The Good, The Bad and The Crafty

Chapter One

My New Squad’s Horrendous First Inquiry

JUMPING FORWARD A FEW YEARS TO 1994 when I was a Detective Sergeant at Warrington. A temporary compound had been built in the large drill hall, and the Warrington bombing inquiry was controlled from there while we carried on using the Portacabins in the yard. It’s amazing how small bits of information, notes and sundry reports can suddenly develop into something serious. My next explosive message was from the DI, Dave Wilcock. It simply asked me to interview a well-known gangster from Widnes, who was alleging abuse at a care home when he was a boy. Ho-hum, more mundane work, I thought. I was very wrong.

I didn’t know it at the time but, I was about to start the biggest paedophile inquiry into child abuse in care homes in Great Britain: Operation Granite. I was about to do what had not been done by many police officers and agencies in the past. I was to take the complaint of child abuse seriously – and act upon it.

‘11am Thursday 10/2: ‘Paul, I’ve made an appointment for you to i/v a MICHAEL TIERNEY re indecent assault on him 15 years ago whilst he was in Greystone Heath approved school’.

It was a memo from the Detective Inspector, Dave Wilcock – a seemingly routine memo that was to have far-reaching effects and would lead to the setting up of a full-time Paedophile Squad in Cheshire which still exists today. Back then, in 1994, it was a routine job for me. This man, who was now 28, had been to Warrington eighteen months before and had made a similar complaint; it had been dealt with by way of no further action, as there was thought to be insufficient evidence. Michael Patrick Tierney was from Widnes, Cheshire, a well-known member of the criminal fraternity and a particularly violent man who stood 6ft 9in. He had been convicted of many offences in his criminal career, from motoring and drugs to robbery and serious assault. He was regarded as a dangerous, volatile, and unpredictable criminal.

‘I’ve been here before, nothing happened then, and nothing will happen now, I don’t know why I’ve come. You bastards aren’t bothered about me.’ He scowled at me across the table. Michael Tierney had kept the appointment, and he had brought a woman by the name of Siobhan Monaghan, a drugs outreach worker, with him for support. His very presence was intimidating he was tall and powerful with an aura of fear and the prospect of impending and unpredictable violence. It was like sharing a room with an unknown savage-looking pit bull.

‘Listen to him Paul,’ said Siobhan, ‘he’s telling the truth, and he’s upset.’

Now it was my turn to speak. I leaned forward and spoke directly into his face. ‘Michael, I have never met you before. I don’t give a shit about your background, tell me, and I’ll listen.’

He then started to talk and had not gone far when this powerful gangster burst into tears and had to be comforted like a baby by Siobhan. I went to get us a cup of tea and on my return started to write out what he wanted to say in the form of a statement.

He now lived with his wife in Thornhill, Dewsbury, and between them, they had five children. Six weeks earlier he had been driving through Widnes and had seen a man by the name of Alan Langshaw walking up the steps to the Magistrates Court with a young boy. Tierney was wanted on a court warrant at the time so did not want to draw attention to himself, and therefore he did not stop. He then went on to tell me his story, which is as follows.

As a child, his parents had physically abused him, and he had trouble with one of his teachers due to his behaviour. As a result, he started a fire at the school when aged about 10 or 11 years and was put into care until the age of sixteen. He was sent to Greystone Heath residential school in Penketh, Warrington and he described it as an ‘approved school’, but it was a community boys school by the name of Greystone Heath, and he was sent there at the age of twelve. The morning after he arrived, he said that he ran off and was caught by two of the boys and Alan Kenneth Langshaw, one of the care workers who dragged him back to the school by his hair. He said that he was taken into a dormitory and battered by Langshaw. After a while, this stopped, and Langshaw started to cuddle him. He sat Michael on his knee and told him that while he was at the home, he, Langshaw would be like a father. He had to do everything he was told, and things would be easy for him. They sat there for over an hour and during this time he was petrified. Langshaw was brushing his private parts with his hand through his clothes in an apparently innocent way. Tierney was so frightened that he wet himself while sitting on his knee. Nothing else happened for about a week, then Michael did some small thing wrong and was told to go and have a shower and go to bed. After a while, Langshaw came up and sat next to him. He felt his towel and said it was not even wet. Tierney was instructed to go to Langshaw’s house, which was attached to the dormitory. Once there, he was told to go and get in the bath. Langshaw said he would go and get him something to eat. At that time, he felt comfortable with him and believed that someone finally cared for him. When Langshaw returned, he soaped him down in the bath and paid particular attention to his private parts and inserted his finger in Michael’s anus. When he did this, the boy was asked if he liked it. He lied and told him that he did. Afterwards, he returned to his dormitory room. Two days later, he was again instructed to go to Langshaw’s house for a bath and thought he was being friendly. On this occasion, Langshaw soaped him down again in the same way, but the third time Langshaw buggered him for the first time – he was just twelve years old.

