Secrets and lies

Gareth Mead has the vulnerable air of someone who has suffered a trauma. He turns up to our meeting in suit and tie, despite the fact he no longer has a job to go to.

The 44-year-old has lost some weight recently, through not sleeping or eating, he explains, pulling at his suit jacket to indicate that it doesn’t fit as well as it used to.

The day we meet, almost three weeks have passed since Mr Mead, the well-dressed and well-spoken assistant director of housing options at Hammersmith & Fulham Council, found his secret past had caught up with him. And when it did, his life was turned upside down.

Mr Mead was branded a ‘secret Nazi’ by a national newspaper, over the racist and anti-Semitic text messages he is reported to have sent as part of a Nazi-themed sex game that were committed to print, and was sacked from his £80,000 a year job.

Mr Mead is still coming to terms with what’s happened. When he ended his four-year involvement in an extreme sexual fetish scene six years ago, he hoped he could leave it behind (see timeline overleaf). Although he says he doesn’t know how the pictures and messages came to light, he believes he knows why they did - just weeks before a general election, he reckons his story was used to undermine Hammersmith & Fulham Council, branded ‘one of David Cameron’s flagship Tory councils’ by the Labour supporting Sunday Mirror newspaper which broke the story of his past.

Mr Mead’s downfall has become one of the most read stories on Inside Housing’s website, prompting record numbers of comments from our readers. An avid follower of the online debate, Mr Mead now wants his chance to explain how events unfolded.

They began on a Friday morning in mid-March. With the day booked off work, Mr Mead headed out to the coffee shop near his home in west London. He didn’t get far - a Mirror journalist lay in wait outside his house.

‘He opened his [Apple] Mac [laptop],’ recalls Mr Mead, ‘and he said, “What do you think of these pictures?”.’ Mr Mead was now looking at himself, dressed in Nazi uniform and posing in front of a swastika. The pictures, he explains, were taken eight years earlier at one of three Nazi-themed sexual fetish parties he attended.

Less than 48 hours later - on Saturday night - the story appeared on the Mirror newspaper’s website, and on Sunday 14 March, a whole page of the Sunday Mirror was covered with the pictures. ‘Council Boss Who’s Nazi Piece of Work,’ screamed the headline.

‘I was in a state of shock,’ recalls Mr Mead. ‘I immediately knew where this was going to head to - that it would lead to me leaving the organisation or being sacked. I rang my line manager and informed him of the situation, and informed the press office [at the council].’

Things moved quickly from there. Mr Mead, who was in charge of 120 staff, was suspended that afternoon pending a disciplinary investigation. But the investigation never took place - his case went straight to a disciplinary hearing a week later and he was dismissed the same day.

The images of Mr Mead, shocking by themselves, were accompanied by sickening words which the Sunday Mirror reported came from text messages sent by the housing head. ‘Turn on the furnaces for those Jewish boys and let them burn in hell with us 2 Nazis j****** off on their terrified screams,’ one message reportedly read.

After deciding to sack Mr Mead, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, his employer of 17 years, released a statement in which chief executive Geoff Alltimes said: ‘The council has acted quickly and decisively following the grossly offensive racist and anti-Semitic content highlighted in the media coverage. Councillors, managers and staff have been shocked, saddened and sickened by Mr Mead’s admissions.’

Troubled behaviour
Today Mr Mead’s light-blue eyes glaze over slightly as he states: ‘I want to categorically tell you: I’m not a racist, never have been a racist. I have never been a Nazi… There’s a big difference between fantasy role-playing and a silly sex game, and real life.’

Mr Mead, who is openly gay, doesn’t deny he sent those texts, but says he doesn’t remember the ones quoted in the Sunday Mirror article. ‘I was sending text messages of that ilk, of that tone,’ he admits. ‘But I don’t remember those particular text messages.’

‘If you have a sexual fetish, you use the internet, instant messaging, emails, to reach out to other people who are into that, and text messaging is an extension of that,’ he explains.

Whoever kept his text messages for at least six years before they were published wouldn’t have been an innocent bystander, says Mr Mead. They would have been ‘indulging in this role-playing situation’.

‘The text messages are absolutely vile in content. In that role-playing situation, I was pretending to be an SS officer. You want to be convincing in that role when you’re playing it and so there was a strange upping the ante of the machismo that’s going on in that exchange - who can be more violent, nasty and disgusting. I would never ever want any of that content ever to come to pass in reality. Never.’ Mr Mead says that he was so ‘conflicted’ by his fantasy world that he sought therapy.

Since the story broke, Mr Mead has feared for his safety. He did not want to reveal his home address to Inside Housing. Instead we meet in the café of the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. It’s a large public place where he can talk openly without being overheard.

The cappuccino he nurses is really just for show - Mr Mead is here to lay himself bare. It’s too late to be coy about the details. ‘Ask me anything,’ he urges.

OK - did he ever bring any of this into the office? Did he use these sexual fetish websites at work? Did the role-plays ever cross over into reality?

‘Never,’ answers Mr Mead, who worked at homeless charity Shelter for three years before joining Hammersmith & Fulham Council as an HIV/AIDS services manager in 1993. ‘I was completely dedicated and passionate about my work. I was able to compartmentalise my life - that was my private life, and only a small part of my private life, for a period of time.’

Mr Mead has come armed with ‘objective evidence’ - his CV, a clear Criminal Records Bureau check dated April 2009, a sparkling reference from an employer dated March 2000, and the ‘outcome of disciplinary hearing’ letter he received after his dismissal, in which Jane West, director of finance and corporate services at the council states: ‘I confirmed that I have not seen any evidence at any time that makes me believe that you are a racist.’

