"We regard this as a true and honest account."

Donna Berry was four years of age in 1970 when she was casually photographed, clothed, not nude, in Graham's Ovenden's flat in London, where he lived with his wife, Annie. The flat consisted of a kitchen/dining area, a very small bedroom and a sitting room where Mr. Ovenden painted and took photographs. The image reproduced here shows Ms. Berry seated on the floor. Pat C., the mother of another model, is the person seated on the couch nearby. Ms. Berry was not alone. It was Pat C. who brought Ms. Berry, together with her own daughter, Lorraine, age 6, to be photographed by Mr. Ovenden. Mr. Ovenden wasn't particularly interested in photographing Ms. Berry due to her age and took only about half a dozen images of her that day. (In Mr. Ovenden's words, four-year-olds' faces are, in general, not structurally developed enough to make them interesting from the standpoint of his artwork. Indeed, conspicuous by its absence from Mr. Ovenden's work are any images of girls under the age of about five or six.) Three years later, Pat C. brought her daughter and Ms. Berry, who was then 7, to Barley Splatt for a five-day vacation. However, no photographs were taken during that visit.

In November of 2006, based on uncorroborated allegations lodged by Ms. Berry, the Metropolitan Police raided the Ovenden home at Barley Splatt and arrested Mr. Ovenden. Ms. Berry was the only alleged victim who ever "came forward" in the Ovenden case and the sole witness upon which the 2006 search and arrest warrant was based. Ultimately, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped Ms. Berry from the case. Nonetheless, the Met made use of her.

Ms. Berry's statement consisted of six pages of rambling accusations that included the "taste test," i.e., that in 1970, when she was four years old, Mr. Ovenden blindfolded her and put his penis in her mouth under the guise of having her taste different things. She also stated that Mr. Ovenden photographed her naked with her legs spread and that she was subjected to mind control. Although the Met signed off on Ms. Berry's statement with the words "We regard this as a true and honest account," someone on the force had to have known that the accusations lacked credibility from a criminal justice standpoint. So eager were they to get Mr. Ovenden, however, that any professional concerns were brushed aside. The raid was carried out, complete with frogmen who were there to dredge the pond and a disused mineshaft on the property if the need arose, and Graham Ovenden was arrested.

Although Ms. Berry's statement to the police has not been publicly divulged, she has made all of those allegations and much more in numerous forums online during the pendancy of the cases against Mr. Ovenden in 2009, 2010 and 2013. (Only the 2013 case ended in convictions and Ms. Berry was not part of that case.) Like Operation Yewtree,¹ the Ovenden case raises numerous questions regarding the Met's practice of "trawling" for victims. But it also raises serious questions of professional ethics in both using someone whose testimony is known to be juridically unreliable as a pretext to conduct a raid and arrest, and then coaxing subsequent witnesses to adopt similar stories. The Met and their investigators used Ms. Berry for their own purposes to carry out their vendetta against Mr. Ovenden, and when it became obvious that they could not rely on Ms. Berry's testimony, they dropped her. As Ms. Berry, writing under her nom de guerre, Minty Challis, stated in a comment she left on 08 April 2013, on The Guardian's website poll, "Should the Tate have removed Graham Ovenden's prints?," "im more damaged by the c.p.s. and people calling me a lier and the proceeder of getting him to court than the abuse now."

Ms. Berry's Online Comments

Ms. Berry's claims were not only taken seriously or given validity by the Met and the CPS, but she has been given a voice on anti-child abuse forums and websites devoted to vast, worldwide conspiracy theories involving Satanism, mind control and paedophilia, including one that is virulently neo-Nazi. The Daily Mail, which criticized her as an "agitprop activist" and a "rent-a-cause rebel," nevertheless devoted three separate articles to her on October 21, 2012, noting that she "has made it onto the front pages of the majority of national newspapers."²

In order to understand Ms. Berry's accusations against Graham Ovenden, it is necessary to see her online posts and their path to the present day. All misspellings, capitalizations, punctuation, etc., are as in the original, as the reader will see via the links provided. The reader should not conclude from this, however, that Ms. Berry is not intelligent. To the contrary, she is a very intelligent woman who not only is well versed in political action and propaganda, but also knows how to appeal emotionally to her audiences.

Note:"[...]" indicates that the post has been edited for inclusion here.

14 April 2001 - IndyMedia UK
"artist grayham ovenden was arrested 7 years ago,and cleared of child abuse.not one of hes child models was allowed to atend or give evidence,no justice!ACALF WAS FORMED BECAUSE OF A NEED FOR AN INDEPENT BODY TO TAKE DIRECT ACTON AGAINST PEOPLE IN POWER WHO ABUSE CHILDREN.NEWS OF THE WORLD HAS STATED THAT OVENDEN IS WITH OUT A DOUBT GUILTY AS HE ASSOCIates with known child abusers.............."³
Author's note: No case was mounted against Mr. Ovenden in the 1990s. Rather, the CPS ordered the Met to drop its investigation after it failed to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing on Mr. Ovenden's part and after numerous artists came to Mr. Ovenden's defense. No former child model made any allegation or complaint against Mr. Ovenden during the 1990s, either publicly or to the police.

13 July 2003 - IndyMedia UK
"[...] As to the comment about the gallery in which a mother artist put naked pictures of her own children in, I will tell you the same as was said to the world press, the pictures themselves I do not find pornographic. Having been in naked art myself as a child, being left in a room with a male photo artist with no adult present, in my case did lead to sexual abuse and many obsessesed with my pictures found me and abused me as well over the years."

"I’m not saying that all artists who photograph children are abusers, some are, but we have a problem that branches out of art. There are a lot of unbalanced mind out there who can not control themselves. Art is ok, abuse is not, ta ALICE OWTA WONDERLAND.MINTY. You realy should look at the Stop Child Rape web site."⁴
 
Author's note: Ms. Berry's claim that she was photographed naked and then pursued and abused by many others who saw her photos over the years has no corroboration. No nude images of Ms. Berry as a child have ever been found. As for the "Stop Child Rape" website recommended by Ms. Berry, it is no longer online, but can be viewed using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The website was "dedicated to exposing and solving the problem of our Worldwide Masonic-run Government's, Ritual Child Abuse & Murder Network."⁵

27 February 2008 - IndyMedia UK
[Ms. Berry's posts are responses to the messages headed "State-protected paedophile ring in Jersey?" and "Paedophile Freemasons involved in cases of child abuse in UK"]
"at last!
its grate to see this topic on indi,ive tried for 10 years to include this topic on our any capitalist marches no one wanted to know,so its good to see it,bless,anti child abuse liberation front,minty challis.x."

"yes not all masons are kidy feelers,a few send me letters how they do not agree with wat was done to me,we got masons fighting masons, believe!!!!look at,www.stop child rape.minty.x. minty challis"⁶

13 November 2008 - IndyMedia UK
"gaham just been charged for child porn that i found on net hes faceing the cps [Crown Prosecution Service]; well i stayed patent and look at the result,i spent years looking at hes sites and got him,one of hes sites direct link to hes other art,child porn,i was never lying just would have taken at least 48 hours to explain,yet none of you had the time,so you never got the full story,shame on you,now thats all in the past and waiting to hear if me and the 8 other children,will be taking him to court we are believed by higher inelegance,but they brought in a fuking law 2 years ago (which i did try get all ya attention on)that you can only take ya abuser to court up to 8 years after the abuse and as ours is over 30 years ago we having to fight hard,now all differences aside,weve done the trees we done the animals now its the youth!!!get in touch for the march of a million youth,(lets remember it was people in high positions of power that abused us),our time is now,bless all minty.x. minty challis"⁷

Author's Note: Mr. Ovenden was never connected to the Internet and was never accused of anything having to do with Internet child pornography. Rather, he was unsuccessfully charged for collage works that contained no actual child pornography, which works were recovered from the cache of his computer using forensic software. There were also never "8 other children" making allegations. As of November 2008, only Ms. Berry and CM had made any allegations.

