I Was Arrested for Crimes I Didn’t Commit

And the people who orchestrated it still have not been held accountable

It came after nearly four years of harassment, two wrongful arrests, a humiliating trial, then an agonising wait for justice. When the charges were finally dropped and I was found not guilty in November 2024, I thought it would bring peace.

It didn’t.

This wasn’t a misunderstanding. This was a calculated, malicious campaign.

I was finally able to tell my story to a journalist I trusted. My sincere thanks to Catriona Stewart, who listened with patience and reported what she could despite legal restraints.

The Times published the story on 15th June 2025, over two years after I was assaulted, arrested and stood trial for two crimes I did not commit.

This Substack post is what couldn’t be said in that article. Here, I tell the full story. No redactions. No legal sanitising.

The Orchestrator

The ordeal was entirely fabricated by my partner’s ex-husband, a narcissist who has taken every opportunity to bully, threaten and coerce my partner, Vanessa. She left the marriage with her two very small daughters, six weeks after the birth of her youngest. She was able to safely leave due to bail conditions put in place after he was charged with domestic abuse (threatening and abusive behaviour). Nicholas Barrett pled guilty to this in July 2015.

Since then, Barrett has weaponised every possible system: the family courts, the police, and child protection, to intimidate and control Vanessa and anyone close to her. I have had to witness the children being traumatised by him. Multiple times their primary school have involved the police and Social Services in attempts to protect the children from his controlling and threatening behaviour.

The most recent incident was in October 2024, where after two hours of him refusing to leave the school, the situation necessitated in the girls being taken home in tears by the police to alleviate their anxiety. (They did manage to persuade the officers to put the siren on).

In the fifteen years I’ve been on the Children’s Panel, I can categorically state that he would not have been granted access to the children without supervision, due to his behaviour both in and out of court.

Vanessa was forced to find new legal representation halfway through the family court case as her lawyer refused to work with or even be in the same room as Barrett.

Still, he managed to manipulate the system. Barrett presents a façade of a reasonable, public school-educated man to the extent that when the Sheriff asked a court reporter to meet exclusively with the children at their parents’ houses and seek their views, Barrett was able to persuade the reporter, with the collusion of his mother, that the children were safe and well cared for.

It resulted in a court agreement that forces the children to be with him, often against their wishes.

The children’s best interests are often frustrated by Barrett’s interpretation of the court agreement. Restrictions are applied and this impacts the girls in that they cannot attend extra-curricular activities, such as swimming, because they occur on nights when the children reside at his house. Even when Vanessa volunteers to do the taxiing, he won’t allow it as he perceives it as some sort of loss for him.

As my relationship with Vanessa became more serious, I became part of his twisted and vindictive narrative.

Photo by niu niu on Unsplash

The Fabricated Charges

Below is an outline of what happened and is part of an email and registered letter that I sent to the Police, the Procurator Fiscal (PF), and the Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC) after my trials had started. The charges were eventually dropped and I was found Not Guilty in November 2024. The PF conjoined the cases after recognising that manipulation, deceit and lies formed the core of the allegations.

The trial began in July 2024 when Day One of evidence was heard. The witnesses were my accuser, Jaime Duffin, and my partner’s ex-husband, Nicholas Barrett. They continually contradicted each other’s evidence. When Barrett took the stand, he opened his briefcase and produced a sheaf of papers to read his evidence from. They were confiscated by the clerk, and subsequently he was unable to recall specific details when giving evidence (as is often the case with liars recalling their lies).

My lawyer exposed discrepancies in his account of the incident versus his original statement.

My lawyer embarrassed Barrett as he gave his evidence, suggesting he was lying, and this was part of his ten-year campaign of harassment against Vanessa. Consequently, Barrett was made to look ridiculous.

The story in The Times had small, yet key sections retracted by the lawyers due to hearsay restrictions. Similarly, opinions were removed from the piece. These led to factual inconsistencies; I don’t have the same restrictions and am happy to finally be able to tell the complete story.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

The Letter

This is the email and letter that I sent by recorded delivery to the Police, the Procurator Fiscal (PF), and Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC).

21st July 2023

Dear Sir/Madam

Without Prejudice

I am writing to you relative to two charges that I have been subject to as part of a campaign of harassment against me and a longer campaign of domestic abuse against my partner. I have been targeted recently as part of an attempt by her ex-husband to influence an ongoing custody dispute. I will try to summarise and have attached supporting emails to the chronology of events and allegations. I have also attached supporting corroboration as to these accusations/allegations being falsely created to weaponise the police.

On Friday November 25th 2022, I received a phone call from officer 2022 G2727 asking if I could meet with him to discuss allegations that had been made against me. I said I would and not knowing the process for questioning as I had never been involved with the police in any way previously, I asked would I need a lawyer. He said he would advise I should have one there. I mentioned my partners ex-husband, Nicholas Barrett’s name and he confirmed that this was where the allegations had originated. I agreed I would attend Helen Street police station on the Sunday 27th November as I naively thought I would have the opportunity to explain the ongoing problem at that stage.

