Ingeus UK Ltd v Wardle

On 16 May 2017, High Court Judge A made a general civil restraint order against Andrew Wardle. Such order was extended by Senior Circuit Judge B on 13 May 2019. By this application, Ingeus UK Limited applies for a further two-year extension of the order.

Mr Wardle did not lodge any written submissions or attend the hearing before me. Having been satisfied that he had been properly served with the application notice, hearing bundle and Mr Tabari’s skeleton argument, I proceeded to hear the application in his absence.

At the outset of the hearing, I declared that I had formerly practised in the same set of chambers as Mr Tabari and that I know all of the judges referred to in this judgment against whom Mr Wardle has made very serious allegations. I observed that this application had to be heard by a High Court Judge and that while some of my colleagues on the High Court bench would not know Mr Tabari or some of the circuit judges involved in this case, I was confident that there would be no High Court Judge in the country who would not know at least some of the judges. I added that I only know Mr Tabari and the judges in a professional capacity. Having declared those matters, I confirmed that I was clear in my own mind that such knowledge did not affect my ability to decide this case in accordance with the law and its merits. Further, I was confident that a fair-minded and informed observer would not conclude that there was a real possibility of bias. Accordingly, I proceeded to hear the application.

In 2012 and 2013, Mr Wardle participated in a work programme run by Ingeus pursuant to the Jobseekers Act 1995 in order to provide support, work experience and training with a view to helping participants to find and maintain employment. The placement did not go well and Mr Wardle continues to nurse a strong sense of grievance as to his treatment by a number of members of staff at Ingeus.

In October 2015, Mr Wardle issued a claim against Ingeus alleging discrimination. Following his arrest, he sought to amend the claim to join the Chief Constable as an additional defendant. On 13 December 2016, Circuit Judge C struck out the claim and dismissed Mr Wardle’s application to join the Chief Constable. She ruled that the claims and the application were totally without merit. On the same date, Judge C also struck out two further claims brought by Mr Wardle against Northampton Borough Council and Northampton Partnership Homes and made a limited civil restraint order against him.

Mr Wardle sought unsuccessfully to appeal Judge C’s orders. He subsequently threatened to bring committal proceedings against a witness in one of the struck-out claims and sought permission to apply for judicial review against the Chief Constable. On 11 April 2017, High Court Judge D (now a member of the Court of Appeal) refused the application for permission to bring judicial review proceedings.

On 17 March 2017, Mr Wardle issued a further claim against Ingeus, four of its employees and the Chief Constable. He alleged harassment and sought both injunctive relief and damages. Employees were variously described as “psychologically disturbed” and “an extremely dangerous, psychologically disturbed criminal.” One had, he said, so behaved as a revenge attack for Mr Wardle’s need to bring legal proceedings against Ingeus and in an attempt to browbeat him. Such behaviour extended to criminality in an attempt to pervert the course of both criminal and civil justice. Of another employee, he alleged that he had lied “to threaten and browbeat [him], to falsify documents to pervert the course of thirdparty investigations, and to humiliate and debase [him] in public.” The fourth employee had, he alleged, abused his position deliberately to inflict anguish and pain upon Mr Wardle as an innocent victim. He said that the employee “humiliated and debased [him] in both private and public, lied to third-party investigators, and used extreme aggression and violent [threats] to aggravate his bullying to the greatest possible amplitude.”

Such conduct was, he alleged, carried out under the direct instructions of a senior manager of the company. The manager had, he claimed:

“authorised and encouraged his employees to carry out gross and vile acts against [him] as a revenge attack for [his] needing to bring legal proceedings against the organisation. These acts include inciting two employees to lie to law enforcement officers in an attempt to pervert the course of justice, inciting one of those employees to make a malicious false report to HMRC that [he] had made a fraudulent claim for tax credits, and paying gratuities (‘bribes’) to corrupt law enforcement officers and to incite them to violently assault and imprison [him].”

Ingeus and the senior manager were said to be “highly dangerous” and would “stop at nothing, including extreme criminal offences, in order to harm [Mr Wardle].”