On or after 18 August 2008 - Minty Challis MySpace page, opened 18-08-08
"I WAS PUT INTO CARE AT THE AGE OF 13 AND LOCKED UP IN WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CALL "ASSESSMENT CENTERS" TILL AGED 15... SHAME IS NO-ONE EVER ASKED ME WHAT MY PROBLEMS MIGHT BE, HENCE THE CONTRADICTION OF THE WORDS "ASSESSMENT CENTRES". HAVING GOT MYSELF A JOB, A ROOM AND A PLACEMENT IN THE ADELAIDE CENTRE/SCHOOL, I WALKED INTO SOCIAL SERVICES TOLD THEM I WAS SELF SUFFICIENT AND GOT MYSELF OUT OF CARE!! I SPENT 8 YEARS ON THE STREETS OF CENTRAL LONDON, HIDING FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ABUSED ME AS A CHILD, I AGAIN GOT MYSELF OFF THE STREETS AND NOW HAVE GIGGED FOR 15 YEARS WITHOUT CHARGING MONEY IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING CONTROLLED BY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. [...] I AM CURRENTLY RUNNING THE 'ANTI CHILD ABUSE LIBERATION FUND' (A.C.A.L.F.) AND AM INVOLVED WITH THE SOUTH LONDON CEASE FIRE CREW... ARE YOU REAL READY FOR THE REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!! MINTY.X. THE PROGRAM THEY ARE USING TO CONTROL US IS CALLED THE ALICE IN WONDERLAND PROJECT.IT IS AN OFFSHOOT OF PROJECT MONARCH,MK ULTRA..........PEOPLE IN AMERICA HAVE TAKEN THE C.I.A.TO COURT AND WON THEIR CASES,SO IT IS NOT CONSPIRACY!!! BLOGS.TO BLESS THE YOUTH.MINTY.X.X.X get these guys to London!!!!we love em,truth!!!!!!!!"⁸

Author's Note: Here Ms. Berry refers to the mind control project that she mentioned in her criminal complaint to the Met in 2006.

21 August 2008 - GoPetition
"Petition signature comment by minty challis
Date: August 21, 2008
Petition: The Megan Williams Case
Petition signer's comment:
i was kidnapped 8 days at 8 years old,and put in videos of child porn,im meditating for Megan.talking healed me not there system councilers as i don't trust them but to other survivors etc.with all my heart bless you,minty.x..x.x.x...x"⁹

Author's note: Ms. Berry's alleged kidnapping at 8 years of age is not an allegation she made against Mr. Ovenden but against someone whom she refers to as Mr. Rothschild. Her claim that she was "put in videos of child porn" remains uncorroborated. (Given the state of video technology in 1974, it is also improbable.)

23 November 2008 - Bebo.com
"Minty Challis said:
hi i was abused and kidnapped at 8 for 8 days and put in child porn,contact me i have songs from years ago that i wrote,there not weepy,fuking aving it,caused a few riots to,myspace.com/mintychallis....my MARCH OF A MILLION YOUTH 18TH JULY,09, myspace.com/stop_the_killin,,,,,facebook mintychallis,ill get the songs on the pages soon as,we are the,,,ANTI CHILD ABUSE LIBERATION FROUNT COME JOIN!!!!! A.C.A.L.F.X.X..X.X"¹⁰

2008-2009 - Youtube (entries on Minty Challis Youtube account captured on June 1, 2013).
"Donna El Berry replied to a comment from ffairlane57 4 years ago
i was abused by pigs and government higher intelligences have found the child porn on net to prove it,i was kidnapped for 8 days at 8 years old for sex,and it hasn't made me hate all pigs,but truth be known they are ordered to batter us,but were not all crusty skum, some of us have good reason not excuses,big up good pigs fuk of bad ones same as all groups good and bad,minty.x"

"Donna El Berry commented 4 years ago
hi i run the anti child abuse liberation front and ive never heard that rod [Rodney King] was a child abuser sorry don't belove it,bless Rodney king, blairs a peado so go bash him,minty.x."¹¹

31 October 2009 - Baby Art Blog
"got away said
hi art is ok abuse is not,he did abuse us,he changes the pics,you all sound like good people, and alot of naked art is ok,ie the mum who put her kids pics in gallery,shes cool,but he hurt me bad wen i was 4,and many more have come forward,bless you all,and hope you understand,.x.x.¹²

20 February 2010 - Causes.com
"About:
to get justice for all survivers of sexull child hood abuse by people in positions of power,there days are numberd...bless,x"
"A.C.A.L.F. was set up as an independant body because of an ever growing need to protect children,,,we are sick and tired of people in positions of power dealing with these cases,,as they are the same people who are committing these offences..we are also WOSA,,PEOPLE WHO AS KIDS WERE FILMED,PHOTOGRAPHED,RAPED,AND WHOS PICTURES WERE POSTED ON A CHILD PORN SITE CALLED WONDERLAND,,IT NOW HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN,,We along with the children of tomorow,,ask these people in there positions of power to now stand down,,or except the fact you will be taken down as in Belgim,,,you had fun with many millions of us we are now one and we do NOT intend to commit suicide,go mad,or forget... thankyou,Alice OWTA Wonderland(Minty challis,bless,X¹³

Author's Note: "Wonderland" refers to the Wonderland Club, shut down by the British National Crime Squad in 1998.¹⁴ There is no evidence that Ms Berry was ever photographed, raped and had her images posted on that or any other website.

Mid-2010 - Reverbnation.com
"DJ,BURNDEM (almost 3 years ago) I am also, Miss Jus Dis, M.C,Liberty..ON MY RECOMMENDATIONS LIST,,BUT AM BLOCKED OUT BY THE ZIONIST HACKERS,,,ALSO IM LOCKED OUT OF MY MYSPACE ACCOUNT,BUT FEEL FREE TO GO HAVE A LOOK,ITS GOT MY HISTORY THERE,myspace.com/mintychallis,,,,BLESS,X"¹⁵

Author's Note: The comment was captured on June 1, 2013.

On August 8th or 9th, 2010, - Despiertate

Author's Note: Ms. Berry appeared at a "Rally against Child Abuse" at Trafalgar Square together with David Icke,¹⁶¹⁶ among others. The videoclip of Ms. Berry speech was deleted from Youtube, but a transcription, translated into Spanish, appears on the website, Despiertate. Portions of that transcript are included here, re-translated back into English. Given both earlier and later postings by Ms. Berry, there is no reason to believe that the transcription and translations in any way misrepresent what she said that day.

"Ok, my name is Minty Challis. In 1970 I was abused by David Mellor, Mark Hayworth, Peter Blake, a famous artist, and Graham Ovenden. My pictures are in a gallery around here, naked at age four with my legs open." [...]

"Do you remember the 13 people people who died in Soho watching a pornographic movie Sorry: we lit the fire." [...]

"The first time I went to Gaza, I asked Hamas for a rocket. I said to them, 'Please, would you permit me to bomb Mr. Rothschild, who abused me when I was four years old? Please, would you permit me to shoot him?' Do you know what they said? 'No. Maintain the peace! The Messiah will return as female energy.'" [...]

"Part of military training is to double over someone fourteen years of age and simulate violating them. It's part of the instruction of the English army." [...]

"Those who hope to go to Israel and help this girl, see how many more are abused there by the Zionists, because we must confess that above the paedophile ring are them." [...]

"The program of mind control used against us, as we all know, is 'Alice in Wonderland,' the same name as my naked pictures when I was four years of age, which are in every gallery in London. Moreover, they are distributed throughout the world. In every gallery of the world you can enter and ask: 'May I see the nude pictures of Alice in Wonderland, 1980?' And there I am, with my legs spread and everything. I tried to stop these pictures. They prohibited me from entering all the galleries. I am prohibited from entering in this gallery here! In fact, I am forbidden to leave England. They took my passport for seven years." [...]

