Denial as a primal instinct

Picking up from the excellent article and interviews on corruption in the November 2022 edition I would add, power provides the capacity not just to corrupt for gain, but to sanitise conduct and provide legitimised defences for other forms of wrongful conduct. Denial is perhaps a primal instinct, and one of the most obvious examples was at Hillsborough 1989 where match Commander Duckenfield immediately blamed the Liverpool fans for the disaster. Although he eventually admitted it was a lie, it spawned a web of counter-accusations and cover-up throughout South Yorkshire Police and all the way into Thatcher's cabinet, causing decades of additional hurt to the bereaved and at a cost of millions to the tax payer (see Professor Phil Scraton's 2016 book Hillsborough – The Truth).

Outside the criminal justice system, a network of dispute resolution systems has developed, but these protect those in empowered positions relative to others. For example, the police ombudsman (IOPC) is now in its fourth version having previously been deemed too bias towards the police, notwithstanding findings in favour of the complainant at around 36% of cases annually. Compare this to just 3% for the PHSO and the OIA who actually devised their own operating rules (Hockey, 2016). A similar pattern of denial and counter-accusation emerges from the Post Office scandal (see Nick Wallis' 2021 The Great Post Office Scandal), Grenfell and multiple NHS scandals to name a few. No one wants to be accountable, especially if the conduct results in a cost to others or a punitive response to the culpable and power insulates against this. It is hard to see this every changing as such inequality works for those that control the evidence, the rules and the decisions, as well as those who benefit from it.

The majority of civil matters and other types of complaints are funnelled into an ombudsman scheme, which avoids blaming the culpable, even counter-accuses. Public inquiries, inquests and other forms of complaints are determined by people operating a system that blocks avenues of inquiry; prevents civil juries from making their own decisions (Mansfield, 2009), or severally restrict funding for legal representation at inquests (INQUEST).

Some victims have fought alone for decades (e.g., William Powell; see Robbie Powell: Time for Truth, Justice and Accountability | Harm & Evidence Research Collaborative (open.ac.uk)). Most just want the truth, they know mistakes happen, but cover-ups exacerbate the pain. According to Business Matters (2019) the same closing of the ranks and turning on colleagues is evident in whistle-blower cases. Some victims have taken to writing books about their experiences (Drew, 2014; Oliver, 2019; England, 2020; Mueller, 2020), but these people are simply ignored by those that cover-up for those that have covered-up for themselves and others.

If we consider that higher and middle tier personnel, with no criminal convictions, engage in a campaign of bullying and harassment against an employee or colleague who is following the law by reporting a matter of public interest, or act vindictively and cover-up against a complainant(s), we should be asking where are our theories and research projects for this conduct.

Dr David Hockey
BSc (hons) MSc, MA, PG Dip, PhD, LLB (law), API Investigations
CPsychol (forensics) AFBPsS

References

Drew, D. (2014). Little Stories of Life and Death; @NHSWhistleblowr. Matador: Leicester. 

England, J. (2020). NHS Dirty Secrets: Bullying, Cover-ups, Discrimination, Favouritism, Whistleblowing. 

Hockey, D. (2020). The Ombudsman Complaint System; a Lack of Transparency and Impartiality. Public Organization Review, 1-14.

Mueller, T. (2020). Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an age of fraud. Atlantic Books. London. 

Oliver, M. (2019). Survivors: One Brave Detective's Battle to Expose the Rochdale Child Abuse Scandal. John Blake. Hertfordshire. 

Wallis, N. (2021). The Great Post Office Scandal. The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail. Bath Publishing. Bath.