Further, Mr Wardle alleged that the police were conducting a campaign of harassment against him “at the behest of the other tortfeasors … and with the deliberate malicious intent of further harming [him].” He also claimed that the police had unlawfully refused to investigate Ingeus’s employees for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice because officers were involved in their criminality. Further, he alleged that East Midlands Police Legal Services had committed blatant contempts of court by deliberately lying in defending a judicial review claim. Such lies were, he said, told at the behest of the Chief Constable.

On 16 May 2017, High Court Judge A found that Mr Wardle had persisted in issuing claims and making applications which were totally without merit in circumstances where an extended civil restraint order would not be sufficient or appropriate. Accordingly, the judge made a general civil restraint order against Mr Wardle.

By a judgment handed down on 26 February 2018, Circuit Judge E struck out Mr Wardle’s claims. He found the new allegations to be “totally without substance.” By an appeal notice lodged on 22 March 2018, Mr Wardle sought to appeal the judge’s order. He applied to add some further 31 defendants to the action, including a member of the Civil Appeals Office

Meanwhile, Mr Wardle established a website www.ignoramus-abuse.org as a further direct attack on Ingeus. On 25 October 2017, he sent a letter before claim to the company and, between 13 November 2017 and 28 August 2018, he sent six purported Calderbank offers. Further, on 23 April 2018, and in breach of the terms of the general civil restraint order, he sought to set aside the May 2017 order.

On 13 May 2019, Judge B duly extended the general civil restraint order for a further two years.

On 2 July 2019, Mr Wardle wrote a so-called Calderbank letter, although its purpose appears to have been to make fantastic and unsubstantiated allegations of serious criminal conduct. It was entitled “Court of Appaedos” and bore the prominent assertion that the senior appeal court judge G was a “kiddie fiddler.” It described Ingeus employees as bullies, thugs and liars. One was a depraved “Bully Boy”, and another was a “criminally insane drug addict adviser who had invented the lies” used to harass him. An ombudsman to whom he complained was, he said, “100% bent” and would tell any lie to protect fellow Freemasons and paedophiles.

Mr Wardle then turned to the theme of the 2002 murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham. He said that he had for years wondered whether the real murderer could have been a “bent copper or bent judge involved in a Masonic child-raping orgy.” He alleged that he had now discovered that the crimes were committed by a senior police officer who had been serving in Cambridgeshire police in 2002. He asserted that the officer had risen quickly through the ranks of “the Freemason and paedophile controlled” police force as a “reward for the service to the Fraternity and service to Lucifer and the Dark Forces he gave in August 2002 by raping, torturing and killing two innocent schoolgirls, and then by fitting up, maliciously prosecuting, and having wrongly convicted, an innocent victim known as Ian Huntley.” He added that the officer had “tried to do the same thing, on a lesser scale” to him.

An Ingeus executive who was, he insisted, a corrupt child rapist, paid a bribe to the police to have him assaulted and falsely imprisoned on “nonsensical trumped-up charges.” But, he added:

“For some reason I still don’t understand, the police wimped out of a malicious prosecution. This doesn’t make any sense, as bent filth can get a conviction in any court they choose in 100% corrupt Great Britain, never mind a paedo-worshipping magistrates’ court. [An Ingeus executive] would certainly have paid them a lot more had they gone through with it, so only they knew why they didn’t. They surely can’t have believed that there are any straight beaks in the British courts!!!”

He said that the bent officer had used alleged contacts with Freemasonry and paedophilia, principally Judges B and I, who he claimed were child rapists, to pervert the course of justice and then fake High Court Judge J’s order dismissing the appeal. Judge C, he asserted, controlled a local paedophile ring and conspired with other Freemasons and paedophiles to pervert any claim that could not be defended honestly. High Court Judge K, who he nicknamed “Bend over the Stool”, was, he said, a Freemason and a child rapist who had deliberately perverted the course of justice to protect Judge C, Ingeus employees and the murderous police officer. Master H was, he alleged, a thief, Freemason, paedophile, child rapist, and “perverter of judicial proceedings.” High Court Judge A was a “nonce” and a “kiddie fiddler” who had committed the most extreme perversion of justice possible. Lord Justice F was, he claimed, “bent” and acted to protect the child-raping Judge E and an Ingeus executive.

