up. He said he had a
knife, and made her lie down in the footwell of the
back seat. He drove to a secluded country lane and stopped
the car. He then turned to the girl and told her to
undress. When she refused, he pulled some rope from
his pocket and said he would tie her up if she did not.
In fear, the girl submitted.
She was forced to lie back in the car while Whiting
molested her. Until this point everything was remarkably
similar to what was to befall Sarah. But after he had
abused the girl, he didn't kill her. Instead he told
her to get dressed then asked where she lived. She told
him and he drove to another street close to hers.
He pulled up and opened the car door to let the child
out and sped away. By the time the little girl ran home
to her parents it was nearly 4pm. Her terrifying experience
lasted just under two hours. The police were called.
Local newspapers publicised details of the case, including
the girl's description of Whiting and his car.
The appeal asked the public for help in identifying
the unkempt owner of a red Sierra with a Bart Simpson
sticker in its window. Clive Graham, who ran a car repair
business near Whiting's workshop at Hyders Farm, Ifield,
read the reports and recognised the car. "I just
froze," Mr Graham said.
"I said to my mate, 'Listen to this description
of a car and tell me who owns it'. I read out the details
and the bit about the Bart Simpson sticker. He just
said: 'Roy Whiting'. I phoned the police and they seemed
a bit bored until I mentioned the sticker. Then the
guy on the phone said: 'Don't move', and they were here
in minutes."
Whiting was arrested immediately. He had first removed
the sticker from his car, then sold it, then made an
attempt to change his appearance by cutting and dyeing
his grey hair. Initially, he denied everything. But
in a second police interview he made a full confession,
confirming almost every detail in the little girl's
statement. An apparently contrite Whiting told detectives:
"I don't want the girl to have to come to court.
I don't want to put her through anything more like that
... It's me. I don't want the girl to be brought in.
She don't have to ID me or anything like that."
Before he came up for sentencing, he was referred to
Dr Farrington, who spent two hours interviewing him
before preparing a report. At this point Whiting's cynicism
kicked in. He said he had no idea why he had attacked
the girl. Something just snapped, he said, it was spontaneous.
He managed to conceal the fact that he had a longstanding
sexual attraction to children. Furthermore, he seemed
keen to undergo counselling to help him change his behaviour.
Whiting's sentencing came on 23 June 1995 at Lewes Crown
Court, the court where he would later be tried for murder.
He pleaded guilty to kidnap and indecent assault. But
he denied one of the worst assaults. The Crown Prosecution
Service, acting with the best intentions - the desire
to spare the victim the ordeal of giving evidence -
accepted his guilty plea on this basis.
But by allowing Whiting to deny the worst episode involved,
this "plea bargain" gave his defence a significantly
stronger hand. His lawyer, Philip Marshall, pleaded
for mercy. Central to his case was Dr Farrington's view
that Whiting "was not a paedophile". Mr Marshall
argued therefore that it was unreasonableto sentence
him on the basis that he posed a risk of reoffending,
a point the judge accepted.
His client had made a full and frank confession, Mr
Marshall continued, and he had no previous convictions.
Mr Marshall also apparently alluded to something that
is often used in the defence of paedophiles - that Whiting
had been a victim of abuse himself when he was a boy
of 11 (though he did so in such vague terms that it
remains unclear exactly what, if anything, happened).
"That incident is perhaps indicative of what has
happened now," Mr Marshall said. "He has on
a previous occasion been obliged through a need for
self-defence in a way to draw down a conscious barrier.
He has done that for the last 25 years in respect of
that incident, and to that extent, in my submission,
the relevance of that ... adds to his current inability
to reason through what has happened".
Mr Marshall's words do not sound very eloquent or persuasive
now. But at the time they were apparently persuasive
enough. Judge John Gower QC acknowledged the horror
of the crime - "disgraceful" and "disgusting"
were the words he used - but also accepted most of the
defence's case, saying he was giving Whiting "maximum
possible credit" for having pleaded guilty, adding:
"We sentence you on the basis ... that this offence
was not premeditated."
He sentenced him to four years on each offence, to run
concurrently. The maximum sentence for indecent assault
is 10 years, the maximum for kidnap is life. Whiting
would serve only two years and five months. He was sent
to Elmley Prison in Sheerness, Kent. He lied to fellow
inmates that he was inside for "clocking"
cars. Whiting knew the reception he would get if he
was known as a sex offender.
