06/11/2017 Inside Out South East

The Eastbourne Brothers

at the centre of the upcoming

enquiry into sex abuse

in the Church of England.

I really would like people to be

held to account what's happened.

So far no-one has been.

There are definitely people,

whether it is myself or not,

who have been abused,

who would not have been,

had the church conducted

itself in the manner

you would expect it to.

Did Nasa copy the invention

of a Seaford scientist?

They never gave me

the credit for anything.

It is so bad.

And it is not normal.

And the riders and drivers battling

for space on our busy roads.

I have been a victim

of a hit-and-run.

The bike was a write-off

and the car was never seen.

I am Natalie Graham with untold

stories closer to home.

From all around the south-east,

this is Inside Out.

Hello and welcome to the programme,

which this week comes

to you from Tunbridge Wells.

When two brothers were growing up

here in Eastbourne in the 1980s

little did they know the rest

of their lives would be

defined by the horrors

they experienced as children.

Or that they would end up

at the centre of an inquiry ordered

by the Prime Minister.

Colin Campbell reports.

I didn't dislike going to church,

there was something I felt quite

meaningful about it.

Phil Johnson was nine years

old when he joined the choir

at St Andrew's church in Eastbourne.

The church is an imposing building,

a very tall red brick church.

It was almost like an unwritten rule

that as soon as I hit eight years

old, I would join the choir too

and I did.

Gary proudly followed in his big

brothers' footsteps.

Their vicar, Reverend Roy Cotton.

He was a very educated person,

and he would leverage that to engage

you in conversation or learning.

But soon the young boys could tell

something wasn't right.

He would give me alcohol

and cigarettes and things

when I was really quite young,

you know, 10, 11, 12 years

old and this was all a secret.

All secret treats.

Cotton was cunning,

devious and manipulative.

It felt like you were being

singled out and recruited.

Also predatory.

He physically overpowered me,

and I believed I was going to die.

And dangerous.

The abuse itself was...

It was kind of all intrusive,

it became all encompassing.

Targeted, groomed and abused,

both boys suffered at the hands

of the same priest.

Their family, their entire lives,

so integrated into the church,

they felt utterly powerless

to stop him.

Totally alone.

And what's so extraordinary

about this story is the brothers

didn't even feel able to tell each

other until they were adults.

There was a story on the lunchtime

news about an abusive vicar

and I could just see out

of the corner of my eye that Gary

froze and, you know,

he stopped what he was doing

and just like the penny dropped

in that moment and I said to him,

did anything happen to you with Roy

Cotton?

Their deepest, darkest secret

was shared as they worked

in an office together in Eastbourne.

Time itself sort of froze

and I don't know how

long it was like that

for, but I...

What was going through my mind

in a moment was less

about what happened in the past

it was more about the fact

that what I had tried

to keep secret was now out,

and I knew there was no way back.

I didn't know what was

going to happen next.

I didn't know how to respond.

That's why I didn't.

But it was a horrible sensation,

it was like being caught red handed.

# The lights are on.

# But you're not home.

Gary pursued a new life in the US.

A keyboard player with bleached

blonde hair, he helped produce

a string of smash hits.

Working with Robert Palmer was quite

special, especially shooting

the video out in the Mohave Desert.

It was my first trip to the USA.

But he could only temporarily

suppress the horrors

of his childhood.

It is only after the fact that

everything came crashing down for me

that I realised the extent

of what had actually happened to me.

He now lives alone in

Southern California.

He is a store manager for a large

phone and tech retailer.

Divorced, he has a young son

who lives 100 miles away.

I try not to blame the past

for the route that my life has

taken, but it is very difficult

to disassociate it completely.

I keep tabs on what is going

on in the UK, just online,

or my brother of course is a great

point of contact, he lets me know

anything important that's happening.

While one brother took flight,

the other stayed here

in Eastbourne to fight.

For Phil Johnson it's been a 20-year

battle with the church

with no end in sight.

A survivor of abuse,

Phil is now a respected campaigner,

head of an organisation

which assists victims of abuse.

Today he's at Lambeth Palace,

the London residence

of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He meets Bishops here regularly,

part of his mission to make

the church a safer place

and to improve the way the church

responds to victims of abuse.

Having access to senior members

of clergy and people

in authority in the church does

make a difference.

I think it ensures that they have

a better understanding of the impact

that abuse has on people's lives.

For the whole of their

lives sometimes.

Sexual abuse of children can

have a profound affect

on the adults they become.

Gary dealt with it by finding

a new life in America.

Phil, confronting the institution he

holds responsible and going public.

Two brothers who were

sexually abused...

Gary and Phil first told

their story in 2011.

