The demonisation of Kerelaw: A modern day witch hunt.

In 2004, Glasgow City Council taken the decision to launch a fabricated investigation into false claims of abuse and bullying of staff and pupils. This decision led to the school being closed, hundreds of staff being branded as abusers, and multiple court cases where innocent ex staff members were charged with demonstrably false allegations and found guilty. 

These ex-staff members are innocent, have been subjected to malicious prosecutions, and their convictions are unsafe. 

Now that it's possible to discuss these convictions, and the Kerelaw narrative as a whole, given the enormous amount of information held on these miscarriages of justice, it's been decided the best way to do so, is to write about this matter within a public format. This decision has been made to tell the truth that has been buried under lies, corruption and deception perpetrated by the authorities, and to outline the circumstances and events that have led to this point, giving as full a picture as possible. This initial post will give a quick outline of the circumstances leading to these convictions, and subsequent posts will go into greater detail on the relevant topics. 

In 2004 Glasgow City Council launched a fabricated investigation, claiming to have uncovered bullying and abuse of both staff and pupils. This was false on all counts.  We now know this was launched in order to cover up wrong doing within external management and to close the school. Listed below are some of the more heinous acts that GCC committed against its staff and pupils at that time. 

•  GCC targeted specific staff members with untrue allegations, created an intolerable working environment in which staff were subjected to threats and intimidation, both from members of the investigation team and GCC external management. Any staff member who spoke up and raised concerns regarding the investigation team practices, found themselves subject to multiple allegations. 

•  GCC began leaking information to the press when their investigation began to collapse. 

• GCC external management gathered up all documentation within the school and taken it to an unknown location, after which they claimed the missing documentation had been destroyed by staff within the school as part of a cover up. This lie was repeated extensively by GCC and the police, until it was uncovered in 2018 that the missing documentation was in fact in their possession, within Centenary House and various police stations. This withheld evidence had a detrimental effect on the criminal proceedings of the first trial of two members of staff, helping to convict them, and had wider implications for the other staff members at the school. 

• As part of their “investigation” staff members were interviewed as part of a fact-finding exercise and asked about allegations, other staff and residents. Minutes of these interviews were given to the relevant staff, soon becoming apparent that sections were added, missing or altered by the investigation team in order to suit their narrative, leading to staff refusing to sign these statements and putting in formal complaints. This was confirmed when two staff taken their own recordings and minute takers to their respective fact-finding interviews. When they received the minutes from the investigation team, they bore no resemblance to what had been said, but now had proof this was happening as the investigation team denied this was the case. Also, the investigation team had been using the altered statements to pit staff against each other, and to sow discourse within the school. 

•  Certain members of the investigation team told pupils that if they made allegations [especially concerning specific members of staff] they would receive £25,000 each, to which many made allegations of physical abuse. When police were called in to investigate these claims, they told these pupils they weren't interested in physical abuse but allegations of sexual abuse, and were told to go away and think if they had encountered this, and to come back to them when they had. This was later discovered after a number of residents complained to staff and social workers that they had not been approached to give statements, and were angry at missing out on compensation. 

• Although there has been a number of allegations made, these are from the same group of complainers that make up a small part of the residents who were placed in Kerelaw over the years. A number of these ex-residents have been manipulated and used by the authorities, pushed and coerced to make statements they did not wish to make, giving knowingly false testimony to altered statements, and being threatened with arrest if they did not go along with these or show up at court. Collusion also being a problem, predominately by the police and prosecution. However, the vast majority of ex-residents have been truthful about their time in Kerelaw, stating no abuse occurred, and that what the authorities are claiming is nonsense. Many ex-residents have testified in court in defence of the accused staff members, which showed real courage. These ex-staff and their families are eternally grateful to those who spoke up and told the truth, especially to those ex-residents who faced enormous pressure by the authorities, who tried to threaten and manipulate them into following a false narrative. 

•  Subsequently, charges followed, to which two members of staff were falsely put together as co accused [police had changed statements to tie them together on two separate charges in order to get them in the dock as co accused] and thus able to pile a number of charges on them. Quantity over quality. 

• A further 40 plus staff members were either charged or suspended, with a further 160 plus staff being subject to allegations that they were not told of, many of whom are still unaware of allegations made against them. These allegations have been made by the same group of complainers. 

• Evidence of significant financial misappropriation of funds by external management was uncovered, along with a long list of illegal practices, bullying and sheer incompetence, all of which were about to be exposed before they launched their fabricated investigation. 

• After significant pressure from a number of sides, GCC was forced to produce a dossier of their findings, and to provide evidence of the fabricated investigation they had launched. They produced a six-page document of nonsense. After all the carnage they had caused, ruining lives and falsely smearing hundreds of people as abusers all they could produce was six pages of words.  

• The media coverage had been, understandably, full on. When it became apparent what GCC had been up to, instead of reporting on that the media simply walked away, choosing to focus any future articles on the accused members of staff. The media knew what GCC had done, read the demonstrably false allegations made by the residents, knew what the police were up to and sat through the first court case. They knew these men were innocent, the staff at Kerelaw had been falsely branded as abusers and that everything GCC claimed was not only false but malicious in its intent, and morally reprehensible. Even though the media knew these facts, they chose to not only stay silent on these things but gave cover and credence to them. 

