Care workers jailed for child abuse could be freed after judges quash convictions

Hundreds of care workers may have been wrongly imprisoned for child abuse it was claimed yesterday after two convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Basil Williams-Rigby, 57, who was released at the Royal Courts of Justice in London after serving three years of his original 12-year prison sentence for alleged child abuse, said that he hoped he was the first of many to be freed.

He said: "There are hundreds of innocent men in prison just like me ... I think that the judges are seeing things differently now."

Mr Williams-Rigby, whose 12-year sentence at Liverpool Crown Court in August 1999 was later reduced to 10, and Michael Lawson, 62, who was jailed separately for seven years in June 2000, were both present in the dock when they heard the judge order their release.

Both care workers, who had worked at the same approved school, were arrested by Merseyside Police as part of Operation Care, one of the largest inquiries into allegations of abuse in children's homes across five local authorities in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yesterday's cases follow the acquittal two years ago of David Jones, the former Southampton Football Club manager, who was wrongly accused of child abuse after being arrested by officers working on the same inquiry.

During the appeal by Mr Williams-Rigby and Mr Lawson, their lawyers claimed the men were convicted on uncorroborated evidence of complainants, some of whom may have been motivated by possible compensation payouts.

Lord Justice Kennedy, Mr Justice Crane and Mr Justice McCombe ruled their convictions "unsafe".

In a statement, one of the men's supporters said: "The decisions by the Appeal Court to overturn the convictions of Basil Williams-Rigby and Michael Lawson are a turning point in the three-and-a-half-year campaign waged by the families and friends of all those caught up in the trawling nets of police operations gathering historical allegations of abuse in children's care homes."

Lord Justice Kennedy said Operation Care "involved circulating former residents and inviting them to contact the police if they had complaints".

Dealing with the appeal of Mr Williams-Rigby, the judge said that at the time of his trial the defence had no evidence other than that of Mr Williams-Rigby with which to challenge the evidence of the four complainants whose testimony was accepted by the jury.

His lawyer submitted during the appeal that since the trial two witnesses had been located whose evidence called into question the evidence of the complainants to such an extent that the convictions should be regarded as unsafe. The two witnesses gave evidence to the appeal that they saw no sign of physical or sexual abuse.

Lord Justice Kennedy said the court was of the opinion that the fresh evidence before the court was capable of belief. If accepted, it directly undermined the evidence of two of the complainants.

The question the court had to decide, he said, was whether the conviction was safe and not whether the accused was guilty. "In a difficult case it is often wise for this court to test its provisional view by asking whether the fresh evidence, if given at trial, might reasonably have affected the decision of the trial jury to convict. We are satisfied that it might," he said.