Page 12 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 2019‘Nick’ cops flew
to Australia to
ask ‘victim’:
Are you alive?
managed to trace seven out of
eight boys called Scott who
had attended the same pri-
mary school as Beech.
Inquiries soon revealed that
the eighth boy called Scott had
emigrated to Australia. Butnorth of Sydney, he admitted he
had been surprised to receive a
call from local police telling him
that London officers wanted to
fly out to speak to him about
claims he had been a schoolboy
victim of a paedophile ring made
up of VIPs. Speaking beforeBeech was convicted at New-
castle Crown Court of pervert-
ing the course of justice and
fraud and jailed for 18 years, he
said: ‘They were with me for a
couple of hours. They explained
the purpose of their visit and
asked me to provide a state-ment. I really couldn’t tell them
anything. From what I’ve now
learned the story is not true,
especially if I’m supposed to be
the Scott referred to.
‘That’s what the police wanted
to check up on, whether I’m alive.
Coming all this way for such a
short time, you’ve got to think
they wanted a bit of a holiday.’
Mr Masterton said he could
not recall details of the discus-
sion he had with the officers. ‘I
couldn’t tell them anything
about Carl Beech – I can’tSerial liar: Carl
Beech said a boy
at his school had
been murderedby Stephen Wright
and Richard ShearsTWO detectives from Scotland
Yard’s shambolic VIP child sex
abuse inquiry flew to Australia
to take a two-hour statement
from a supposed victim to con-
firm he was still alive.
He told the Daily Mail he was aston-
ished the Metropolitan Police sent
the pair to Sydney to spend ‘just a
couple of hours’ with him ascertain-
ing he had not been murdered by an
Establishment paedophile ring.
Laughing off the £4,000 taxpayer-
funded jaunt, Scott Masterton, now 49,
declared: ‘I’m very much alive and well!’
The saga started when serial liar ‘Nick’- real name Carl Beech – told officers on
Operation Midland that a boy called
‘Scott’ – thought to be from his school –
had been murdered by Establishment
paedophiles in a hit-and-run incident in
south-west London.
During a series of interviews with
Scotland Yard in late 2014, the vicar’s
son – subsequently convicted for
paedophile offences – insisted he had
witnessed the supposed killing in
- But detectives could find no
record of it. Within months, they had
‘They wanted a
bit of a holiday’‘Bungled raids
on homes’Trip cost £4,670 when they could
simply have phoned for just 85p
rather than pick up the phone
to ask a local force to take a
statement from him, the Met
sent two officers to Sydney.
The decision was later con-
demned in an official report on
Operation Midland by retired
High Court judge Sir Richard
Henriques, who said the inquiry
could have been pursued through
‘more economical means’.
He pointed out that the wit-
ness ‘must necessarily have sur-
vived his childhood’.
According to a Freedom of
Information request, the trip
cost around £4,670 (at today’s
exchange rate values), includ-
ing flights, expenses and accom-
modation. A two-hour phone
call from a UK landline to Aus-
tralia would cost £102 – or 85p
per minute – under the stand-
ard BT international rate.
The Mail tracked down the
‘Scott’ who was visited by Oper-
ation Midland police in 2015. Mr
Masterton said it appeared that
the officers used him as a rea-
son to fly to Sydney for what
was little more than a holiday.
At his £1million home justremember him today. It was
some 40 years ago.’
Details of the trip raise further
questions about the running of
the Operation Midland probe
into claims by Beech under the
command of Deputy Assistant
Commissioner Steve Rodhouse.
The official cost is about
£2.5million. The Met also paid
Northumbria Police £951,982 for
an independent inquiry into
Beech’s fabrications.
On top of this, the Met has
paid £100,000 in compensation
to Lord Bramall and Lord Brit-
tan’s widow Diana over bungled
raids on their homes.
Details of the Australian trip
come days after the Mail exposed
a damning document showing
police should never have raided
Lord Bramall’s home.hospital in Athens with gunshot
wounds to his arm.
In January 2013, she moved out of
their house in Bath to stay with friends
as she could no longer afford the rent.
By this time, Acklom had vanished.
Miss Woods said: ‘I have always
taken a pride in my personal presen-
tation but.. now my life is restricted
to little more than survival.
‘I have suffered sexual and emo-
tional violation that has resulted in a
loss of pride and self-worth.
‘Initially, when I discovered the
truth, I felt bereaved. It was as though
the man I fell in love with had died.
‘What I had to get my head around
was the fact that the man I fell in love
with never actually existed, he was
the fictitious creation of Mark Ack-
lom. I have felt deeply betrayed and
have suffered a loss of identity.’
Miss Woods was flanked by her
daughters, friends and other mem-
bers of her family in a packed public
gallery to see Acklom sentenced.
Worried about being in the same
room as him, she entered the court at
the last possible minute, supported by
staff from Avon and Somerset Police
and the Crown Prosecution Service.
In her victim impact statement, she
described the devastating psycho-
logical effects of Acklom’s actions –
she has been diagnosed with post-
traumatic stress disorder.
‘I find that I am very emotional and
prone to mood swings, much of the
time struggling with feelings of deep
depression,’ she said.
‘I have suffered from both agora-
phobia and claustrophobia, some-
times feeling too frightened to go
out and at other times feeling terri-
fied of being trapped.
‘Physically I feel as though I have aged
a good 15 years. A doctor I saw in the
summer of 2013 told me I was suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘People I know well think of me as a
strong person. I used to be happy,
confident and sociable but I now find
it very difficult to trust anyone and
have become reclusive.
‘I have a fear of being watched and
followed and don’t want anyone to
know where I am or what I am doing.
I live in fear. My world has shrunk to
almost nothing and I feel totally
messed up inside.
‘Along with everything else, I feel I
have lost myself.
‘I feel a tremendous sense of injus-
tice and I can only hope that, in the
course of time, justice will prevail
and that the perpetrator of this
assault against my very being will
be punished accordingly, and
stopped from destroying any more
lives in the way in which he has
destroyed mine.’FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
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