Operation Midland was a criminal investigation carried out by the London Metropolitan Police between November 2014 and March 2016 in response to false allegations of historic child abuse made by Carl Beech.
The operation focused on investigation of several high-profile British citizens—politicians, military officers and heads of security—over claims of historic child sexual abuse and murder.
The 18-month operation found no evidence to support the claims, and an inquiry into the police investigation afterwards concluded that the people involved had been falsely accused, leaving them dealing with considerable damage to their lives and reputations. A report of the inquiry's findings found that detectives and officers within the operation's taskforce had committed several errors during the course of their work, and made calls for more effective checks on allegations and accountability by police.
Following the reporting of the inquiry's findings, the Metropolitan Police were forced to make apologies to those who had been accused and to compensate them financially. The outcome of the operation damaged the organisation's reputation, already impacted by government pressure to improve its handling of abuse cases. It was concluded that, as a consequence, genuine victims of abuse might be discouraged from coming forward. The inquiry's handling was criticised by some of the accused in Operation Midland. Carl Beech, the perpetrator of the false allegations, was later investigated for perverting the course of justice and was himself found to be a child sex offender. He was later arrested and charged, and sentenced to 18 years in prison in July 2019.
Background
In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012, police were facing mounting pressure to investigate any and all cases of child abuse, particularly of a historic nature, reported by victims either directly to officers, or through interviews with journalists. Growing national public outcry over the possibility of there being more VIP serial abusers concealing their actions, and political campaigns demanding greater action to investigate cases of historic abuse, greatly affected the need for police to step up their efforts.
In 2014, journalist Mark Conrad came across an online blog containing allegations of a potential case of historic abuse, created by Carl Beech – a Wiltshire man born Carl Stephen Gass in 1968, who assumed the surname of his stepfather, a military officer, after his parents divorced and his mother remarried. Conrad made contact with Beech to discuss his blog and its contents, in which he was given detailed allegations by Beech about abuse he claimed he had suffered from a group of powerful men, including his stepfather, during his youth. During meetings with Beech, Conrad was taken to various locations and given accounts of what Beech had allegedly been made to endure between 1975 and 1984 at each site. Conrad made further confirmation about his abuser's identities, by showing un-marked photos to Beech for him to identify those he had named.
Conrad posted his inquiries into the blog and its allegations in a story for the investigative journalism website Exaro, providing Beech with the pseudonym of "Nick" to conceal his identity, as is common practice for protecting victims of abuse from their abusers. Conrad's story was picked up by detectives in the Metropolitan Police, who made requests to see his source, and agreed to Beech's request to allow the journalist to attend their initial informal meeting with him. In later formal police interviews, which Conrad did not attend, Beech gave full, detailed accounts of the abuse he claimed he had been subjected to at various locations, including the Elm Guest House, the Dolphin Square apartment block in Pimlico, the Carlton Club, and various other locations in the Home Counties.
Most concerning for detectives were Beech's claims that he, alongside a number of other child victims of the group, had been witness to three murders – Beech claimed that two children were killed for sexual pleasure, while a third was eliminated to intimidate the other abuse victims – in which he supplied the names of two individuals who he stated had been murdered by the group: Vishal Mehrotra, whose abduction and the subsequent murder in the early 1980s remained unsolved, and Martin Allen, whose disappearance was documented in the late 1970s. Metropolitan Police deemed Beech's accounts "credible and true",, though what he told them turned out to be entirely false.
In November 2014, the Metropolitan Police announced a large-scale investigation, codenamed Operation Midland, into Beech's claims. The Met recruited a taskforce of detectives and experienced officers, led by Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald, to handle the investigation, and modelled the operation after Operation Yewtree, a similar investigation conducted by police that had investigated several VIPs over child abuse allegations.
Criminal investigation Announcement and political support Once Operation Midland was under way, the police began their focus on the men whom Beech had implicated as being members of a VIP child abuse ring. Those he had named included the former Members of Parliament Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner, the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, former Prime Minister Edward Heath, former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall, the former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service Maurice Oldfield, and former Director-General of MI5 Michael Hanley.
