Met officer scapegoated in the Victoria Climbie inquiry finally clears his name
By EILEEN FAIRWEATHER
In the clear: DCI Philip Wheeler endured a ten-year battle with the Met to salvage his reputation. He admits he felt ‘driven into the abyss’ by the deceit of his colleagues.
Detective Chief Inspector Philip Wheeler felt paralysed by shock when the woman hurled black gloss paint in his face. It was January 10, 2002, and he had just started giving evidence to Lord Laming’s inquiry into the murder of Victoria Climbie.
Wheeler had been based at North West London Police Murder Squad at the time of the eight-year-old’s death in 2000. He had been describing to the inquiry a report he wrote warning his superiors that child protection locally was not being properly supervised. Then his assailant struck.
He says: ‘Everyone was so stunned that no one grabbed her until she reached the door, when a sergeant shouted, “Arrest that woman.”‘
After the attack he was rushed to hospital. The woman, Lauretta Okocha, was subsequently charged with assault and sent to a mental hospital.
Wheeler was signed off work. During his enforced break from giving evidence to the inquiry, colleagues made him the scapegoat for police failings. He says he was ‘framed’ when, in fact, he was the officer who rang alarm bells.
It is only now, ten years later – his health and career ruined – that he has been able to clear his name.
Philip Leslie Wheeler became Area DCI at London’s North West Crime Area’s Murder Squad in February 1999, a year before the murder of Victoria Climbie.
Wheeler had previously run Camden’s child protection team where he had earned a fine reputation. In February 1999, the judge at the Old Bailey trial of Australian nanny Louise Sullivan, who shook a baby in her care to death, described his work as ‘the most thorough investigation ever to come before me’.
But his new post was a strange, rag-bag job. The Area DCI ran paid informants, surveillance operations, officer training, firearms licensing, armoury security and, almost as an after-thought, also did the administration for seven outlying child protection teams.
The North West Area included inner-city Tottenham and Brent, plagued by drugs. It dealt with 92 murders that year. Wheeler knew child protection desperately needed more attention. Challenges included child prostitution rings, the use of children as drugs ‘mules’, and trafficking.
Many officers needed more specialist training. They had isolated offices, poor computer facilities and a high staff turnover. One senior officer was having a breakdown.
Wheeler knew this was dangerous and on January 21, 2000 – five weeks before Victoria’s death – submitted a four-page report to a senior officer with responsibility for child protection, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cox, insisting that North West Area needed a full-time DCI coordinating child protection. He respectfully proposed himself for the job.
DCS David Cox, now retired, scribbled back to Wheeler: ‘Such is the lot of the Area DCI.’
Victoria Climbie died in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, at 3.15pm on February 25, 2000, from malnutrition and hypothermia. Doctors discovered 128 injuries on the child’s emaciated body, inflicted by her great-aunt Marie-Therese Kouao and her lover Carl Manning, who beat her with sticks and belts to ‘exorcise devils’.
Wheeler, a father of three, was at home on annual leave when he learned of Victoria’s death. He offered to cancel his leave. He was not invited to work on the murder inquiry – a fact that he says ‘underlines that I had no operational responsibility for child protection’ – but was asked to assess what had gone wrong.
He was sent into the Haringey child protection team and within a fortnight had produced a devastating report that described demoralised teams ‘bereft’ of basic skills, training and supervision. He sent it to his superiors and finally management agreed that a fulltime DCI was crucial in child protection. Wheeler was selected.
Betrayed: Victoria Climbie, who died in 2000.
A chastened Scotland Yard provided long-overdue resources and set up a dedicated child protection command.
On January 12, 2001, Kouao and Manning were sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey for murder.
Wheeler was by then uneasy about a series of complaints made about him by a senior officer. There were allegations that he had cheated on expenses and claims that he was lazy.
The complaints were rejected but Wheeler’s lawyers later discovered that a file detailing these unsubstantiated complaints had been given to Lord Laming. Wheeler feared he was being ‘set up’ and left the child protection job for a post with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
Victoria Climbie had been failed by London’s police, hospitals and social services, having several times come to their attention. A public inquiry was launched. Giving evidence, Wheeler acknowledged that the Haringey Squad had handled Victoria’s-case in a ‘totally unacceptable’ way. But then he was attacked by the paint-throwing woman.
