Another letter to Carter-Ruck (31 August 2010)

It's been necessary to write a further letter to Carter-Ruck, given that other people, notably 'muratfan', appear to be giving the '60 Reasons' booklet and the '10 Key Reasons' leaflet quite a lot of publicty of late:

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From: Anthony Bennett
66 Chippingfield
HARLOW
Esse
CM17 ODJ
Tel: Harlow (01279) 635789
e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Carter-Ruck
Solicitors
6 St. Andrew Street
LONDON
EC4A 3AE

Your ref: Stevie Loughrey
AT/IH/SVL//13837.5 - 15 July and 3 August 2010

Sent by e-mail and hard copy by Certificate of Posting

Dear Sirs

re: Your clients Dr Gerald and Dr Kate McCann - ‘60 Reasons’ booklet and ‘10 Key Reasons’ leaflet

I have yet to receive any acknowledgement of my last two letters to you dated 16 and 20 August respectively. Do you intend not to acknowledge my responses to your letters?

I now write in relation to a number of issues relating to the undertakings I gave to the High Court on 25 November 2009.

I write first of all in relation to the publication or linking elsewhere of our leaflet which is commonly known as ‘10 Key Reasons’.

As you know I undertook not to further sell nor distribute copies of that leaflet, and I have not done so. Nor for that matter has The Madeleine Foundation as a separate entity.

It has come to my attention that the ‘10 Key Reasons’ leaflet is currently available on a blog set up recently by Helene Davies-Green. I will not give the link here as we intend to publish this letter as an open letter.

For the record, neither I nor The Madeleine Foundation as a separate entity has given any consent to the reproduction of our leaflet on that blog. Moreover, we have written to Mrs Davies-Green making clear our objections to that leaflet being reproduced on her blog. I say this because until earlier this year, both Helene Davies-Green and her husband Grenville Green were Committee members of the Madeleine Foundation and indeed until 19 June Mr Green was our Chairman. It might reasonably be thought therefore that the reproduction of our leaflet there is with our consent. It is not. We have no power or control over Mrs Davies-Green’s decision to set up a blog nor of course over the contents of it.

In my last letter, I referred to the activities of ‘muratfan’ whom we believe with very good reason to be Ian West of Norwich, a former photographer. You claimed in your letter of 3 August that neither you nor your clients knew anything about him, which caused us some surprise. I write now to inform you that ‘muratfan’, on his blog: ‘brenryanandco blogspot.com’, has publicised two clear and accurate links to where my book, known generally as ‘60 Reasons’, may be viewed. I will not publicise these links for the reason given above. I hasten to add that those particular links and all other links to both the ‘60 Reasons’ book and the ‘10 Key Reasons’ leaflet were removed from our website months ago.

During the past 48 hours, the following message, which I reproduce in its original form and without alteration, has been placed on the internet and has moreover reached thousands more people by virtue of ‘Alerts’ on the internet such as ‘Google Alerts’:

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Press Release
Madeleine Foundation Secretary Admits To Selling Banned Book
2010-08-30
By Robert Kennedy

Tony Bennett despite a court undertaking admits to selling banned book
For_Immediate_Release:

Tony Bennett, a odd ball from Harlow, had a court undertaking not to promote, sell or copy his book "60 Reasons". Despite this Mr Bennett is continuing to sell this book.

He claimed in a press release today that his group The Madeleine Foundation had been inundated with sales of the book. He is quoted as saying " sales of our '60 Reasons' book - now effectively banned as the McCanns claim it is libellous - rocketed"

Mr Bennett responded by saying " If the McCanns want to sue me over it they can. I can defend this in any court of law and they know it. That is why they have not taken me to task over it"

For more information:
Keywords: Tony Bennet,madeleine maccan,madeleine foundation,McCanns,court undertaking,tony bennett libel,libel case

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I do not know who is responsible for placing this irresponsible and untrue report on the internet. You may wish to find out and have a word with them. For the record:

1. Neither I nor The Madeleine Foundation ‘admits to’ (as claimed by the author of this press release) selling the ‘banned book’ since 25 November 2009

2. The statement ‘Tony Bennett is continuing to sell his book’ is wholly false. We have on record, as you are fully aware, correspondence with wholesale and retail booksellers who have placed orders for ‘60 Reasons’. We have informed them on each occasion that the book is not for sale. We also have, should it ever prove necessary, enquiries from individuals who very much wanted to buy the book. On each occasion bar one (see below), we have told them in writing that the book is not for sale any more.

