A coroner examining the death of a teenager has referred the Scout Association to the police after a jury found that the boy was unlawfully killed during a trip to North Wales.
Ben Leonard, 16, suffered a serious head injury when he fell about 200ft at Great Orme in Llandudno while on a trip with the Reddish Explorer Scouts from Stockport, Greater Manchester.
The teenager and two friends took a different path from other scouts, unsupervised by any leaders, who had “lost” the trio on the Orme in August 2018.
Ben ended up on a 50cm ledge, which was an animal track, when he lost his footing, slipped and fell to his death.
Following a two-month inquest at Manchester civil courts of justice, a jury found that Ben was unlawfully killed by the most senior scout leader on the trip, and an assistant scout leader, and this was contributed to by neglect by the Scout Association.
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The law prevents inquest juries from naming any individual in conclusions.
Given the significance of the Scout movement in Britain, with more than 400,000 young people taking part in projects each week, the jury’s findings will likely raise serious questions about the safety of children.
During the inquest, Sean Glaister, the scout leader on the trip, declined to answer a series of questions from Bernard Richmond KC, instructed by Fieldfisher, the law firm representing Ben’s family. Mary Carr was named as the assistant scout leader on the trip.
David Pojur, assistant coroner for North Wales east and central, has referred the Scout Association and an employee, who cannot be named by court order, to North Wales Police to investigate for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. No further details on that matter can be reported.
Jurors were not told of the police referral and the media had been ordered not to report it until the jury reached their conclusions.
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Lawyers for the Scout Association and several other individuals applied to indefinitely extend the ban on reporting of the police referral. That was refused by the coroner following an application by PA news agency, the BBC and The North Wales Pioneer newspaper.
At the beginning of the inquest, the third after two previous inquests were aborted, the Scout Association for the first time publicly apologised and accepted responsibility for Ben’s death.
However, his tearful mother, Jackie Leonard, told the hearing that their apology was five-and-a-half years too late and the treatment of her family had been “disgusting”.
She added: “Like we didn’t matter and like Ben didn’t matter.”
She described her son as a “thoughtful, very funny, extremely witty” boy who joined the Beavers aged five. He was an avid reader and film buff and planned to study TV and film at college.
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However she said that the Scout Association had tried to portray her son as a “wild child”, taking a “defensive” attitude and until their apology had never accepted being at fault.
The inquest also heard Ben’s family had been lied to as the Scout Association was worried about “reputational damage”.
An initial inquest was held in February 2020 at Ruthin coroners’ court but the jury was discharged by Pojur, who said that the Scout Association had failed to provide the court with full information and “created a misleading impression”.
The inquest jury heard that Ben’s family had been told “people who try and take on the Scouts are never successful” and that “no one can touch the Scouts” despite it being apparent from the day of the teenager’s death that things had gone “horribly wrong”.
Richmond told the hearing that Ben’s life could have been saved but for the “basic failure of care” to give simple instructions about areas to avoid and routes that were safe on the Orme.
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Glaister, the Scout leader, declined to answer questions after being told by the coroner that he did not have to answer, if the answer was to incriminate himself.
There were suggestions that Glaister had believed another man, Brian Garraway, group scout leader and qualified first aider, was also going on the trip, only to discover that he was not present when he got to their campsite in Snowdonia.
It meant that no suitably qualified first aider was present, which broke the Scouts’ rules for expeditions, and the trip should not have gone ahead.
Glaister agreed that he had not warned any of the scouts, including Ben, not to leave the designated paths up the Orme and he was not aware of the dangers of the cliff edges.
The witness agreed that the Scout Association never monitored his activities or ensured any training he was supposed to undergo had ever been done.
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Richmond added: “They have hung you out to dry, haven’t they?”
“Yeah,” Glaister said. “This could have happened to any of the leaders on any of the trips we went on.”
Jennie Price, chairwoman of the Scout Association Board of Trustees, said: “We take today’s conclusion extremely seriously. We want to restate our wholehearted apology to Ben Leonard’s family and our deepest sympathies continue to be with his family and friends.
“As an organisation we are committed to learning. The jury heard how in this instance the local leaders did not follow our safety rules and processes. As a result of Ben’s tragic death in 2018, we have already made many changes to our risk assessments, safety rules, training and support we give our volunteers.
“We will closely review the coroner’s observations and adopt all further changes we can, to do everything in our power to stop such a tragic event happening again.
“Keeping young people safe from harm remains our number one priority at Scouts. We emphatically refute allegations made in court about any criminal action on behalf of the Scout Association.”
