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THE MISSING MASONIC CHILD ABUSER WHEN FORMER Birmingham police officer Raymond Ketland parked his car on a North Wales beach in 2005 a group of men walked by.
At his trial, prosecution barrister Andrew Thomas said Ketland told police he recognised this man as a member of the masonic lodge he belonged to. The mason asked: “Do you want to have a bit of fun?” He pointed to a girl who was with the group. Ketland decided to join in the “fun”. The group sex was organised by Fred Lawlor from Abergele. He had gained control of the young girl when she was 13. She was 14 when police rescued her: she told them Lawlor instructed her to have sex with 50 men.
Police launched Operation Furley and began to carry out surveillance on beaches between Llandudno and Rhyl. On one occasion officers saw Lawlor with the young girl. They considered that she wasn’t dressed appropriately. He responded by writing to the Chief Constable complaining of harassment.
As well as having sex with the girl himself, Lawlor filmed encounters with other men, sometimes using a hidden camera. When the videos were examined, police found 17 men who could be identified. One of these was Ketland. He was charged with two counts of having sex with a child, taking an indecent image and facilitating a child sex offence. He was gaoled for two and a half years. Ketland refused to name the freemason who had invited him to join in the abuse.
Bishop Crane said he’d known him for several years. “I don’t know why he did what he did,” Bishop Crane told a reporter. “He confessed to me and told me it was a moment of madness. He asked for forgiveness.” “We have prayed together for the unfortunate girl. He is full of remorse and is distressed for any hurt he has caused.” Last December REBECCA asked Bishop Crane if he was a freemason like Ketland. Bishop Crane said: “I have never denied my membership of freemasonry but it is a personal matter that is no concern of anybody else.” “I joined many years before I came to live in North Wales, and I am not a member of any Masonic Craft Lodge in the Province of North Wales.” “Nor have I ever been a member of the same Craft Lodge as Mr Raymond Ketland. I met him socially some seven years ago and regard him as a friend. As such I was able to accede to his request to appear as a ‘character witness’ at his trial, and also to minister to him as a Priest.” “At the time of the trial, when I heard about the ‘missing child abuser’, I implored Mr Ketland to reveal that person’s name to the authorities, if he knew who it was. I repeatedly begged him to accede to my request if he had any information, but, for whatever reason, he would never do so.” “In consequence, I never knew and still do not know, the identity of the man in question. I did telephone the Provincial Secretary and asked him to investigate the allegation that one of his officers was the ‘missing child abuser’ but I was never informed as to the outcome of any such investigation which might subsequently have taken place.”
If he had not been caught she might have lost her life. Lawlor has a lawless past. In 1982 he was convicted of actual bodily harm after he repeatedly punched his then girlfriend and then jumped on her stomach. She was seven months pregnant. Five years later he attacked another girlfriend. He first tried to electrocute her by putting the flex from an electric fire into her bath. When that failed, he picked up a knife and stabbed her repeatedly. She needed five operations to repair the damage and had to use a colostomy bag for five months due to the lacerations on her bowel.
Later another partner, Dorothy Carre, was twice reported missing by her family who described Lawlor as a “cruel, manipulative bully”. She was last seen in 1999. But it wasn’t until the police gave the sex tapes they’d seized from Lawlor in 2006 to the BBC Crimewatch programme, to help identify the abusers they had not caught, that her fate was finally revealed. Dorothy Carre’s sister saw Lawlor on Crimewatch and rang the police to remind them that her sister was still missing. This time Greater Manchester Police carried out a more thorough investigation. They found Dorothy Carre’s body in a shallow grave in the cellar of the house she had shared with Lawlor in Bolton. The skeleton revealed stab wounds to the spine. The body had been wrapped in a duvet and buried under flagstones in the cellar of the rented house. In October 2007 a jury at Manchester Crown Court decided, by a 10-2 majority, that Lawlor had stabbed Dorothy Carre to death. He was gaoled for life. Dorothy Carre’s daughter said: “Since 1995 Frederick Lawlor has taken our mother from us, initially by manipulating her into staying away from us and finally by committing the worst crime by taking her life in such a cruel, callous, heartless and premeditated way, ensuring she would never return to her family.”