He added that one former prime minister had raped boys on his boat in the English Channel while another was a child rapist and murderer responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

On 22 July 2019, Mr Wardle sent a letter to then Lord Chancellor. He referred to his new website www.judicialpaedos.com. He alleged that a Member of Parliament was a child rapist and that High Court Judge A was a “nonce”, a “bent” judge and a “corrupt rapist … who perverts judicial claims at the Royal Courts of Corruption, Criminality and Paedophilia in the Strand.” He suggested that either:

He asked whether the ministers had committed harassment “in order to attempt to cover up the crimes of serial bent judges, child molesters, and depraved Satanic ritual murderers, or did … the Nonce usurp your authority just to lend more credibility to his own pitiful grovelling and snivelling attempt to save his own sorry, perverted backside?” He added:

“It is essential that the public is given this information, as it needs to know who it can trust and who it cannot. While the majority of people in the dying United Goondom have been satiated with mind-numbing drivel from the gutter press, the Savileworshipping BBC, and the rest of the Deep State controlled misinformation machine to the extent that they don't even care about bent judges violating their oaths and destroying innocent lives, they have not yet sunk to the level where they don’t care about child rapists, innocent children being tortured and murdered, or Satanic ritual blood sacrifices.

It is also essential that I be given this information, as I need to know whether to bring an harassment claim against just [High Court Judge A] and his bent lawyer, or also against [the ministers].”

Mr Wardle then sought to draw some unexplained connection between High Court Judge A, the so-called “bent lawyer” and the arrest in New York of Jeffrey Epstein. He said that the High Court Judge was up to his “drink-sodden neck in this”, while senior appeal court judge G and Master H were “also in it up to their own stinking evil necks.” Epstein, he asserted, was a front controlled by his “puppet masters” who were “running the blackmail operation which funded him.” The High Court Judge was said to be directly involved. He was said to have “committed some egregious acts to aid and abet other Deep State paedophiles, under threat of having pictures of his own child raping made public.” He asserted that the judge’s child raping had now been made public and that “patriots and prosecutors” had the audio and video.

Mr Wardle then directly asked a government minister whether he was involved in raping children, human blood sacrifices and “doing favours” for Epstein. He queried whether ministers had taken bribes from Epstein to have a “fellow paedophile” installed as a CEO of a major bank.

Mr Wardle asked the Lord Chancellor to “do something about the judicial perversions, child rape, human blood sacrifices and Luciferian torture being carried out in the courts.” “Judicial perversions” against him were, he said, paid for by “Satanic paedophiles”, either a paedophile ring for which a “bent” circuit judge was a leading member, or a senior executive of Ingeus, who he described as a “Satanic paedophile controlling millions of pounds of public money usurped from the public purse under the false pretence of providing ‘services to the unemployed.’” He added that the circuit judges were bribed by the senior police officer who was, he asserted, a “known child murderer” and the true killer of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

Mr Wardle then turned his attention to the Court of Appeal or, as he again dubbed it in a misjudged attempt at humour, “the Court of Appaedos.” The senior appeal court judge G was, he claimed, a “perv” and court staff had attempted to pervert yet another appeal. He added that he had suspected a Member of Parliament of being part of the alleged paedophile ring and now knew “for sure.”

He claimed that the circuit judge was “a member of the same Masonic lodge and paedophile ring” as a senior local authority official, and that the judge had subjected him to “severe verbal abuse … before deliberately perverting the course of justice.” He dubbed the allegedly “bent” judge, Circuit Judge C, as “Nine-Bob Note.” He then asserted that Master H stole court papers intended for a High Court judge “in order to pervert the course of justice.”

High Court Judge A, who Mr Wardle again referred to as “the nonce”, had, he said, perverted the course of justice to protect the bent circuit judge (C), the thieving Master (H) and various paedophiles.

The original general civil restraint order was, he claimed, a “malicious and criminal order.” Judge E, who he dubbed “the Boy Buggerer”, had, he said, perverted the course of justice. He was, he said, a corrupt paedophile. Circuit Judge I was a “Yellow Belly” who had found for Mr Wardle but then made a malicious costs order to protect the senior police officer who was, he maintained, a child rapist and murderer. Judge B was, he said, a corrupt paedophile and child rapist who controlled all of the “criminal perversions” in Birmingham. He gave him the nickname “Arse Worth a Tenner” and claimed that nothing mattered to him save “collecting the bribe money and covering up for fellow Freemasons and paedophiles.” Judge I, he claimed, then forged and falsified an order purporting to be made by High Court Judge J (now a member of the Court of Appeal).