While most had long been dead, those still alive were subsequently informed they were under investigation regarding the allegations against them; Proctor himself learnt from his solicitors that the allegation against him included claims that he had stabbed a 12-year-old boy before strangling him to death. He then held a press conference to give the public details of the police's accounts of the claims, along with the names of those accused on similar charges.
Appeals were sent out for further information and witness reports in regards to the allegations of child abuse and possible homicide, alongside any other potential activities of a similar nature that could have taken place near the Houses of Parliament between the 1970s and 1980s. Alleged contemporaneous incidents across London and at military establishments were also placed under investigation.
Public support for the case was increased by the influence of Labour politician Tom Watson, the future deputy leader, who had campaigned in support of investigations into historic abuse. Watson had met Beech prior to the start of the police operation following his Exaro story, and remained in intermittent contact with him as the operation began, showing his support of Beech's allegations by accusing the named men; when interviewed about the matter, Watson publicly spoke out against Lord Brittan, one of the accused, as being "close to evil" based on Beech's accounts. Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith spoke out in support of the allegations against Lord Brittan, while former Labour politician John Mann compiled a dossier of his own, containing allegations against 22 high-profile individuals, which he passed on to police.
By 2015, police were conducting extensive searches for documents and articles that could support the accusations against the accused – the homes of both Bramall in Yorkshire and Proctor on the estate of Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, were searched in March, while the home of Lord Brittan was raided six weeks after his death, with computers, hard drives and documents removed for examination.
Concerns about falsehood Despite a search for abuse victims connected to the allegations made by Beech, no credible individuals could be found by police. Shortly after Beech's claims of abuse were announced by Metropolitan Police, another accuser came forward to make further accusations against Lord Brittan and statements of witnessing two murders committed by the group. Although given anonymity and referenced by detectives under the name of "Darren", the Metropolitan Police questioned the validity of the claims, and eventually determined them to be potentially false.
Despite this line of inquiry no longer being feasible to pursue, the claims of "Darren" were passed over to Suffolk police to further investigate. Detectives in Suffolk interviewed six people under caution before eventually dropping the case in September 2015 on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Suffolk Police's decision to drop the accusations of "Darren" led to detectives within Operation Midland to question the justification of launching the probe into the twelve men based only on the words of Beech's accusations. Their concerns were further increased after another accuser – hidden under anonymity with the name "David" – admitted to detectives that he had been falsely claiming that he had been abused by some of the men stated in Beech's accusation, including Lord Brittan.
Journalists for the BBC investigation series Panorama, investigating the inquiry, interviewed "David" over his revelation to police, when it came to their attention. The accuser's actions to come clean to police were derived from personal guilt over his false claims – the accuser had never met the people he named; his accusations were made as merely a joke to begin with; and the claims had been supplied by "two well-known campaigners" he had met.
Concerned that police would falsely charge people for actions they had not committed based on his false accusations, "David" voiced the belief that the origins of the investigation needed to be double-checked alongside a re-examination of any case based on elements that "aren't even true".
Collapse of investigation Fourteen months after Operation Midland began, detectives concluded there was insufficient evidence and no credible witnesses to support the continuation of investigations against the accused. The statements of those interviewed by police who had worked with the accused provided no support for the accused having been abusers during the 1970s and 1980s, and subsequent interviews with the accused revealed total denial of the accusations made against them: Proctor denied being part of any "rent-boy ring" or attending sex parties with prominent figures, while Bramall denied having "a connection or anything to do with the matters being investigated. It is not in my character or my psyche."
Public support for the investigation eventually began to wane after Proctor held a press conference to denounce the police's operation and the allegations against himself and the others, and further after the findings of both the Panorama investigation and those conducted by the Daily Mail. Over the course of three months in 2016, between January and March, the Metropolitan Police began to drop the charges against each member of the accused, saying that they would take no further action against them, before eventually shutting down the police operation.
Police conduct inquiry