After a troubled and insecure childhood, Steven Messham was placed under a care order at the age of 14.
He spent twenty months at Bryn Estyn, from September 1977 to May 1979, and then to Chevet Hey until the following October.
From there he was sent to Glamorgan Farm School in Neath, South Wales, where he claimed to have spent some time in the school’s secure unit.
He left the Farm School during December 1980, when his care order expired on his eighteenth birthday.
After leaving care, he spent ten days living in the Wrexham flat of Gary Cooke, while Cooke was away.
After being accused of theft by another temporary occupant of the flat, Messham led the North Wales Police to a cache of [allegedly] ‘indecent’ Polaroid photographs, which he claimed were taken by Cooke.
These [allegedly] included a photograph of teenager Mark Humphries.
Steven Messham was visited by the North Wales Police during March 1992, and proceeded to made allegations of [sexual?] abuse against both Peter Howarth, and Nefyn Dodd.
Shortly after that, his wife committed suicide, leaving him to care for their young daughter.
His allegations continued to multiply and gradually became more serious, especially following being interviewed by London-based journalist Dean Nelson.
After initially complaining that Dean Nelson was ‘pestering’ him, and attempting to get him to say things about Gordon Anglesea which were not true, Messham’s attitude suddenly changed and he proceeded to make a series of allegations to the journalist about the retired police officer.
He was not called as a witness in Peter Howarth’s trial, however, after he was ruled out by the Crown Prosecution Service who viewed him as being an ‘unreliable witness’.
But he did appear as a witness in the 1994 libel trial of Gordon Anglesea at the High Court, but only after first attempting to secure £60,000 in libel damages from one of the defendants, Private Eye Magazine.
His erratic behaviour at the libel trial, was reported as being similar to what he displayed at the North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry, (described by a number of media sources as ‘Drama Queen Grandstanding’) greatly reinforced his already tarnished reputation as a witness.
After disappearing for years, he re-appeared before television cameras on the 2nd of November 2012, on the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ programme, where he alleged that he had been sexually abused by ‘hundreds of men’ including a senior Conservative politician.
A week later, however, he made a full public retraction, and offered a formal and unreserved apology to Lord Alistair McAlpine, who had been mistakenly identified as being one of his abusers.
The following day, the Director General of the BBC, George Entwistle, resigned.
On the 13th of November, he appeared on BBC Wales’ ‘Week In, Week Out’, where he made a request for more victims of sexual abuse in North Wales to come forward.
The next day, it was witnessed that he had been ‘driven close to suicide’ by an anonymous Twitter user, who was later identified by him as being Darren Laverty.
On the ‘Slog’ website an article appeared which stated: ‘Steven has named Darren Laverty, it seems this guy wants him to shut up and accused him of being on the take and loves the media spotlight’ …
Oddly, and for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, less than a week later, Messham and Laverty, suddenly appeared to be on very friendly terms indeed, on social media anyway.
Steven Messham remained on Twitter until January of 2019, his last Tweet read : ‘My new year resolution is to use all the bent corrupt officers in N W Police & make sure they are brought to account NW Police have covered up so much it’s a disgrace. Don’t get me wrong there are many good officers & they deserve respect. start with professional standards Dept’.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn 