Liar, Liar...

The new ITV drama serial 'Liar' recently reached its conclusion. It was billed as a 'did he or didn't he?' story of a hospital surgeon, Andrew, (played by Ioan Grifford), who is accused of drugging and raping Laura, (played by Joanne Froggatt), after an ostensibly romantic meal in a seaside restaurant. To add to the drama, Laura happens to be Andrew's son's English teacher, which makes it even more reckless of him to choose her on whom to carry out such a vicious crime.

Did it happen? Will she be believed?

From the outset I knew how this drama would unfold: to keep the tension, the writer thought he'd initially throw into the mix the possibility she could be making up her accusations. Sure enough, early on in the investigation, Andrew receives communication from a person whom Laura had accused of a similar offence many years earlier. That charge was dropped. But, inevitably, it wasn't long before the pendulum swung back Laura's way and it came as absolutely no surprise to me that she was revealed to be telling the truth after all. He was predictably declared to be a conniving, mendacious serial rapist.

Let's be clear about this - there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of a TV drama being commissioned here in the UK in the modern age, in which the accuser is revealed to be a lying fantasist. Because, as we are repeatedly reminded, it is such a rarity that people make a false allegation of having been sexually abused. We are pointed to the statistics which support this - I wrote in a previous blog about BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford recently claiming on the 6 o'clock News that there are 160 times more prosecutions for rape than for making false claims. He and the statisticians simply ignore the fact the CPS and police are not the slightest bit interested in pursuing malicious lies, even when those lies are obvious.

As for 'Liar', can you imagine the reaction of the militant lobbyists/sexual assault activists/lynch-mob Twitterati zealots/the self-appointed injustice campaigners if Andrew had been innocent all along and Laura a representation of the myriad opportunists, fantasists, greedy inadequates and downright liars who inhabit the UK?

The truth is malicious, unfounded allegations of sexual assault are an ever-increasing problem in our society and I think our TV programme commissioners have a duty to reflect this on our screens. However, I'm not holding my breath.

Compensation for Liars and Perjurers?

I seem to be in a permanent state of irritation and frustration recently, and this is not just down to the fact I am obliged to use the totally unreliable Piccadilly Line here in west London on a daily basis. I was watching the six o'clock news earlier this evening and BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford delivered one of his TV 'packages', as they are called, this one about the poor innocent fellow who spent two years in prison due to the lies of that foul creature Jemma Beale (please read my previous blog post for details).

What made me almost choke on my 'Hob Nob' biscuit was his closing statement, informing us that we needn't concern ourselves too much because false allegations of sexual abuse are extremely rare. To quote Mr. Sandford: 'There are 160 times more prosecutions for rape than for false allegations of rape.'

So that's ok then. We are meant to deduce from this statistic that people rarely lie about being sexually assaulted. But the statistic is totally misleading. Why? Because, as I have repeatedly mentioned, the police/CPS rarely, if ever, pursue complainants who, after investigation, seem to have been telling a pack of lies.

I'm still waiting for the two friends who accused me back in 2012 to be investigated. They both lied through their teeth about me supposedly having inappropriately checked to see they were dry after a P.E. or Games lesson, back in the early 1980s. I repeat, they both lied and anyone with an I.Q. above the day's temperature, who attended Ipswich Crown Court in October 2104, will have come to a swift conclusion that there was not a shred of truth in anything the two manipulative opportunists had to say (as all twelve members of the jury immediately confirmed).

After my acquittal I asked the police officer in charge of the so-called investigation if I was going to receive some sort of apology from the liars for having had my reputation and career trashed. 'Her answer was immediate: 'That's not going to happen.'

So, Mr. Sandford, that statistic you broadcast this evening is meaningless. Because I imagine my case is far from being an exception.

Within an hour of listening to Mr. Sandford my blood pressure was back to normal. Then I reached page 12 of today's paper. The headline screamed out at me:

'Sex abuse fantasists who get to keep thousands in compensation.'

The article told the reader exactly that - anyone who makes a false allegation of having been sexually abused, even those who are shown to be unscrupulous, greedy liars, are allowed to keep their compensation money.  What????? Does that mean those two lying fantasists who invented that cock-and-bull story about me, in a bid to get their greedy hands on money they were presumably unable to earn legitimately, who have since slunk back to their former miserable, unproductive existence, anonymity intact, leaving me to pick up the ruins of my life and career in the full glare of publicity, that they have been paid compensation money out of state coffers? Have they actually benefited financially for having deliberately perjured themselves? Meanwhile, I, the victim, have not received a penny from anyone. Can this be true?