The next day, January 11, 2002, Wheeler’s former boss, Detective Superintendent Susan Akers, gave evidence instead of him. She is now a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police. Akers denied Wheeler’s claim that he had wanted, but was denied, real power over the local child protection teams.
Neil Garnham QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked her whether his evidence meant that ‘Mr Wheeler is simply lying’. ‘Yes,’ Akers replied, ‘I am afraid it does.’
While Wheeler recovered at home, two more senior officers gave evidence. They implied he had lied. Det Supt Gary Copson – now a Commander – had taken over from Akers three months before Victoria’s death. He described Wheeler as unmanageable.
Wheeler was incredulous – he claims he’d hardly ever seen Copson at HQ because he was often away working on a post-doctoral thesis.
Every night the fax machine in Wheeler’s home spewed out faxes from the inquiry detailing the day’s claims about him.
‘My wife is an ex-sergeant, but she would bring them to me in tears,’ says Wheeler. ‘I am an ex-teacher, I work with troubled kids in my spare time. I have three children of my own and I have been a school governor. I’ve worked on and advised on hundreds of child abuse cases and murders. Why was the truth being twisted?’
His belief is that, because of public outrage over the case, senior officers recognised that someone was going to have to be ‘sacrificed’. By the time he returned to the inquiry, the die had, effectively, been cast.
‘I had never expected this, so I didn’t even have proper legal representation or the paperwork proving that I was, in fact, a whistleblower,’ he says. ‘I thought Laming would believe I raised the alarm.’
Fresh-faced: Philip Wheeler as a new police recruit in the Seventies.
But Lord Laming had been told by another officer that Wheeler wrote his reports after the event. Wheeler had moved office and although he searched frantically for the originals, could not prove when he wrote them.
Months later he found original copies and police logs confirming their receipt by management but by then it was too late – the inquiry was no longer accepting evidence.
When Lord Laming finally published his 250,000-word report in January 2003, Wheeler was abroad. ‘My lawyer read out the sections about me. I felt physically ill. Laming had branded me a liar.’
In Laming’s report he accused Wheeler of ignoring the teams’ problems: ‘He should then have brought this information to the attention of more senior officers. His failure to do so means, in my view, that he must assume a great deal of responsibility.’
The repercussions were immediate. Wheeler was ordered by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the Police Inspectorate’s head, to leave his post. The Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards, now headed by Det Supt Akers, authorised disciplinary action against Wheeler. In May 2005, his disciplinary hearing began at Tintagel House by the Thames.
‘I queued beforehand in the canteen for tea, and a very senior officer joined me. He said quietly, “Phil, the Climbies [Victoria's parents] want a scalp from the senior management team, and you’re it.” He was tipping me off.’
His ordeal lasted five weeks. Several senior officers who were incensed by the Met’s treatment of a highly regarded colleague gave evidence for Wheeler. Det Supt Stephen Hobbs, the senior investigating officer in the Climbie murder inquiry, said Wheeler had done ‘magnificent work’ and was ‘a really good, honest and hardworking officer’.
Det Supt Michael McDonagh said: ‘His integrity and honesty in my opinion is beyond doubt.’ Meanwhile Det Supt John Sweeney described Wheeler similarly: ‘Extremely conscientious, very capable’.
The back-tracking began. Officers who had testified against Wheeler to Laming took a different tack when interviewed under caution. The disciplinary hearing represented more legally stringent proceedings than the public inquiry.
Commander Akers now conceded that Wheeler had told the truth. DCS Cox agreed he did an ‘excellent job’.
Det Supt Copson had to disclose emails, unavailable during Laming’s inquiry, which confirmed the management structure at that time, making it clear that Wheeler did not have operational responsibility for child protection.
Although Commander Cressida Dick, who was the ‘gold commander’ in charge on the day when Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at Stockwell Tube station on July 22, 2005, found Wheeler guilty of two charges of dereliction of duty, his punishment – a caution – was the most lenient allowed. However, he was sidelined.