"Ok, so I went to France in 1994 and was filmed for television, was singing, giving a concert, and someone told me that they were filming for television, so then I said, 'Good, I'm from the United Kingdom, and 8 politicians abuse me as a girl - I can't get my case heard!' They took my passport on my return from France and refused to give it back to me. The woman who tried to get a passport for me so I could go to Gaza last year, she received a telephone call that said 'She is a terrorist, we don't want her leaving the country.' A terrorist, because I was abused? Because I lead the Anti-Child Abuse Liberation Front?" [...]

"Twenty years ago I did mind control, I was Alice in Wonderland, and people have told me that mind control is something that doesn't exist. Even my own family threw me out of the house." [...]

"They hypnotized me as Alice in Wonderland; I was four years old!" [...]

"Why is there an affinity between Gaza and me? Because the leaders of the paedophile ring are in Israel! They are called Rothschild y they are called Rockefeller! Rothschild organized my kidnapping when I was 8 years old. I was kidnapped for 8 days. I was given heroin and used in pornographic films, that have now been discovered." ]...]

"As many women were involved in my abuse as were men." [...]¹⁷

September 21, 2011 - Subverted Nation
"this is so true, i was abused and kidnapped by these sick pedos at 4 and 8 years old, thank you to people now LEARNING and posting, XXXX"¹⁸

Author's Note: Ms. Berry's comments were directed to an article on this a neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denial website about an Internet child pornography ring that resulted in the arrest of 22 people from around the world in 2008. Subverted Nation wrote:

It's obvious this wasn't just your garden variety group of sickos trading a few pics on the net...The whole operation stinks of jews... It was run like a jew business, and it's a typical jew business model for sure. Not to mention it's an area where jews are the majority, because their doctrine is the only one on earth, that not only condones, but encourages sex with children. [...] [I]t's like I keep saying, the depravity of the jew knows no bounds. [...] [Children] are not safe with jews walking our streets [...] You can scream Nazi all you want, but there was a good reason Germany enacted laws to confine these critters, and just look at how infested they are with disease today. I say this tie we get rid of these demonic souls once and for all. No more jews living among non-jew populations, not even on the same land mass...for as long as mankind shall last.¹⁹

June 2012 - Youtube (Donna El Berry posted 1 year ago)
"2nd.responce to xFADrelxs. im not a benefit sponger,i had an opp in 200 they removed a foreign body from my belly i lost an overy,no doctors believed me all my life then they scanned me and i had a major opp,(and was apologized to for many years of none belief,100 they had to cut it from my bowels my bladder and all other internal things as it was sticky and attached,can you imagine the pain i had all my life from this?"²⁰

Author's Note: The comment was captured on June 1, 2013.

January 17, 2013 - Novel Activist
"minty says:
the thing is why were the child models alone with him with no adult there as he paid the parents adults to go have tea in harrords wile he took naked pics of them Lorraine has had to have many years of counseling just for that she says he didn’t touch her but the modeling left her with complexes so much so she changed her name etc."²¹

Author's Note: Mr. Ovenden never paid any of his models, their parents or anyone else. Nor did he send parents to Harrods (or anywhere else) while he took nude images. Ms. Berry's statements above that Lorraine C. (referred to in the first paragraph of this article) "had to have many years of counseling" and that "modeling left her with complexes so much so she changed her name" is contradicted by two facts: First, in an email sent by Ms. Berry to this author on May 29, 2013, Mr. Berry admitting that she "lost touch with lorrain when i was 11 as my mum moved away from her mum." Second, Pat C.'s letter to Mr. Ovenden in December 2004 would not have been written by someone who believed her daughter was damaged by him. (The police are also in possession of a letter from Lorraine C. thanking Mr. Ovenden for a print of one of her images that he sent her.)

06 April 2013 - Zoompad's Blog

Author's Note: The following comment was not by Ms. Berry, but recounts what Ms. Berry was heard to say. Evidently, the writer of the comment believed what Ms. Berry told her. However, there were never any images of Ms. Berry in the Tate Gallery -- or any other gallery or museum.

"When I went to the child abuse victims get together a couple of years ago, [...] I met Minty, the lady who was in the newspapers later over the Dale Farm eviction, I had a chat with her and she told me they had got her picture in the Tate Gallery, that Ovenden had abused her and taken her picture as part of his Malice in Wonderland collection. I hope she's ok and well, if she's reading this blog, I am very glad for her that the horrible pictures have been taken down [...]"²²

08 April 2013 9:40am - The Guardian
"Donna El Berry
what is painful for us he abused is this,wile the pics were taken we were being abused this is hidden as the pics are changed a bit with bright colors etc,so its like a complex i feel everyone can see me naked,sounds mad but thats the psychological damage from hes abuse.i wish all the pics of us were removed not just from the Tate,every day he sells pics of me and the other abused girls,some for over £.2000 EACH THIS MAKES ME SICK WILE I HAD A DISTURBED LIFE FROM HIM AND HES SICK FANTICS I LIVED ON THE STREETS ETC, never able to reach my full potential staved for many years etc he feeds of my pics. for 30 years i was called a lier etc bullied to the point of suicide.now i can slowly start my life ,shame is im 47 and not eating cos of hes sick food games and abuse i have not much left of me to have a life,i dedicated my life to proving hes a abuser and abused us,its took me 40 years of demos riots and complete press harassment and lies written about me,the papers all called me a lier last year now they are all jumping on the band wagon, not one of them has apologized,im more damaged by the c.p.s. and people calling me a lier and the proceeder of getting him to court than the abuse now,love to all,always protect you kids as abuse damage is life long,peace."

(The comment was posted on The Guardian website poll, "Should the Tate have removed Graham Ovenden's prints?," but removed by shortly after it was posted due to complaints about its veracity.)

May 30, 2013, email from Minty Challis to Bruce Wagner
"[...] [Mr. Ovenden] put me naked on a hight stall and blind folded me,he had put bowels of diferent foods and when i was bliind folded he made me tast the foods one by one on hes wlly,i have had problems eatting all my life,i my self know that becaue i do not remember what foods was in the bowels when some thing has the same textures i cant eat,hence nearly starving to death all my life, i wouldnt have baths with out cloaths on till i was about 16 years old,then i worked out it was a complex from bieng photoed nude, obiosly my sub concane thought nude ,camra,as soon as i put 2 and 2 together i was ablue to bath naked [...]"

- "i was just always telling police i was abused,me and lorrain usto go to the police station and say we were abused and they usto say,do you want to see the horses ,they never did anything,i was always telling people he abued me,there must be lots of places that had been tolled, police have most of that"

- "mark haworth booth,ill telll you how that came about,i went to pat [C.'s] house years ago to punch her,as my mum tried to blame it all on pat taking me to grayham,i knocked on her door she opened the door and said sorry,(my mum never said sorry)so i forgave pat and stayed at her house 1 week ,pat said hes ruined your and lorrains life and tolled me lots,she said he wanted you for hes alice in wonderland project(which i now know is the mind control program they put me in,mkultra,alice progect)so then i looked at the vxa for the pics of me,as i had a feeeling to go print room and ask for alice pics,(thanks pat) i got there a lad was there that day,i got the pics and the boy said,hay thats you now in that pic but its got 1970 on it! i said pls say nothing this man abused me and im shure they have been folowing me all my life,he said you can contact mark haworth booth ,hes not here today,or you might know him as howerd, that esent shivers down my spine,when we went to knightsbright to grahams studio there was another abuser there him and grayham shared the kids,hes name was howerd! there more on that one,obiosly me bieng me i then studed howed(mark),,i did again complain when he was arested first time in uk, the police were crap,now david mellor,i have a slight memory of him bieng there at times at grayhams studio, so me bieng me googled david mellor and mark haworth booth as one google i got a boook they did together years ago,it was called definitan of little boys musles,it was nude kids boys flexing there muslces,yuk!i was with kevin javes at the time and we were on net togther,,kevin worked for panarama,he lives in usa now.so again i had a wittness to me finding this book,then i knew for shure david was in it with them,all sounds a bit mad,but to wright it i dont do as well as saying it [...]"