During 2018, the senior appeal court judge G, who he dubbed “the perv”, ordered, he claimed, court staff to “play silly buggers” with his appeal papers. He said that a lawyer working in the Civil Appeals Office was “bent” and had lied about the court papers. Another member of court staff was the poodle of the alleged “perv.” The 2019 extension of the civil restraint order was a “gross perversion” of justice.

Mr Wardle turned his attention to the monarchy. He referred to Her Majesty The Queen as “Lizzie the Leech” and as an “unelected criminal.” The late Princess of Wales had, he asserted, been murdered by the Royal Family to cover up one senior royal’s drug trafficking and another’s “Satanic child raping with Savile and [the late Lord Mounbatten].” He added that he was no fan of the “ConsPERVative Party.”

On 23 August 2019, Mr Wardle sent a letter before action to another senior police officer who he branded a child rapist. Somewhat menacingly he gave his own email address as: admin@[the officer’s name]childrapist.org. The letter was copied to the Prime Minister, Mr Wardle’s own MP, an Ingeus employee and an investigative journalist. The letter returned to the theme of the Soham murders. Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were, he alleged, innocent of any involvement. Rather, the girls had been abducted, raped, murdered and buried by a police officer in the Cambridgeshire Police. The officer, Mr Wardle alleged, did not act alone but with “one or more accomplices from the Masonic lodge and paedophile ring which controls Cambridgeshire Police.” Huntley and Carr were, he said, “fitted up” and evidence was deliberately fabricated and falsified to secure their convictions. He asserted that the police officer alleged to be responsible for the murders had achieved such notoriety and acclaim within the “Luciferian child-raping cult of Freemasonry (which controls police forces in Great Britain)” that he had quickly progressed to a very senior rank.

The officer had, he claimed, accepted a bribe from a senior Ingeus executive (who was a Satanic paedophile) to have Mr Wardle falsely imprisoned and maliciously prosecuted for the purpose of perverting civil proceedings and as part of a “petty revenge attack” for the proceedings issued by Mr Wardle.

Mr Wardle wrote a further letter to the police, again accusing the same officer of being a corrupt child rapist and using the same menacing email address. The letter was copied to the Prime Minister, the then President of the United States, the Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary, an MP, an Ingeus employee and various lawyers. He claimed that the officer had allowed police premises to be used by “agents of the child sex trafficking Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) for the purposes of falsely imprisoning an innocent member of the public, trespassing on private property, and stealing computer hardware.” He said that the police officer had colluded with MI6, which he said was the “British equivalent of the child sex trafficking CIA” because he desired to harm the individual who had revealed his colleague as the Soham murderer. He repeated his claim about that case and added that an Ingeus executive was a “known Satanic paedophile” who was personally involved in the murder.

Mr Wardle asserted that there was only one possible explanation and that was that the officer was “heavily involved in the Satanic paedophilia, child raping, human-blood sacrifices, Masonic orgies and Luciferian ceremonies which pervade virtually all of Britain’s 100% corrupt police forces.”

Mr Wardle then repeated his allegations that a senior appeal court judge (G) was a “perv” and a “kiddie fiddler.” He said that the Lord Chancellor was aware that the Court of Appeal, High Court and County Courts, at least in London and Birmingham, were “100% corrupt and under the control of Masonic lodges and Satanic paedophile rings.” He added:

“He knows that [senior appeal court judge G] is a corrupt, criminal judge, a devil worshipper, and a serial child rapist. He knows exactly that same thing about [appeal court judges D and F]. He knows the exact same about High Court Judges [A and K]. He definitely knows exactly the same about [Judge B] and several other circus judges, including [Judge I], [Judge E] and [Judge C].”

He also repeated that Judge E was “bent” and “the Boy Buggerer.”

An employee of Ingeus was, he said, “as repugnant and repulsive an excuse for a human being as it is possible to behold” and a paedophile’s puppet. Judge B was an arch criminal who conspired with Judge I to produce a fake order refusing permission to appeal. Judge B, he said, specialises in faking court orders.

