Whiting played the system, then killed

Technically he was right ... Dr Anthony Farrington was the medical expert who six years ago told a judge that Roy Whiting was not a paedophile. In 1995 Whiting had grabbed a girl off the street in Crawley, driven her away and sexually assaulted her. The case was identical to what was to happen to Sarah Payne five years later in almost every respect bar one: his first victim escaped with her life.

When the case went to court, the comments by the psychiatrist about Whiting not being a paedophile - which was technically correct under the letter of accepted guidelines at the time - were relied upon by his barrister as part of his defence. Whiting received a relatively lenient sentence.

The story, which the Sarah Payne jury was not allowed to be told about for legal reasons, began at 2pm in March 1995 in Ifield, the Crawley suburb where Whiting had his workshop. Three young girls were playing in the street when a red Ford Sierra drove up and a man got out. It was Whiting. He tried to grab all three, ordering them into his car.

Two managed to get away but one, a nineyearold who lived nearby, did not and was bundled into the back of the car. Whiting drove off at speed, taking her on an intricate tour of small country roads. The child tried but failed to open the back door which had been closed with child locks.

Then she begged to be told where she was being taken. Whiting shouted at her to shut up. He said he had a knife, and made her lie down in the footwell of the back seat. He drove to a secluded country lane and stopped the car. He then turned to the girl and told her to undress. When she refused, he pulled some rope from his pocket and said he would tie her up if she did not. In fear, the girl submitted. She was forced to lie back in the car while Whiting molested her.

Until this point everything was remarkably similar to what was to befall Sarah. But after he had abused the girl, he didn't kill her. Instead he told her to get dressed then asked where she lived. She told him and he drove to another street close to hers. He pulled up and opened the car door to let the child out and sped away. By the time the little girl ran home to her parents it was nearly 4pm. Her terrifying experience lasted just under two hours.

The police were called. Local newspapers publicised details of the case, including the girl's description of Whiting and his car. The appeal asked the public for help in identifying the unkempt owner of a red Sierra with a Bart Simpson sticker in its window. Clive Graham, who ran a car repair business near Whiting's workshop at Hyders Farm, Ifield, read the reports and recognised the car.

"I just froze," Mr Graham said. "I said to my mate, 'Listen to this description of a car and tell me who owns it'. I read out the details and the bit about the Bart Simpson sticker. He just said: 'Roy Whiting'. I phoned the police and they seemed a bit bored until I mentioned the sticker. Then the guy on the phone said: 'Don't move', and they were here in minutes."

Whiting was arrested immediately. He had first removed the sticker from his car, then sold it, then made an attempt to change his appearance by cutting and dyeing his grey hair. Initially, he denied everything. But in a second police interview he made a full confession, confirming almost every detail in the little girl's statement.

An apparently contrite Whiting told detectives: "I don't want the girl to have to come to court. I don't want to put her through anything more like that ... It's me. I don't want the girl to be brought in. She don't have to ID me or anything like that." Before he came up for sentencing, he was referred to Dr Farrington, who spent two hours interviewing him before preparing a report. At this point Whiting's cynicism kicked in. He said he had no idea why he had attacked the girl. Something just snapped, he said, it was spontaneous. He managed to conceal the fact that he had a longstanding sexual attraction to children. Furthermore, he seemed keen to undergo counselling to help him change his behaviour.

Whiting's sentencing came on 23 June 1995 at Lewes Crown Court, the court where he would later be tried for murder. He pleaded guilty to kidnap and indecent assault. But he denied one of the worst assaults.

The Crown Prosecution Service, acting with the best intentions - the desire to spare the victim the ordeal of giving evidence - accepted his guilty plea on this basis. But by allowing Whiting to deny the worst episode involved, this "plea bargain" gave his defence a significantly stronger hand.

His lawyer, Philip Marshall, pleaded for mercy. Central to his case was Dr Farrington's view that Whiting "was not a paedophile". Mr Marshall argued therefore that it was unreasonableto sentence him on the basis that he posed a risk of reoffending, a point the judge accepted.

His client had made a full and frank confession, Mr Marshall continued, and he had no previous convictions. Mr Marshall also apparently alluded to something that is often used in the defence of paedophiles - that Whiting had been a victim of abuse himself when he was a boy of 11 (though he did so in such vague terms that it remains unclear exactly what, if anything, happened).