Michael had been told that he was pretty, and he felt very alone, he wanted Langshaw to like him and be friendly. In his own words: ‘I felt that I had no one else in the world. He told me that he was going to put his penis up my bottom and that it would not hurt. He told me to soap his private parts, and I did. He then put his penis up my bottom. The pain was intense, and I screamed, but he carried on pushing it in and out. I was crying all the time. When he had finished, he pulled it out and cuddled me. He told me that he was sorry it had hurt, but it would not hurt again. After this first time, it became a regular occurrence. I knew it was going to happen because he would be nasty to me for no reason, then he would be nice. So much happened to me during that period. Times and dates are all mixed up. I can remember that at first, he made out that he was my friend, but after a while, he just made no pretence, he just abused me in every way possible.’

Michael outlined all of the sordid ways in which Langshaw abused him. He detailed the things that were done to him and the things that he had to do. He estimated that after that first time, this man sexually abused him almost every day for more than three years until he left at the age of sixteen.

Michael alleged that most of the staff were homosexual paedophiles and had their favourite boys. He was abused in a lesser way by some of the others, but all of the boys knew what was going on. Langshaw would sit in the communal television room at the back with a boy on his knee, and when the others turned around to look, he would say such things as, ‘Turn round and watch the fucking telly.’

On occasions, word got out, and the police were informed of the alleged abuse at the school, Michael remembered one day when he was called to the assembly room to find tables with policemen sat at them. Each boy was asked if the staff were hitting them or anything like that. They all said they weren’t, as they knew that if they said anything, they would get battered when the officers left. Michael then said the following:

‘I have not been the same since these things happened; I am obsessed with watching my children at all times to make sure that they remain safe. I still feel dirty and used; I don’t ever want anyone to know what went on. If this is known publicly, I will kill myself. I am prepared to go to court and give evidence but only on the condition that my name is never made public. I have not been able to put my past behind me and never will. I have wanted to tell a psychiatrist what happened and seek help, but I have never been able to. It has taken a lot for me to come and make this statement. When I saw Langshaw going into court with that boy, I knew that something had to be done. He took my childhood from me. I did not have parents that I could turn to. I was alone and could do nothing about what was happening. I know that Langshaw was a total deviant.’

Some years later, when the Jimmy Savile enquiry started, questions were asked about how abuse could happen, and nothing be done about it. In the case of care homes, the children were just not believed if they said anything despite the shocking degree of abuse.

Michael came in again a few days later and made a further statement outlining incidents when Langshaw would get the boys to abuse each other in his presence and a few other similar incidents. This time, he ended his statement with the following:

‘I am not homosexual and never have been. I did not want these things to happen to me. I am now 6’9’ tall with two of my own children and three of my wife’s. People who know me regard me as a hard man in my neighbourhood and I have never wanted my past to come out.’

The next day I went to see the DCI, Mick Holland.

‘That’s it, boss, what do you think? I’m going to try and trace Langshaw and see what he’s doing, it sounds like he still works with kids.’

Mick read the statement. ‘This is a hot potato at present Paul, what with the Welsh job, let’s make sure we do it right; pull an operation together and then let me have a look.’ Mick was a bluff, straight-talking and very experienced senior detective, a man whom I had the greatest respect for – I had to agree with him. The paedophile inquiry in North Wales involving the Bryn Estyn children's home in Wrexham was ongoing and had received a lot of publicity. It was the biggest enquiry to date and what transpired was that we were in the process of setting up, arguably the next biggest! These operations turned the spotlight on children’s homes across the country, and what it revealed was not good. We were not aware of this at the time, but it was quite likely that we would have the same result as Bryn Estyn. Accordingly, it had to be dealt with properly. Cheshire already had two enquiries underway into children’s homes looking into historic abuse in the county. An operation looking at Danesford Children's Home in Congleton and St Aidan’s Assisted Community Home, Widnes, but they were not going well with little in the way of any disclosures.

