Brady advocate bailed following TV revelations
Police have arrested the mental health advocate of Moors murderer Ian Brady following her disclosure that he gave her a letter that may reveal the whereabouts of a child’s body missing since 1964.
Jackie Powell, 49, was arrested this morning on suspicion of preventing the burial of a body, but has now been bailed pending further enquiries.
Police seized papers from Powell’s South Wales home after she told the makers of a TV documentary that Brady had given her letters to be opened after his death. One of these letters is addressed to Winnie Johnson, mother of Keith Bennett. The child was 12 years old when abducted on 16 June 1964; his body, alone among the five victims of the Moors murderers, has never been found.
Powell told the documentary makers that the letter could contain ‘the means to her [Bennett’s mother] possibly being able to rest’. Greater Manchester Police said that they do not have any new information about the location of Bennett’s body.
Ian Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley abducted and murdered five children between 1963 and 1965, burying their bodies on Saddleworth Moor near Manchester. Four of the bodies have been recovered, but Brady has consistently refused to reveal where Bennett was buried.
Since April 2009, statutory access to independent mental health advocates has been available to patients, such as Brady, detained under the Mental Health Act 2007. Their role is to help patients understand and exercise their legal rights, express their thoughts and to support them at interviews.
They are not lawyers, despite the word ‘advocate’ in their job title, and so are not subject to legal privilege. Even if they were lawyers, in a case as serious as this, privilege would have been waived and they should have told police about Brady’s letter.
Speaking to the Radio Four Today programme this morning, Law Society President Lucy Scott-Moncrieff said that mental health advocates ‘are not lawyers and privilege does not apply here’.
Comments
Privilege
I don't think it is right to say privilege would be waived: unless Brady would have done it. There's every likelihood privilege would not have applied (not a communication for advice) or possibly crime-fraud exception.
Ian Brady's Mental Health Advocate
If the police need an excuse to arrest this person then they should look at the footage on the programme of her driving whilst using a mobile phone.
Strangely enough, in this
Strangely enough, in this country the police are not supposed to use "an excuse" to arrest someone. They are supposed to investigate where there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. Apparently none existed in this case-but it got a lot of PR for the programme.
However there must be a
However there must be a serious question over the right of the police to arrest someone and then search their property, look at their correspondence on the basis that there "might" be some information of use.
The stated reason for the arrest also seems extremely dubious.
Privilege
"Privilege would have been waived"? What does that mean? Where privilege exists (and I doubt that it would have existed in this case), it is for the client (not the adviser) to decide whether to waive it. Give that this is the Law Society Gazette, it would be good if it got things like this correct.
It is extremely unlikely that
It is extremely unlikely that privilege existed in this case. What does exist are the rights of the citizen-such as remain in this country.
Privilege
Privilege does not apply as the article rightly points out since the advocate is not a lawyer and even if she were then privilege would still not apply because the information was not given in pursuance of receiving a device and further constitutes a VERY serious offence of concealing a body or preventing a burial and I could go on.
The issue of privilege and therefore who waives it is irrelevant in this case.
So the police have arrested a
So the police have arrested a citizen on speculation in an unbroadcast TV programme that a letter that a citizen may or may not possess, may or may not contain information which may or may not prove that a crime may or may not have been committed.
The police have been shown to be the fools they apparently are in this case. So much for the rights of citizens in the UK.
I would point out Sir that,
I would point out Sir that, as a realm under a constitutional monarchy we are not Citizens (not being a Republic) we are Subjects...
That's not what the British
That's not what the British Nationality Act 1981 says (which defines amongst other things, the expression 'British Citizen')
Well
If the article meant that the crime/fraud exception to privilege would have applied, it should have said that. The short point is that there is no privilege and no question of "waiver".
privilege
rather sloppy journalism.
If the narrative is true then a document was handed to the MHA which she believed was information as to the location of an unlawfully hidden body. It was handed over with the instruction that nothing was to be done with it until IB's death. The only possible claim is an assertion of confidentiality (not privilege), however "there is no confidence in an infamy"
mental health advocates
Who are these people? Do they have access to legal advice for what was, in this instance, a distinctly hot potato?
whatever the actual facts in
whatever the actual facts in this matter may be ( and they are far from clear at the present time )stand by for the mass resignation of mental health advocates