Eric Cullen - Child Campaigner

Child Campaigner

Although many Scottish newspapers assumed that Cullen was a paedophile himself, and in fact continued to hound him throughout his life and even after death, he was treated for nineteen months by psychiatrist Dr Prem Misra, one of the UK's leading experts on child abusers and abuse survivors, and Dr Misra has stated publicly that Eric Cullen showed no trace of any perversion whatsoever, and that he is absolutely certain that he was only ever a victim of abuse and not an abuser himself. Cullen worked with children all his adult life, including a spell as a primary school teacher, and the police could find no child with even the slightest complaint against him.

Once the court case was out of the way Cullen dedicated himself to campaigning against child pornography, and to trying to bring his abusers to justice. Of the three men he named as his principal abusers one, Francis Currens, was jailed during Cullen's lifetime; one, Cullen's uncle Jack Williams, was jailed after his death (both of them for a catalogue of offences including the repeated rape of young boys); and as of summer 2006 one, whom Cullen named as the ringleader, has never been prosecuted - or even seriously investigated.

Cullen's arrest in 1993, followed by a long drawn-out police investigation and the persecution by the press, destabilised his mental defences leaving him suicidal for many months. As soon as his prison sentence had been quashed on appeal, he began to be offered acting parts again, but he was still too ill with severe Posttraumatic stress disorder to resume work.