"[T]he police in my case said the defence were going to use the vid [of Ms. Berry's speech at Trafalgar Square] to make me look stupid,so i asked the girll who put it up to take it down,they didnt for 3 mouths till ii threatened thenm with leagle action [...]"

Author's Note: The account of the "taste test" offered in Ms. Berry's May 30, 2013 email contains details that were absent from her statements to the Met. As already stated above, the claim that Pat C. told Ms. Berry that Mr. Ovenden ruined her and Lorraine C.'s life is contradicted by Ms. Berry's email admitting that she lost contact with the C.'s and by Pat C.'s letter to the Ovendens in December 2004. Again, no nude pictures of Ms. Berry exist because none were ever taken. Mr. Ovenden did produce a number of "Alice" drawings and paintings, but Ms. Berry is not in them and they were created prior to 1970.

The "Alice" series that was available for view at the Tate Gallery and its website (and which can now be seen here) was begun in 1968 during Mr. Ovenden's final year at the Royal College and completed by 1970 when it was exhibited along with works by Peter Blake at the Waddington Gallery. There were 8 screen prints in the series, all modeled on Sally J, the daughter of Mr. Ovenden's frame maker, who does not resemble a four-year-old or Ms. Berry in the slightest. Nor do any of those drawings depict nudity. The second Alice series were a group of paintings modeled after a girl named Belinda, whom Mr. Ovenden photographed in 1968 and 1969. One of those paintings was used as the cover of a 1976 LP entitled "Malice in Wonderland" by British blues/rock/funk band, Paice Ashton & Lord.

Perhaps the Met did tell Ms. Berry to take her Trafalgar Square speech offline in 2010 when the CPS was preparing a case against Mr. Ovenden based on Ms. Berry's 2006 allegations, but it is a fact that when Mr. Ovenden's barrister, Robert Linford, asked for copies of the historical psychiatric reports regarding Ms. Berry, the CPS refused to hand them over until forced to do so. The reports are notable only for the fact that they contained no claims by Ms. Berry that she had been abused in 1970 by Mr. Ovenden or anyone else.

Ultimately, CM and JB adopted their own version of Ms. Berry's "taste test" story. Was it the Metropolitan Police who prompted them? Testimony by another witness, shown in an earlier post with a white blindfold, suggests that this was the case. She indicated that she had been questioned repeatedly about blindfolding (although the Met didn't know at the time that she had been blindfolded for one of the Harry Lunn drawings) and could not explain to her inquisitors why she was blindfolded, although she was sure she was never abused. CM and JB, on the other hand, told the same story, with the same doubtful details, down to the sudden visual "revelation" of the alleged event many years after the fact. For this reason, and because on cross-examination they dissembled on important aspects in their stories which they hadn't thought through, they were disbelieved by the jury. As already mentioned here, Judge Cottle was disturbed enough by the similarity of their testimony to instruct the jury to consider, among other things, whether they had "been affected by someone to make similar but false claims." These stories and the claims of Ms. Berry are relevant now because they are indicative of how the case against Graham Ovenden has been constructed and prosecuted by the Met and the CPS from the very beginning.

In the next post, we'll take a closer look at other accusations that should never have been prosecuted by the CPS: those by JB for which Mr. Ovenden was convicted by a vote of 10-2.

Endnotes

¹See, e.g., Furedi, Frank, "After Savile: policing as entertainment." Spiked: 29 April 2013. http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13580/

²See, Moir, Jan, "Minty the rent-a-cause rebel with a frothy latte," Mail Online, 21 October 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2051662/Dale-Farm-eviction-Minty-rent-cause-rebel-frothy-latte.html; Reid, Sue, "The fantasist of Dale Farm: Why does the mother of gipsy camp activist Minty Challis say she's a deluded self-publicist?" Mail Online, 21 October 2011; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052079/The-fantasist-Dale-Farm-Why-does-mother-gipsy-camp-activist-Minty-say-shes-deluded-self-publicist.html; and Pendlebury, Richard and Arthur Martin, "The truth about Minty, the crucifix-waving rebel for any cause you like." Mail Online, 21 October 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051282/Dale-Farm-The-truth-Minty-crucifix-waving-rebel-cause-like.html.  

The Daily Mail is cited here not for the truth of what the articles contain, but to illustrate the fact that Ms. Berry is given voice in a wide array of forums.

³Indy Media U.K., "acalfs victory over child abuser artists, Minty Challis, 14.04.2001. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2001/04/2952.html

⁴Id. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2001/04/2952.html?c=on#comments

⁵Stop Child Rape Network, http://wayback.archive.org/web/20050306014328/http://stopchildrape.info.

⁶IndyMedia UK, "State-protected paedophile ring in Jersey?" and "Paedophile Freemasons involved in cases of child abuse in UK," http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392266.html?c=on#comments

⁷Infra, note 3.

⁸Minty Militant Charming Challis's page on MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/mintychallis, at lower right.

⁹GoPetition: Changing the World, http://www.gopetition.com/petition-comment.php?cid=4017738

¹⁰The Anti Peado Squad's Photos [sic], on Bebo, http://www.bebo.com/c/photos/view?MemberId=1758379385&PhotoAlbumId=1830555542

¹¹Donna El Berry, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/mintychallis

¹²Baby Art Blog, "graham ovenden on trial," http://www.pileup.com/babyart/blog/?p=379

¹³causes: "Anti-Child-Abuse-Liberation-Front,,A.C.A.L.F," http://www.causes.com/causes/450378-anti-child-abuse-liberation-front-a-c-a-l-f/about

¹⁴For information on the "Wonderland Club," see, Wikipedia, "Operation Cathedral," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cathedral

¹⁵DJ, BURNDEM / Comments, http://www.reverbnation.com/page_object/page_object_comments/artist_884294. (The photo is of Ms. Berry.)

¹⁶David Icke preys on people like Ms. Berry by using their emotional fragility in the service of his hate-filled, paranoid vision of the world. Mr. Icke's Wikipedia entry reveals an anti-Semitic undercurrent to his ideology, but he is probably more of an equal opportunity crackpot. Here are some typical excerpts from his website:</ br>

Put it all together and the situation is as clear as can be: paedophilia and Satanism are the cement that hold the establishment control structure together in every country, and these 'national' networks connect together to form a global network of paedophiles and Satanists all watching each others' backs - while they continue to serve the Control System.
[...]
People don't realise how organised it all is. Satanists and paedophiles (and those doing their bidding in pursuit of power, money and sheer survival) are placed in the key public offices to hide their activities. I am talking presidents and prime ministers, too.
[...]
I have been naming the former British Prime Minister, the now late Ted Heath, since 1998 to be a child-killing paedophile Satanist and, in terms of his 'high-office', he is far from a rarity (see article below this one). I know others, including one who spent a long time in that position.
[...]
The mention of Father Bush is especially significant because I have been naming him in my books and on radio for years as a serial paedophile, child torturer and killer. I said it on a live BBC radio programme once, actually twice, and this fact appeared in some national newspapers.
[...]
The US government mind and sex slave, Cathy O'Brien, exposed Bush and many others in her book, Trance-Formation of America. Here she describes what Bush did on a regular basis to her daughter, Kelly:

'Kelly's bleeding rectum was but one of many physical indicators of George Bush's pedophile perversions. I have overheard him speak blatantly of his sexual abuse of her on many occasions. He used this and threats to her life to "pull my strings" and control me.

The psychological ramifications of being raped by a pedophile President are mind shattering enough, but reportedly Bush further reinforced the traumas to Kelly's mind with sophisticated NASA electronic and drug mind-control devices.