Taking responsibility
Mr Mead is not going to take any action against his former employer. ‘I completely accept my responsibility in this situation,’ he says. ‘It was me who got involved in this scene. Obviously, I never intended for any of this to become public, but I have to take it. If you get to a senior level [within a local authority], you understand that you work in a politicised environment. Perception matters. My employers treated me very well over the years.’

More than anything, he wants to apologise to his former colleagues and acquaintances. ‘This is my way of saying sorry for the profound hurt and upset I’ve caused through the reporting of the comments attributed to me in the press. Of the whole incident, it’s that which has upset me most,’ he says, voice shaking.

Mostly, his colleagues have been ‘overwhelmingly positive’. ‘I’ve had very many supportive texts and emails,’ says Mr Mead.

Some comments left on web forums have, however, been accusatory. ‘Clearly when you’re a senior manager you have to discipline people, sack people - they will always want to use ammunition against you,’ Mr Mead explains.

‘I’ve had some colleagues try to accuse me of racism. But I can honestly say to you, hand on heart, that no way did I ever sack or discipline somebody because they were black.’ ‘I have never been accused of being a racist by a client,’ he later adds.

A third group of people has been contacting Mr Mead over the past few weeks - those who want ‘an explanation as to how I arrived at this situation,’ he says.

‘There are black colleagues who have been in touch with me to say I’ve been a really supportive manager who tried to push their careers… there’s confusion among these colleagues.’

Traumatic upbringing
To make sense of Mr Mead’s predicament, he believes he has to go right back to his childhood - not a comfortable thing for him to talk about, he says, but he feels he has been forced to explain himself.

‘I came from a background that was traumatic, abusive, bullying and violent, and also I had a situation where both my parents rejected me in the most fundamental way you can imagine,’ he says frankly.

‘Then I experienced seven years of unrelenting, day in, day out homophobic attacks from an all-boys east end school. You don’t walk away from that kind of experience happy, clappy, lovely, smiley, integrated - you come away emotionally scarred. And the fact that I’d been the victim all the time in this fuelled those feelings of anger and hatred about myself and about my family.’

While his brother turned to heroin, he says, Mr Mead visited a counsellor for five years and turned to role-play as an escape. ‘In my private sex life I was enacting that game of power and mind trips. I could express that frustration and anger in a really safe way with another consenting adult.

I haven’t committed a crime. I’ve experienced that discrimination and prejudice and I’ve experienced people’s fists as a result of that feeling.

here’s no way I want to do that to anyone else.’

New start
Then six years ago, Mr Mead says, he gave it all up. He started going to the gym, focused on his work and met a partner who ‘would accept me for all my baggage’. ‘I was at one of the happiest places I’ve been in my life, and now my past has completely car crashed into my life,’ he says.

Questions about those photos remain though. Why would you leave them on the internet - especially when you say you knew they could potentially be used to blackmail you?

‘I was stupid enough to have my picture taken,’ says Mr Mead, stating the obvious.

Eight years ago, when he was a junior manager, he ‘exhibited self-sabotaging behaviour,’ he explains. ‘I was sailing very close to the wind in terms of its potential dramatic impact on my career.’

Others at the Nazi-themed gatherings - who were from ‘all walks of life’ - were older than him. They were ‘wise enough’ to make sure their faces were blanked out, he says, before they were posted on a secure ‘specialist website’ that had password protection, Mr Mead insists. They could have been downloaded by anyone with access to it over the past eight years. ‘Once they’re out there - you can’t get them back,’ he says.

If ever those photos were going to be brought to light, it was now, explains Mr Mead. ‘I was a very useful pawn in a bigger game of politics.’

Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s housing policies have been controversial and the London borough has been labelled a ‘test bed’ for right wing conservative policies.

Mr Mead says the Sunday Mirror coverage took his ‘sexual activity and bashing of the council for its policies, and tried to knit the two together’. It reads: ‘In recent years the housing policy has been likened to “ethnic cleansing” for discriminating against poor and ethnic minority tenants.’

In 2008, Formula 1 boss Max Mosely successfully sued the News of the World newspaper for £60,000 in damages, stating that a story it published claiming he had been involved in a ‘Nazi-style orgy’ was a breach of his privacy. Mr Mead has lodged a complaint with the Press Complaints
Commission.

Raised on an east London council estate until the age of 18, Mr Mead believes there is nothing sinister about Hammersmith & Fulham’s housing policies. The west London council is trying to ‘engage with tenants to give them hope and ambition,’ he says.

‘I’m not a Tory and I believe in social housing,’ he is free to say now that he is no longer a public servant. ‘I don’t want security of tenure to be undermined,’ he adds, referring to stubborn rumours that a Conservative government enamoured of the west London borough’s housing policies would scrap life tenancies.

For eight years, Mr Mead has carried the fear that the photos of him dressed as a Nazi would come to light. Now that they have, he’s not angry at the person who passed them on to the papers. ‘It was those kinds of feelings that got me into that scene in the first place,’ he says firmly.

At the moment, he’s dealing with more pressing financial concerns. ‘I’ve gone down from a salary of just over £4,000 a month to £257 a month [in benefits],’ he says. From now on, his days are going to spent trying to find ‘gainful employment’.

He’s also developed a fascination with what’s been written about him online. Campaigning group, the Third Estate has set up a Defend Gareth Mead campaign, which is essential reading. ‘It’s been an interesting debate to watch,’ says Mr Mead, checking his Blackberry mobile phone. ‘This case touches on religion, politics, sexuality, private and public spheres of life.’

Another glance at his screen: ‘I’m the second most read thing on your website.’

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