Please someone, anyone, tell me this could not possibly have happened. Otherwise, my blood pressure is going to take some time to return to normal.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Jemma Beale, a narcissist, a fantasist, a manipulative liar, has been sent to prison for ten years for falsely claiming she had been raped by nine men and sexually assaulted by six more over a period of three years. It was all a pack of lies. Police, meanwhile, spent 6,400 hours investigating her lies, which cost us taxpayers a quarter of a million pounds. One of Beale's victims, Mahad Cassim, spent two years in prison on account of this woman's disgusting claims.

Jemma Beale mugshot

Following the sentence, it was reported that Beale's is the most serious case of false sexual accusations in judicial history. Prosecutors went on to make the extraordinary statement that false allegations of sexual assault remain very rare.

How the hell would they know? The police and CPS rarely, if ever, go back over cases of alleged sexual assault when the accused has been found not guilty in a court of law. If the accuser doesn't actually admit to making up the whole story, he or she can be sure of getting off scot-free, even if their lies are exposed.

It has always to be pointed out, just because someone is found not guilty, this doesn't automatically mean that defendant is innocent, just that the prosecution has failed to prove its case. But there are occasions when it is palpably obvious the complainant is nothing more than a cruel opportunist/inadequate/liar (like the two friends whose filthy lies took me to Ipswich Crown Court in 2014). Wouldn't one assume that in cases when the trial is halted or when the jury return with an almost immediate decision of not guilty on all counts, the accuser would at least have his or her claims subsequently reviewed?

Not a bit of it. Why? Because the police and CPS do not want to look like they backed an unalloyed liar. After all, it was their decision jointly to charge (don't believe for a moment that the CPS operate independently from the police) and they have therefore both subjected the accused to a prolonged hell on earth existence and also cost the taxpayer many thousands of pounds.

Not good for career prospects for anyone to back the wrong horse.... so what do they do? They move away from the failed case as quickly as possible and allow the liars to return to the usually miserable, unproductive lives whence they came, with their identities protected forever.

My two accusers, who lied and lied about me, are not part of the statistics upon which the prosecutors base this latest, oft repeated, preposterous statement. Of course false allegations of sexual assault are ostensibly rare but this does not mean they are rare. How can anyone know?

If the police continue with their current m.o.of pursuing their so-called investigations following the guidelines decreed by the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, that 'all complainants must be believed', of course the greedy, insidious opportunists are going to chance their arm because they know they'll never be called to account for their vile behaviour, even when they are exposed for what they are. They have absolutely nothing to lose and a hell of a lot to gain. And all this passes for British justice.

I watched a television programme, 'The Wright Stuff', discussing the Beale sentence the following day and instead of the conversation being a vilification of the cruel, disgusting, rebarbative Beale, it was mainly focused on how this lengthy sentence might put off genuine victims 'coming forward'.

No it won't. Beale was proven to be a liar. As long as someone is telling the truth, he or she has nothing to worry about. There is not a cat in hell's chance of someone who has been raped being sent to prison for a false testimony. I reject utterly the mantra that prosecuting those who make false allegations will prevent other complainants coming forward. It is an excuse for the police and CPS to do nothing when they suspect they have been well and truly duped.

So, in spite of this appalling Beale case, it is highly unlikely that the m.o. of the police/judicial system will be in any way affected and people like me will continue to have their lives trashed as lying fantasists peddle their malicious allegations knowing they have little, if anything, to lose.

A Game of Chess?

There has been a succession of articles recently about the sharp decline in the number of children who read books for pleasure. Apps/video games/You Tube etc take up most of children's leisure time. Indeed, most youngsters are attracted by anything which doesn't require extended periods of concentration. Most households have at least two tablets, ready and waiting...

With instant gratification at the touch of a screen, why would any child bother to go about the laborious process of buying a cumbersome book and then sitting down quietly to read it? Added to this, it is often the case that when starting a novel, the reader has to be patient during the first few chapters, as the storyline unfolds.

Patient? No thanks. Nowadays, few under the age of 25 are prepared to wait for anything, if they have a choice.