Now I had a very strong and detailed disclosure, but I needed to put meat on the bones of it, and this could only come with corroboration. I needed other complaints, and I was determined I was going to get them, but where should I start? Greystone Heath was no longer a children’s home. It was opened as a Quaker Run Penketh Friends boarding school having been built in 1834. It closed in 1934 and was bought by Liverpool Corporation and was known as The Sankey School until 1947 when it was re-named Greystone Heath School. In 1973 the school became a Community Home with Education; it was also known as Greystone Heath Approved School. It catered for boys.

Dave Jones was a DC at Risley and had been one of the teams involved in the earlier complaint about Greystone Heath. There had been a few allegations emanating from boys at the school as described above but these came to nothing due to lack of evidence.

‘Dave, I’m going to look at Greystone Heath again but this time with success – come and get involved.’ He agreed, and I looked for another staff member. Charlotte Legge was a probationary policewoman on attachment to the CID; I commandeered her as the second recruit to my operation. Now for office space. I seized the empty room next to the detective sergeant’s office, and we started our investigation. Now we needed an operation name: now names are computer generated but then a name could be chosen with a tenuous link to the operation planned.

‘I think Operation Tarzan,’ I said. ‘Greystone, Greystoke, that is the connection.’

‘No,’ said Charlotte, ‘Tarzan doesn’t sit well with paedophiles, it’s a macho name, and they are anything but macho. What about ‘Granite?’

‘Operation Granite sounds alright to me,’ I said. ‘Greystone, Granite, has a nice ring to it!’ The name was born, a name that was to be synonymous with sick paedophilia in the North West and a name that would eventually become known throughout the country in the field of child abuse investigations. It was to become the largest operation of its kind in Britain.

Our first job was to trace Langshaw, but he could be anywhere in the education system, or he could have left it and moved. All good jobs require luck, and we really needed some. We hit the phones and struck gold when we contacted Liverpool Social Services and spoke with Alan Pickering, a senior social worker.

‘Thank God someone is taking an interest in this,’ said Alan. ‘I have lots of intelligence on what went on in these schools, and no one is interested.’ He also told us to be careful about who we spoke to as there were quite a few bad apples within the childcare system. We went to Liverpool and met Alan; he was a font of all knowledge as far as paedophiles were concerned and had somehow obtained the registers naming all the boys who went to Greystone Heath. We finally traced Langshaw working as a lecturer at Halton College in Widnes.

While Alan Pickering’s information was undoubtedly a massive bonus, we needed another stroke of luck – and got it. The chief constable Mr J Mervyn Jones had seen fit to disband the Serious Crime Squad, and I was given a number of the redundant detective constables to work on the operation. I had already been to St Helen’s with Dave Jones to re-interview the lad who had been named in the earlier, unsuccessful, inquiry as having been abused. It was quite obvious that he had, but he would have nothing to do with us. There was an insight into the trouble that we were faced with: it was one thing finding lads who had been at the home but another thing getting them to open up these horrible old wounds. Greystone Heath had now become an old people’s home and thanks to Alan, we not only had the names of the boys but those of the staff. It was a good start. My new team was qualified in the use of the major incident filing system known as the Holmes System (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) it meant that every piece of information could be logged on the computer system from which a ‘paper room’ was set up. This ‘room’ generated ‘actions’ for the staff to do having been drawn from the computer system. The important ones involved tracing the present whereabouts of the ex-residents. Without these, we would not have a job.

I posted on the wall an offer that I would buy a pint for every disclosure that they came back with. Along with this, there had to be ground rules; a lot of boys who have been in care progress to a life in crime which meant, unfortunately, that a lot of the boys we would trace would be streetwise. Under no circumstances could the fact that possible victims may be eligible for Criminal Injuries compensation be mentioned. The last thing I wanted was for the operation to be bogged down with false disclosures. Nothing should be disclosed over the phone, I insisted, or in front of others and anonymity could be and should be guaranteed. Even though these aggrieved were now adults, the rules of anonymity as applied to children still applied to them. Within a week, we had a few disclosures from other boys who had been abused by Langshaw. After I left the operation and the three operations and others were inked under the Granite name, this was not quite so enforced, and it resulted in claims of false arrests and such like. Before the operations were linked, I had lectured their teams on the requirements and the method of operating.

‘Can I go and get him now, boss?’ I asked Mick ‘He is still in the education system, and we’ve got more evidence now.’