[...]
Wherever you are in the world reading this newsletter - your country's political-intelligence-military network is doing exactly the same.
[...]
Scotland - one of the global centres for paedophila and Satanism

http://www.davidicke.com/articles/child-abuse-mainmenu-74/31148-paedophilia-and-satanism-the-fabric-of-the-web

¹⁷Despiertate, "Concentracion en Trafalgar Square Londres," 9 de agosto de 2010, http://despiertate-pronto.blogspot.com/2010/08/concentracion-en-trafalgar-square.html

¹⁸Subverted Nation, "Jew 'Honored' To Be Part of Global Child Pornography Ring," 30 May 09, http://www.subvertednation.net/jew-honored-to-be-part-of-global-child-pornography-ring/

¹⁹Id. For somewhat more accurate information on the Internet ring, see, Seattle Times, “Child-porn ring was sophisticated, March 5, 2008. http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2004261109_porn05.html

²⁰Infra, note 11.

²¹Novel Activist, "Graham Ovenden Update," September 14, 2012, http://novelactivist.com/11651/graham-ovenden-update/

²²Zoompad's blog, "Graham Ovenden," http://zoompad.blogspot.nl/2013/04/graham-ovenden.html

On Becoming an Offence to Public Morals

In the wake of Graham Ovenden's conviction on two false charges related to one former "model" -- a woman who is both registrar and administrative/ technical contact for the website of Mr. Ovenden's estranged wife -- and five charges related to three "indecent" photographs depicting only nudity, Mr. Ovenden and his art have been heaped with scorn in the press and the blogosphere. Commentaries have ranged from crass derision and sneering (e.g., The Daily Mail and Jonathan Jones in The Guardian) to an almost neo-Nazi-like zeal and fervid hatred (e.g., Chris Spivey, Dave Knight and others of the ilk of Icke). (For those who don't know, David Icke is a conspiracy theorist who believes that Britain, and possibly the entire world, is ruled by reptilian paedophile satanists.) Naturally none of the writers or bloggers have any of their facts straight about Mr. Ovenden's case and know next to nothing about his art -- or much about any art, for that matter. That also goes for Mr. Jones, whose article about Mr. Ovenden's work and "1970s self-conscious decadence" revealed a breathtaking dearth of knowledge about both art and art history.¹

In response to Graham Ovenden's conviction, the Tate Gallery removed 34 of his (mostly early) works from public view, because the convictions, the Tate said, "shone a new light" on his art.² Perhaps they will be restored once the Tate realises that the work shown did not depict any of the witnesses at trial (including the ones who recanted the sex charges that the police prepared for them) and was not made while Mr. Ovenden was molesting anyone. On the other hand, the Tate may decide, as Jonathan Jones believes, that the work is no longer art (or that it never was).

Rachel Cooke had a good point when she wrote in the The Guardian on Sunday,' 7 April, 2013, that "[w]hat was art in March must surely be art in April."³ Never mind that she was misinformed about how Mr. Ovenden's trial actually turned out. "You can't un-art art," she wrote, "though Hitler had a go, when he decided that what was modern was also degenerate and set about destroying it and, far worse, those who made it."⁴

Of course, when it comes to photographic work, you can "un-art art." According to the courts, the 1978 Protection of Children Act was intended to follow the dictates of public opinion and requires that, in any prosecution under the Act, the artist's intent, the context within which the images were created, and what the subjects of the images said about those images as young adults (and close in time to the images' creation) must not be considered. Thus it is hardly a surprise that, in 2013, images which the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute during the 1990s should become the cause of a criminal conviction. That wasn't the only injustice: the application of "specimen" counts made it possible for the jury also to convict Graham Ovenden for photographs (depicting only nudity) that they never saw.

Critics like Jones and other moralists who are smug about their "un-arting" of Mr. Ovenden's work and advocate, expressly or impliedly, its destruction, will surely miss the irony that their politically correct ideas land them at the same point as some of the worst ideologues and ideologies in history (and not just national socialism). To put an even finer point on it, one may cite the words of Thomas Mann in Mario and the Magician, a novella written in 1929 about the rise of fascism in Italy:

In a word, we became an offence to the public morals. Our small daughter -- eight years old, but in physical development a good year younger and thin as a chicken -- had had a good long bathe and gone playing in the warm sun in her wet costume. We told her that she might take off her bathing-suit, which was stiff with sand, rinse it in the sea, and put it on again, after which she must take care to keep it cleaner. Off goes the costume and she runs down naked to the sea, rinses her little jersey, and comes back. Ought we to have foreseen the outburst of anger and resentment which her conduct, and thus our conduct, called forth? Without delivering a homily on the subject, I may say that in the last decade our attitude towards the nude body and our feelings regarding it have undergone, all over the world, a fundamental change.
                                                               - Thomas Mann, Mario & the Magician

The reader should not think that anyone is being accused of fascism here. Rather, the lesson lies in the fact that what Stephen Pinker refers to as the "Rights Revolution," a positive historical development that includes "a century long movement to prevent the abuse and neglect of children," has left, as an utterly unnecessary legacy, a code of etiquette with its own "puzzling customs, peccadilloes and taboos."⁵ That this code includes a dangerous streak aimed at dictating what people may represent and view in art is not in doubt.

Endnotes.

¹Jones, Jonathan, "Graham Ovenden: artist thrived among 1970s self-conscious decadence." The Guardian, 2 April 2013; http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/02/graham-ovenden-artist-1970s-decadence

²Bowie-Sell, Daisy, "Graham Ovenden prints removed from Tate." The Telegraph, 04 April 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9970830/Graham-Ovenden-prints-removed-from-Tate.html

Most of the works that are now hidden away at the Tate, including the Aspects of Lolita series of aquatints from 1975, can be seen online, most notably at the website for the Art Museum at the State University of New York at Albany and the website called Not the Tate, which was created the last time that the Gallery removed Graham Ovenden's work from public view.

³Cooke, Rachel, "The idea of 'ethical art' is nonsense. We have to separate art from life.' The Guardian, Sunday, 07 April 2013; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/07/graham-ovenden-art

⁴Id.

⁵Pinker, Stephen. The Better Angels of Our Nature. Viking, 2011. (Kindle Edition, Location 8450-51.)

Trial Fails to Rewrite History of Graham Ovenden's Art

[Readers who haven't read the previous posts should do so before reading this lengthy one.]

Although prosecutor Ramsay Quaife attempted to connect Graham Ovenden’s art with sexual abuse charges, he was unable to do so at trial. The “taste test,” where Mr. Ovenden was said to have blindfolded two of his models in order trick them into performing fellatio, was disbelieved by the jury for good reason: the stories were directly contradicted by circumstantial evidence and lacked the ring of truth. Mr. Quaife’s other claim – that Mr. Ovenden blindfolded his models in order to get them to pose with their legs open – was never proven because there were never any photographs to support it.

The two prosecution witnesses whose photographs by Mr. Ovenden were charged as “indecent” must have been under considerable pressure to make accusations against Mr. Ovenden. The police concocted negative statements, but when called to testify, they failed to follow the scripts that the police and prosecution had prepared for them.

One of the witnesses, the subject of a single photograph alleged to be indecent, unequivocally stated behind the witness screen that Mr. Ovenden never abused her and gave mixed reviews to her photographs. One image shown to her on cross-examination she found beautiful. As to the allegedly indecent photograph presented by the prosecution, she simply stated that it was “not me.” Presumably she meant that she didn’t feel it was a proper portrayal. That photograph, which had never been published or exhibited, was part of a group of images taken from a bound album that was seized from Mr. Ovenden’s studio and torn apart by the police in preparation for trial. Mr. Ovenden later testified in his defence that taken together with the other images, the allegedly “indecent” one would not be viewed as indecent at all. At that point, Judge Graham Cottle inquired of the prosecution whether the police were in possession of the other photographs. They said they were not, despite the fact that they had shown them to Mr. Ovenden’s counsel legal team, comprised of QC (Queen’s Counsel) Christopher Quinlan, barrister Robert Linford and solicitor Tess O’Callahan, just prior to Mr. Ovenden stepping into the witness box. Ultimately, the other images may not have been admissible for the jury to consider, as under British law, jurors are instructed to consider images in isolation from the context in which they were created.