This need for instant gratification has simultaneously had a deleterious effect on many children's ability to concentrate in class. Modern day teachers are expected to be akin to circus performers, to ensure the pupils are not distracted. As technology develops, the situation will only get worse.

What can be done? I have an idea... I think every child should be made to learn to play the game of chess. He or she will immediately find concentration is required, often for an extended period of time. And it won't only assist in a person's powers of concentration... it will also assist his or her powers of critical thinking/problem solving/planning analysis and abstract reasoning.

The benefits would be enormous. As a school boy, I was pretty hyperactive (still am) and I would probably have been diagnosed with ADHD in a modern day school. There is no doubt that being forced to play chess by my Housemaster every time I stepped out of line helped me enormously (as you might imagine, I had to play most days). Before very long I was playing unprompted. My behaviour soon improved and I often look back and appreciate how the game of chess enriched my life and helped to keep me on the straight and narrow at that crucial period in my life. We could even roll this initiative out into prisons... the benefits would be marked.

It's worth consideration, surely?

Why Real Education Matters

I was recently approached by the media to offer my thoughts as to why the provision of school education here in the UK is no longer the envy of the world. In fact, as a nation, we have slid down the international league tables in both literacy and numeracy, both to an alarming degree.

In a nutshell, I would state that the principal reason is, in our efforts to avoid reprimanding children at all costs and to try 'to get alongside them' (I know, ghastly phrase, but so often used by management), teachers' authority has severely diminished. Many British pupils seem to have adopted an inflated sense of their own importance and refuse to respect the paid professionals employed to educate them until they feel they are prepared to do so.

In British society teachers are viewed at a pretty low level in terms of the top professions and pupils are aware of this. An ever increasing number of parents, too, encourage their offspring not to accept what they are told to do at school and are quick to complain if their son or daughter is punished. In other words, they often undermine the running of the school.

Let's consider for a moment two countries in the world who annually come top of the international league for educational success - South Korea and Finland. In the way they provide education for their children you couldn't get two countries farther apart. In the case of South Korea, pupils are put under unrelenting pressure with long school days, a lot of homework and regular testing from an early age. In Finland, children don't start school until they reach the age of seven, they rarely do homework until their teenage years and don't have to sit a public exam until they reach sixteen.

But what is common to both countries is practically all children believe in the system and share a deep respect for their teachers and their academic accomplishments. Teachers are viewed as highly as doctors in both societies and the teaching profession attracts applications from the top ten per cent of graduates. In both countries the pupils are convinced that doing as they are instructed by the paid professionals will ultimately bring them success, happiness and fulfillment. They are taught how to work wisely and how to persist in the face of possible failure. Both Korean and Finnish parents support the running of their local school at every level.

In both these countries there is almost total literacy and numeracy among school leavers and the difference between the weakest and strongest is the smallest in the world. What's more, both countries spend far less money on each child's education than that spent here in the UK.

The lesson is clear but, of course, will be ignored here in the UK for generations to come - teachers' authority must be restored to how it was in the 1960s and '70s. I am not suggesting we return to the days of 'children should be seen and not heard' but as long as we persist with this notion that the pupils have every right to challenge the teachers' authority whenever they please; as long as we refuse to punish those unruly pupils who are ruining the chances of others in the class from learning; as long as teachers are treated as lackeys in our society, thus putting off top graduates from a career in teaching, and as long as parents refuse to offer their unalloyed support for the running of their local school, then the gap between educational provision here in the UK and that in countries such as South Korea and Finland will continue to widen.

Trial By Jury - Or By Prejudice?

For many, trial by jury has long been the most important part of our judicial system. Those accused of a criminal offence, it is argued, have a right to be tried by 12 of their peers, who are selected at random from the community. But, as the decades have passed, I have become increasingly convinced that the jury system has become anachronistic and is now fraught with problems.

My doubts started when I, myself, sat in a cage in a crown court in 2014 and a liar who had accused me of having touched him inappropriately 30 years earlier was allowed to give his 'evidence' from behind a screen. Those 12 jury members, most entering a court for the very first time, would not be human if they didn't feel some bias against me in my cage, and empathy towards the 'vulnerable' liar, being protected from my view. Thus, we have a natural bias against the defendant to overcome from the start.

When it comes to alleged crimes perpetrated against children, ordinary folk are programmed to feel disgusted and will be most reluctant to acquit if they feel there is even a smidgen of doubt that the accused may be guilty. Everyone knows that 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt' is unlikely to come into many jurors' decision making, but rather it is a case of  'are the chances this person might well be guilty?'

