The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt [Hardcover]

'This is an extraordinary book ... gripping and coherent .... a major achievement'
Professor JEAN LA FONTAINE

'courageous ... fearless ... so closely and cogently argued that it demands attention'
GERALD HAIGH

'This is an extraordinary book ... gripping and coherent ... a major achievement.'
Professor Jean La Fontaine

'courageous ... fearless ... so closely and cogently argued that it demands attention'
Gerald Haigh

'epic ... valuable'
John Williams

'Totally compelling ... fascinating, disturbing'
Dean Powell

'This book has made the scales fall from my eyes ... It is a book of national importance.'

The Secret of Bryn Estyn tells the story of the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in recent British history – how innocent lives have been destroyed, the public deceived and millions of pounds wasted in a hunt for a dark conspiracy which existed only in the imagination of the investigators.

In 1991 rumours began to circulate in North Wales that Bryn Estyn, a home for adolescent boys on the outskirts of Wrexham, was the centre of a paedophile ring. A massive police investigation was launched which, over the next ten years, spread to care homes throughout Britain. Thousands were accused, hundreds arrested, and the prisons began to fill up with convicted care workers. Had we at last faced up to a horrifying reality? Or had we unleashed an entirely new kind of witch-hunt? Richard Webster has spent nine years uncovering what really happened in North Wales. The result is one of the most remarkable works of investigation ever written.

RICHARD WEBSTER was born in 1950 and studied English literature at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of 'A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and "The Satanic Verses"' (1990), 'Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis' (Harper Collins, 1995) and the Great Philosophers volume 'Freud' (Weidenfeld, 2003). His book about a contemporary witch-hunt, 'The Great Children's Home Panic', was published in 1998. He lives in Oxford and a collection of his essays, articles and reviews can be found at richardwebster.net