A woman who accused Sir Ted Heath of satanic child abuse contributed to “a catalogue of fabrication” by making outrageous allegations after hypnosis, a leading criminologist has claimed.
Dr Rachel Hoskins, an expert in ritual sacrifice who has been asked by detectives to examine claims made against the late former prime minister and others in Operation Conifer, spoke out on Sunday to allege that some of the evidence being examined by Wiltshire police was “fantastical”.
The intervention came as the future of the investigation into Heath appeared in doubt. The police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon, Angus MacPherson, has called the force’s chief constable, Mike Veale, to an urgent meeting to discuss the case, it was reported on Sunday.
It follows a damning official report into Scotland Yard’s £2m Operation Midland investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring in Westminster, which closed in March without a single arrest.
Hoskins said she was profoundly disturbed that allegations being considered by police against some people were “based on no more than two uncorroborated witnesses, whose claims of satanic abuse were made under the influence of controversial psychotherapists specialising in ‘recovered memories’”. In an article in the Mail on Sunday, she said: “At least one of these witnesses was under the influence of hypnosis.”
The criminologist said there were connections between a key witness claiming Heath was involved in satanic abuse in Wiltshire, and “Nick”, the witness who gave discredited evidence to Scotland Yard detectives that MPs were involved in child murder, despite detectives initially describing his claims as “true”.
Hoskins previously helped police solve the mystery of “Adam”, the limbless torso found in the Thames in 2001, who was believed by detectives to have been victim of ritual sacrifice. For the last two months she has been compiling a 40,000-word report for detectives running Operation Conifer.
“In 15 years of working as an independent police expert, I have never seen anything like it,” she said of some of the evidence she has seen against Heath and others. Wiltshire police, she said, must immediately close any cases based on the “pernicious fallacy” of claims of ritual abuse.
Hoskins disclosed that one of Heath’s accusers alleged to police that when she was 10 she stole a boy in a pushchair from outside Tidworth post office in Wiltshire as a gift to her father who was waiting at the church.
The woman said she watched as her father proceeded to sexually abuse the boy on the altar before killing him in a satanic ritual sacrifice. The story was preposterous, Hoskins said. The source, a woman who has also accused Heath, is named by Hoskins as Lucy X. She told police about the Tidworth sacrifice in 1989, Hoskins said, but they decided it was beyond credibility.
Yet, Hoskins said, “it forms a crucial part of a witness statement for one of the most highly publicised sexual abuse inquiries in the country”.
A Wiltshire police spokeswoman said: “[The force is] disappointed that information relating a confidential report has been leaked and potentially may have impact upon those who have disclosed abuse to us.”
She added: “This investigation is complex and multistranded. There are a number of allegations with a significant number of individuals who have disclosed allegations of abuse. In addition to this there are a number of investigations that have fallen out of the main investigation that we are pursuing.”
Notes in the evidence file seen by the criminologist show how Lucy X and Nick, whose claims of child murder by a Westminster paedophile ring have recently been demolished, were “enabled by psychotherapists to recall their past”.
“At first the detail in [Lucy’s] diaries is scant,” said Hoskins. “But Lucy’s descriptions grow ever more detailed under hypnosis ... eventually she ‘remembered’ that members of the paedophile ring had gorged themselves on blood and body parts. They maimed and murdered children in orgiastic sacrifices at the stake or on altars.”
Lucy then spoke with three other women she knew well and they “swapped fantastical tales”, Hoskins said. This year they claimed Heath had taken part in rituals in a forest surrounded by candles.
Hoskins found connections between Lucy and Nick. She said their fathers worked alongside each other. Nick’s early claims of ritual abuse related to the area where Lucy lived before going onto describe a paedophile ring at Dolphin Square, an apartment building in Pimlico not far from the houses of parliament. Both named Heath.
When she sent her report to Wiltshire police, its head of crime, Sean Memory, reportedly replied that her comment upon the credibility of Nick and Lucy’s evidence was “well-structured, rationalised and evidence-based, its presence within the report causes me some concern”.
Hoskins said she was taking the unusual step of disclosing her findings because she was concerned the police do not want to hear what she has said and will not pass her report on to senior MPs on the home affairs select committee, or the accused.