Recently, I sat through a criminal case in a crown court in which a man was on trial for alleged historical abuse perpetrated against three young women in the 1970s. I watched the jury eagerly as the evidence was presented and I was shocked that only one of the twelve was bothering to take any notes at all. If I'd been on that jury, I would have been unable to come to an informed decision back in the retiring room based solely on memory. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that some of them might well have been bored.

And how can the system prevent certain jury members from making decisions based on their in-built prejudices? What was it that juror Kasim Davey posted on Facebook after a trial at which he had been adjudicating....'Woooow, I wasn't expecting to be in a jury deciding a paedophile's fate. I've always wanted to fuck up a paedo.'

Can we really be sure that all jurors will start listening to the evidence being presented to them completely open-minded about the defendant sitting in his or her cage? It is foolish to assume so. Is the present system an expensive and dangerous way of placing incredibly important decisions in the hands of 12 ordinary citizens, some of whom might well not understand the complexities of the case?

I do concede that judges can also be biased against certain tranches of the population but if we had a system in the crown court similar to that at a magistrates' court, i.e. three trained judges prevailing, I think it would be likely we would have fewer miscarriages of justice, particularly where historical allegations are concerned, as these usually are based on one person's word against another. Three judges would also be wary of the police's m.o. of trawling for complainants when the initial complaint has no evidence to support it... quantity replacing quality 'evidence', as is often the case nowadays.

I know a professional, hitherto distinguished, man who was recently sent down on the allegation of an ex-con. The jury was unaware the complainant's criminal history and that he was facing another jail sentence as he gave his 'evidence'. The defendant was subsequently found guilty based on prejudice rather than any actual evidence. Had three highly trained, informed judges been in charge of proceedings (there is a good reason why judges have to undergo such rigorous training), they would have been better equipped to come to the correct decision and, as according to our innocent until proven guilty system, this person would have been rightly acquitted.

I dread to think the number of innocent people serving time in jail - the national figure doesn't bear thinking about. I can state without hesitation that, with the growth of social media, if anyone thinks that the long established rule of jurors not checking out the background to defendants (to avoid bias thinking) still exists, he or she is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Police Bail: 28 Days Later

Curbs have now been introduced on the police current practice of leaving potentially innocent people in legal limbo for months on end, in some cases years. In my recently published book Presumed Guilty, I described the present system surrounding the use of bail by the state as 'police officer justice'. I had to endure 9 months on pre-charge bail and then a further 13 months after I was charged, as the police scoured the country for 'evidence'. Meanwhile, I was convinced this earth was another planet's hell.

While on bail the suspect lives his or her life under a cloud of suspicion and a number of arbitrary restrictions are placed on that person - movement/removal of passport/computer/phone/diaries/personal correspondence/suspended from job (in my case this involved suspended from the home and community where I had spent 30 years)/in some cases (not my own) even separation from one's own children.

There is now a 28 day limit on pre-charge bail. In my book I called for the limit to be 2 months because, with the police force and its support teams currently so stretched, we don't want to make the task of investigation even longer, as officers waste valuable time sitting around in court houses every few weeks.

The Magna Carta states: 'justice delayed is justice denied' but nevertheless some of the appalling cases of this 'police officer justice' m.o. led to Cliff Richard being bailed for 672 days (precisely the number I was bailed for) and Paul Gambaccini for a year, yet neither was charged.

Anyone who has spent even a week on bail will tell you the effect it has on your life is exacting. The longer the process continues, the more one feels the strain. It is nothing short of mental cruelty.

I was discussing this on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 on Monday and Jeremy asked what was the impetus for this new law being introduced. The answer is the printed press - not the television or radio but three newspapers: the Mail, the Telegraph and the Times. These journals are despised by the liberal establishment because the latter generally don't care a fig for individuals like me because I don't tick any of the minority boxes.

The left wing press concern themselves only with 'movements' and 'groups', while the right wing papers treat each case on the actual evidence. I would like to take this opportunity to thank, among others, Libby Purves and Daniel Finklestein, Richard Littlejohn, Jane Moore and Janet Street Porter - all those print press journalists who will not be cowed by political correctness but will express their views without fear or favour.

I wish the police would invite them to address their officers to explain why this is so important.