Mick agreed, and we arranged to go to Langshaw’s home in Moreton, on the Wirral, on 7 March 1994, to arrest him. I picked my team and prepared for the visit. The Principal of Halton College had been kept informed and was aware of our plans. DC Carl Sheridan was on the operation, and we worked a lot together. Carl was an experienced detective and sportsman. He excelled at most sports and played football for Irlam Town. I decided that he and I would arrest Langshaw while the rest of the team searched nominated rooms in his ground floor flat.

We arrived at the flat at around 8am and knocked on the door. ‘Alan Langshaw?’ I said to the sheepish looking man, in the dressing gown, peering from the front door of his flat.

‘Yes…’ I was faced with a pleasant-looking man, younger-looking than his 42 years, with fair hair.

‘I am arresting you for buggery at Greystone Heath some time ago. I cautioned him by the rules.

‘Oh my God, I don’t believe this.’

DC Sheridan said that we had evidence that he had buggered and abused inmates at Greystone Heath when he was a housemaster there some time ago. We walked into the front room with him, and he was insistent:

‘Oh my God, I don’t believe this, I have only done masturbation.’

He then sat on the settee, pulled his knees under his chin, and burst out crying. He sat there rocking backwards and forwards while the other staff searched his flat. The flat was clean and tidy with nothing in the way of indecent material – we recovered photographs of children, from one of the draws in the living room but none of an indecent nature. While we were there, a single woman living in an upstairs flat came down to see what was going on. She gave the impression of being a friend of his and comforted him in a motherly fashion. We told her what was happening, and she accused us of not doing our homework properly. Alan was a true gentleman and would never hurt a fly, she said. He was not in any sort of relationship with her, she just thought the world of him and was quite satisfied in her own mind that he had never done anything wrong.

This was the opinion of many people that we came across during the inquiry. Langshaw was a very presentable and plausible man. Listening to this woman, I almost doubted that I had got the right man.

He was taken to the police station, booked in and placed in a cell. Later that day I went with Detective Chief Inspector Mick Holland, a senior member of Cheshire Social Services and the principal of Halton College in Widnes to the college assembly hall where we had called a meeting of parents. We sat at a desk at the front. They were told that Langshaw had been arrested for indecent assault upon boys at Greystone Heath in Warrington. They were assured that his time at the college would be fully examined. We were all taken aback by the strength of feeling in the hall. Parents shouted at us.

‘You have got it wrong, he’s a lovely man!’

‘I have total trust in that man!’

‘I would trust him with my children anywhere!’

‘It’s disgusting what you are doing. Why pick on him? His wife has cancer, and one of his children is an invalid, this is out of order!’

Langshaw had surrounded himself with a totally false air of respectability that included the story that he was married with four children, one of the children was disabled, and his wife had leukaemia. He had fabricated a life which was a total lie. Lecturers at the college had even driven Langshaw to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral where they had waited for him in the car park for an hour while he ‘visited’ his ‘sick wife’. Staff, students, and parents had held collections for him and had given him flowers and chocolates to take home to her.

So, we spilled the beans and told the disbelieving audience: he was not married, had no children and lived alone in a flat! We were to learn later that he had indulged in his perverted paedophile activities in a shed and in the staff room on this very site. As recently as the previous week, he had abused a male student from the college in his flat. It even transpired that he was the member of staff responsible for counselling abused students at the college!

The following day, Carl and I prepared to interview him. His legal representative was an ex-police officer, now a legal executive. Alan Kenneth Langshaw told us his story. He admitted many paedophile offences stretching over his long period as a care worker. One thing that I noticed over the interviews was that although he disclosed the most heinous of offences against boys, he held back when it came to Tierney. He admitted abusing him, but he would not admit buggering him, and Tierney was the catalyst in the whole thing. I believed that he was lying, but I couldn’t understand why. However, over two days of interviews, Langshaw outlined what he had done. It was a catalogue of systematic sexual abuse.

Langshaw had started his training at around 16 years of age at Greenbank College in Garston, Liverpool, which was at that time a Liverpool Social Services establishment, to qualify as a residential social worker. (The college is still there but is now part of a registered charity). During his time at the college, he had been sent to Greystone Heath as a placement trainee. Also, during his time, if he is to be believed, he was sexually abused by another social worker by the name of Dennis Grain.

Grain was to figure in Operation Granite later, and in 1995 he received a total of seven years at Chester Crown Court, having pleaded guilty to four offences of buggery, one of attempted buggery and fourteen of indecent assault, he received 7 years imprisonment concurrent. He was aged 64 years at the time and had ruined all of these’ lives and yet he received only seven years