Most of the men did not pay for sex with the girl. The only one who did was Lawlor’s neighbour Gary Owen, 55, who had already served a six year sentence for sex offences against a 12-year-old girl. This time around he was gaoled for another six years. Sentencing Lawlor to an indefinite prison sentence to be reviewed in 15 years, Judge Merfyn Hughes told him “the full extent of psychological damage you have inflicted on this young girl won’t be known for many years.” “You have completely ruined any immediate chance she may have had of leading a full life. She must have believed sexual promiscuity was the norm.” “You carried on despite being investigated by police, and even had the affront to write to the chief constable claiming that officers were harassing you.” He praised the police operation headed by Detective Inspector Wayne Jones for ridding the area of a large number of sex offenders.
“It became a much larger inquiry that anybody had initially, perhaps, expected.” Only two of the men featured in the films remain at large. Pictures of both have been shown on the BBC Crimewatch programme. Another missing abuser is the mason who introduced Ketland to the ring. A spokeswoman for North Wales Police said: “Ketland would not co-operate with the police therefore it is not possible to say whether there was a masonic connection.” In November REBECCA asked the North Wales Province of freemasonry if the North Wales Police had asked them for their assistance in identifying the missing masonic abuser. Provincial secretary Peter Sorahan replied: “We do not know and were never told who else was involved. Furthermore we are completely unaware as to what action was taken by the Police against any other person and would certainly not support any person who was in any way involved; neither would we tolerate them in freemasonry.”
He added that Ketland is no longer a freemason. Sorahan also declined to give details of the lodges that Ketland belonged to: “As I’m sure you are aware, under the requirements of the Data Protection Act we can not disclose the names and personal details of members and their Lodges.” At the time Sorahan was answering these questions, REBECCA had not yet been told by Bishop Crane that he had contacted Sorahan’s predecessor as provincial secretary, Leonard Ellis. We asked Sorahan to confirm that Bishop Crane had contacted Leonard Ellis and, if so, what was the outcome. Sorahan did not reply.
Also in November REBECCA e-mailed North Wales Police and asked if they had been in touch with the masons in North Wales. It took a month and several reminders before a spokeswoman came back with a statement: “The Masons have been approached by officers and are unable to assist further with identifying the outstanding offenders.” REBECCA asked provincial masonic secretary Peter Sorahan to confirm that police had been to see him and that their visit had taken place only after we started asking questions. He e-mailed to say “your assumptions are correct.” We finally caught up with Ketland in February as he stopped at a garage. He had not answered our letters and wasn’t in when we called at his home in Llandudno.
He said that he believed the man was a member of a provincial grand lodge because, when he first asked him to join the child abuse ring, he was wearing provincial cufflinks. REBECCA has asked the Crown Prosecution Service if it had made a mistake in claiming that Ketland told police that the missing mason was a member of his masonic lodge. They said they were not in a position to help. REBECCA also asked North Wales Police what Ketland had said in his statement to police. The force didn’t reply. REBECCA now knows Ketland’s masonic history. He resigned from freemasonry in April 2006 after his conviction. Before then he was a member of the Lodge of St Hilary which meets at Llandudno’s Freemasons Hall. He was also a member of the Gogarth chapter of Royal Arch Masonry. His original lodge was Hilbre which meets in Neston in Cheshire. The REBECCA investigation into the missing masonic child abuser continues. •R•  A TALE OF TWO VERSIONS This is a highly unusual tale. A former police officer admits joining a sex ring that is abusing a young girl and goes to prison. He says a fellow mason introduced him to the ring. The prosecution at his trial say he told police the mason is a member of his lodge.
The missing mason is a provincial officer, he insists. The police now claim that "initial and more recent inquiries" reveal "that there is no connection with any Masonic lodge in North Wales." What does this actually mean? Does it mean that they accept that Ketland's version of events is true? But if his account is correct, and the missing masonic child abuser is a provincial officer, then police can't rule out the possibility that he's a member of the North Wales province. If he is, then he must be a member of a North Wales lodge... Or if they know for certain that he's not a member of the North Wales province, why not say so? And why will they not explain why they did not go to see the masons until after REBECCA began asking questions? The police say they "will not release any further information in relation to this case as we firmly believe it will serve no policing purpose." Why does that reply feel so unsatisfactory? |
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