Lies and Damned Lies on Oath

The erstwhile popular entertainer Rolf Harris has recently concluded nearly three years at Her Majesty's Pleasure. The previous pleasure he afforded her Royal Highness was in 2005 when he produced a superb painting of Her Maj to mark her 80th birthday. In 2014 he was convicted of a number of sex attacks on young women and girls. The most sinister of the charges was one alleging an attack on an 8-year old child... more about that in a moment.

In May this year, he was re-tried on four charges upon which the original jury couldn't agree. I attended most of this trial as a spectator and, taking notes throughout (as one would expect jury members to do!), I was in no doubt by the conclusion of the case that the charges should be dismissed. As it turned out, this is what happened but, once again, the jury members couldn't agree on their verdicts. There will be no more re-trials.

Now the Court of Appeal has quashed one of Mr Harris’ 12 original convictions from 2014, although the judges have upheld the remaining 11. Importantly, this quashed conviction concerned the most serious and revolting allegation of all, namely that Mr Harris had sexually abused an 8-year old girl during an event at a venue in Portsmouth in 1969.

This conviction was ruled ‘unsafe’ on the grounds that new evidence provided by the complainant’s own stepfather suggested that the girl would never have been permitted to attend such an event by herself at that young age. Moreover, the sole ‘eye-witness’ to the alleged assault - one David James -has now been exposed as a serial liar, fantasist and convicted fraudster, who has repeatedly claimed to have had a military career despite incontrovertible evidence that he is a lorry driver who never wore the Queen’s uniform and never served abroad in Korea, as he had claimed falsely on oath.

What is deeply shocking – but sadly hardly surprising in modern Britain – is that both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were aware of this lying fantasist’s dubious character, yet withheld this vital information from the defence and – equally importantly – from the jury at the first trial. This man was permitted to lie on oath and Rolf Harris was duly convicted and sentenced, despite his repeated protestations that he had never performed at the Portsmouth venue at the time claimed. He was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment on that charge alone.

The imposture of the key witness was only discovered by Mr Harris’ defence team when preparing his appeal against conviction. In response, the prosecution claimed that its failure to disclose this man's utter unreliability was 'a mistake'. It was, if I may say so, a very convenient ‘mistake’ and yet another example, in a very long line of incidents, in which crucial evidence has been withheld from the defence in sexual assault prosecutions.

Will any action now be taken against the fantasist who stood up in front of a judge and jury and told bare-faced lies on oath? I very much doubt it. It seems that blatant perjury is no longer treated as a serious criminal offence – or even prosecuted – as long as it assists the police and CPS in getting convictions, particularly in prosecutions for alleged sexual offences.

Even if the liars fail to impress the jury and the accused is acquitted, they're still not called to account even when their lies are obvious. I repeat for the umpteenth time, the two perjurers who dragged me into a court of law in 2014 and were subsequently seen to be what they are - lying, insidious fantasists - have still not been called to account, and it's over three years since the preposterous trial.

I am currently following another appalling case of an ex-teacher who was jailed in 2014 on the word of a proven liar who was, at the time, facing serious criminal charges himself. Needless to say, any charges against him were put aside.

According to media reports Mr Harris’ accuser has apparently already pocketed £22,000 in compensation payments. No doubt she will be permitted to keep the cash, despite this conviction having been quashed (a less generous observer might prefer to say comprehensively trashed).

The main, obvious point of concern following this latest judicial reversal is, if Mr. Harris was not guilty of abusing that woman when she was an 8-year old girl, what effect did hearing the dubious evidence adduced on this particular charge have on the original jury when they considered all the other allegations against him? Can you imagine sitting on a jury considering the fate of a man who is alleged to have sexually assaulted an 8-year old child? Once they had decided he was guilty of this offence, surely the minds of those jury members must have been influenced when considering all the other allegations. How can they not have? Yet the judges in the Court of Appeal seem to have concluded that all the other 11 convictions are safe.

May I put it to you, Your Lordships, that I defy anyone to hear evidence from a witness who vividly relates a sexual assault allegedly committed against him or her at the age of eight and not form a highly negative view of the person accused. After all, that is why the CPS opts to ‘bundle’ as many separate charges against a defendant as possible, in order to suggest the accused’s propensity to commit similar acts.

