Carl Beech and the Metropolitan police’s investigation have done a great disservice to all victims of this terrible crime (Report, 27 July). There are many problems concerning the investigation of historical child sex abuse. The gathering of facts can be almost impossible as the passage of time may have erased any evidence, and what does survive needs properly resourced and trained officers to bring it to court. I wonder if the taboo and heinousness of this subject conspire to for ever hold it in an investigative system lacking in rigour, ingenuity and the will to make change.

I also see that Beech claimed criminal injury compensation to the tune of £22,000. How was this possible? There is something seriously wrong when conviction rates are this low and innocent people have their lives shattered. Is it not time we admitted that this crime needs specialist units who are well trained and resourced, so that when a child or adult makes the brave decision to report, they can be supported by a system they can trust, and see justice done.

Sara Newman

Groombridge, East Sussex

• Trauma and abuse evoke powerful feelings. As therapists, psychologists and counsellors we are concerned that the extra anger being aimed at Tom Watson MP, the police and Carl Beech is missing adequate reflection. Tom Watson suggested, in parliament in 2012, that evidence from the paedophile Peter Righton’s conviction pointed to a “powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”. This was prior to speaking to Beech, and he was right. National figures such as Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith MP were unmasked as prolific child abusers.

The outcry culminated in the then home secretary, Theresa May, announcing an independent inquiry, and the 2014 pressuring on police to be believing – now rescinded. The scenarios Carl Beech describes, and his complex mixture of untreated victim and perpetrator, are familiar. People need to understand “fantasists” and “liars”. To ignore that subject risks not hearing vulnerable children. Children with dissociative identity disorder from trauma, for example, are often accused of being liars when one state of mind is amnesic to what another has said or done. To be wrongly accused is abuse.

We must provide justice for all, while acknowledging the number of innocent people named is very small compared with the one in 65 survivors who gain justice.



Valerie Sinason, Sue Richardson, Kathryn Livingston, Melanie Goodwin, Rémy Aquarone, Nancy Borrett, Jaclyn Everitt,Andrew Baxter, Penny Johnson, Paula Fenn, Dena Sanger, Ruth Alborough, Kay Luck, Maire Fitzmaurice, Michelle Jowett, Winja Lutz, Sandra Buck, Judy Williams, Lindsay Schofield, Kate Forbes Pitt, Dehra Mitchell, Eimir McGrath, Andrea Aldridge, Liz Hall, Mandy Coghill, Ronete Cohen, Giles Lascelle, Abbie O’Connor, Jane Blackhurst, Cathie Wright, Ruth Leaper, Patricia Bahs, Katia Kohler, Loraine Newbold, Paula Biles, Rainer Kurtz, Judith Marlow, Heather Bacon

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