Friends of: September 2011

David Farrant.

Occupation: (since release on parole from prison in and also prior to imprisonment):

Unemployed (permanently in receipt of state benefits).

Criminal Convictions:

November 1972 (Barnet Magistrates’ Court):

Indecency in Monken Hadley churchyard (Ecclesiastic Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860).

June 1974 (Central Criminal Court, London):

Malicious damage in Highgate Cemetery by inscribing black magic symbols on the floor of a mausoleum.

Offering indignities to remains of the dead via black magic rites in Highgate Cemetery where photographs were taken of a naked female accomplice amidst tombs.

Threatening police witnesses in separate case where his black magic associate, John Pope, was subsequently found guilty of indecent sexual assault on a boy named Blackwell.

Theft of items from Barnet Hospital where the offender worked briefly as a porter in late 1970.

Possession of a handgun and ammunition kept at Farrant's address, which also contained a black magic altar beneath a mural of a face of the Devil.

Civil Actions:

Two libel suits brought by David Farrant resulted in the News of the World (on a claim that his publicity-seeking was a substitute for his failed sexual libido) failing to produce their principal defence witness owing to Farrant making sure she remained in her native France, and his losing against the Daily Express (who had accused him of being a black magician and of being insane) where £20,000 court costs were awarded against him. In the News of the World action, which he won on a technicality, he was awarded the derisory sum of £50 with court costs awarded against him. The newspaper’s star witness who failed to appear for their defence was Martine de Sacy, an ex-girlfriend of Farrant’s who was identified as the naked female in the infamous “nude rituals trial” at the Old Bailey in June 1974. She was persuaded not to appear by her ex-boygriend, causing the News of the World to lose their star witness. Farrant was arrested in December 2002 and charged with the harassment of several people, including Bishop Manchester and his wife, but the Crown Prosecution Service did not proceed owing to Farrant being careful to stagger incidents which made the precise paragraph of the Act used to charge him invalid. Had the police charged him under the Malicious Mail Act the CPS would have gone ahead, but this Act only carries a fine whereas the Protection from Harassment Act evoked by the police following numerous complaints lodged with them by recipients of Farrant's unsolicited incitements of hatred in self-published pamphlets — predominantly against the bishop and his wife — carries a custodial sentence. Subsequent complaints to the police in 2007 from his ex-girlfriend, Catherine Fearnley, concerning alleged death threats against her and the threatened publication of inappropriate photographs came to nothing.

Friday, 9 September 2011