That peculiar phrasing of the witness, that the photograph was “not me,” was probably a contrivance of the prosecution to ensure that she didn’t give an opinion as to the ultimate question – i.e., whether the image was “indecent.” The latter is strictly for the jury to decide. If she had stated that she believed the photograph was “indecent,” a mistrial might have been declared.

There was more than mere contrivance in the signed statement prepared for this witness by the police. Although the prosecution represented that it accurately summarized her extensive pre-trial interview, Mr. Ovenden’s QC compared the two and discovered that the statement mischaracterized what she had said and omitted crucial testimony which tended in Mr. Ovenden’s favour. Furthermore, she was not a witness who, as the prosecution claimed, “contacted police long after the abuse is alleged to have taken place, and only when they realised exactly what had happened to them as girls.”¹ Not long before his arrest in 2006, Mr. Ovenden received a visit from the witness’s mother, who asked Mr. Ovenden for copies of photographs that he had taken of her two daughters and told Mr. Ovenden that her daughter (the witness in question) sent him her fondest wishes. What happened to this former model was not some realisation, but a visit from the police, who contacted her after Mr. Ovenden naively gave them a list of his former models in 2008.

It should not be surprising that in her interview with the police she had positive things to say about her experience of being photographed by Mr. Ovenden. In 1990, when she was 27, she made a statement about that experience and it was published as part of the introduction to Mr. Ovenden’s monograph, States of Grace. Here is what she said:

There was a freedom about it -- not just being myself, but it showed other possibilities, different from everyday situations. It was nice to be accepted on the level that I was myself and he didn't used to say “this is so-and-so and she is 10 years old.”  In this sense, it was very adult....

Graham didn't pose me that much. He used to just let me do things and he used to say “that's OK.” It was quite spontaneous. Sometimes he might have said “pick up your chin” or he might have said something emotive, like “look far away” or things like that. I never felt that he took away “me” as a person.

One of the things that's very important, I feel, is that the work is very honest. However, erotic the pictures are, however they are provocative, they are honest pictures. We were there. We did those things. It's not like someone's faked it. I know that Graham's an artist, and not to take anything away from him, of course, but the thing is, the people are there. So, it exists and you can't pretend it doesn't exist and that sexuality doesn't exist. So the honesty, I think, is really important and I think people are just stuffy and have a lot of fears about what's okay and get confused about what's okay.... It was a very safe environment.²

With the second prosecution witness and her allegedly “indecent” photographs, things get, as Alice once said, curiouser and curiouser.  The police laid three charges of sexual abuse against Mr. Ovenden on her behalf, but when she got to the witness box, behind a screen and out of view of Mr. Ovenden and any spectators, she steadfastly maintained that Mr. Ovenden had never abused her. Prosecutor Quaife, who must have felt betrayed, turned nasty in his questioning of her. He made her cry, but couldn’t shake her resolve. On the following Monday, when the trial was reconvened, the prosecution made an application to the court to dismiss the three unproven counts.

Judge Cottle was extremely unhappy with that decision. Although he ordered the three charges dismissed,³ as he was required to, he invited the prosecution to bring new charges in their place. Subsequently, Mr. Ovenden was separately charged with making two indecent photographs of the witness in question. These were laid in addition to two “specimen” charges that related, in part, to the same photographs. While bringing new charges in mid-trial seems unfair in terms of compromising a defendant’s ability to prepare a defence, specimen charges are manifestly unjust where, as here, the line between legality and criminality can only be drawn by looking at the images.

The two photographs in question, taken on the same day and appearing on the same strip of negatives, were not printed by Graham Ovenden. They were printed by the police, who manipulated them in such a way so as to accentuate the genitalia. Interestingly, these photographs had already been in the possession of the police once, in 1993, when Mr. Ovenden was raided by Sergeant Michael Platt of the Metropolitan Police, Obscene Publications Squad. Mr. Platt, now retired, appeared at Mr. Ovenden’s 2013 trial. Outside the courtroom, he represented to QC Quinlan, who was standing with the rest of Mr. Ovenden’s legal team, that the two images in question were familiar to him and confirmed that they had been returned to Mr. Ovenden. Immediately thereafter, however, Mr. Platt was led away by the prosecution, only to return and say that he had been mistaken.

These two photographs, in addition to being the basis of two charges in their own right, were the basis for the specimen counts, which were grouped into different years. (If the reader finds it strange that two photographs taken on the same day could represent groupings of photographs spanning different years, so does this writer.) Where a specimen, as in Mr. Ovenden’s case, is a separately identifiable offence, the jury is instructed as follows:

Count [X] is a specimen Count. The prosecution allege that D[efendant] also committed numerous other offences of the same kind. Instead of loading up the Indictment with Counts charging many offences, they have selected one as an example, as they are entitled to do. However, you may convict D[efendant] only if you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the particular offence charged in the Count [X], whether or not you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he also committed other such offences.

Crown Court Bench Book and Specimen Directions, Third Ed., 2010 (emphasis added).

In other words, even if the jury is uncertain about the photographs they haven’t been shown, if they find the examples (i.e., the two photographs) “indecent,” then they must convict on the specimen charge. The Bench Book gives as an example of a specimen charge “a Count of indecent assault on a child who claims to have been abused in the same way on many occasions, but cannot say precisely when or how often.” This isn’t even remotely analogous to the situation here. Photographs are physical artifacts. What someone might remember about a photograph is proven or disproven by the thing itself. These counts essentially tell the jury that if it finds one image “indecent,” then it should imagine that others are also “indecent,” regardless of what the photographs actually show. Compounding the disparity is the fact that although the witness was photographed by Mr. Ovenden on many occasions, she did not testify that she was photographed in the same pose on numerous occasions.

The witness was not called back for additional testimony regarding the new charges, but she had already expressed her opinion. As to the two photographs printed by the police, she stated, like the first witness, that they were “not me.” She also said that, at 39 years of age, looking at her photographs, she was of the opinion that no young girl should ever be photographed in such a way and that she would do anything she could do to make sure that it didn’t happen to anyone else.

This was a strong condemnation given that she did not testify to having suffered any particular damage or consequence as a result of her experiences. It is also a strange statement – a complete revision of the eloquent declarations she made during the 1990s in defence of Mr. Ovenden’s photographs of her.

Maud Hewes was photographed by Graham Ovenden twenty to twenty-five times from the time she was six until she was about fifteen. (He also once photographed her nude as an adult.) Seven of her images from 1984 through 1988, when she was between the ages of nine and fourteen, appear in Mr. Ovenden’s monograph, States of Grace. In five of them she poses by herself; in two, she is posing with another model. Ms. Hewes’ name, unlike those of the other witnesses against Mr. Ovenden, is mentioned here because she spoke publicly about Mr. Ovenden’s photographs on a number of occasions as a young woman.