The first trial in 2006 was nothing short of a farce, no other way to describe it. Two members of staff had been charged with demonstrably false allegations, the majority of which were thrown out, however due to the number of charges against them, they were found guilty on some, solely on the basis of “no smoke without fire” 

•  The Clerk of Court caught a group of eight men in the canteen, conspiring together, colluding to back each other's stories up and were subsequently thrown out that day. 

•  The police were caught changing statements, and swapping witnesses for others in an attempt to link charges by Moorov, and to give them a better chance of gaining guilty verdicts.  

• Subsequent to finding out in court that two particular Police Officers had changed witness statements to falsely link these two ex-staff as co accused, the Judge, Lady Paton, should have halted proceedings immediately, given this was one of many revelations that came to light of a concerted effort to frame said ex staff members. That, along with the farcical nature of the trial, should have compelled the Judge to halt proceedings. However, she failed to do so, thus helping to convict two innocent men and giving credence to a fabricated investigation. 

• Documentation was withheld by GCC and the police, the narrative being that Kerelaw staff members had destroyed these in an attempt to cover up what was happening at the school [this was a lie]. These boxes of documentation [some 900 plus] were ‘found’ in 2018 after the initial Judge in the second court case gave them an ultimatum; produce these boxes or the case would be scrapped, as the judge did not believe what GCC and the police were claiming. Documentation was soon produced and that initial judge was replaced. Within these newly found boxes of documentation, evidence of police wrongdoing and tampering of evidence was uncovered, likewise with GCC. This was a point in one of the former staff appeal of his first trial, in which the Judges stated that these documents would have made no difference to the outcome of his trial. Clearly, that was not the case. Also, two of the charges another staff member was found guilty of, where the accuser pinned herself down to a specific time and date, was subsequently found to be false, as he wasn't there. Both of these newly found pieces of evidence are now being investigated. 

  
  

In 2015, Chris Clements wrote an article claiming new allegations of abuse had been uncovered. This kick started a new investigation which is still ongoing.  Police soon charged two former staff members, with the court case ongoing from 2018 until its conclusion in 2022. Only two of the charges that were made were ‘new’, the rest were allegations made to the police, with statements being taken between 2004-2006. The authorities claimed these charges were brought in order to “seek justice for the victims”. If that were the case, why didn’t they seek justice in 2006 when their police statements were taken? And why, if they have such a solid case of clear-cut abuse at Kerelaw, did they charge them with demonstrably false allegations instead of ones that weren’t littered with inaccuracies and lies? This was put to the authorities but as of today, no response has been forthcoming. 

• Police brought charges against these former staff members, using them to launch a new investigation into Kerelaw, knowing the probability of guilty verdicts being returned was extremely high due to their previous convictions, thus giving them a justification for said investigation. 

• The optics of the first trial were replicated for the second: both in the dock as though they were co accused, multiple accusers with a mountain of charges, no evidence in support of allegations {no documentation, no medical records, times and dates never matched, etc.] This was done deliberately to give the prosecution the best chance of gaining guilty verdicts, as their case was weak, and they hoped that what the jury would see [two men previously convicted of similar charges, together again facing another mountain of charges] would have a greater effect on them than what they would hear. It worked. 

• Article 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedures [Scotland] Act 1995 states that certain evidence and questioning cannot be used to portray a complainer in a certain light. This has been expanded and twisted so that if a complainer tells a lie within their testimony, that can be hidden from the jury as part of said defence of character. 

• Use of language by the Advocate Depute Paul Kearney fell short of proper conduct within a court room setting. When addressing the jury his language was leading, on a number of occasions his personal opinion was interspersed throughout the trial, and his questioning of the defendants and their witnesses was rude, personal and attacked their characters. Again, this is being investigated. 

• Collusion between the police, prosecution and complainers became apparent during the trial after the same demonstrably false details were repeated by a number of complainers within their testimony – details that were pushed by the Advocate Depute, suggesting he was responsible for said false details being included.  

• As in the first case against two former staff members, the second case saw multiple allegations that were littered with falsehoods which were hidden from the jury thanks to Articles 274 and 275. No medical records were produced [even though the vast majority of complainers stated they were hospitalized with injuries inflicted by these former staff members], and when the complainers stated they had a witness to their allegations, it was found that these witnesses were not at the school at that time. Corroboration only went so far as the complainers stated they were abused and were in Kerelaw, and this made up the whole sum of the prosecution's case, whereas the defence had a plethora of evidence to say these allegations were false and that these ex-staff members were innocent. 

• In his closing statement to the jury, Advocate Depute Paul Kearney stated {I paraphrase slightly} “When you look at these allegations individually, they may seem fantastical and unbelievable, but when you look at them as a whole, they must be true and believed.” If this is the nonsense you're coming away with, after affectively a year's long case, then you have knowingly and willingly prosecuted two innocent men. Morally reprehensible and repugnant behaviour by a court official. 

  
  

As of now, not one person from GCC who orchestrated this heinous ‘investigation’ has been held to account. Instead, those who participated have been rewarded with substantial career advancements and golden handshake packages. Similar to the Post Masters scandal, the authorities have falsely branded hundreds of people as criminals in order to cover up their own failings and criminal activities. The only way to expose the cover up, is by telling the truth which we will do over the next few months, giving as much detail as possible.