I attended at 12 pm with my lawyer who I know through one of the businesses I am involved with. I was arrested, which I had not expected and then video interviewed in the presence of my lawyer. My lawyer advised that I make no comment until I understood the basis of the charges. As the long list of allegations were read to me, I genuinely did not recognise some of the names or times or most of the social media platforms mentioned. Mr Barrett had previously created false media accounts to suggest I was online trying to meet other women. He took screenshots of these and sent them to my partner in October 2021. So, I realised this was a more robust attempt to do a similar thing, but with sinister overtones. At the end the officer clearly saw that I had no knowledge or recognition of the allegations and asked did I want to make any complaint at that time. My lawyer suggested I shouldn’t until I clearly understood who Jaime Duffin was, as I had not heard of her, but she was a co-complainant.

I submitted a freedom of information (FoI) request on 13th April 2023 to get the detail of these allegations as I couldn’t remember the exact scope and wording when discussing with my partner over the following weeks. I never received a response to the FOI.

In the course of the next few months I discovered that Jaime Duffin was a person who had communicated with me on Facebook messenger in October 2022. Her name on the profile was Jae Anne. She said that she was in a relationship with Mr Barrett and that he had showed her a message allegedly from me which threatened to expose screenshots of personal messages he had saved from his WhatsApp account. I had known of these screenshots since the previous autumn (Oct 2021) when one of my partners children returned from her dad’s house and her iPad had been synced to his personal account. My partner found hundreds of photos he had screenshot of him abusing her and other people. There was also degrading porn and a video of his mother verbally abusing his terminally ill dad. I was genuinely shocked when I saw them as no sane person would keep or be sharing these images and examples of coercive control, much less be screenshotting them as trophies. I assured this person (Jaime Duffin aka Jae Anne) I would never have sent such a message and that the incident had already been reported by my partner to her lawyer. My partner had advised Mr Barrett that she had seen these images and had reported them to her lawyer in 2021.

I then received a series of calls from this Jae Ann with my partner in the room and I suggested she may be being gaslit by Mr Barrett. I assured her I had nothing to do with any message he had received.

I thought I had left the call in a reasonable and reassuring way, so much so that I believed she was a decent person and had influence with Mr Barrett. I felt confident enough to message her from Canada when my partner and I were on holiday in October 2022 asking would she please use her influence to ask Mr Barrett to let the children speak to their Mum. He often uses this as a form of control. I did not receive any response and my partner was not able to speak to her children.

On 6th April 2023 I was in the USA on business when I received a link to a newspaper article showing that Jaime Duffin had been reported to the police in 2016 for fraud after creating false social media accounts to send threats to herself in order to get the father of her youngest child to pay for a house move on five separate occasions. I sent a copy of the link to Mr Barrett in an email saying I was heading home from a business trip and would be reporting this to the police as it was very similar to the campaign against me in November. I think that email set in motion the following sequence of events:

On Friday 7th April I was in Heathrow when I received a call from a private number at 16.27, it was Jae Ann (Jaime Duffin) being quite aggressive and angry that I had sent the email to Mr Barrett and outraged that I was planning to go to the police. We spoke for 4 mins, and I hung up on her. We then had an exchange on messenger where I restated that I would expose their complaint. She again spoke about the alleged WhatsApp message sent to Mr Barrett which would cause her “great harm” if I used the screenshots from the girls iPad. I confirmed that I did intend to do her harm by exposing the whole story to the police.

On Sunday April 9th my partner was taking her children to drop off at Mr Barrett’s mother’s house which is close to her address. She asked me to go with her as she has a genuine fear of being in the same vicinity as him. I have been attending court with her, and most handovers are now after school or gymnastics which mean she does not have to see or be intimidated by him. There is a long history on record of abuse, bullying and again weaponising the police against her in order to enforce court orders. As we walked close to the house I was approached by a woman I now know to be Mr Barrett’s sister in law (Claire Barrett) who asked if I was John Ward and then began shouting and accusing me of all sorts of insane things, screaming that I “was a pollution.” Mr Barrett’s brother Mark, who I have never seen or spoken to, came towards me aggressively and the subsequent threats and assault is subject to court proceedings; Crime Ref GE01220423. He assaulted me after following me up the hill and out-with the view of any witnesses. He said in front of my partner “I’m going to slit his fucking throat.” This was also reported to the police at the time. I was advised on Saturday 22 April that police officers had been at my partners address asking to speak with me, but they left no details. I assumed it was relative to the FOI request. On Monday 29 May the police arrived at my partners home at around 23.30 and I was arrested and charged with two separate offences under the communications act.

These offences were alleged to have happened on Friday 7th April which was a day I spent in Heathrow trying to get a flight home after arriving overnight from Dallas Fort Worth. It was good Friday and many of the flights were overbooked. I eventually returned from Heathrow to my partner’s home by taxi at approximately 21.00. After a long overnight flight and day in Heathrow, I went straight to bed at about 21.30. This can be backed up by taxi, phone and Fitbit activity records. The alleged offences accused me of making threatening calls and were acted upon by the police based on corroboration by Mrs Claire Barrett and Nicholas Barrett. The police acted upon the allegations and made the charges as it was stated that my partners children were heard in the background at around 22.00.

