Darren Richard Laverty was in care North Wales, at Tŷ’r Felin, the Bryn Estyn School, Wrexham and at Y Gwyngyll, Anglesey.
After his parents had split up when he was a child, he became, by his own account, ‘a tearaway’ and began to commit numerous acts of vandalism and petty crimes, which resulted in him getting arrested for stealing money from electricity meters near his home, and a number of other offences, by the age of eight.
(He has since claimed that it was his time at the Bryn Estyn School that made him into a criminal).
On the 1st of February 1978, at the age of 10 years and three months, he was placed on remand at Tŷ’r Felin for 21 days. After appearing at Holyhead Juvenile Court, he was then placed under a full care order and transferred to another home in Gwynedd – Eryl Wen.
On 10 September 1981, at the age of 14, Darren was sent to the Bryn Estyn School where he met Alison Taylor during her three month training placement there, and during June 1983, he was transferred to Y Gwyngyll, Anglesey where he spent 15 months before moving into approved lodgings.
He was discharged from care into approved lodgings during May 1985, three months before his eighteenth birthday.
Not too much time had passed, however, before he was arrested again and taken before the courts, and was sentenced to serve 10 months in prison for drug dealing in and around Wrexham, (he subsequently blamed his ex-girlfriend and her mother for his jail sentence, who he was living with at the time) and he later claimed that when he came out of prison, he was ‘a reprobate’ – drinking, fighting and taking drugs’.
Both Darren Laverty and Alison Taylor played major roles in the 1991-93 police investigation, practically steering the whole thing, and also played a prominent role in the later North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal which was held at Ewloe, Flintshire.
Following the conclusion of the North Wales Tribunal, Laverty eventually completed a degree course in criminology at the University of Bangor.
Although Laverty has made a number of allegations of brutality and physical violence against a number of people, none of these have led to a successful prosecution, and some were clearly fabrications on his part.
He did make an allegation to the North Wales Tribunal that he was sexually abused by a female member of staff, which was later shown to have been provably false, and may well have been copied from an earlier allegation, made by boy who had been transferred to the Ty Mawr Approved School in South Wales.
Nonetheless, he went on to claim that he sued the Daily Mirror newspaper, and further claimed to have received £10,000 as the publication had ‘wrongly’ printed that he had been sexually abused while in care in North Wales.
He has since claimed that he was a ‘victim of sexual abuse’, in a letter from his solicitor, Imran Khan, which he published on his personal blog … and has since denied after being questioned about the inconstistencies in his story.
Since 2012, he appears to have been waging an online campaign of harrassment and bullying, for which he has been arrested a number of times, and was subsequently convicted on the 14th April 2014, after pleading guilty to a Section 5 Public Order (Threatening Behaviour) offence, receiving a fine, and a 12-month Conditional Discharge, at the Magistrates Court, Llandudno, North Wales.
Two tweets in particular stand out in regard to his disturbing online behaviour, when Laverty even began targeting the father of a disabled child.
On 17th February 2016, Laverty was arrested at the Wrexham Magistrates Court for Contempt of Court (‘live Tweeting malicious and disgusting comments’) during the sentencing hearing of a man he had insisted was prosecuted for malicious communications against him.
Following his arrest, he was removed from the court building in handcuffs, and taken to the Wrexham Central Police Station where he was held in custody until the end of court business, when he was brought before the District Judge who’s court he had been removed from.
He apologised profusely, and was permitted to leave the court with a stern warning that he should withdraw the comments he had posted on his Twitter feed relating to both the trial, and the court.
The notes that both Laverty, as well as his wife had taken during the court session were seized by the police and ordered to be destroyed.
In April 2016, he was suspended from the Twitter social network, for what was described as the ‘targeted harrassment’, of a number of people, including a female journalist, child sexual abuse survivors, and child abuse charities.
On the 26th of May 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service, suddenly, and unexpectedly dropped a number of charges against him, for the stalking of two women, one who lived in London, and the other in Liverpool.
In February 2019, aged 51, he was again convicted, this time at the Magistrate’s Court at Winchester, Hampshire, of Malicious Communications, after pleading guilty to ‘sending an offensive online message’ to a female barrister.
He was sentenced to serve a Community Service order of 80 hours unpaid work, and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £85, with further costs of £85.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn 