Lots of things are taken into consideration when you’re at a job interview that have no legal grounding.
You could come over as a bit tetchy. A bit thick. Not a team-worker. You submit references that are just the opinions of people who know you.
It’s a sensitive issue, but I see no problem with the police being asked for their opinion of someone in such a sensitive job. If their opinion was that he had repeatedly been investigated for sexual offences against young women, do you not think this counts for a fair bit more than looking smart at the interview and worthy of consideration?
And if the job applicant should have no problem being asked at the interview to comment on that opinion. If the police’s opinion is groundless then they are free to say so and put the record straight.
I know it sounds like being very close to being a human rights issue, innocent until proven guilty etc. But no-one has the right to a job in a school. If I had been falsely and repeatedly accused of such things and justifiably feared being ‘fitted up’, as Huntley claimed he did, I would steer well clear of such work.
Mangetout - You know better than a juror sitting in the court room listening to the evidence, looking at the accused, educated in all the facts of this case and all the relevant law, and having this as your full time job for the past six weeks or so ?
Forgive me if I don’t find your position a little “difficult to understand”.
Apparently the Home Office are to hold an enquiry about the failure in the vetting procedure. Whether or not it’s reasonable to use a series of non-convictions against an applicant, the main problem is that the information was not made available to Cambridgeshire Police or the school authorities.
Humberside police investigated Huntley for at least three rapes and a burglary. Social services there investigated him for at least four cases of underage sex, including accusations of violence against girls. But none of that was coordinated. Each investigation was treated separately and previous paperwork thrown away.
Records were not cross-referenced against Huntley’s known aliases by the Humberside Police and so when they were asked for information they turned up blank against the name they were given.
Cambridgeshire Police checked the national computer and again found nothing against “Ian Nixon”, in spite of “Huntley” being carried as a former name on his compulsory statement.
The school spokesman, Howard Gilbert, has said that he would have turned Huntley’s application down if he’d known about the burglary charge because the caretaker’s primary role is security. It would have been a matter of trust and solely at his discretion to appoint or not.
Or maybe not Gobear … Whilst I have no doubt Huntley was guily there have recently been a fair few high profile murder cases overturned many years after the event. Including I believe the case of the last man to be executed in this country. His name escapes me … someone else will know.
I don’t really understand the verdict in Carr’s case. I don’t see how she can be guilty of one charge and not another, either she knew he was the murderer, in which case she is guilty of all charges. Or she believed he was innocent and thus so is she.
As you can see, the conspiracy charge doesn’t depend on Carr knowing or believing that Huntley was guilty, it just accuses her of lying about being in Soham on the relevant days.
Is this really the thread to talk about matters Irish ? Galanthus - She gave him the alibi because she didn’t want Plod to think he was alone when the girls came to the house - that stuff about the previous Rape charge and how they’d think it was him . . . she believed in Huntley at that point and it didn’t, apparently, cross her mind that he had killed them (she was, again apparently, more concerned he was having an affair while she was in Grimsby - that was her explanation for not connecting him doing the bed sheet laundry with the girls disappearance).
The Jury accepted she didn’t untill she didn’t “know or believe” he murdered the girls until she was in custody and the evidence was presented to her.
In other words, she did ‘Pervert the Course of Justice’ by lying to Plod about her whereabouts when the girls were murdered (the alibi) but didn’t ‘Assist an Offender” because she didn’t believe he was an offender.