None of this happened and I believe I can prove that. I think that it was a desperate attempt to justify a defence for Mr Mark Barrett’s assault on 9th April 2023.

Since I was arrested there has subsequently been a campaign to embarrass and cause me difficulties in my professional life based on these spurious allegations.

Please see attached emails and screenshots to:

Spring Solutions Ltd where I am a shareholder and Director.

Spring Distribution (Scotland) Ltd where I am a Director

Aircraft Seating where I am a Director

Livingston Football Club where I was Chief Executive Officer

The same person contacted the Children’s Hearing System where I have been a volunteer for over fifteen years and I have been forced to take a leave of absence until the court cases are over.

I have also resigned as CEO from Livingston Football Club as there was a threat to involve the media and I have no desire for the club to be embarrassed. I remain a Director and chairperson but have no day to day responsibility for the club. I firmly believe if the police investigated these allegations, they would be able to trace where the alleged calls came from via phone records, and identify IP addresses from social media accounts. I would then expect they would have to drop the charges against me and see that the justice system has been played in order to cause me personal, emotional and professional harm as well as influence the child custody hearing.

I have not been at court for the Jaime Duffin case as there is a backlog in Glasgow, yet the emails and calls to my employers have specific knowledge of the allegations, which to the best of my knowledge aren’t public. This was confirmed during a discussion with police officers who attended my partners home on June 29th at my request and suggested I embark on this communication with the Procurator Fiscal and the PIRC.I also attach telephone records and the IP tracking from the fraudulent email sent to Spring Solutions that I asked the IT team to track if they could. I would welcome a full investigation and will provide any access you need to my phone records or IP addresses. I have sent the above including attachments in a letter to both organisations registered post.

Kind regards

John Ward

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Rooted in Lies

Factually I had gotten a few things wrong, but I had not been presented with any details of the charges at the time of writing the email/ letter. In actual fact the offences were reported on the afternoon of Saturday 8th April by Barrett’s brother Mark Barrett and by Barrett’s partner Duffin. Both claimed that I called repeatedly and threatened them. Mark Barrett’s allegations were substantiated by his wife Claire Barrett (who I later discovered works/worked in child protection) and Jaime Duffin’s allegations were witnessed by Nicholas Barrett himself.

Barrett regularly videos my partner dropping off and collecting the kids despite Vanessa requesting multiple times via her lawyer that the Family Court order him to stop this invasion of her and the girls privacy. As seen on the iPad that had synced with his data, this is a man who keeps humiliating and personal photos and videos on his WhatsApp account, presumably for gratification and to make himself feel powerful. Interestingly, the 16.27 call initiated by Jaime Duffin was not recorded and he apparently did not have the presence of mind to record the alleged threatening calls between 22.00 and 22.30?

The alleged calls never happened, but I believe they were part of a hastily contrived plan triggered by my Thursday 6th April email to Nick Barrett and led to the subsequent sequence of events over the weekend of Friday 7th to Sunday 9th April.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was a weak attempt to discredit me before I went to the police with the news story about Duffin. The story on Duffin alleges she made fake accounts to threaten herself and win sympathy from the father of her youngest daughter. She did this five times according to reports and claimed that it was her ex’s former partner who was threatening her. This was to extort him to pay for house moves to keep her safe.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

What Comes Next?

Vanessa and I intend to instruct legal action to recover costs, lost earnings, the damage to my reputation and more importantly, the emotional distress that my extended family and I were subjected to. It went on for so long and consumed our day to day lives to the extent that even this re-telling is both painful and triggering.

This legal action cannot happen until after Mark Barrett’s trial for threatening and assaulting me. Both the accusers and the witnesses will be cited and given the sums involved, it will be heard in the Court of Session. All four of them will become liable for costs and damages.

It may cost a six figure sum to take these proceedings to their conclusion, but I have to understand what lies were told by Nick Barrett to persuade his brother to embark on this course of action. Mark Barrett had never met me, neither had Claire who has potentially damaged her professional career by giving false evidence and being prepared to commit perjury.

It may be that one or both of them was gaslit by Nick and Jaime.

My hope is that once the action starts and they realise that this is going to require senior Kings Counsel to represent them in court at significant cost, that they rethink their position and tell the truth as to what exactly happened over that weekend in April 2023.

One thing I am certain of is, Nick Barrett and Jaime Duffin orchestrated and coerced the others into making the allegations. After The Times piece was published, I received a call from an estranged close friend of Jaime Duffin’s and it appears she is a serial accuser. I was given a list of people she has made allegations against, some of whom have been imprisoned. She has also falsely claimed she had terminal illnesses in order to manipulate relationships and friendships.

On the day she called me and subsequently made the allegation that I threatened her, I said to her that she and Nick were a match made in hell and that they deserved each other.

I stand by that….

This isn’t just my story, it’s a case study in how domestic abusers can weaponise the system and manipulate institutions. It’s a call for reform, accountability, and vigilance.

No one else should have to go through this.

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