When page proofs of States of Grace arrived in New York from the printer in Hong Kong in October 1991, United States Customs seized them. At a court hearing in February 1992, the United States government announced, without filing charges, that the book contained depictions of minors engaged in “sexually explicit conduct” under United States law, which prohibits the portrayal of a “lascivious exhibition of the genitals.” One month later, at a second hearing on the matter, the head of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the United States Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Robert Flores, identified the image of Ms. Hewes on page 54 of the book as the only potentially pornographic image in the book. (Actually, he equivocated, claiming there might be other pornographic images, although he was at a loss to explain which ones or why.) A month later, as the defence of the book was taking shape in New York, Robert Atkins, then a reporter for the Village Voice, interviewed Ms. Hewes, then 18, by telephone. She told him:

When I modeled for Graham, I’d make up the poses and he’d shoot them. He never asked me to be sexy and I never tried to…he’s been a family friend since I was four years old.⁴

The following month, Ms. Hewes flew to New York, where she made a sworn declaration that was submitted to the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York. In pertinent part, it stated as follows:

I have known Graham Ovenden as a family friend for fourteen years – since I was four years old. I have modeled for Graham on numerous occasions – in fact, too numerous to count – for both his photographs and paintings. I have modeled for him both clothed and fully nude, both alone and with other children.... The portrait which the United States has charged as indecent is a portrait of me as I was eight years ago. I am not acting in a sexual way in the picture and Graham never asked me to be sexual or treated me as a sexual object. The accusation that the image is “obscene” is, to me, an accusation that I am “obscene,” something to which I take offense.⁵

Ms. Hewes also spoke about her photographs in the U.K., the first time on April 21, 1993, when she was interviewed by agents of both the Metropolitan Police, Obscene Publications Squad (OPS), and the Kirkwall police, after Mr. Ovenden was arrested by the OPS on suspicion of being part of a pornography “ring,” one of the obsessions of the police at the time. Her statement both affirms and adds to what she had previously said:

I have been shown a booklet of photographs 'MP 20' which contains images of myself. The photographs appear to pinpoint a certain age, although I have been widely photographed since I was about 4 until I was maybe 15 years old. All the people that I have worked with I have known very well, and have felt perfectly comfortable with them. I have never been indecently assaulted by any of them or forced to do anything against my wishes. I have now been through the "MP 20" booklet and initialed all the photos that I recognize of myself. I have also put the initials of the photographer when positively identified. All the photographs that I have identified as being Graham Ovenden's were taken at Barley Splatt....

I decline the idea that any of the images of myself are indecent and emphatically state that I was never abused, or photographed/drawn by co-ercion. Photographic or life drawing 'sessions' were never a prearranged appointment. I was at Graham Ovendens a lot of the time and the Ovendens were, are like a second family to me. Quite a lot of the time Emily and I would ask to be photographed. The only time a session was arranged was for the 'Alice Project' between Graham, Brian P and myself. Because it was a project sometimes we would decide that we ought to do some more for the project. The images in the 'MP 20" which I have marked G.O. refer to Graham Ovenden. Graham Ovenden is one of my best friends and also like a father figure. Signature: [M.] Hewes.⁶

At the time Ms. Hewes made that statement she was living in the Orkneys, very far from Cornwall, with her father and stepmother, both of whom were present on the day Ms. Hewes was questioned. Ms. Hewes’ stepmother, a friend of the Ovendens, posted a letter to Mr. Ovenden five days after Ms. Hewes made her statement. The letter is reproduced here in large part:

Nethermill, Rousay, Orkney                                                         Monday 26th April 1993

Dear Graham:

I’m typing this because my writing is becoming so unreadable these days. I enclose a photocopy of a bad photocopy of [Maud's] statement which you may wish to show to your solicitor. I insisted on getting it done at the fish factory in the last couple of minutes before Platt and Hills got on the 3.25 ferry. In my frantic hurry I didn’t line the first page up properly and so two lines are missing. I’ve typed up the statement so you can read it easily but you can make out [Maud’s] initialed alterations on the photocopy.

Michael Platt (the Met), Philip Hills (New Scotland Yard) and Morag Scrimgeur (Kirkwall Police) arrived at 11:15. Joseph and [Maud] were interviewed separately and privately, though the policewoman was present during [Maud’s] interview. I was not allowed to stay while Joseph was questioned. I did try to insist on it but was told they would have to take him somewhere else. Wish I’d been sure of the legal position. Have they a right to take someone who is not under arrest, only a witness? I was made to feel it would be very unreasonable if I kept on.

The mode of questioning was more like interrogation than anything else – very manipulative, full of leading questions and in Joseph’s case they used both veiled and open threats. After 20-30 minutes Platt had reduced [Maud] to tears. At this stage I was allowed in. She said he became much less heavy and manipulative after this. Eventually she agreed to write a statement. Platt tried to steer it but she resisted quite well. In fact she showed an admirable defiant independence. Platt read it and said later to Joseph that she had been schooled by Graham Ovenden. He forgets of course that she is nineteen, intelligent and articulate, and that she’s been out to the States to testify in a similar case.

Joseph was interviewed twice – long and hard. He was shown three or four photos which he recognized as G.O.’s because of the wallpaper! And two others which he could not identify. [Maud] was also unable to these. Platt was clearly very frustrated. Rather bad photos – I’m not surprised no one can remember them….

They were very anxious to extract evidence of a network for taking and distributing photos. They are convinced of this. … Joseph was asked if he had ever been to Germany with Graham Ovenden. Hills asked Joseph in my presence what he knows about the ‘Alice fantasy’! Upon my very spontaneous burst of laughter, he added “Don’t forget we’ve seen the correspondence. They seem to be looking for the ideal child to play Alice.” Later I heard Platt ask [Maud] how she felt now she was too old to be Alice. Similar mockery from [Maud]! Hills stated categorically in front of me that the Lewis Carroll Society was a cover for paedophiles to exchange photos of young girls! And Platt told Joseph during his second interview that all this is an attempt to use art to cover up paedophile practice. At this time Platt also accused Joseph of only just being able to keep the lid on it all – he was protecting others. [Maud] too was just managing to do the same – any minute now she would crack and spill out everything about everyone. They offered Joseph a deal – making a not so implicit promise to make things easier for him if he revealed all about everybody. They finished “We’ll be back in three months and this time you won’t know when we’re coming.”

Platt claimed that they had two disclosures of indecent assault already.* In the car on the way to the pier, appealing to my concern for [Maud], he said it had taken a month to get one girl to talk. (I don’t know what age this girl is now or if indeed she is part of this case – I was too intent on getting a photocopy – but the poor girl, he’d obviously kept on and on until he heard what he wanted to hear.)

Curiously, there was a programme on T.V. last night called “Street Legal” presented by Paul Foot. It dealt with misbehavior by the Metropolitan Police. Apparently a large increase of money has been set aside by them for the next three years to cover expected increases in compensation!

I’m sorry this letter is so long. You can tell how angry/agitated I am. I just hope that some of this is useful. I hope it arrives safely. Could you give me a quick ring to let me know? Love to you all from us both.

Chrissie

*[Those charges, if they existed, had nothing to do with Mr. Ovenden or anyone connected to him.]

Ms. Hewes was interviewed again in 1996, at the age of 22, for a documentary entitled “For the Sake of the Children,” which was part of the series Films of Fire and shown on Channel 4 in 1997.⁷ She not only affirmed her earlier statements about her photographs, but pointed out that images shown to her by the Metropolitan Police had been manipulated by them and did not reflect the original work, or intent, of Mr. Ovenden.

Intent, however, is not an issue when it comes to determining whether an image is “indecent.” This topic will be covered in greater detail later, but the standard of what is “indecent” under British law ostensibly precludes a consideration of either the intent of the maker or the context in which the image was made. Motivation and context are only relevant, if at all, to show that the images were made intentionally rather than by accident. As the Court of Appeal stated in Regina v. Graham-Kerr [1988] 1WLR 1098,

The question, as it seems to us, is whether the photograph itself is indecent. Photographs, after all, may last a large number of years, pass from hand to hand and so on. In our view it is not possible to relate the question of whether or not a photograph is indecent with the original motivation of the person who took it. It may be that the original motivation was perfectly innocent subjectively regarded; but if the photograph is one which right-thinking people would regard as indecent, the motivation of the original taker, in our view, cannot be a relevant matter.

The court in Graham-Kerr also approved of the lower court’s instruction to the jury to “apply the standard of decency which ordinary right-thinking members of the public would set.” This standard, the Court of Appeal found, was no different from the alternative formulation, that the jury should apply “recognised standards of propriety.”