3. It is true that we issued a press release on 29 August (Sunday). That press release referred to a surge in sales of ‘60 Reasons’ following the publicity about our ‘leaflet drop’ in Leicestershire on 12 August 2009. That surge was well before 25 November 2009, the date of the undertaking. We had stopped selling ‘60 Reasons’ some time before then.

4. The press release titled ‘Madeleine Foundation Secretary Admits To Selling Banned Book’ alleges that I said this: “Mr Bennett responded by saying: ‘If the McCanns want to sue me over it they can. I can defend this in any court of law and they know it. That is why they have not taken me to task over it’." That alleged quotation from me is a complete fabrication.

Whether you wish to contact whoever placed this irresponsible and bogus press release on the internet is a matter for your clients, but I should point out to them and yourselves that every time ‘The Madeleine Foundation’ is mentioned on a ‘Google Alert’, we get extra traffic to our website, enabling people to read our many articles there.

A classic example of this occurred only yesterday. The internet poster ‘muratfan’ runs a particularly pernicious blog (referred to above) and routinely makes libellous posts about me and other members of The Madeleine Foundation. He (and a few others associated with him) appears to think that his activities will benefit your clients, of whom he is an avid supporter and champion. If he thinks his vicious personal attacks and lies are to your clients’ benefit, he is very much mistaken. On the contrary, people speculate whether your clients are aware of this conduct, on their behalf, and ask if they’ve ever tried to influence ‘muratfan’ and others to refrain from the highly personal, often obscene and false allegations they make. As professed supporters of your clients, it is the view of a great many observers that they bring nothing but discredit on them.

Yesterday a Google Alert for muratfan’s latest blog article, whatever that may be, produced this entry on the Alert:

Keeping A Check On Bennetts Libellous Posts....Tony Bennett Loves ...
By murat fan
To join our campaign for justice for Madeleine, contact The Madeleine Foundation at 66 Chippingfield, HARLOW, Essex, CM17 0DJ Tel: 01279 635789 email: ajsbennett@btinternet.com
website: http://www.madeleinefoundation.org/
Keeping A Check On Bennetts Libellous... - http://brenryanandco.blogspot.com/

This sort of exposure only increases traffic to our website and leads to further enquiries about our work. Moreover, as a direct result of this very article being published on the internet, we now have one more new member. Whether your clients wish to exert any influence over ‘muratfan’ is of course entirely a matter for them.

Finally, it is true that one copy of ‘60 Reasons’ has been sold, and we wish now to give you the full circumstances of that sale. Very early in the year, we had an enquiry from someone purporting to be ‘Michael Sangerte’ of ‘Berkshire’. Despite being told originally that this booklet was no longer on sale, and despite his also being informed that an internet search for ‘60 Reasons’ would probably result in him being able to read it somewhere or other, this gentleman wrote a number of letters to us, pleading to obtain a copy ‘for historical interest’ and promising to pay ‘a high price’ for it. All this correspondence is documented.

Eventually, believing that this was not a genuine enquiry, we agreed to obtain a copy of it from one of our past customers and sell it to him for £5 including postage. No sooner had we despatched this booklet to Mr Sangerte, now apparently at an address in Kent, than we learnt that Mr Sangerte was none other than photojournalist Mike Gunnill. Moreover he boasted on the internet that he obtained the book because he was ‘acting on instructions’, adding that he had conveyed the booklet to yourselves.

Checking my e-mail inbox, I was able to see that Mr Gunnill had previously sent me a number of strange e-mails, purporting on different occasions to be alternatively ‘Mr Jason Peters’ and ‘Mr Peter Tarwin’. He also posted on the internet under a number of different names, notably ‘petert’, ‘mc’ and ‘mgunnill’. His postings were weird, and besides that, when we visited his photo library on his website, we noted that it was for some reason dominated by photos he had taken of the Haut la Garenne children’s institution in Jersey, the centre of a notorious child abuse scandal involving possibly more than 100 children.

Yours faithfully

Anthony Bennett

ENDS