FORMER County Councillor Paul Dowson received a three-year ban from public office at an Adjudication Panel for Wales hearing on Monday, August 22.
The Tribunal decided on the ban after finding against Mr Dowson on four allegations regarding breaches of the Code of Conduct for councillors.
BLM SPAT LED TO FALSE ALLEGATION
The first allegation followed an online spat between Paul Dowson and a then-fellow County Councillor, Joshua Beynon.
After a series of increasingly bitter exchanges between supporters of Cllr Beynon and Paul Dowson regarding Black Lives Matter and the protests by outside neo-Nazi groups at Penally Camp, Paul Dowson alleged that in 2015 Cllr Beynon, while still a student at Pembroke School, circulated a sexually explicit video of a girl aged under 17.
That allegation was false; the girl concerned was 18. Mr Dowson subsequently accepted he was wrong “by a year”.
He’d believed a rumour of child exploitation was true and repeated it without checking.
Aged 17, Joshua Beynon obtained images and messages from an 18-years-old fellow student’s Facebook profile and created a Facebook group to circulate them.
He deleted the group before being spoken to by police officers in April 2015 and received a two-day exclusion from school.
The Tribunal ruled that in 2020, the Respondent falsely and publicly accused Cllr Beynon of sharing a pornographic video of a girl under 17, “something which is factually untrue”.
The Tribunal decided that he brought his office and the Council into disrepute when he did so.
His subsequent repetition of the allegations amounted, the Panel ruled, to the bullying of Cllr Beynon.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY LED TO HARASSMENT
In the second instance, Paul Dowson falsely accused an individual, Marc Davies, of having a criminal record. He had confused him with another person of the same name.
Despite being informed by Mr Davies in September 2020 that he was referring to a different person, Paul Dowson repeated the falsehood through his social media channels.
In February 2021, he apologised to Marc Davies and accepted his allegations were untrue.
The Tribunal found Mr Dowson’s conduct between September 2020 and February 2021 broke the Code of Conduct and amounted to harassment of Mr Davies.
“ON THE REGISTER” ALLEGATION WAS FALSE
In the third case involving an individual, the Case Tribunal found Paul Dowson took part in a conversation on Facebook with Timothy Brentnall, who was using the name “Timothy St John” at the time.
At one point in the conversation, Paul Dowson said: “…I heard you are on the register but it’s not been proven so I’m not spreading it around. Better man than you”.
The suggestion Mr Brentnall was “on the register” was a lie.
The Tribunal found Paul Dowson used the words to try and discredit Mr Brentnall “in a wilful and harmful way”.
Accordingly, it found Paul Dowson brought his office and the Council into disrepute under the Code of Conduct’s terms.
The above are instances where formal findings of fact and Paul Dowson’s admissions were enough for the Tribunal to find him guilty of Code of Conduct breaches, any of which could lead to a ban from public office.
COUNCILLOR SPREAD MISINFORMATION
The most contentious issue surrounded Cllr Dowson’s comments regarding the Welsh Government’s Relationships and Sex Education Programme.
When interviewed by the Ombudsman’s caseworker, he conceded that he had not considered the text of the RSE programme, which was not then published.
Instead, he relied on reports about the programme from other sources.
Despite not reading the Code, Paul Dowson claimed the Code aims to teach 3-year-old children about masturbation; and 13-year-old boys and girls about anal sex.
The Panel found that Mr Dowson had no basis for his assertions, which he repeated in an email to another Council member, in which he claimed lesson plans for 11-year-olds and upwards contained references to bondage, anal sex, facial ejaculation and more.
As a finding of fact, and in the absence of Mr Dowson’s presentation of evidence to contradict its findings, the Tribunal found Paul Dowson guilty of spreading misinformation and that his statements were untrue.
FABRICATED EVIDENCE
Finally, the Tribunal found Paul Dowson produced a fabricated exhibit to the Public Services Ombudsman’s investigation.
It found he did so in “a deliberate attempt to mislead that investigation”.
The Tribunal concluded this, too, was a breach of the Code of Conduct.
The Tribunal banned Paul Dowson from public office for three years.
After the hearing, Mr Dowson was unrepentant.
Describing the proceedings as “a joke” and “a kangaroo court”, he said: “I didn’t participate as it was obvious that hearing was prejudicial.”
He stood by his comments regarding Cllr Beynon, claiming the Tribunal had “irrefutable proof” he was correct, despite admitting he’d got the female student’s age wrong.
He further insisted that the Tribunal “stuck its neck out” when it found he shared misinformation regarding the Welsh Government’s RSE Code, saying: “I provided evidence that my allegations regarding RSE were true.”
Readers can decide whether the allegations are true by reading the Code for themselves and looking for the specific issues Paul Dowson says it deals with; the full Code is here: https://bit.ly/3TdrbqX
