OPEN DOOR: THE START OF A CAMPAIGN
On a dark February evening in 1954, a 17-year-old schoolboy met a man on the Exeter to Taunton express. Within weeks, that schoolboy was on trial.
According to his prosecutor, Mr Kenneth Bain: ‘He got into conversation with a man in his compartment and made improper approaches. The man was a railway policeman and at Taunton took him into an office for questioning.’ The boy, Geoffrey Patrick Williamson, told them, ‘You may consider things morally wrong. I don’t.’
But Geoffrey had fallen into a trap laid by a ‘pretty policeman’ and his youthful defiance didn’t last long. Under official pressure, Geoffrey named 16 other men, mostly from Taunton,