On 8 January 2020, Mr Wardle sent a letter before action to an Ingeus employee. It threatened to bring a claim for harassment against the employee, the company and “multiple other criminals and tortfeasors with whom [the employee] colluded.” These included the alleged “Luciferian child rapist” executive and the police officer who he believed committed the Soham murders. He again referred to “Freemason and paedophile bent judges” and asserted that all levels of the judiciary had been “manoeuvred into position by gangs of paedophiles and blackmailers so that they can pervert the course of justice.” High Court Judge K was, he said, another “bent Luciferian paedophile” who had been blackmailed by Ingeus. He made further wide-ranging allegations against Ingeus employees. One was a

“useless, dippy, vacuous bitch” while others were malicious “thugs and bullies.”

Letter to an Ingeus executive, 2 March 2021

On 2 March 2021, Mr Wardle wrote to an Ingeus executive. He again referred to his website www.judicialpaedos.com. He alleged that the executive had personally sponsored and facilitated multiple perversions of justice, directly blackmailed two corrupt senior police officers (including the true Soham murderer) in furtherance of his “perverted Luciferian Masonic creed.” He asserted:

“The reason you have been able to do this is because you have access to the Secret Intelligence Service database of video footage of multiple public officials, including judges, raping and murdering children. You use this footage to blackmail these judges into gratuitously perverting the course of justice.”

He then set out details of the two High Court Judges, four circuit judges and three appeal court judges who he said had been blackmailed by the executive. All were, he claimed corrupt paedophiles and murderers.

On 8 March 2021, Mr Wardle applied for a witness summons against the Ingeus executive. He was, he repeated, a master blackmailer with extensive connections to the Secret

Paragraph 4.1 of Practice Direction 3C provides:

“A general civil restraint order may be made by—

(1)

a judge of the Court of Appeal;

(2)

a judge of the High Court; or

(3)

a Designated Civil Judge or their appointed deputy in the County Court, where the party against whom the order is made persists in issuing claims or making applications which are totally without merit, in circumstances where an extended civil restraint order would not be sufficient or appropriate.”

Such order may be made for a period not exceeding two years: para. 4.9(1). An order can, however, be extended. Paragraph 4.10 provides:

“The court may extend the duration of a general civil restraint order, if it considers it appropriate to do so, but it must not be extended for a period greater than 2 years on any given occasion.”

The provisions of Practice Direction 3C put the inherent jurisdiction of the court to control vexatious litigation, recognised in a series of cases culminating in Bhamjee v. Forsdick [2003] EWCA Civ 1113, [2004] 1 W.L.R. 88, on a statutory footing. The general civil restraint order is apt to cover the situation in which a litigant adopts a “scattergun approach to litigation on a number of different grievances without necessarily exhibiting such an obsessive approach to a single topic that an extended civil restraint order can appropriately be made”: per Brooke LJ in R (Kumar) v. Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs [2006] EWCA Civ 990, [2007] 1 W.L.R. 536, at [60].

In Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Constabulary v. Gray [2019] EWCA Civ 1675, Irwin LJ approved the following formulation by Stuart-Smith J (as he then was):

“The test when the Court is asked to extend a GCRO pursuant to para. 4.10 of PD 3C is different and is that the Court ‘considers it appropriate’ to do so. That test must be read in the light of the criteria for imposing a GCRO in the first place, since the restriction upon the party’s right to bring litigation is the same during the original term of a GCRO or during its extension. In briefest outline, the question either on an original application for a GCRO or on an application for an extension is whether an order (or its extension) is necessary in order (a) to protect litigants from vexatious proceedings against them and/or (b) to protect the finite resources of the Court from vexatious waste. This question is to be answered having full regard to the impact of any proposed order upon the party to be restrained. The main difference between an original application for a GCRO and an application for an extension is that, on an application for an extension, the respondent will have been restrained from bringing vexatious proceedings during the period of the existing GCRO.”

In this case the original order was made by High Court Judge A on 16 May 2017. There is, however, some doubt as to whether Judge B had jurisdiction to make such order. Judge B was a Designated Civil Judge who was authorised pursuant to s.9 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 to “act as” a judge of the High Court. On one reading of paragraph 4.1 of the Practice Direction, he only had jurisdiction to make an order in the County Court. Such construction gains some support from the slightly different formulation used in paragraph 4.11 of the Practice Direction that, where a Master or District Judge sitting in a district registry considers that it would be appropriate to make a general civil restraint order, they should transfer the proceedings to “a High Court judge.”