The promise he made to attend counselling sessions to
change his behaviour was broken. The prison system did
nothing to ensure he honoured it. Despite the popular
view "once a paedophile, always a paedophile",
many experts believe that treatment programmes can be
effective in making at least some offenders recognise
the horror of their crimes and prevent them reoffending.
But while there are about 5,000 sex offenders in jail
at any one time, the Prison Service puts barely 1,000
per year through such programmes. Whiting was released
automatically after serving twothirds of his sentence.
He was not eligible for parole because he showed no
remorse and failed to take part in a treatment programme.
He had carried out virtually the textbook paedophile
crime yet officially he was not a paedophile and a judge
had accepted he was no longer a risk. By pleading guilty
and feigning contrition, he had received a substantially
shorter sentence and his jail time had not been unduly
hard; Whiting had played the system and, to a degree,
had won.
In an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard,
Dr Farrington, 55, who had worked as a visiting consultant
psychiatrist for the Prison Medical Service for 10 years,
said he stood by the conclusion he had drawn in 1995
and felt no guilt. Dr Farrington said: "I don't
want to be vilified but I think that what I said in
that report was right, and I do not feel guilty. It
was the best I could do with the time and the information
I had available to me.
I said Whiting was not a paedophile and I came to that
conclusion with the help of the current psychiatric
definition of paedophilia given in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which was published
the year before I interviewed him. "Essentially
it defines a paedophile as someone who consistently
shows a sexual interest in children, whenever they get
the chance, for at least six months.
That means that a single isolated case, which is what
this was, is not enough to merit a diagnosis of paedophilia.
If you are going to be a psychiatrist you have to be
consistent and go by the rules and this is what they
say. I do not believe that even if I had said he was
a paedophile it would significantly have altered the
sentence."
The DSM manual, which with another document produced
by the World Health Organisation were the basis for
Dr Farrington's conclusions, are internationally recognised
and still widely used in this country. The psychiatrist,
who is now an adviser to the NHS ombudsman, is aware
that his report has put him in line for intense criticism.
But he added: "What people are overlooking is that
in the report I also said there was a relatively high
risk of Whiting reoffending. I said that I was extremely
concerned by the way he had planned the attack - getting
a knife and a rope ready in his van - although he said
he impulsively snatched the girl.
"It was obvious that he had planned to frighten
somebody, with the knife, he had planned to tie somebody
down, with the rope, and afterwards he made great efforts
to change his appearance. All this made me say that
I thought he was likely to reoffend." He added:
"I wasn't impressed by any remorse - more a fear
of being in trouble. Now I just have to hang on to the
fact that I did tell the court about the high risk of
reoffending.
Tragically it looks as if I was right. I wish I had
been wrong. But at least my report will have helped
the police find him after Sarah Payne was abducted.
I stand by my report, which was very carefully worded,
and do not feel guilty about what I wrote. But I do
feel extremely sorry for Sarah Payne's poor parents.
They are the ones who are suffering." Also still
suffering is his first victim and her family. The girl,
now 15, is understood to be still profoundly traumatised.
Her parents are so horrified that they have attended
every day of the trial. Whiting's release from prison
came a few months after the introduction of the sexual
offenders' register which enables the authorities to
monitor sex offenders after their release from prison.
It was heralded as the way forward in protecting children.
It had been introduced because of fears over the threat
posed by people such as Whiting. Although put on the
register for life, Whiting was obliged to see social
workers for only a few months after his release. The
system has since been changed so that sex offenders
can be tied to these meetings for up to 10 years.
In theory the police could have kept him under observation
after his release but the reality of limited police
resources means this was never really a serious option.
The Home Office is actively considering the introduction
of an "indeterminate sentence" for child sex
offenders which would mean they could be held for as
long as they pose a threat - their case would be reviewed
every two years.
The scandal of the Roy Whiting case isn't that the system
lost track of him. In fact, police knew exactly where
he was when they wanted to arrest him. The gnawing problem
is that despite the killer having been identified as
a risk and despite the police being well aware of him,
it was still possible for him to kidnap and murder Sarah
Payne. |
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