It used to be a high profile campaigning organisation which aimed to “raise awareness of the issues that are faced by victims of crime in the aftermath of the crime”. Vince Cable (before spotting the credit crunch) had a moment to support of the charity: “Victims of Crime Trust is an excellent organisation that gives support and hope to the families of victims of terrible crimes”. It was set up in 1994 and was particularly prominent between 2003 and 2006 “promoting the crudest possible line in punitive criminal justice policy” according to Nick Davies of the Guardian.

Norman Brennan, its director, was quoted in the Daily Mail more than 300 times between 2001 and 2007 and more than 250 times in The Sun over a similar period. According to Media Guardian, PC Brennan (he is/was a British Transport Police officer) conducted 7,000 media interviews in the nine years to 2005.

Norman Brennan's media profile

And he was eminently quotable, saying things like:

• “Granting of asylum to a murderous asylum-seeker: “It just goes to show Britain is a soft touch when it come to immigration matters.” 27 July 2003: The Mail on Sunday
• On arming the police: “We must arm them before more are killed.” 16 March 2003: Sunday Mirror
• As far as I’m concerned, the criminal justice system is in crisis and in freefall at the moment. You have got gun crime, knife crime, violent crime and the fear of crime the worst I have ever known it in 27 years of policing.”
• He accused Lord Woolf of “putting the offenders first“

And then . . . . nothing. Not a word.

So what’s happened to the Victims of Crime Trust?

Its website isn’t even on Google. The website is unavailable, and has been for some time. I contacted the person who registered the domain name but they did not return my emails.

The Victims of Crime Trust has not filed anything with the Charity Commission since December 2005. It is over 1200 days late filing its accounts.

The most recent accounts (dated July 2004) revealed that the Trust had an income of £80,000, up slightly on the previous year. Unusually, 96% of its expenditure was on salaries, up from 66% the previous year. The Trust still owed Norman Brennan more than £24,000.  When I spoke to the Charity Commission, it confirmed that they were in the process of stripping the organisation of its registered charitable status.

Why does this matter?

The Victims of Crime Trust was, briefly, a very effective organisation at getting its views heard in the media. But it didn’t provide any services, formally represent any victims of crime (or speak on their behalf) and appears to have lacked sufficient support to sustain itself financially. But that didn’t stop it from getting a signficant media profile.

The Trust, like the Taxpayers Alliance, went for quite a while without any real media scrutiny. Nick Davies’ book exposing PR and a failure to fact-check in the newspaper industry was published in 2008. It appears that no journalists asked who it represented, where its money came from or how it spent its cash. And as the people behind Starsuckers have demonstrated today, it is not alone in finding it easy to get stories into the media without scrutiny.

It really matters for those charities and campaigners who really do represent people, conduct research and have ensured that they can stand up to scrutiny. There is a constant reminder that, in the eyes of the media, all of that doesn’t really count for anything as long as you are available for comment and the comment fits the editorial line of the media outlet.

* If you work for the Victims of Crime Trust and it is actually still a thriving operation, please do reveal yourself and I will gladly set the record straight.

Related posts:

1. Journalists Liverpool fans can trust
2. Taxpayers Alliance: a case study of poor journalism