Tragedy of the Attwell family
Why did this Boy Scout die?
When Jonathan Attwell, 10, set off to Snowdonia for his first adventure away from home, he was so excited he forgot to kiss his mother goodbye. He never came back.
It was a perfect day, with views stretching across the mountains of Snowdonia to the Irish Sea. Hundreds of walkers converged on Snowdon itself that Saturday in October 1999, among them 10-year-old Jonathan Attwell.
He was one of 12 Scouts from the 19th Kingswood (1st Warmley) group in Bristol, which he had joined only a month before. The boys were excited and noisy as they left the car park at Pen-y-Pass, but as they reached the narrow, rocky ridge of Crib Goch they settled down and followed instructions, an apparently well-managed group on one of the toughest approaches to Snowdon's summit.
Jonathan had been delighted at the prospect of his first adventure away from home. His older sister, Cathryn, recalled how 'everything revolved around the Snowdon trip'. His father, Martyn, with some pride, had taken him to buy a pair of walking boots and told him he would have to break them in before climbing Snowdon. His mum had bought him a new waterproof coat, bright yellow so that everyone could see him on the summit.
Other hill walkers were surprised to see the Scouts splitting off the main, easier path up Snowdon towards Crib Goch. 'It seemed the group was a bit young to follow that route,' Gordon Richardson, an experienced hill walker, said afterwards. 'Crib Goch has very narrow ridges. It's an almost vertical drop in places'
Not only was Jonathan very young to be attempting such an awkward walk, he was almost entirely lacking in experience, as were several other boys in the group. It was the first time Jonathan had been on a mountain, but the route chosen by his Scoutmaster, Peter Finlay, a 49-year-old electrical engineer, was one of the most demanding options he could have chosen for a young boy's first experience of the great outdoors.
Despite this, all the boys completed the climb to the summit of Snowdon, where they posed for a photograph, taken by Finlay. It is a haunting image. A smiling, elated group of boys and leaders celebrate their moment of success. They are all exhilarated, happy. Jonathan has just told one of his friends, Tony Abram, that it was his 'second-best achievement, after going to Disneyland'. It was the last photograph taken of Jonathan alive.
But if Finlay's decision to climb Crib Goch was ambitious, his choice of descent was far worse. Reports would describe it either as the east ridge of Snowdon or the Watkin Path, but in fact it was an amalgam of the two.
Looking east from the summit of Snowdon is Lliwedd, the next peak on the Snowdon Horseshoe. The shortest way to reach its slopes is to head down Snowdon's east ridge, but until recent years few walkers descended this way; it is awkward and covered in loose stones and false trails. Much easier is the Watkin Path, which Finlay had named as the likely descent route. This heads briefly south-west to avoid the steep rubble before turning east.
But Finlay chose to go straight down the ridge, telling the boys they would regroup at the saddle between the two peaks of Snowdon and Lliwedd. At his trial, Finlay described this route as 'reasonably safe', safer than climbing Crib Goch, a view supported by the Scouts' mountaineering expert. Although he started correctly at the rear of the party, Finlay moved ahead of some of the younger boys, Jonathan included. It was tough ground for a boy of 10 to face without supervision. The east ridge of Snowdon drops for over 1,000ft to the col below Lliwedd. On its north side are a band of cliffs and gullies called Clogwyn-y-Garnedd that fall steeply away for several hundred feet. Because the ridge is convex, walkers cannot see all the terrain that separates them from the top of the ridge from the saddle below Lliwedd. Perhaps Jonathan was deceived by one of the false trails that lead dangerously towards the cliffs; perhaps he simply tripped and fell. Richardson, who had seen the Scouts heading off to Crib Goch, found himself following them down the east ridge.
He came across one of the leaders helping a boy descend a difficult section. A boy above him shouted: 'Where's Jon?' Another boy answered that he thought Jon had fallen. It took Finlay another several minutes to reach the point where Jonathan had disappeared.
Sam Roberts, the National Park warden who knows Snowdon better than anyone, happened to be on the summit as Finlay searched anxiously for Jonathan, and he radioed for help.
