"On this first occasion in Bangor, the police refused to take a statement from Laverty on the grounds that he had come to the wrong place. It was as a result of Taylor's intervention that an arrangement was made for him to make his statement at Mold, four days later. Laverty's evident haste to contact the police at the earliest possible point in the enquiry stood in curious contrast to his tardiness in bringing to their attention events which he said had happened up to thirteen years previously.
Neither Laverty's delay in making these allegations, nor the fact that he was apparently encouraged to do so by Taylor, automatically discredits them. Nor should any aspect of Laverty's statement lead to the conclusion that any of his claims were made either maliciously or insincerely. But, like all allegations of this kind, his claims need to be examined with more than ordinary care. One of the most significant features in this respect, is the complaint Laverty makes against the teacher John Roberts.
According to his statement, Roberts was one of three people - the others being Nefyn And June Dodd - who slapped him 'daily'. In the course of time, Laverty would dramatically enlarge the scope if his allegations he made against John Roberts, claiming that he was not only slapped, but also punched, kicked and caned by him. However, a scrutiny of the Tyr Felin records reveals a significant inconsistency in this claim.
The records show that the account of his time in care in his statement bears only a tenuous relationship to the actual chronology if his placements. Laverty had deduced that the date of him being sent to Tyr Felin from the time he was placed under a care order - 22 February 1978. Having found this date on his criminal record, he assumed that it marked the beginning of his stay at Tyr Felin. In fact, it marked the end. He was sent to Tyr Felin for a 21-day period of remand in 1 February 1978. On 22 February, he appeared in court at Holyhead where he was placed under a care order and transferred to Eryl Wen. He therefore spent a mere three weeks at Tyr Felin at this point instead of the eight or nine weeks he claimed in his statement. Much more remarkable than this is the fact that John Roberts did not begin working in Tyr Felin until September 1979, 18 months after Laverty had left.
The only time at which the paths of Roberts and Laverty might conceivably have crossed was during the period between 1 June and 10 June 1981 when Tanner had returned briefly to Tyr Felin pending his transfer to Bryn Estyn. Yet since Laverty himself remains adamant that the assaults he alleges took place during his first spell at Tyr Felin (and flatly refuses to accept that he ever returned there), his story is at odds with the facts.
The only conclusion we can reasonably draw is the allegations Laverty made against John Roberts in 1991, allegations that would become progressively more serious with the years, were completely untrue.
Laverty's further claim that he could not convey his unhappiness about Tyr Felin because nobody came into the home from outside is also contradicted by the records. The content of Nefyn Dodd's report and the existence of a Psychiatrists report, do not in themselves negate Laverty's claims. But they do cast doubt on his credibility. The doubts are multiplied if we compare the complaints he made to the police about Dodd in August 1991 with what he said on other occasions. One of the most interesting perspectives is provided by the verbatim records of what Laverty told Yorkshire Television almost exactly two years before he made his police statement."
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