Alan Waters - India

June 05

Lt Cdr Alan Waters, a gentleman in his late 50’s, is a highly respected superintendent for the Royal Navy’s National Sea Cadets Centre. He is being tried for the sexual abuse of boys at shelters in India. These are spurious allegations and there is no evidence to support them.

Mr Waters spent many periods of leave, often with his wife, helping his friend Duncan Grant with the running of Mr. Grant’s Anchorage Shelters for street children in Mumbai, India. The Shelters accommodate around 90 boys.

In summer 2001, Duncan Grant asked 2 supporters, one Indian and one British, to discontinue their visits as they seemed to be developing inappropriate relationships with some of the boys. A few months later, Duncan Grant and Alan Waters heard that similar allegations were being made against them, along with the Indian manager of the shelters. Five boys from the shelters had made these allegations. It transpires that they had been befriended by the dismissed British man. It was later discovered that this man was a convicted paedophile.

Mumbai police conducted an investigation and interviewed with all the boys in the shelters. They found no evidence supporting the allegations. In August 2003 defence lawyers in Mumbai obtained sworn statements from the 5 boys retracting their accusations. The boys claimed that they had been offered money by the dismissed British man and an Indian lawyer associated with Childline India. They had signed statements and blank pieces of paper in English, which they could not understand.

In July 2003, Alan Waters was travelling in an official capacity with a group of naval cadets, changing planes at JFK en route to Bermuda. He was detained at JFK by US immigration on a ‘red order’ from India and was held in Brooklyn Detention Centre for 14 months, after which he was extradited to India.

Since Alan Waters’ extradition, his hearings in Mumbai have been postponed at least 7 times. However, his trial finally started in April 2005.

Fair Trial Issues

1. The trial is going ahead despite retractions of the statements of the boys. Those statements are the only evidence against him.
2. There are constant delays in the trial due to obvious attempts of the prosecution to obstruct progress.
3. Childline India, which has made serious allegations against Mr Waters in the press, has a permanent presence in the Mumbai courtroom and is exerting pressure on the prosecution in order to save their own reputation.