POLICE STATE

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Kevin Kirk and his business partner were lecturers at Aberystwyth University when they started Kanda Systems Limited in Aberystwyth in Wales, making and distributing electronics components. Kevin was married and at the time of these events in 2001 his eldest daughter was 19 and two younger children were 11 and 9. The company quickly grew to 42 staff and won several prestigious awards for small innovative businesses. They acquired a subsidiary in the US. One of the innovative ideas was to solve what could have been an expensive packaging requirement for their shipped products by shipping them out in ordinary plastic video cases.

In 2001, Kevin privately purchased two adult videos from the US, which featured Asian women wearing uniforms. A ‘customs censor’ at Leeds Airport opened the package, saw the uniforms and decided that the models were under the legal age, apparently unaware of either the facts that uniforms are common in Asian countries in just about every sector of the urban working population and that they are very popular in adult erotic and comedy movies. The videos featured Japanese actresses, and anyone who has seen Japanese erotic or non-erotic fantasy knows that women in uniforms in Japanese entertainment is a national characteristic. The women on the videos were all over 21 and the videos had been certified by NEMA, which appears to be equivalent to the BBFC certification, but more relevant is that each of the women had her own website which shows her age plus other details, such as her fan clubs.

This mistaken assumption by one customs officer set off a chain reaction that was to be fatal for Kevin and his business. Next thing apparently, customs or police peered in through the factory windows and lo and behold! They saw the video cases used to ship products! ‘Operation Star Trek’ was launched and its high point was the raiding of the factory and homes of the managing partners, no less than 48 customs and police officers raiding the factory alone. Neither the raiders nor the officers who obtained the warrants had seen the legal adult Asian movie seized at Leeds Airport. The mistake about its contents and the sight of the plastic cases were enough to set off this ridiculous operation.

The raids happened on the same week as the company won a national exporter of the year award, which was reported in the newspapers, so word of the raids spread quickly. As the raids were taking place, Kevin was in the Ukraine having lunch with that country’s Deputy President. One of his employees called to tell him what was happening and to say that the senior officer involved had suggested that he was in the Ukraine talking to his child porn suppliers. Kevin told this to the Deputy President, who was an ex KGB general, and he laughed and said it must be awful living in a totalitarian country where privacy and freedom of expression were forbidden. At first Kevin assumed that he was joking, but then he remembered that he was the ex Ukrainian Ambassador to London.

The raiders behaved with the usual swaggering arrogance. According to Kevin, they locked the staff up in the boardroom for the whole day and when customers called they were told it was a customs raid in progress and those customers in turn were interrogated over the phone as to why they were phoning. They told all the employees they were investigating the importation of child porn and this news quickly spread to the customers who soon began to understand that they also were being tarred with the same brush. Finally, after spending the day at the factory, they left, taking all the computers which were eventually returned. Over 80% were damaged to varying extents and about 25% never worked again.

It was equally bad at Kevin’s raided home. They lived in a very rural part of Wales and with him away and his wife afraid of stories about a local stalker, she was terrified at seeing a man peer through the windows at 7am. The officers pushed her aside as they entered and would not let her get dressed, leaving her in her nightgown. They told her and his neighbours that they were investigating the importation of child porn. His wife became hysterical at this news and even later, when it transpired that only the adult movies had been found, their marriage was irretrievably damaged.

At his business partner’s house, their naked and terrified 15 year old daughter was dragged out of bed and forced to dress in front of the leering customs officers. We are told that the police had left the room in disgust at seeing this treatment. His business partner’s wife was also told they were investigating the importation of child pornography, which was not what it said on the search warrant. They found no child porn at his business partner’s home either but his business partner’s wife has not spoken to him since.

Kevin’s 19 year old daughter was in the factory and confirmed to him that she and the others were kept locked up all day. She also told Kevin that the customs officers made lewd statements to her and that one even asked her out on a date. Kevin reports also that when she told them off, they tried to badger her into saying that he had molested her when she was younger. They found no evidence of either the importation or manufacture and distribution of child porn whatsoever at either the factory or the homes. The seized Asian adult videos did not feature either in his arrest or in the search warrant which was for ‘Production and distribution of pornography contrary to the Obscene Publications Act’, not for the importation of child porn.

Kevin claims that they took $500 from his workshop during the raid. He complained and provided evidence that it was there before the raid, but Customs deny this. The police issued a letter to the company on the day of the raid, saying they could find no evidence of anything illegal. One week later Kevin went voluntarily to Aberystwyth Police station to meet with Customs with what he describes as his ‘incredibly supine lawyer’, and despite their having found nothing illegal he was arrested for the production and distribution of obscene material.

The police then informed the child protection team of Social Services and they began an investigation to see was he abusing his children, which included asking all his friends and some neighbours if they suspected him of being a paedophile. They even arrested his wife in the street because she would not say that he had molested the children. Eventually, in 2003 two policewomen came to his house and said that they had concluded their investigation and found no evidence of him being a paedophile, but, threateningly, that the suspicion 'would remain on file'.

There is a sinister reason for this apparently inexplicable act of arrest for possible child abuse. Having destroyed his business (for it was now about to collapse), the act of investigating and arresting him placed him on a ‘soft intelligence’ police register, which ensured that he would not be able to take up teaching again. He was thus blacklisted. When the UK or US police fail to destroy you legally, they have other means of getting you. They do not forgive those they fail to falsely accuse.

Their reasoning proved correct, because after the factory closed with the loss of the 42 jobs, Kevin could not get work as a teacher or college lecturer, as each time he applied the ‘offenders database’ threw up this arrest and the subsequent investigation of suspected child abuse. On top of the smear campaign, for months after the raids, the company’s goods were impounded for weeks at a time while they were checked. They were still found to be only plain printed circuit boards, but this caused them to lose contracts in an industry where time to market is paramount.

No charges were ever brought, but as Kevin says, “Mud sticks!”. The company went under a year later because the best staff left, so 42 people lost their jobs and the country lost a bright new export earning company. When Customs were challenged they said they said they'd done nothing wrong but had ‘a duty to protect the public’. Kevin has not been charged with anything. Most of the raiding officers were from out of town and stayed during the raid in local hotels, probably on overtime.

Kevin made a complaint to the Customs Ombudsman but says, “They just passed it on to Customs to be investigated by the very people I made a complaint about. Needless to say they denied everything. I would really like to publicize this case to stop others going through the same nightmare that I went through. I am an innocent man and have lost my livelihood, my friends and any hope of getting a job, and my marriage fell apart. And all Customs could say was, "We have a duty to protect the public.” (Source: Inquisition)

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