Judge rejects Scout leaders’ bid to overturn unlawful killing verdict
A senior judge has rejected an attempt to overturn an inquest verdict of unlawful killing on a teenager who died while on a Scout trip.
Ben Leonard, 16, suffered a serious head injury when he fell about 200ft at Great Orme in Llandudno, North Wales.
He died while on a trip with the Reddish Explorer Scouts from Stockport, Greater Manchester, on August 26 2018.
Ben and two friends took a different path from other Scouts, unsupervised by any Scout leaders, who had “lost” the trio on the Orme.
Ben ended up on a 50cm ledge, which was an animal track, when he lost his footing, slipped and fell to his death.
Inquest
Following a two-month inquest last year at Manchester Civil Courts of Justice, a jury found 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.
The law prevents inquest juries from naming any individual in conclusions.
During the inquest, the Scout leader on the trip, Sean Glaister, declined to answer a series of questions from Ben Richmond KC, lawyer for 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, 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.
But after the inquest, Mr Glaister and Ms Carr applied for a judicial review of the inquest findings of unlawful killing, heard at the High Court in Manchester in December.
On Thursday, Mr Justice Fordham ruled the coroner Mr Pojur had directed the jury fairly and correctly and rejected the appeal to review the inquest findings.
‘Relieved’
Ben’s mother, Jackie Leonard said: “We are just relieved it is now over and the judicial review failed. We need to try to move forward now but with Ben in our hearts always.”
At the beginning of the inquest last year, the third after two previous inquests were aborted, The Scout Association for the first time publicly apologised and accepted responsibility for Ben’s death.
The inquest also heard Ben’s family were lied to as The Scout Association was worried about “reputational damage”, and Ben’s family were told, “people who try and take on the Scouts are never successful” and that “no-one can touch the Scouts”.
Around 500,000 young people and 145,000 adult volunteers take part in Scouting projects and activities each week, according to the association’s own figures.
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Sorry for the tragedy, but an accident is just that—an accident. Unfortunately, though rare, these things do happen. If volunteers are going to be hauled before the courts every time, it won’t be long before organizations like the Scouts and Urdd fold—and ironically, that could lead to even more tragedies.
Children do get lost, whether intentionally, unintentionally, or through no fault of their own. In this case, it’s heartbreaking that a simple misjudgment about the width of a pathway had such devastating consequences.
Any time an incident occurs which puts the “Boy Scouts” in a bad light, it’s all to the good. The sooner the world can get rid of this relic of an imperalistic colonial time the better.