The reason they took

such profound step is

they discovered their abuser,

Reverend Roy Cotton,

had been allowed into the church,

despite having a previous conviction

for molesting a choir boy.

Being abused is bad enough.

Being abused by someone in such

a position of authority means that

I don't trust doctors,

I don't trust the police,

I don't trust anyone

in a position of authority.

I don't trust men.

Their bravery prompted other

survivors of Cotton to come forward.

He was manipulative.

To the extreme.

I mean, I was scared.

I was very scared.

They have contributed

to four separate Church

commissioned reviews,

examining safeguarding

surrounding their case and others.

Their determination prompting

admissions of cover-up

and deception in the past.

By cover-up I mean that

a person in authority...

Their case has led to the jailing

of a significant number of clergy,

including retired Eastbourne priests

Jonathan Graves...

You are now a convicted

child sex offender.

Mr Coles, are you ashamed?

..and Robert Coles.

Mr Coles, would you like to say

anything to the victims?

But also the highest ranking member

of the Church of England to ever be

convicted of sexual abuse.

The former Bishop of Lewes,

Bishop Peter Ball.

It is the brothers pursuit

of the truth which has served

as a catalyst here in Sussex,

helping to expose a disturbing

Church of England sex abuse scandal.

Phil is visiting his abuser's grave.

The brothers personal battle

for criminal justice ended 20 years

ago when they were told

there weren't enough independent

witnesses to prosecute Cotton.

He died in 2006.

It is feared he'd

abused dozens of boys.

How did it go?

Horrible.

In 2010 Gary underwent

psychiatric assessment.

The brothers had chosen

to fight for justice

through the civil courts.

To gain compensation

from the church, both

were repeatedly evaluated by experts

who assessed the damage

caused by the abuse.

HE SOBS.

A process that often

re-traumatises victims.

They eventually received a financial

settlement from the church

and a formal apology,

and accepting mistakes

that led to their abuse.

We are deeply and profoundly

sorry for what happened.

Really ashamed on behalf

of the Church commission.

Really ashamed on behalf

of the Church community.

Secretary, Theresa May.

The Sussex church sex abuse scandal

is now the focus of a national

enquiry ordered by the then

Home Secretary, Theresa May.

Where there has been

a failure to protect children

from abuse we will expose it

and we will learn from it.

The Prime Minister was born

in Eastbourne, her father

an Anglican minister in the town.

Phil Johnson is a key witness

in the enquiry she ordered.

It will start to examine

what happened in churches

in Sussex early next year.

I want to make sure that that

enquiry does get nearer to the truth

than what we have already had.

And that takes an awful

lot of work and effort,

so I feel that if I step back

from that it is kind of throwing

away all of the work

that you have done.

For me it is less about the church,

it is more about making the world

a slightly safer place.

I have a son of my own and I want

to give him the best chance,

I don't want him to live

in a bubble.

I want him to live and have his own

experiences but I want him to have

less chance that he ever has to do

with anything that

I had to deal with.

Although separated by water,

abuse has only served to strengthen

the bond between these brothers,

and their common cause,

to seek out the whole truth.

Colin Campbell reporting.

Coming up on Inside Out:

For cyclists, how close is to close?

I'm one pothole away and he's one

distraction in the cab away

from becoming a statistic.

You overtook him much too closely.

Now, if you are from Sussex

and you invent something

for a space station,

you might feel your career

is going like a rocket,

but the dreams of one such man

from Seaford came down

to Earth with a bang,

as John Cuthill reports.

We choose to go to the moon in this

decade and do the other things.

Not because they are easy,

but because they are hard.

Three, two, one, zero...

Lift off.

We have liftoff.

Since the 1960s the world's greatest

minds have been racing to reach

the stars and expand our horizons.

This is the first

orbital test satellite.

The forerunner of all the comms

space craft that you have.

This was the daddy of them all.

Although NASA often grabs

the headlines, an engineer

from Sussex played a major role

behind the scenes and believes

the Americans have stolen his idea.

They never gave me

credit for anything.

It's so bad and it's not normal.

Back in the '70s, engineer

Alan Weinberg started work

at the European Space Agency,

designing solar array power systems.

What's more, they're still in use

today on almost every spacecraft

and satellite in orbit.

When I arrived at the European Space

Agency, we had more or less a clean

sheet as far as the power

system was concerned.

When you look at what the Americans

were doing it was pretty,

and the Russians,

it was pretty basic.

Alan left the space agency in 1995.

Three years later, NASA launched

the International Space Station,

powered by a massive array of solar

panels, and some of

Alan's early designs.

But the power system had a major

flaw, the original solar panels

could only survive around 15

years in space.

At the time of the launch Alan

was working as a self-employed

engineer and came up

with a solution.

They are past their lifetime now.

