IT IS an unremarkable shopfront in the Liverpool suburb of Wallasey. There is no indication as to what its business might be and the main entrance is at the back of the building.
This is where the Lantern Project offers help for those seeking to escape the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.
In the 12 years since it was created by abuse survivor Graham Wilmer, 64, a former copywriter, the charity has helped more than 2,000 people who suffered sex abuse in their childhood.
Although it is little known outside the circles of sex abuse survivors, some of whom have praised its work, the charity has played a significant role in the campaign led by some politicians and websites to prove the existence of a paedophile ring involving former ministers, MPs, generals and celebrities.
Allegations about a “VIP paedophile ring” were first aired in the House of Commons by Tom Watson, now deputy Labour leader, in October 2012. These, and subsequent interventions, were based on the evidence of several witnesses who claimed to have suffered and witnessed abuse. So far none of the allegations have been corroborated by police.
Advertisement
Crucially, two of the witnesses — Esther Baker and a man known only as Darren — have been helped by the charity and there are significant doubts over their claims.
Watson spoke to Wilmer for an hour more than nine months ago about child abuse in a religious order, but Wilmer says he has not had contact since. It is understood that Watson did not know about the therapy used.
Inevitably the charity’s work with two of the witnesses whose allegations have been given publicity by Watson will raise questions about its role in his campaign and its controversial methods.
Advertisement
The charity calls its therapy method “unstructured therapeutic disclosure” (UTD). What concerns some experts is the uncomfortable echoes of a previously discredited technique called “recovered memory therapy” which played a part in false claims of child abuse in the 1990s.
According to the charity’s website, UTD begins with “what we call ‘reverse disclosure’ where we tell the victims they do not need to tell us what happened to them as we already know because it happened to us”. It also promises that its counsellors will “tell them [patients] in graphic detail about their own experiences”.
The website contains links to articles supporting the “recovered memory” theory and criticising the theory of “false memory syndrome” — which suggests that the technique can lead patients to imagine abuse they never actually suffered.
However, Wilmer says UTD does not involve any “recovered memory” work and it plays no part in their approach.
Baker first emerged in January when she claimed to have been abused in a church setting but made no mention of VIPs or politicians.
Advertisement
However, four months later after widespread publicity about VIP sex abuse, she waived her right to anonymity and made new allegations that she had been regularly raped by a group including a former MP in a forest in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.
Baker also recalled being taken to Dolphin Square, near Westminster, which has been mentioned by other of Watson’s witnesses as a London venue for parties where children were abused, tortured and even murdered.
The former MP, who was questioned by police last week and denies the allegations, says he has serious concerns about the Lantern Project’s involvement with Baker.
“He [Wilmer] has been with her all the time. The problem with the therapy is that it is encouraging people to remember things that don’t exist. It is a mechanism for generating miscarriages of justice,” the former MP said.
Advertisement
Another of Watson’s witnesses, known as Darren, claimed he had been abused at Dolphin Square as well as at an estate in Suffolk where he claims he witnessed a man being murdered. Last month Suffolk police scrapped their investigation into Darren’s claims after finding there was no evidence to support them.
Despite Darren not having had UTD therapy, Wilmer has been supporting him in some of his dealings with the police as an intermediary. Baker began her UTD therapy after making allegations of childhood sexual abuse and is informally supported by Wilmer.
Matthew Scott, a barrister who has worked on a number of child abuse cases, said: “It would be hard to devise a form of counselling more fraught with the danger of producing unreliable evidence than one in which therapists prompt their ‘patients’ to disclose sexual abuse by telling them in graphic detail about their own experiences. It’s crazy from a forensic point of view.”
Roger Kennedy, a consultant psychiatrist with the Child and Family Practice in London, who has worked with a number of adult victims of Jimmy Savile, was also critical of Wilmer’s approach. “The therapist or counsellor should not be divulging vast amounts about their own lives and pushing that onto the patient. It’s very confusing.”
Advertisement
Wilmer defended his methods: “What we are trying to do is to open the debate about what does help victims.”
He said:“Most of the people that come to our service have already had the strict regime of clinical counselling that the psychiatrists are talking about and it hasn’t helped them.
“Talking about our own experiences is to help these individuals feel they are not the monsters in their own heads that they think they are, because we went through the same experiences and we came out the other side.”
This article has been amended.