On March 4, 2015, I sat in the bedroom of my home, an old farmhouse overlooking the rolling beauty of the Vale of Belvoir, sipping tea with my partner, Terry. It was an ordinary early morning – until an unexpected knock shattered its peace.
Through the glass, I saw the police. My first thought was that something was afoot at Belvoir Castle, where I worked as Private Secretary for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. But as I opened the door, my world collapsed. A police officer handed me a search warrant. Subsequently, I now know it was an illegal warrant. Then, like an invading force, around 20 Metropolitan Police officers, the majority in pale blue forensic suits, stormed my home, and a little later, my office in the Estate Office. The raid was part of Operation Midland: the disastrous police investigation based on the delusions, fuelled by fame and fortune, of Carl Beech.
I was accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable: serial child murder and sexual abuse
After almost 30 years of rebuilding my life since my ordeal in 1987 which ended my long-coveted parliamentary career, yet again, at the hands of the police, I became a monster overnight in the eyes of the public. I lost my home, my job, my reputation, and, for a time, my will to live.
I was accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable: serial child murder and sexual abuse. Death threats followed, forcing me to move abroad and home at the advice of the police several times. And because of the way society has regressed, with the old prejudices that conflate homosexuality with paedophilia, I was forced to declare, in front of the world’s media: “I am a homosexual. I am not a murderer. I am not a paedophile.”
This was the first time in my life I had been so publicly open about my sexuality. Yet what astonishes me to this day is the silence of the very community that claims to champion justice and equality. When I was prosecuted for gross indecency in 1987, the LGBT movement did not come rushing to my defence. During Operation Midland, when I accused the Metropolitan Police of conducting a ‘homosexual witch-hunt,’ certain LGBT organisations actively distanced themselves from me. Would it have been different if I had been a left-wing ex-Member of Parliament?
For 18 months, I lived under the shadow of a grotesque lie. It took two Metropolitan Police Commissioners – Lord Hogan-Howe and Dame Cressida Dick – a damning judicial report by Sir Richard Henriques, and a jury’s conviction of my accuser in 2019 to confirm what I already knew: I was entirely innocent.
But exoneration is not redemption. The damage done to me and others falsely accused – Field Marshall Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan, and many others – is irreversible.
I have since met the judge – Howard Riddle – who issued the search warrants used by police to invade my life and the lives of Field Marshall Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan. Judges are understandably reticent about public comment on their cases. However, I know he is devastated by the impact the warrants had on me and other innocent people. He is aggrieved that his formal complaint to the IOPC that he was lied to by the Metropolitan Police Service before issuing the warrants was not properly investigated.
The Metropolitan Police, by their admission, committed catastrophic errors and yet, not a single officer – despite the lies, the failures, and the institutional misconduct – has been held accountable. The reason? The culprits sat too high up the chain of command. Justice is a luxury for the powerless, not a certainty for the powerful.
I have tried to rebuild my life. I have regained my home, resumed my work, and re-entered public debate. As someone with such horrendous experiences and as President of FACT (Facing Allegations in the Contexts of Trust), I now support others – teachers, professionals, parliamentarians, and private citizens alike – whose lives have been devastated by false allegations. However, being declared innocent is never the end.
A police letter of “No Further Action” does not wipe away the agony of having been branded a criminal. The loss is not just material – the destruction of a career, the bankruptcy, the wreckage of friendships – but psychological. The certainty of life before the accusation is gone; weeks before my home was raided, I had set in motion the process of reducing my working days to three per week. You also question yourself. You question others. And worst of all, you question whether society will ever truly see you as innocent.
Even today, I live with the knowledge that some still believe the lie. I live life looking over my shoulder, with the fear that someone, somewhere, might take the law into their own hands. That is a torment that never ends. Life can never be the same.
Operation Midland was a catastrophe, but it was not an accident. It was a result of society and the Establishment intoxicated by ideology, emboldened by a media eager for scandal, and crippled by an establishment too cowardly to demand accountability.
What became of those responsible? Steve Rodhouse, Police Gold Commander of Operation Midland, was promoted to Director of Operations at the National Crime Agency. Cressida Dick, then Assistant Commissioner, was later appointed Commissioner. Bernard Hogan-Howe, then Commissioner, was ennobled. Boris Johnson, then Mayor of London, became Foreign Secretary and later Prime Minister. Tom Watson, who shamelessly championed Carl Beech’s lies and fuelled the witch-hunt, was elevated to the House of Lords. Others have been promoted and enriched.
In Britain, failure is not punished. It is rewarded. This is not justice. It is complicity.
Until the lessons of Operation Midland are learned and true accountability is enforced, what happened to me, a former Home Secretary, a former head of the Armed Forces and a former Prime Minister, can happen to anyone. No one is immune – not the powerful, not the ordinary citizen, not the teacher, the doctor, the soldier, or the struggling father falsely accused without evidence. The chilling reality is that wrongful accusations and miscarriages of justice are not confined to high-profile cases that command media attention. For every public scandal, there are countless nameless victims – families torn apart, reputations shattered, livelihoods lost – who suffer in silence, their lives upended by falsehoods, police failures, and a system that too often values narrative over truth. This is why I am campaigning: not just for my justice, but to ensure that the police, the judiciary, and the establishment are held to account, so that never again can a lie be allowed to ruin lives unchecked.
Ten years on, Operation Midland remains an open wound. Until those responsible are held to account, it will continue to fester at the heart of British justice.
Comments