But at the beginning of life

they've got excess power,

and my idea was let's

use this excess power.

Let's not keep the solar array

at a constant voltage

but vary the solar array.

I patented it because I felt

that it was a smart idea and nobody

had thought of that,

and having said that,

it seems simple but at the time

when I presented it to other people

it didn't seem simple to them.

Alan spent £35,000

securing his patent,

but as he never heard from NASA,

he assumed his idea to vary

the voltage had been ignored.

So why, after the international

space station's power system should

have started to fail,

is life on board

continuing as normal.

I'm absolutely certain

that they are varying the voltage

and this is the basis of my patent.

And they can do this

easily because they have

all the equipment to do that.

Nasa insists the voltage is always

kept at a set point of 160 Volts.

But data from the Space Station's

power system is broadcast on ISS

live, and that clearly shows

the voltage changing, to 151 Volts.

Intellectual property rights,

like Alan's patent, are a hot topic

in the UK right now,

especially here in the south,

where the space Industry is booming.

Here at the UK Space Agency's

research base in Oxfordshire,

Catherine Mealing-Jones

is Director of Growth.

Space is a bit of a quiet

success story for the UK,

making a big contribution to many,

many different sectors in the UK

about £250 billions worth.

When people want to do something

innovative in space they often come

here to the UK and you know we're

a nation of inventors and that's

what people like to work with.

One of our brightest up-and-coming

stars in the business

is Oxford Space Systems.

The space race is on.

We're seeing this transition

from space being dominated

by countries and large agencies

and flipping into commercial space,

so there's great opportunities

there for entrepreneurs.

For CEO Mike Lawton,

ideas are the firm's lifeblood,

but keeping hold of them

can be tricky.

It's that delicate balance

between disclosing your intellectual

property to achieve sales,

but without giving away the crown

jewels of how you make your product

or how you formulate a material.

There is an argument to be made

if the technology is so great then

it's probably right for a government

to want access to it

and take ownership of it,

and most governments generally

would look to strike a deal

with the inventor because clearly

if you're the guy that invented

the technology, you're the real

smart person who knows how

to really exploit this.

It's better to have you on side

rather than shut you out.

But of course there are

horror stories where

inventors do get shut out.

And shut out was exactly how Alan

was feeling about Nasa.

So he lawyered up.

I did eventually find

a no-win-no-fee type lawyer,

and they were interested.

They invited me to come over

and I spent a week with them

and we went through everything

and they started to dig

for information using

the Freedom Of Information Act.

Alan thought he'd finally got

the proof he needed when this report

from NASA landed on his desk.

But they still weren't

giving anything away.

Redacted page after redacted page.

All of it labelled classified under

the US Arms Export Control Act.

It's an International Space Station,

you know, you can't claim an arms

agreement as a reason for not giving

information, so eventually we came

back with some sort of information

but it wasn't sufficient.

Alan's lawyers sought

compensation from Nasa.

But Nasa said no.

They maintained they hadn't

copied his patent and weren't

varying the voltage.

The live data from the space station

seems to show it does vary,

and we've also seen emails to Alan

from Nasa employees,

confirming they can vary the voltage

from back here on Earth.

But still that doesn't prove

they're using Alan's idea.

If Alan wants to take his claim

to court he could be in for a drawn

out and expensive ordeal.

In 2009, Nasa was ordered to pay

Boeing $28 million for using one

of their patented ideas.

And a legal battle with

the Hughes Aircraft Company over

another patent went on for 20 years.

In the end my patent

lawyers said to me, look,

we can't continue with this.

NASA aren't admitting anything

and it means we have to take them

to court and that's going

to cost us a lot of money.

We contacted NASA to ask how

they keep the power set at 160

volts, when their own data shows it

varies, and how they've extended

the power system's lifespan

without using Alan's idea.

After asking for more time not

once but three times,

they eventually told us

what they told Alan five years ago,

that they don't change the voltage.

The greater our knowledge increases,

the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Back in Sussex, Alan's

still inventing.

He's currently working on two

improved power systems

he reckons are groundbreaking,

but his fight with

Nasa's left its mark.

The eyes of the world now look into

space.

I'd be very careful next time.

I'll try to be fully

protected if that's possible.

Is it possible?

No.

Probably not.

Sad, isn't it?

Now, the number of cyclists killed

or seriously injured

on our roads has gone up.

We know there is more traffic,

but it seems some drivers

are willing to put their fellow road

users at risk.

Here is John again.

It's a weekend meet for members

of the Sotonia Cycle Club.

Ten years ago the Hampshire club

averaged 70 members.

Now, thanks to the rising

popularity of cycling,

it has more than 250.