A Sea King helicopter diverted to the scene and found Jonathan's body on rocks below the east ridge. Winchman Philip Hill felt for a pulse, but the length of fall made death almost inevitable. Jonathan's new boots had been torn off, his wallet was halfway up a rock face, his rucksack and sweater some way below his body. Martyn and Lynn Attwell, Jonathan's parents, live on a neat, prosperous estate on the edge of Bristol. Their son was a cheerful boy and full of initiative, popular at his local primary school, Red field Edge. Hundreds packed St Barnabas's Church in Warmley for his funeral.
'He wasn't football-mad,' Martyn said. 'He was forever out the back building dens and climbing trees. He liked that more than being a sports person.' So it wasn't surprising that Jonathan would follow in his father's footsteps and join the Scouts. 'We knew he'd fit in and that it was the kind of thing he'd enjoy.'
Martyn Attwell knew which questions to ask when he met Finlay, the troop's leader. And when Jonathan asked to go on the walking trip to Snowdonia, Martyn carefully explained that his son had done some walking locally, but nothing like climbing a mountain, as Finlay planned. 'What reassured me was, [Finlay] said, 'We'll only be going as fast as the slowest.' He said the right kind of things. I assumed naturally that he was qualified to do it. It was the third year he'd done it. It was the biggest mistake I made.'
Jonathan left with his new friends on the Friday evening. Lynn remembers that he was too excited to kiss her goodbye. 'Don't worry Mum, everything will be all right,' he told her.
Next day, Cathryn went shopping, looking for a 3D jigsaw for her brother's Christmas present. There was a police car in the close when they got back, but Cathryn was joking with Lynn as she came in. Then a policeman was behind her, at the door.
Two police officers drove to North Wales with the family - Martyn and Lynn, Cathryn, and Jon's grandmother, Sheila. Jonathan's body had been brought by the rescue helicopter to Gwynedd Hospital, outside Bangor. They all attended the formal identification of his body.
'It's difficult to describe, but he looked sorry,' Martyn said after wards. 'It was as if he was trying to tell me something.' The following day, the BBC reported that other Scouts with Jonathan were receiving counselling to help them cope with the tragedy. Roger Starr, Scout County Commissioner for Avon, told the BBC that the Scout leader was following a route up the mountain he had done 'many times before'.
He added: 'We would like to assure parents - and I think they will know from the experience of the activities their youngsters do under leadership of people in the Scouting movement - that we have our rules and procedures. At the end of the day, sometimes there is just a tragic accident, maybe as simple as someone losing their footing.' Martyn Attwell watched news of his son's accident on television. It was reported that the Attwell family were also being comforted by the Scouts Association officials.
It wasn't true. A meeting had been arranged the night before so Finaly could explain what had happened to the Attwells . But Finlay didn't come. 'I had so many questions, but no one to answer them,' Martyn said. It wasn't until the following Wednesday that Finlay, accompanied by Roger Starr and Field Commissioner Janet Hall, came to see the Attwells.
Their first question was the most obvious: who was at the back of the group? '[Finlay] literally put his hand up and said: 'I take responsibility for that, but I don't know.' I asked what had happened and he said: 'I don't know what happened to him. He vanished'.'
At this, their only meeting with the Scouts, details were hazy. Far from finding out what had happened to Jonathan, the Attwells were more confused than ever. Finlay gave them the impression that Jonathan had strayed from the path and effectively stepped off a cliff. He pointed through the window at a house 80 metres across the close and said Jonathan had been as far away as that. Interviewed in the autumn of 2000, just before being charged with manslaughter, Finlay said that it had been feet.
The Attwells asked the other boys who it was who had been at the back of the group with Jonathan to guide them down. The answer was that they had been left to descend alone. Despite Starr's assurances to other parents, the regulations of the association had been ignored and fundamental rules of mountain leadership flouted.
Not until the inquest in February did the Attwells discover the failures that had led to Jonathan descending alone and his fatal fall. Finlay's qualification from the Scouts as a mountain leader had expired because he had not applied for a new first-aid certificate. By his own admission, he had done no planning for the trip. The coroner, Dewi Pritchard Jones, told the inquest in Caernarfon that he had considered delivering a verdict of unlawful killing due to gross negligence, before recording accidental death. The Crown Prosecution Service began an investigation ,which culminated in Finlay being charged with mans\laughter. Soon after the inquest, both Finlay and Matthew Wilson, his deputy who was with him on Snowdon at the time, were expelled from the Scouts.
