The Victim Vanishes

In recent months I have gained the distinct impression that the tide has started to turn against those who make false allegations – especially those of a sexual nature. There is still a long way to go, but there does appear to be a greater public awareness of the fact that false accusations are not as rare as some vocal campaigners would like us to believe.

Indeed, there is a greater willingness in the media to report on cases where malicious allegations have been made, as well as giving a voice to innocent victims whose lives have been devastated or to the grieving families of those who have committed suicide because they were unable to cope with the intense pressure and utter misery of being falsely accused of sexual abuse.

The way in which the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) deal with allegations of sexual misconduct is also coming under intense scrutiny, with questions being raised in Parliament and in the courts. Urgent reviews of thousands of current cases have led to hundreds of these prosecutions being dropped owing to relevant evidence either having not been disclosed to the defence or new material (especially electronic communications, such as text messages) being produced belatedly which casts significant doubt on claims made by the complainant.

The recent collapse of certain high-profile prosecutions – including that of former pop mogul Jonathan King – raises yet more questions about the conduct, methods and even probity of some police investigations. All of this controversy has led to an official call to abandon the ludicrous dogma of ‘you will be believed’ – which applied specifically to allegations of a sexual nature, no matter how bizarre or fantastical the claims being made might be. (I still can't believe that someone in such a prominent legal position - Keir Starmer, then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) - could have uttered such a pathetically puerile, preposterous statement). The utter fiasco of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Midland (2014-2016) alone – at a cost to the taxpayer of £2.5 million, plus substantial compensation payments made to victims such as Lord Bramall and Lady Brittan, should have been proof enough that suspending disbelief and simply accepting that every bizarre tale told to police was ‘credible and true’ was the road to ruin. And so it has turned out to be.

Pressure is also mounting for a review of older sexual convictions, where dubious police practices and highly skewed methods of investigating (such as failing to check any of the allegations being made against relevant facts, or refusing to interview relevant witnesses whose testimony might assist the defence in any way) might well have led to miscarriages of justice. Although there remains a marked reluctance on the part of the authorities – especially the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) and the Court of Appeal – to acknowledge the potential scale of these possible wrongful convictions, more and more scrutiny by the media and campaigning groups will make a policy of obstinate refusal much more difficult to sustain.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unjustly convicted people and their families are now demanding effective redress, starting with the urgent review of cases where prisoners and ex-prisoners are maintaining their innocence. Once the floodgates have been opened in a few high profile convictions, the flow through the CCRC and the Court of Appeal may prove difficult to ignore.

However, while there are some positive developments ongoing, the plight of the innocent victims of malicious false accusations – whether prosecuted and acquitted or not – remains largely unaddressed. Moreover, until vindictive liars, compensation-grubbing fraudsters and attention-seeking fantasists are routinely prosecuted and brought to justice for their crimes, the risks of making a bogus complaint to the police will remain extremely low.

And the damage that these malicious false accusations inflict also needs to be recognised and addressed. One of the rarely acknowledged by-products of the false sexual accusation industry is that of the innocent victim who becomes a ‘non-person’ as a result of the negative publicity generated by these allegations. I’ll explain what I mean by this. Most successful professional people, who are often the target for compensation-hunting liars, have a wide social network, including a significant social media ‘footprint’. Such folk are often active in their local communities – making a positive contribution to a wide range of organisations and causes, such as charities or clubs. Their names – and reputations – are well-known and, thus, very vulnerable to any kind of scandal.

All of this good work is undone overnight as soon as a false accusation of a sexual nature has been made. This can also be true, of course, following a bogus claim of other forms of misconduct, including embezzlement, fraud or violence, but it needs to be recognised that alleged sexual offences are the crimen exceptum of our age: crimes considered so exceptionally terrible that the normal rules of evidence and justice need not be followed. This perverse doctrine was established during the Middle Ages when superstitious panics about witches led to appalling injustices, including torture and judicial murder following shockingly unfair show trials where the only ‘evidence’ was the demented or malicious ravings of the accusers.

Such medieval attitudes were revived during the so-called ‘satanic panics’ of the 1980s and 1990s, when reason seemed to go out of the window and mob rule – encouraged by the most irresponsible and sensationalist reporting by the media – led to literal 20th century witch hunts, under the banner of what is still called ‘satanic ritual abuse’. From there it was a short step to suspending rational investigation when it came to any accusation of sexual misconduct, especially if children (or adults claiming to have been sexually abused when they were minors) were involved.

The logical conclusion of all this nonsense was the idiotic dogma of ‘you will be believed’, promulgated, as mentioned above, by the then DPP Keir Starmer (now a Labour MP and shadow minister) and followed by the present incumbent of that office, Alison Saunders. Although this policy has now been utterly discredited, it remains to be seen how long it takes to filter down to police attitudes and practices at the front line.

Yet, in many cases, it doesn’t even require a prosecution to wreck the lives of innocent victims of false accusations. Reputations that have taken years to build up can be shattered in seconds by malicious gossip, especially when such allegations are broadcast via social media. One popular tweet on Twitter, or a post on Facebook, can incite mobs – both online and on the street – to target people who have never even been arrested or interviewed by the police, let alone charged or prosecuted.

Businesses, lives and careers can be destroyed overnight, professionals suspended pending further enquiries, homes targeted and families (including children of victims) bullied and intimidated. I have been dealing, in recent years, with a number of fathers who are not even allowed to live in the same house as their own children. Others are so afraid for their safety and that of loved ones that they have to flee their homes and go into hiding, or to seek refuge with friends’. And, on top of all this, the names of the accused can suddenly be ‘wiped out’: organisations and institutions that were once proud to be associated with him or her immediately drop the accused like the proverbial ‘hot potato’.

This is particularly noticeable when teachers have been accused of any form of misconduct: suspension from work is always immediate. And within a matter of days, or even hours, the very existence of such a person is often erased from websites and official records, as if they had never worked there. Even group photographs can be doctored to remove the pariah. It is strongly reminiscent of the concept of an ‘unperson’ during the Stalinist purges in the 1930s, when every trace of the accused person had to be removed until it seemed that he or she never even existed.

Since I was the victim of malicious false accusations in 2012, made by two vile lying fraudsters intent on cashing in on the institutional insurance gravy train, I have lost count of the number of social events and school functions – including colleagues’ retirement parties, school sports days and the like – to which I have not been invited, despite my 35 year career as, if I say so myself, a highly dedicated, hard working teacher. The fact that at trial I was acquitted in a few minutes by a unanimous jury counted for nothing. The damage was done by the mere existence of pretty absurd sexual allegations, regardless of the fact it was patently clear by the end of the trial that the pair of low lives who accused me had made the whole story up.

I say it again - why have they not been arrested? I had my life turned upside down on account of obvious lies: but when the truth emerged, nothing was done to the accusers and I am seemingly still persona non grata at the school where I worked for 30 years. How on earth does this stack up?

We live in an era of foolish credulity, despite our many technological and scientific advances. Nowadays, the surest way to destroy another human being is to smear him or her with a malicious false accusation, especially if it involves the sexual abuse of a child. Whispering (or tweeting) that someone is ‘a paedo’ is the modern equivalent of screaming ‘burn the witch’. And until liars, fraudsters and fantasists are held accountable for their evil actions, and are brought to justice, every single man, woman and child remains at risk from such false allegations and the perverted mentality of the mindless mob.