Wedger’s ‘Foxy’ story: Not the cover-up he claims

More than a year ago, this blog published a post in which we questioned the veracity of some of the tales told by former Metropolitan Police officer Jon Wedger.

In particular, we wondered about his story of a woman nicknamed “Foxy”, who he claimed was grooming and trafficking teen-aged girls. This woman, Wedger stated, was never brought to justice, despite his own heroic efforts.

Here’s the story, as told to Brian Gerrish in 2016. Speaking of a 14-year-old girl, Wedger said,

And she’d made an allegation that this woman Foxy had been pimping her out; and she’d made a couple of allegations, and they hadn’t gone anywhere. So what I was told was, ‘Can you look into it? She’s made allegations before; she’s a bit of a nightmare; she might be lying, she might not; but she’s a bit persistent; see what you can do.’ So I went, ‘OK.’ So I, I went to see the girl, made an appointment and was told she’s very anti-police, you know, and she is a bit of a handful. …

And, we sat down, we had a chat. We..interviewed her, and she told me the story start to finish. And she’s the product of broken family: her mother was a drug addict, the father was absent, and it, the mother was buying drugs off this girl Foxy, and Foxy then started to groom her, because her mother was unable to look after her.

She then ended up living with the grandparents but the grandparents lived in a red light area. And so Foxy would go and pick this young girl up, and, basic grooming; look after her, show her some attention, a bit of love, do her hair for her, give her make-up – but then introduced her to cannabis; got her smoking cannabis, and then, would then take her to hotels.

These were bottom-end hotels; these were the sort of places where a lot of the builders would go to, you know. So there’d be like converted Victorian houses, or whatever. In one, one area of London there’s a big row of them. And a lot of them were, were maintenance and building workers from the North would come down and stay in these hotels.

So Foxy had an agreement with the night porters, and the night porters would make a room available for her. So she would take her clients in there; so she’d go in there with a client, start having sex and have this young girl there watching, and then encourage the young girl to get involved.

And then from there, she would then start giving the young girl the bigger drugs, so the Class A drugs is what they want the kids on. Once they’ve got them on the Class A drugs—especially the crack cocaine—it’s got a, a real grip on them, you know. And this girl had no way of getting these drugs, so she relied on Foxy as her medicine lady, you know. So she got her on crack cocaine, and then she started then pimping the young girl out, getting the young girl involved. And then she would then get the girl to introduce her friends to it.

So she was then introducing her friends—also come from families that, parents were drug addicts, or absent or whatever. And so, or in the care system; in fact all the kids we dealt with were subject to care orders, whether they were residential care orders or, or just normal care orders, you know. But they’re all known to Social Services and from ‘At Risk’ backgrounds.

And so, she gave me the name of another kid. So I went to see that girl; the story was identical, and the other thing was they used to say, ‘Well what about the police? Do the police ever get involved?’ And both girls said,’Well, we would get hidden in a bush; if we was put on the street, if the police came Foxy would hide us in a bush; but she, she knew the coppers anyway, she’d just flirt with them and they would just let her go.’

And she said, ‘But also there’s a judge, there’s a judge involved.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She went, ‘Oh, judge at the magistrates’ court. So when Foxy’s charge goes before the judge, the judge is her client anyway. So the judge lets her off.’

So I checked this out; I went through the disposal history, the criminal history of this girl, and found she keeps getting bind-overs, this Foxy. So, I thought,’Right, well, there’s something in this.’

As we pointed out a year ago, the “Foxy” story has the ring of truth…right up to the point where she would find herself in front of a particular magistrate, who happened to be one of her clients. According to Wedger, this magistrate would always let Foxy off.

In fact, this is not how magistrates court works. When a person is sent to magistrates court, they don’t have a choice of judges. And the judges there don’t choose their cases; they take what’s assigned to them.

According to Wedger, his superior officers reacted to his breakthrough report on this case by insisting he stop pursuing it, putting him on stress leave, and then threatening that if he did not leave the case alone, he would “lose everything”:

I said, ‘Well, what have I done?’… I, you know, I really thought I done well; I’d exposed this’….

And he turned round to me and he said, ‘Well that’s a problem; you’ve exposed it.’ He said,’We knew you could dig, but we never knew you could dig that deep.’

He then said, ‘What you’ve exposed is gonna F us, past, present and future. This cannot, and will not, ever get out.’

He said, ‘If you mention a word of this, you will be thrown to the wolves.’ He then said, ‘You will lose everything – and that means your job, your home, your kids, you will lose it all. You need to shut your F-ing mouth.’

And I was just dumbstruck. I was like, ‘For real?’ And he said, ‘We never thought you would dig this deep. You have no understanding how deep this goes.’

All very Serpico, no?

The problem is, it’s just not true.