After Jonathan's death, the Attwells discovered they were not alone. A network of bereaved parents had lost children on Scout trips or at camps. Jonathan's death was particularly tragic for Sharon Fanning, whose 11-year-old son, Scott, died on a Scout camp 18 months before Jonathan. He too had only recently joined his local group near his home in Oldham when he spent a weekend away at Ashworth Valley in Lancashire. An untrained adult helper took a dozen boys for a short walk, putting Scott at the front. The group was too large for one adult to manage and Scott missed the path, slipping on loose ground. He fell over a cliff. At the inquest in Rochdale, the coroner called for improvements in how the Scouts managed walks. The Scouts' field commissioner for North-West England told the Press Association news agency: 'Quite obviously we will take these recommendations on board. But Scouting, by its nature, involves young people taking part in adventurous activities. There is always a danger that normally active young people are going to be constrained to such an extent that they never move outside their front door.'
On Friday, Sharon Fanning heard that the Scouts had admitted negligence for Scott's death. 'It's not about a cheque,' she told The Observer . 'I wanted a court case, I wanted publicity. I wanted people to understand what they had done to my family. If we save just one boy's life through this, then it will have been worth it.'
A year after Scott's death and two months before Jonathan's accident, an eight-year-old, Jack Sudds, drowned at a Scout camp in Forest Row, near East Grinstead. East Sussex Scout Council was successfully prosecuted by Wealden District Council for what magistrates described as 'multiple and continuing breaches of health and safety'. Magistrates also found that the Scout Council had neglected to follow its own guidelines and had ignored the concerns of their own lifeguard. This followed an earlier fatal accident at the camp in November 1997.
A week after Jonathan Attwell's death, a 35-year-old Scout leader, Chris Oliver, died after falling on Cader Idris, also in Snowdonia National Park. Mountaineering experts were surprised at the route he had chosen to scramble up, leaving a large, well- organised group to an easier path. The one Scout he took with him, 14-year-old Gareth Cole, was only feet from his leader when he fell. After Oliver's death, and a third fatal mountain walking accident in Austria, the association commissioned an independent inquiry into how their adventure activities were managed. The team included Iain Peter, chief executive of the National Mountain Centre at Plas-y-Brenin, the best- qualified mountain training organisation in England and Wales. Its report concluded that the Scouts had been stuck with a 'Sixties attitude to adventure and risk that is not acceptable to society in 2000'. The inquiry found a 'cavalier' culture more interested in the wishes of leaders than young people's needs.
'The challenge that the Scouts face,' Peter said, 'is that it's not just about having rigorous and robust rules - it's in making people stick to them.' John Bevan, chairman of the trustees of the Scout Association, accepts Peter's criticisms and believes the Scouts have adapted to answer them: 'Because we are a voluntary organisation and our culture was one of come and help us work with young people, we were not hard enough on those who didn't stick to our procedures for getting assessed. We now are.'
Bevan believes that the incident rate involving Scouts is 'extraordinarily low', but, as the Attwells have discovered in the two years since their son's death, criticisms of leaders and management practices have been a common feature of inquests into accidents involving the Scouts.
There is no shortage of ideas of how to minimise risks still further. One option is to include voluntary organisations under the legislation passed to regulate commercial outdoor activity centres after the Lyme Regis tragedy in 1993, when four young people died when their canoes were swamped by the sea. The company that organised the trip was successfully prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. Few experts or voluntary organisations believe that statutory regulation is workable.
'I don't think you can make it work,' said Bevan. 'If you take a large organisation like us, then we could probably adjust our procedures to make allowance for licensing. But if you extend it to all children, what does the local curate do when he wants to take his Sunday school out for a walk?' The question, he believes, is how the same standards can be achieved without legislation.
The jury at Peter Finlay's trial took three hours to acquit him of the manslaughter of Jonathan Attwell, two years to the day after the young Scout's death. His parents are continuing with a civil action against the association. But, despite everything that has happened to them, Martyn Attwell still believes scouting offers young people important opportunities. 'The principle is good. It gives kids a chance for all the right things. But if you've got someone in there not doing it properly, you've got to close it down, simple as that.'
