email PITY II

Letter from the Crown Posecution Service

From CWP Newell, Director, Casework.
Crown Prosecution Service. Casework Directorate, United House, Piccadilly, York. Y01 9PQ.
Ref: YB2/199/01. 15 December 2004.

Dear Ms Proctor,

You will recall that Merseyside Police have been carrying out an investigation into allegations that Professor van Velzen committed a number of criminal offences when he worked at Alder Hey hospital. The investigation followed the publication of the Royal Liverpool Children’s Inquiry Report – The Redfern Report.

Since publication of the Report, the Crown Prosecution Service has been working closely with Merseyside Police in what has been a difficult investigation. I can assure you, that the police have been very thorough.

One of the areas the police have been investigating is whether Professor van Velzen committed any offences by:

I have considered the case very carefully, and have also been advised by a senior and independent barrister, a QC in fact. Both the barrister and I agree that there is not enough evidence for us to be able to prosecute Professor van Velzen.

The main difficulty for a prosecution was identified in the Redfern Report itself where it said “It was therefore clear from the outset that there could be no guarantee that organs which remained in the containers were those originally taken at post mortem examination” (page 30, paragraph 1.10). This factor causes particular problem in any prosecution as we would need to prove beyond reasonable doubt which child’s organs we were talking about. The police have tried hard to find a solution to this problem, but they have been unable to do so.

There were a number of other matters considered by the police concerning allegations of offences of dishonesty against Professor van Velzen. We cannot prosecute those either because of insufficient evidence.

As the case has attracted publicity in the past, I have arranged for a short press release to be issued.

I apologise for writing with this news at this time of the year, but once a decision had been reached I felt you ought to know as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Banks
For Neil Dalton.

The Executive would like to inform its membership that it will be writing a response to the Crown Prosecution Service and will hopefully publish the response online and/or in our final newsletter.