'I've been waiting for a brick through the window': Father falsely accused of being a paedophile by his ex-wife reveals his pain

David Tune’s daughter is seven years old; the age when little girls are obsessed with sleepovers.



‘She loves all that,’ he says. ‘Going to friends’ houses for tea, and pyjama parties … They do, don’t they?’

And does she have friends round for sleepovers in return?

'I am free now to shout from the rooftops that I am not a paedophile, but that word doesn't leave people's heads once it goes in,' said David Tune

David’s face suggests this is the most awkward thing you can ask someone in his situation.

‘Well, er, no. It’s difficult. Other parents don’t say “no” out of malice, but you get the “Oh sorry, she’s got to see her Granny” kind of thing.

‘I kind of don’t ask now. I don’t want to make people uncomfortable. I understand.’

He asks if, in the circumstances, I would let my daughter come for a sleepover at his house.

Oh my. In law, this is an innocent man. Three judges have said so.



In 2006, David Tune’s ‘world fell apart’, as he puts it, when his ex-wife Vicky publicly accused him of sexually abusing their daughter.

For five years he has been dragged through the Family Courts, accused of the most heinous acts. Yet every single investigation has ended with the authorities concluding that he has no case to answer.

Not only has the entire system — police, social workers and judiciary — believed his word against his ex-wife’s, but they have believed in him so much that they have taken the child from her, and she now lives with her father.

This week, the most senior family court judge in the country took the highly unusual step of naming all the adults involved in this complex case, claiming that David had the right to tell the world he was not a paedophile.

In her version of events, Vicky Haigh is a devoted mother whose only crime has been to believe that her daughter has been abused by her own father

Jailing a woman called Elizabeth Watson, an associate of Vicky’s, President of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir Nicholas Wall, declared unequivocally that Vicky had made the whole thing up.



She had, he concluded, coached her daughter to say that her father had abused her, and when no court in the land believed her, set out to blacken her ex’s name.



With Elizabeth Watson’s help, she had then sent emails containing all manner of vile accusations, slurring not only David but accusing almost every professional involved of corruption, and worse.

Sickening statements of a sexual nature, made by the little girl about her father, were submitted to a British court. Versions of these accusations found their way online, leading to a powerful internet campaign to get Vicky’s voice heard.

‘She (Vicky) has repeated the untruth that the father is a paedophile and — without a scintilla of evidence — has attacked the good faith of all the professionals who had any contact with the case,’ Sir Nicholas Wall said.

Moreover, he ruled her actions were ‘wholly contrary’ to her daughter’s interests, to the point that it was she who was harming her daughter, not David.

So David Tune is innocent, and now free to tell the world.

He arrives for our interview at a Yorkshire hotel apologising for the late hour (‘childcare … you know’) and looking polished.

The 41-year-old has the slight build of the long-distance runner he is (he has twice represented his country in the World Championships). He is wearing a neatly-pressed striped shirt, jeans and highly-polished brown brogues. His manner is precise, considered.

At one point I tell him I don’t understand how he isn’t bouncing off the walls with rage, if his story is true.

‘When you have been in court so many times that you have lost count, as was the case last year, you learn to keep your cool,’ he says. ‘But believe me, I have had my moments.’

He has cried once already by the time we get onto the tricky subject of sleepovers, and whether I would allow my daughter to be alone in his company. I say sorry, no, I wouldn’t. It may fly in the face of fairness and justice, but no. His point is proved.

‘Of course you wouldn’t. No mother would. No father. If there is any question at all of them not being safe, well, why would you take the risk? I wouldn’t myself.

‘That’s the trouble. I am free now to shout from the rooftops that I am not a paedophile, but that word doesn’t leave people’s heads once it goes in. No smoke without fire.

‘This is why what she has done is so outrageous. Calling a man a paedophile — when you know it to be untrue — is the worst thing a woman can do. It’s worse than being called a murderer.’

David says that the relationship between him and Vicky was already in difficulty by the time their daughter was born

Over the years, Vicky has accused him of five different episodes of abuse, claiming that even after he was cleared of one count, he went back and harmed his daughter again.

After every complaint, his access to his daughter was restricted. He once, he says, went more than 100 days without seeing the little girl.

‘I am a loving father. I would not hurt a hair on her head. To be denied access to your child like that, is devastating.’

In November last year, however, the authorities took the extraordinary step of removing the girl from her mother and she has been living with David ever since.

‘But that didn’t stop Vicky’s ridiculous, evil campaign,’ he says.



‘In fact, it got worse. Parents at the school got emails warning them not to let their kids near me. I was asked on the street, “Are you that bloke who fiddles with children?”

‘She even put our daughter at risk. She, or one of her cronies, posted our address online, fuelling all those people who have been Tweeting about how they were going to get me and what a sicko I was.

‘I have been waiting for the brick through the window, or worse, the petrol bomb. I haven’t had PAEDO scrawled across the front door yet, but I’ve expected it every day. And, worse, I’ve expected it when my daughter is beside me. How do you start to explain that to a child?’

‘Vicky would agree for me to have her, then say there was a problem. I’d turn up to get her, and she wouldn’t be able to go'

And where do you start to unravel this mess? In truth, you can’t. There are two sides to this story, but the secretive way in which the Family Court system operates makes it impossible to fully scrutinise events.

What is clear is that, whatever happened, there is a little girl who is a victim here.

David shows me a picture of his daughter — who can be named only as X — on his phone. People tell him that she looks the spit of him.