Wedger’s bosses did not intervene to protect “Foxy”, and there was no conspiracy which “went all the way to the top”. The truth is much less melodramatic than Wedger would have us believe.

The real “Foxy”

“Foxy”, whose real name is Fiona Walsh, is a woman from West Kilburn who was arrested in March 2006. In May 2007 she was tried and convicted on an 18-count indictment, which included one count of causing a child to engage in sexual activity and supplying her with crack cocaine and attempting to procure a second youngster to have unlawful sexual intercourse and supplying her with hard drugs. Walsh pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to conspiracy to supply Class A substances while on remand in Holloway Prison.

Far from getting a rap on the knuckles and being set free to continue destroying the lives of young girls, as Wedger has claimed on multiple occasions, “Foxy” was sentenced to 10 years in prison, following more than a year on remand in custody.

Here’s how the Ham&High newspaper described Walsh/Foxy’s crimes. Note the similarities with Wedger’s version:

A pimp who “launched the careers” of a string of teenage prostitutes in Paddington has been jailed for 10 years.

Fiona Walsh, 32, from Third Avenue, West Kilburn, lured vulnerable girls as young as 12 off the streets with crack cocaine, Inner London Crown Court heard.

She encouraged them to have sex with clients at her home, in the back streets of Paddington and in local hotels – offering one of the girls £125 to perform oral sex on a client.

Five girls initially came forward to police and charges were pressed in relation to two girls, aged 12 and 15 at the time of the offences.

The girls were both from ‘unstable’ backgrounds and cannot be named.

Sentencing, His Honour Judge Roger Chapple said: “(Girl A) was only 12 when she had the misfortune to meet you.

“You started her upon a wretched downward spiral of drugs and prostitution.

“You took gross advantage of her by supplying her with drugs. You of all people should know the pernicious effect of Class A drugs.

“You launched her career. You crushed whatever hope there may have been for her to lead a happy and fulfilled life.”

Earlier, Joanna Korner QC, prosecuting, told the court how Walsh had “cynically and cold-bloodedly befriended” both girls for her own benefit.

She described the girls as “easy meat” because they came from dysfunctional backgrounds and gave details of a string of incidents when the girls were forced to prostitute themselves in order to fund their spiralling drug addictions.

“According to (girl A), Fiona supplied her with crack within two weeks of meeting her,” said Ms Korner.

“(Girl A) described one incident in 2005 when she had absconded from the care of social services and she met Fiona outside the Monkey Puzzle pub in Sussex Gardens. Fiona sent her to Normandie Hotel with a client and she received £90.”

Walsh also offered girl B £125 to have oral sex with a punter in a backstreet.

And, on another occasion when she refused to prostitute herself with two men, Walsh pushed her into a bathroom in a flat yelling: “I don’t get it for nothing, neither do you. You’re going to have to sleep with them both.”

Ms Korner said Walsh had controlled girl A for more than two years from Christmas of 2003 and girl B for one month in May 2003.

Girl B is now aged 19 and in a stable relationship with two children. Girl A’s life may have been ruined forever, the court heard.

Walsh was arrested in March 2006 and later admitted her guilt on a string of charges. Her sentence includes three years for conspiracy to supply heroin to prisoners in Holloway while she was on remand.

Jonny Weeks, Ham&High, 17 May 2007

But is Fiona Walsh really “Foxy”?

Aside from the fact that Walsh’s story is virtually identical to the tale told by Wedger, how do we know that Walsh and “Foxy” are one and the same?

At the time, this story received significant media coverage. It was reported (twice) by BBC News, Metro, and the Irish Examiner. as well as by a now-defunct site called “LifestyleExtra.com”.

While that site is no longer accessible online, an abbreviated version of its coverage was picked up by a GVNet.com, a site which collects news stories about the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

This version of the Walsh story clarifies that she was indeed known as “Foxy”:

A female Fagin, who lured girls as young as 12 into prostitution by getting them hooked on crack, was jailed for ten years today (Wed). Fiona Walsh—known as Foxy—plied the girls with highly addictive drug (sic) and then forced them to have sex with ‘punters’ in alleyways and hotel rooms to fund their addiction. Mother-of-two Walsh met the victims through a mutual friend and gained their trust by taking them on shopping trips and buying them designer clothes and handbags.

LifestyleExtra.com

So much for Wedger’s attempt to turn the story of Z and “Foxy” into some sort of mysterious cover-up: in its time, it was quite widespread.

Interesting that instead of citing Walsh by her real name, which would have made the story very easy for anybody to verify, Wedger chose to use her nickname—which is only accessible at one rather obscure site on the internet.

It’s almost as if Wedger has been trying to cover up the fact that there was no cover-up. That wouldn’t be a ploy to sell the story to the conspiraloon set, now would it?