"That incident is perhaps indicative of what has happened now," Mr Marshall said. "He has on a previous occasion been obliged through a need for self-defence in a way to draw down a conscious barrier. He has done that for the last 25 years in respect of that incident, and to that extent, in my submission, the relevance of that ... adds to his current inability to reason through what has happened". Mr Marshall's words do not sound very eloquent or persuasive now. But at the time they were apparently persuasive enough. Judge John Gower QC acknowledged the horror of the crime - "disgraceful" and "disgusting" were the words he used - but also accepted most of the defence's case, saying he was giving Whiting "maximum possible credit" for having pleaded guilty, adding: "We sentence you on the basis ... that this offence was not premeditated." He sentenced him to four years on each offence, to run concurrently. The maximum sentence for indecent assault is 10 years, the maximum for kidnap is life.

Whiting would serve only two years and five months. He was sent to Elmley Prison in Sheerness, Kent. He lied to fellow inmates that he was inside for "clocking" cars. Whiting knew the reception he would get if he was known as a sex offender. The promise he made to attend counselling sessions to change his behaviour was broken. The prison system did nothing to ensure he honoured it.

Despite the popular view "once a paedophile, always a paedophile", many experts believe that treatment programmes can be effective in making at least some offenders recognise the horror of their crimes and prevent them reoffending. But while there are about 5,000 sex offenders in jail at any one time, the Prison Service puts barely 1,000 per year through such programmes. Whiting was released automatically after serving twothirds of his sentence. He was not eligible for parole because he showed no remorse and failed to take part in a treatment programme.

He had carried out virtually the textbook paedophile crime yet officially he was not a paedophile and a judge had accepted he was no longer a risk. By pleading guilty and feigning contrition, he had received a substantially shorter sentence and his jail time had not been unduly hard; Whiting had played the system and, to a degree, had won.

In an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard, Dr Farrington, 55, who had worked as a visiting consultant psychiatrist for the Prison Medical Service for 10 years, said he stood by the conclusion he had drawn in 1995 and felt no guilt.

Dr Farrington said: "I don't want to be vilified but I think that what I said in that report was right, and I do not feel guilty. It was the best I could do with the time and the information I had available to me. I said Whiting was not a paedophile and I came to that conclusion with the help of the current psychiatric definition of paedophilia given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which was published the year before I interviewed him.

"Essentially it defines a paedophile as someone who consistently shows a sexual interest in children, whenever they get the chance, for at least six months. That means that a single isolated case, which is what this was, is not enough to merit a diagnosis of paedophilia. If you are going to be a psychiatrist you have to be consistent and go by the rules and this is what they say. I do not believe that even if I had said he was a paedophile it would significantly have altered the sentence."

The DSM manual, which with another document produced by the World Health Organisation were the basis for Dr Farrington's conclusions, are internationally recognised and still widely used in this country.

The psychiatrist, who is now an adviser to the NHS ombudsman, is aware that his report has put him in line for intense criticism. But he added: "What people are overlooking is that in the report I also said there was a relatively high risk of Whiting reoffending. I said that I was extremely concerned by the way he had planned the attack - getting a knife and a rope ready in his van - although he said he impulsively snatched the girl.

"It was obvious that he had planned to frighten somebody, with the knife, he had planned to tie somebody down, with the rope, and afterwards he made great efforts to change his appearance. All this made me say that I thought he was likely to reoffend."

He added: "I wasn't impressed by any remorse - more a fear of being in trouble. Now I just have to hang on to the fact that I did tell the court about the high risk of reoffending. Tragically it looks as if I was right. I wish I had been wrong. But at least my report will have helped the police find him after Sarah Payne was abducted. I stand by my report, which was very carefully worded, and do not feel guilty about what I wrote. But I do feel extremely sorry for Sarah Payne's poor parents. They are the ones who are suffering."

Also still suffering is his first victim and her family. The girl, now 15, is understood to be still profoundly traumatised. Her parents are so horrified that they have attended every day of the trial.

Whiting's release from prison came a few months after the introduction of the sexual offenders' register which enables the authorities to monitor sex offenders after their release from prison. It was heralded as the way forward in protecting children. It had been introduced because of fears over the threat posed by people such as Whiting.

Although put on the register for life, Whiting was obliged to see social workers for only a few months after his release. The system has since been changed so that sex offenders can be tied to these meetings for up to 10 years. In theory the police could have kept him under observation after his release but the reality of limited police resources means this was never really a serious option.

The Home Office is actively considering the introduction of an "indeterminate sentence" for child sex offenders which would mean they could be held for as long as they pose a threat - their case would be reviewed every two years.

The scandal of the Roy Whiting case isn't that the system lost track of him. In fact, police knew exactly where he was when they wanted to arrest him. The gnawing problem is that despite the killer having been identified as a risk and despite the police being well aware of him, it was still possible for him to kidnap and murder Sarah Payne.