The sad thing is that this protracted and costly (in all senses) saga was born out of a relationship that was brief and flawed.

David and Vicky met in 1998 or 1999, through running, he says. A former model, she was working as a jockey and racehorse trainer. They married in 2003, when Vicky was already pregnant with their daughter.

Ironically, her competitive spirit was one of the things he found most attractive about her. Now, he thinks it might have fuelled all that followed.

‘Why did she do it? I have no idea. I think the immediate plan was to get me out of X’s life. What better way to do that than to start shouting “Abuse!”.

‘After that? I don’t actually know if it was about me. Or X for that matter. I think it was about Vicky, and her need to win. She just can’t lose.’

He is convincing. Yet so is Vicky. Her story is — or perhaps was — the stuff of Hollywood movies.

Earlier this year, and pregnant by her current partner, she fled to Ireland when it emerged that Social Services were planning to take her baby into care as soon as it was born.

She has lived in Ireland ever since, but her case has become something of a cause celebre for those who say that our Family Court system — mired in secrecy and difficult to challenge — is a disgrace.

Read in isolation, her story — documented online, and illustrated by harrowing letters to her daughter — is heartbreaking.

‘They ganged up on us, darling, and we didn’t stand a chance,’ she writes to X. ‘I am nearly there for you baby, can you feel me?’

In her version of events, she is a devoted mother whose only crime has been to believe that her daughter has been abused by her own father.

But David’s story is the polar opposite. He says that the relationship between him and Vicky was already in difficulty by the time X was born. For legal reasons, he declines to go into detail of why but admits they had grown apart.

They split up and he took a sales job in Belgium, not considering even staking a formal custody claim.

‘People split up. It happens,’ he says. ‘My parents had divorced, but things hadn’t been nasty. I didn’t see any reason why we, too, couldn’t do things amicably. I flew back every Thursday and had her Thursday, Friday, Saturday.’

When he returned to the UK in 2005, however, things became more difficult.



‘Vicky would agree for me to have her, then say there was a problem. I’d turn up to get her, and she wouldn’t be able to go.

‘Eventually, I lost patience. I went to court to get an order allowing me to see my daughter. I got one, but over time Vicky started breaking the terms. It happened again and again.’



‘She said I was the love of her life and could we start again. I could not believe it'

In 2006, he went back to court, he claims, asking for a penal notice to be attached to the order — meaning Vicky could be punished if she did not comply — ‘and she attacked me outside court’.

‘Within 24 hours, she had made the first allegation of sexual abuse. It came like a thunderbolt. I found myself in a police station answering questions. It was like waking up in your worst nightmare.’

It took weeks of ‘agony’ before he heard that no further action would be taken. But a pattern was set. In all, five serious accusations were made.

‘At one point, after the second or third accusation, she actually got in touch and asked if we could get back together again.

‘She said I was the love of her life and could we start again. I could not believe it. She was saying these things about me but wanting us back together as a family.

‘I had to get my solicitor to write to her, asking her only to contact me through my lawyers. It is mad. The whole thing is mad. She has pulled so many people in with her lies.’

And it is not just the online community who have taken sides in this extraordinary story.

MP John Hemming became embroiled when — appalled that Vicky had had her child taken from her, and faced arrest for even talking to him about it because of the draconian Family Court laws — he highlighted her case by naming her in Parliament.

Hemming did not name David Tune, but David feels he might as well have.



‘He has to take responsibility here. He gave her credibility. The internet was awash with this “poor Vicky Haigh” thing. He has fanned the flames without any concern for our homelife or X’s safety.

‘People have been calling for him to resign. I agree. Not once did he ask me about my side of the story.’

There are many elements of this story that we still cannot report.

What does X know about her mum’s whereabouts?

‘She knows she is living in Ireland. She know she has a half sister. To be honest, she has issues of abandonment regarding her mother. She doesn’t talk about her much.’

Couldn’t that be because she doesn’t want to hurt her father?

‘Yes, but remember that it was Vicky’s choice not to see X. She had the opportunity to see her during supervised visits, but said she would not do it.

‘I agree they are horrible. You have someone sitting with a notebook and you are waiting for every hug to be misconstrued. But I still put seeing my daughter first.’

David doesn’t attempt to deny that his daughter made the allegations of sexual assault. Did she believe, even erroneously, that he had abused her?



‘No. She says now that she said them because Mummy told her to say them, and Mummy went on about it so much that she had to comply. Children will say anything if you want them to.’

He describes the anguish of hearing what his daughter had said, and then watching her give evidence on tape.

‘It was as if the police were speaking a different language,’ he says.



‘I just couldn’t get my head around it. I kept asking “Why would she say that? Why?” I started thinking, my God, she HAS been abused. Not by me, I know that, but by someone.

‘But the medical evidence was that she had not been abused, at all.’

X is seven now and starting to use computers. What happens when she taps her mother’s name into Google and is faced with the message — made to her direct — that Daddy is a bad man?

‘I have locks and passwords on everything. I can keep her away from it,’ insists David.

Until she is 18?



‘Well, no. One day I know we’ll have to sit down and go through it all. “Yes, your mummy says this, but I say this.” I know it will happen, but at the moment the priority is giving her stability. She’s a good kid. And I am a good dad.’

It is late. He is heading home to put his daughter to bed. He looks shattered, a man who has finished the most important race of his life but isn’t quite sure if he has won.