‘I couldn’t get an operational post,’ he says. ‘Instead I was asked to write papers on things like the theft of satnavs. I worked from my laptop in the Yard’s library or at home. It was degrading and an obscene waste of public money.’
He decided to continue his pioneering work on shaken baby syndrome. Professor David Chadwick serves with Wheeler on the International Advisory Board of America’s National Centre For Shaken Baby Syndrome, and describes him as ‘in the top tier of law enforcement child abuse experts in the world’.
Wheeler’s personal nadir came when London was bombed by Islamic extremists on July 7, 2005, and 56 people died.
‘When the first bombs went off I had just got out of Euston Station. I sped to the Yard. I told personnel that I was a DCI doing nothing and that I would do anything to help, even make the tea. But I wasn’t allowed to do a thing. I felt terrible watching as people ran through the corridors of the Yard.’
How London’s Evening Standard reported that DCI Wheeler was ordered to leave his post.
Wheeler is a plain-speaking Northerner and does not readily discuss feelings. But he admits he was devastated at being ‘framed’ and refused work. ‘I felt driven to the abyss. I lay in bed many times unable to sleep and thought of Dr David Kelly’s desperation. Of course, I would never do anything stupid. But in the small hours … .’ He trails off.
He appealed to the Assistant Commissioner, Stephen House, against his dereliction of duty charges but House turned down his appeal, in March 2006.
Wheeler obtained a judicial review. Mr Justice Stanley Burnton said: ‘I accept the defence points that in several written reports Mr Wheeler brought the child protection team issues to the notice of his senior officers.’
The High Court therefore ruled in February 2008 that Wheeler had been unfairly treated, the Assistant Commissioner ‘not having addressed the real issue raised by Mr Wheeler’, namely that he rang alarms but received no backing.
That should have been that but, extraordinarily, the Met decided to have the case against Wheeler reheard by another senior officer.
The Police Federation refused to fund Wheeler further. ‘They said I’d get nowhere because I’m a white, married, middle-class male,’ he says.
Fortunately, his two QCs from Furnival Chambers offered to represent him free of charge. According to the Met’s own discipline regulations, the hearing was meant to conclude within 60 days. Instead it took two years to arrange, as various Assistant Commissioners turned it down.
In September 2008, Wheeler collapsed outside Scotland Yard. Doctors found he had multiple myelomia, a rare form of bone-thinning blood cancer. Since then he has had chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant. He returned to work part-time.
The Met finally persuaded someone to hear its case against Wheeler. Shortly before Christmas, between hospital appointments, Wheeler gave evidence to Sara Thornton, Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police.
Wheeler says: ‘Two weeks ago my wonderful solicitor Tom Brownlow, who has also represented me for nothing for the past two years, rang and said, “Crack open the beers.” ‘
Thornton had overturned both charges of dereliction of duty. She noted: ‘It emerged in the course of my review meeting that some of the evidence given by witnesses to Lord Laming’s inquiry had not subsequently been repeated during the course of the misconduct hearing.’
So after a decade-long battle, the High Court and Chief Constable of an outside force have both confirmed DCI Wheeler’s innocence.
Curiously, the witness statements given to Lord Laming’s inquiry were recently removed from the internet.
‘I got clobbered and it has just about destroyed my career and my health,’ he says. ‘They have dragged this out for ten years, hoping I’d retire – or die.
‘But the Met won’t get better until it faces and investigates its problems. This is not the police family I joined, and to which I gave my life.’
DCI Wheeler has not received any payment for this interview. The Mail on Sunday has made a donation on his behalf to the Metropolitan & City Police Orphans Fund.
• eileen.fairweather@ mailonsunday.co.uk
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1247294/Met-officer-scapegoated-Victoria-Climbie-inquiry-finally-clears-name.html#ixzz0eBjGBReL
Dickiebo; Believe me, if senior officers have it in for you – you’re dead! These are the ‘rotten’ senior officers who I continually preach, must be removed if our police are to regain their former position in society. Don’t hold your breath! BTW How many, I wonder, of the officers mentioned, are students of ‘Common Purpose’? (See sidebar.) Certainly Cressida Dick is one.
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