But with more bikes and more traffic

on the South's roads, some of these

cyclists are feeling the pinch.

A lot of them do pass very closely.

The worst thing is when

the motorists go past

you and then pull in too soon.

I've been a victim of hit and run.

Bike was a write-off,

car was never seen.

It was last week I reported

an incident to the council,

the city council, in fact,

it was a taxi driver.

Too close, too close.

Did I hit you?

Did I hit you?

It's just one of hundreds of close

passes, near misses, or even worse.

Figures just released show

between 2015 and 2016 nearly 3,500

cyclists were killed or seriously

injured on our roads.

But these stats don't tell the story

of the near misses and close passes

cyclists say they're

experiencing every day.

Rachel Aldred is behind

the Near Miss project.

Her study of 1,500 cyclists found

near misses and close passes to be

an all too regular occurance.

In this study we only had

the cyclists perspective, so there's

a limit to what you can say.

But I think what we did learn

is that there's a broader road

culture of you might call it

might makes right.

So whereby people in larger vehicles

kind of feel that they have

right to be in front,

even if overtaking a cyclist

or slower road user doesn't

ultimately gain them any time.

Cyclists said they had on average

one very scary near miss every week.

And one per year so bad it

made them reconsider how

And one per month so bad it

made them reconsider how

safe they are cycling.

Phil Robertson is

another keen cyclist.

This morning he's out

on one of Southampton's

busy commuter roads.

But all is not quite as it seems.

Phil's part of an operation to catch

drivers who are getting a little

too close for comfort.

First to be pulled

in by the joint police

and council initiative,

a council van.

This morning's what's

happened is my colleague out

and about on a motorcycle,

the one that pulled you in,

he's observed you overtake three

cyclists this morning

included our unmarked

police cyclist.

None of the drivers pulled

in today will get a ticket.

But they will get a talking to.

What we've got here sir is in

relation to an overtaking distance

of around about 1.5m.

Mats like these are now being used

by police across the region to drive

home the message on close passing.

So what we need to do is allow

cyclists room to manouvere,

to react to obstacles in front

of them and also so as motorists

you're not intimidating a cyclist

who is, let's not forget,

a lot more vulnerable than you are

in your car or your van.

Look how close some of these drivers

were getting to undercover Phil's

handlebars in the bottom

right hand corner.

Well, as I was coming up today I had

one on the left hand side of me

and one coming round the roundabout.

Yeah, probably should have just

stopped and let them pass really.

Sometimes you don't get the room

required.

I'm not trying to make excuses,

but sometimes you can't help

being a little bit nearer.

When you're driving and you're

looking at all the other traffic

and stuff, sometimes you don't give

that cyclist the space

that's needed but I guess

we've learned that today.

When it comes to cycling slower

isn't necessarily safer.

Riders who travel at less than 8mph

have three times more near misses

per mile than those pedalling

at 12mph or faster.

Women, who on average cycle

more slowly, have higher

near miss rates than men.

So could any changes to the law help

with the problem of close passes?

Dr Ian Walker is a traffic

psychologist with the

University of Bath.

The Highway code is woolly in terms

of what it says. Leave as much space

as you would a car. I would rather

see that phrase do something like,

leave as much space as you would

like to be left if you were stood on

the road, and that would probably be

a much better thing that people

could imagine. I would love to see

cycling as part of the driving

education process. That is going to

give people the empathy and the

genuine understanding of what it

feels like to be in the road and

have 1.5 tonnes of metal come past

you at high speed.

Back on patrol, and the next

close pass even rattles

experienced police rider Phil.

An 18 tonne HGV just inches away.

The truck gets pulled.

Turns out it's an instructor

and his trainee.

You overtook him much too closely.

For both of you that is very

important, for you as a train and

supervise and you as a driver.

He got within six

inches of my shoulder.

That's 18 tonnes.

I'm 100 kilos.

I'm one pothole away and he's one

distraction in the cab away

from being another statistic.

Curb, cycle, and this is where you

should be.

Yes, yes.

This is you and

you should be this far over.

That's one lesson he

won't forget in a hurry.

Police forces say they're already

seeing a drop in the number of close

passes following this

summer's clamp down.

But there is one other way of

keeping motorists at arm's length.

Now remember these?

The Oxford Fold Out Safety

Reflector of the 1970s.

You can still get them today

but the chances are you had one

strapped to your Chopper.

The only problem is they're barely

wider than your handle bars.

Which gave me an idea.

Now, for more information

about our region you can

visit our Facebook page.

And you can watch the show

again on iPlayer.

Just go to the BBC website.

That is it for this series.

If there is something you think

we should be looking

into, then e-mail me.

You can also find me on Twitter.

That is it from us.

Thanks for watching and we will see

you in the New Year.