The rape case that tragically misfired
WHAT are we to make of the tragic story of Eleanor de Freitas, 22, who killed herself after a man she accused of rape won the support of the Crown Prosecution Service in his private case against her for perverting the course of justice and lying to the police?
Her father, businessman David, says: ‘If only the Crown Prosecution Service had not supported that private prosecution. Because they did, I have a dead daughter.’
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is overseeing an inquiry into the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to put this vulnerable young woman on trial. It could have halted the private prosecution, but decided otherwise.
The West London coroner has asked to hear the full remit of the DPP’s investigation before deciding on the scope of his hearing, which will be before a jury.
The man Eleanor accused of rape, wealthy financier Alexander Economou, said through a spokesman that he ‘sends his condolences to the family for this very unfortunate event. It is a great loss.’
For his part, Eleanor’s father says she was unhappy that she could not put across her case to police in a believable manner. ‘In the end, she understood the police officers’ reasoning not to prosecute and she accepted it. She decided to get on with the rest of her life.’
However, Mr Economou brought a private prosecution apparently to clear his name, but according to her father he went further than that. Mr de Freitas says that Mr Economou subsequently harassed Eleanor with texts and voicemails, as well as threatening to prosecute her and put her in prison. Mr de Freitas claims: ‘The police were very tolerant of his harassment. If they’d shown zero tolerance and he’d been accused of harassment, he’d have had a difficult job with his private prosecution, and rightly so.’
The public is rightly very angry when rapists avoid justice. And, equally so when men are falsely accused of rape. But this story is a bit more complicated, isn’t it?
THE POLICE cannot be expected to bring a rape charge if they think they’re going to lose. And there must also have been the consideration that Eleanor might have taken her own life if the police had proceeded against Mr Economou, and she had suffered an attack on her reputation in the witness box, and lost the case?
Her bereaved father’s claims of ‘harassment’ by Mr Economou sound shocking, but were they strong enough for the Crown Prosecution Service to halt the private prosecution case he’d brought against Eleanor?
Evidently not, but did its officials take into account the possibility that Eleanor might take her own life if the case proceeded? They should have done.
The truth is that the Crown Prosecution Service is constantly pulled in opposite directions — by those who say it isn’t pro-active enough in prosecuting sex crimes, and by others who say it devotes a disproportionate amount of its time doing exactly that.
It’s vilified by ‘all men are rapists’ feminists and undermined by women who cry rape to punish men who’ve scorned them, or deceive boyfriends who might otherwise think they’ve been unfaithful.
No coroner’s court, or Crown Prosecution Service internal inquiry, is going to bring Eleanor de Freitas back, or assuage to any degree the lifelong pain bequeathed to her father by her pointless death. There won’t be much public sympathy for Mr Economou, perhaps. He’s wealthy, foreign- sounding and clearly felt Eleanor ought to be punished for accusing him of rape.
Men in his position — accused of rape but not prosecuted — are entitled to be angry. But most are grateful when the judicial system — always in need of reliable evidence — spares them a trial.
Few men in a similar position would go on to launch a private prosecution of their accuser, far less would they ‘harass’ them by text and voicemail.
When the police decide not to prosecute for rape, there is often a hullabaloo from the family of the ‘victim’. Not in this case. Eleanor de Freitas, says her father, was content to let the matter rest.
I hope Alexander Economou comes round to thinking one day that he should have done the same.