The Murder of Childhood

NEW TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. 


It is now ten years since the death of sex-offending expert and founder of the Gracewell Clinic, Ray Wyre. It is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the main events described in this book and 40 years since newspaper girl Genette Tate ‘disappeared into thin air’. Tim Tate and Charmaine Richardson (Wyre’s widow) have meticulously re-visited a work out of print for a decade, adding a fresh Introduction, Preface, Index and endpiece, ‘Twenty-five Years Later…’. They show how events have moved on, including the further conviction of Black for the murder of Jennifer Cardy and developments in policing methods, but criticise a continuing, possibly worse, failure to protect children from paedophiles in the internet age. They voice real concern that Ray Wyre’s call to learn more about sex-offenders, their methods of operation and strategies of denial, distortion, deflection of blame and need for treatment, have gone unheeded. Ultimately, the book paints a picture of political regression.


Contains extracts from Ray Wyre’s revealing interviews with child serial-killer Robert Black (Wyre was the only person Black ever opened-up to). Analyses Black’s murders of children, including Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper as well as his implied confession to the murder of Gennette Tate.

Reviews


‘A tribute to the extraordinary skill of Ray Wyre?…?who possessed a unique ability to enter the mind of offenders and by doing so provide the evidence which would bring to an end years of offending and unsolved crimes. By common agreement of judges, solicitors, investigators and his clinician peers?…?he was quite simply exceptional?…?one of the world’s leading experts on sexual crime’-- Richard Monk, CMG, OBE, QPM, former Commander, Metropolitan Police and UN Police Commissioner in Bosnia and Kosovo (Review of 1st Edition).


AMAZON REVIEWS (FIRST EDITION)

‘An uncomfortable but worthy read’.

‘The strongest account of Robert Black available’.

‘Powerful, unflinching, informative…’

Authors


Tim Tate is an award-winning documentary film-maker, investigative journalist and best-selling author. Ray Wyre (1951–2008) was the only person Black would open up to and a nationally acknowledged expert in the sexual crime field. Charmaine Richardson is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who married Ray Wyre in the late-1990s. Her life with him forms a central part of her 2018 book, Pick Up the Pieces.