Surely, when one convincing complainant gives evidence of a vile crime being committed against him or her, it must contaminate the rest of the trial, since the jurors form a view of the defendant, particularly if that complainant was a pre-pubescent girl at the time of the alleged offence. Had the jury in the first trial been made aware that there were grave doubts about the truth of this crucial allegation – and the fact that the one key eye-witness to the alleged incident was a notorious liar and fantasist – it  would surely have led them to be much more cautious about the remaining allegations against Mr Harris.


We live in dangerous times: even totally unfounded allegations of a sexual nature can end a person’s career – and, sadly, even their life – long before they have even been charged, let alone convicted. Publicising such allegations prior to a conviction opens the way for a rag bag collection of liars, fantasists and compensation hunters to invent similar stories which can all too often be seized upon by police officers, who then fail grossly to undertake any rigorous investigation. And, as the quashing of one of Mr Harris’ convictions clearly shows, even when key witnesses are known to the police as liars and fantasists, this crucial information may be withheld from the defence, the judge and, crucially, the jury.

We already have a gross ‘inequality of arms’ in our courts. Most defendants, unlike Rolf Harris, simply do not have the financial resources to pay highly skilled investigators (often retired police detectives) to examine the evidence, check facts and track down potential witnesses – something that can prove absolutely vital in so-called historical sexual abuse cases, where the allegations can date back decades. The police have resources to do this work but often seem to rely entirely on the complainant’s statements, rather than impartially, thoroughly and even-handedly investigating the allegations.

As things stand, our justice system is being brought woefully into disrepute, yet police, prosecutors and perjuring witnesses seem to enjoy complete immunity from any negative consequences of appalling miscarriages of justice. How many innocent men and women are currently rotting in prison, their lives ruined, as a direct consequence of deeply flawed prosecutions?

And, to conclude, does any rational person on the street not now begin to wonder just how many more lies have been laid at the door of the beleaguered Rolf Harris?

Trial By Media

As many of my followers are probably aware, in 2012 I was publicly arrested as part of some police 'Operation' for an allegation of an inappropriate after-shower inspection in 1981, following a supposed P.E. lesson. The accuser was then 11 years old. The facts that a) I have never taught P.E. and b) I have never taught 11 year olds in a thirty year teaching career did not prevent the very public arrest and the subsequent, immediate, widespread publicity. I was driven to the cusp of suicide and, had I been cursed with a sensitive nature and had not endured a tough boarding school education, I would certainly have carried out this awful act.

It was the publicity which drove me to despair. You see everything you have built up ruined by the court of public opinion. The untutored mob of the evil internet (none had ever met me) repeatedly entreated me to kill myself at that time.

And still anonymity is refused to those facing a mere allegation.

On a TV debate programme I watched earlier today, the journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown stated that, on the other side of the argument, Harvey Weinstein would not have been exposed had his name been kept out of the press. Yes he would have been - it would have happened straight after he had been found guilty in a court of law. This is the time to publish, thereby humiliate, people accused of abuse. Anyone who has had to experience his or her name being published in a story of alleged child abuse will testify to the horror of the experience: it's degrading, it's unalloyed cruelty - even if one is totally innocent. I had never met my accuser!

The police use this process of naming accused people to harvest (trawling, it's called) statements from other accusers, who are not hard to find if you offer a generous compensation payout at the end of the process. Indeed, money is paid out even if the accused is not charged or is found not guilty. What the police lack in quality 'evidence', they make up for in quantity, if they can.

We no longer live in an age when people are afraid to step forward to claim abuse. Even if Weinstein's name had been kept away from the media, local Hollywood gossip would have spread that the police were investigating him. But his name should NOT have been put officially into the public arena until he is found guilty of an offence in a court of law.

Otherwise, we maintain a system whereby accused people are used as an unfortunate by-product of the way we administer so-called justice. If this continues, then, I fear, there are going to be many more people, just like Welsh Assembly Cabinet Secretary Carl Sargeant, who are driven to take their own lives. I know exactly how Mr. Sergeant felt, as do the hundreds of people who have also faced this appalling practice.

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.