I raised this issue with Mr Tabari. He was not aware of any authority directly on the point but urged me to take the view that while Judge B was not “a High Court judge”, he was “a judge of the High Court.”

While the matter is not entirely clear, in my judgment it is doubtful that the jurisdiction to make a general civil restraint order in the High Court (at least on a freestanding application rather than when otherwise seised of a case) is exercisable by a judge who “acts as” a judge of the High Court pursuant to s.9 of the 1981 Act rather than by a High Court Judge. I consider therefore that it is doubtful that Judge B had jurisdiction to make the May 2019 order.

It is not, however, necessary for me to determine the question of jurisdiction in the absence of full argument on the issue since I am satisfied that the court on an extension application can instead determine that it is more appropriate to make a fresh order. Indeed, there are advantages in having a single clear order stating in terms what must not be done and for how long, and in refreshing the judges to whom any application for permission to issue a claim or application must be made. Further, I am satisfied that the court’s jurisdiction to make a fresh general civil restraint order extends to circumstances where it concludes that the only reason that the respondent has not made further claims or applications that are totally without merit is because he believed that he was prevented from doing so by an earlier general civil restraint order. In any event, Mr Tabari submits that it would be open to me to extend the original general civil restraint order after its expiry: Ghassemian v. Chatsworth Court Freehold Co. Ltd [2019] EWHC 3646 (Ch), per Birss J as he then was. That said, a gap of two years would be somewhat extraordinary and no doubt well beyond anything contemplated by Birss J. Accordingly, rather than determining the point about jurisdiction, I approach this application on the basis that it is for a fresh order.

No one is of course above the law and anyone who has committed blackmail, the rape of a child or murder, or who has attempted to pervert the course of justice should be exposed and brought to justice whatever his or her status. These are vile crimes of the highest order of gravity. It is not, however, acceptable to make such incredible, wide-ranging and extremely serious allegations against a vast array of people without presenting a shred of evidence in support. Accordingly, in this public judgment I have deliberately not named the employees, police officers, judges, politicians, court staff or members of the royal family against whom serious allegations have been made.

In my judgment, Mr Wardle’s actions over the two years since Judge B’s order amply demonstrate that he remains fixated upon the perceived injustices that he suffered during his participation in the work programme in 2012/3 and when he was arrested by the police, and that he has now drawn the most preposterous conclusion that anyone with whom he comes into conflict is a serious criminal, paedophile and murderer. Such extraordinary allegations are made against no fewer than ten judges who have, on the face of the papers before me, done no more than attempt to deal with the cases before them in accordance with their judicial oaths, the evidence and the law. There are three obvious possibilities:

There is no evidence whatever before me to justify the first conclusion. Indeed, it is absurdly far-fetched to think that he has somehow stumbled upon evidence that one senior police officer committed the Soham murders; that other police officers deliberately covered up his identity as the true Soham murderer and deliberately framed an innocent couple; that two former prime ministers are child rapists and murderers; and that senior police officers, business people and ten different judges, including some of the most senior judges in the country who have had no dealings with Mr Wardle other than through hearing his cases, are all paedophiles who have been filmed committing offences of child rape and murder and who think nothing of conspiring with police officers and businessmen to pervert the course of justice, or blackmailers who have a hold on judges engaged in such conduct through their access to secret MI6 files.

I am unable on the material before me to determine which of the second and third possibilities is most likely.

I am satisfied on the evidence that:

Accordingly, I make a fresh general civil restraint order in this case for a period of two years. In doing so, I take the opportunity of refreshing the judges to whom Mr Wardle must make any application for permission to issue a claim or application. It is, in my judgment, appropriate for me to replace High Court Judge A, both in view of the fact that other judicial commitments mean that he no longer sits on this circuit but also in view of Mr Wardle’s very serious allegations against him. Further, it is appropriate that the alternative judge should be my fellow presiding judge, Jeremy Baker J, rather than the President of the Queen’s Bench Division.