Judge Cottle’s instruction to the jury in Mr. Ovenden’s case regarding the three photographs was much the same: “The question is – would right-minded people regard such photographs as ‘indecent’?”⁸ Technically, that instruction was correct. But how is it possible that the jury could have ignored the plainly prejudicial conjectures of prosecutor Quaife that Mr. Ovenden was “a paedophile,”⁹ one who “abused children in Cornwall and London, sometimes while taking photographs,”¹⁰ and is “besotted with little girls.”¹¹ Although these claims were unsupported by any evidence, they were clearly aimed at dirtying up Mr. Ovenden so as to predispose the jury to convict him.

Moreover, what was the jury to make of images, which were not the subject of any charge and did not depict actual children, shown and described by the prosecution near the end of the trial during Mr. Ovenden’s cross-examination? These were composite works – collages – made up from original drawings and paintings by Mr. Ovenden not depicting any real people, together with pictures from adult (not child) pornographic magazines. The collages, which suggested that the child figures in the drawings were engaging in hard core sexual acts, were actually an interim step for a series that came to be titled, “As Through A Glass Darkly.”¹²(To say that the collages depicted children engaged in sexual acts would be inaccurate, both for the fact that no actual child was portrayed and that the images were plainly collages and not intended to look real.)

The police and prosecution were well aware that the composite works were an interim step because those images had been securely deleted by Mr. Ovenden from his hard drive once the final work was completed. Using special forensic software, the police recovered the explicit composite images, which were in a deleted folder titled “DESTROY IT.” But the police would have first viewed the final works on a data DVD seized from Mr. Ovenden’s studio. There were two copies, both of which were put into separate evidence bags. (“Copy 2,” shown here, was left behind.)

To create the final works of the series, Mr. Ovenden took the explicit images he had created and overlaid them with visual “noise” from severely deteriorated Victorian glass negatives, giving the work a sense of “random acts of destruction of time.” The explicit content was thus only alluded to but not shown, creating a discomforting visual tension to the work. (Three of the final works are shown here.)

The prosecution showed the jury two of the sexually explicit interim works and described the rest of them in graphic detail as evidence of the alleged motivation behind all of Mr. Ovenden’s artwork. That this evidence was far more prejudicial than probative of any aspect of the offences with which Mr. Ovenden was charged cannot be doubted. They do not make it more or less likely that he committed the offences of child abuse for which he was charged; nor do they make it more likely that he created “indecent” images of his models. They did, however, instill in the minds of the jurors concrete images to remember while they considered the specimen charges, that is, the photographs of Maud Hewes that they were never shown. Given that they saw only about half a dozen photographs by Mr. Ovenden during the entire trial (only three of which were charged as “indecent”), it was inevitable that the interim images and their descriptions would loom large in the jurors’ minds. In the interest of basic fairness, the judge should have excluded the composite images from the trial, but basic fairness was hardly the order of the day.

Something or someone made Maud Hewes change her mind about the images Mr. Ovenden took of her, but she was not forthcoming about it. When she was questioned by Mr. Ovenden’s QC, she claimed not to have remembered her statement to the Metropolitan Police twenty years ago, which seems quite unlikely given the fact that it was a topic of conversation at home and she spoke about it to others and discussed it in the documentary, “For the Sake of the Children.” Notwithstanding her change of mind and regardless of prosecutor Quaife’s jaundiced view of the supposed “paedophilic” intent of Mr. Ovenden’s art, history will vindicate Mr. Ovenden. As his daughter, whose image appears in States of Grace together with Ms. Hewes, told The Guardian in 1993, 

We were always an open household and as young children would often run round naked … These pictures were just never anything to do with sex.¹³

Endnotes

¹“Graham Ovenden convicted of child sex offences,” The Guardian, April 2, 2013, 12:23.BST. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/02/graham-ovenden-convicted-child-sex-offences.

²Ovenden, Graham. States of Grace. Ophelia Editions, New York & Amsterdam, 1992, p. 10.

³Cooper, Rob, “Artist Graham Ovenden found guilty of indecency against young girls after using nude children in his paintings,” Daily Mail Online, April 2, 2013, 15:21 GMT. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302849/Artist-Graham-Ovenden-guilty-indecency-young-girls-using-nude-children-paintings.html.

⁴Atkins, Robert, “Lolita Syndrome,” Village Voice, April 14, 1992. http://www.robertatkins.net/beta/shift/culture/censorship/kiddie.html.

⁵Id., note 2, page 80.

⁶Statement of Maud Hewes, age 19, April 21, 1993, taken by Michael Platt, Metropolitan Police (OPS), Philip Hills, New Scotland Yard, and Morag Scrimgeur, PC441, Kirkwall Police. Typographical errors in the original.

⁷http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b8096d8ff. The interview will hopefully be transcribed and posted on this blog.

⁸“Artist Graham Ovenden’s indecency case jury retires,” BBC News, March 26, 2013, 14:31 GMT. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21943329.

⁹BBC News, “Artist Graham Ovenden accused of being paedophile,” March 11, 2013, 16:48 GMT; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21745915; McDermott, Kerry, “Internationally acclaimed artist ‘sexually abused young girls in nighties after blindfolding them’,” Daily Mail Online, March 11, 2013; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...-2291669/Graham-Ovenden-Internationally-acclaimed-artist-sexually-abused-young-girls-nighties-blindfolding-them.html?ito=feeds-newsxml.

¹⁰“Graham Ovenden child sex abuse trial: Nakedness ‘no shame’, BBC News, March 21, 2013, 16:08 GMT. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21881501.

¹¹Morris, Steven, “Artist Graham Ovenden denies abusing young models,” The Guardian, March 21, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/21/artist-graham-ovenden-young-models.

¹²Id.

¹³Morris, Steven, “Graham Ovenden lived in rambling rural idyll with a dark side,” The Guardian, April 2, 2013, 20:32 BST. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/02/graham-ovenden-idyll-dark-side.

Graham Ovenden Convicted, but No Fall from Grace

On April 2, 2013, artist Graham Ovenden was convicted in Truro Crown Court of various crimes about which much has been written in the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Times, the Independent and other newspapers, both in print and online. Without exception, the reporting was (and will no doubt continue to be) wildly inaccurate and professionally irresponsible. Unproven claims asserted by prosecutor Ramsay Quaife were reported as facts. When two witnesses, testifying from behind a protective screen, denied that they had ever been abused despite insistence by the police that they had been, the press found nothing newsworthy to report. Although not a single aspect of the prosecutor's theory -- that Mr. Ovenden's "portraiture was part of a ruse to abuse young girls, making them dress in Victorian clothing before removing it and committing indecent acts"¹-- was proven at trial, the lie perdured in the press even after conviction on charges that were far less serious and sensational.

For its part, the Daily Mail became shrill, attacking the "establishment" which supposedly protected and even fostered Mr. Ovenden's supposed (but non-existent) crimes and deriding Mr. Ovenden's famous friends. The Guardian commenced to hand-wringing, wondering whether anyone could rightfully ever look at an Ovenden artwork again. True, there were one or two voices arguing sanely in favor of judging Mr. Ovenden's art on its own merits rather than ad hominem, but it wasn't enough to dissuade the Tate Gallery from removing Mr. Ovenden's prints from view, both on its publicly accessible website and in the library, where his work was on view by appointment.

The story that will be told here is vastly different from what has been reported in the press. We will examine the facts adduced at trial, present the charges of which Mr. Ovenden was accused and for which he was either acquitted or convicted, and delve into the rather sinister background of the 2013 trial -- some 20 years of persecution and dirty deeds by the police, and in the end, Mr. Ovenden's son, Edmund ("Ned") Ovenden. Finally, we will look at Ovenden the artist, his practice and methods. It's time that the truth be told: there was no "fall from Grace" for Mr. Ovenden. His conscience is clear of wrongdoing, because he did nothing wrong.

Note: None of the images shown on this site are illegal and none were in contention at any time during Mr. Ovenden's trial. Rather, they are part of Mr. Ovenden's published output.

¹ Davies, Caroline and Steven Morris, Artist Graham Ovenden convicted of historic child sex offences, The Guardian, 2 April 2013 20.16BST, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/02/artist-graham-ovenden-convicted.