Cleared MP aide attacks law chief for rape claim ‘competition’
AN MP’s aide cleared of rape has accused the country’s chief prosecutor of fostering competition to secure more rape convictions.
Samuel Armstrong said the Crown Prosecution Service had created a ‘competitive atmosphere’ in its anxiety to encourage police, courts and juries to produce more guilty rape verdicts.
Mr Armstrong blamed Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions, for an alleged campaign to raise conviction rates at the expense of justice. The CPS, he said, ‘hopes to get these conviction rates as high as anything’.
‘Sometimes it is easier for them not to ask the difficult questions and push for things they know could undermine their case despite the horrible effect it has …
‘It’s easier because it’s less effort and makes getting convictions easier,’ he added. ‘The head of the CPS has made it clear she wants these convictions up.’
Mr Armstrong, 24, who works for Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, was acquitted of raping a parliamentary worker in a Palace of Westminster office.
His defence lawyers are understood to have been kept waiting for nine months before they were allowed to see the phone and medical records of his accuser. The woman, who is in her 20s, contacted a journalist within hours of the incident to secure ‘sympathetic’ newspaper coverage. The case was the third rape trial in a week to result in failure for the prosecution.
The Metropolitan Police have begun re-examining 30 recent cases in the wake of the collapse last week of the rape trial of Liam Allan.
The 22-year-old was cleared after his defence lawyer was belatedly allowed to see phone records in which the accuser had fantasised about rape and admitted that sex with Mr Allan was consensual.
Mr Allan plans to sue the CPS and the police over their failure to disclose the evidence that would have saved him from two years under the cloud of a false accusation.
In another case, Isaac Itiary, 25, was cleared of offences including rape of an underage girl after prosecutors failed to offer evidence. Mobile phone records from his accuser showed she had posed as a 19-year-old.
Mr Armstrong’s accusation against the DPP completes a torrid week for Mrs Saunders, who has been widely accused of going too far in her attempts to correct what she believes are low conviction rates for rape. Mr Armstrong spoke to ITV’s Good Morning Britain the day after being cleared of rape and other offences after a two-week trial.
He said: ‘For a year I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and of course I’ve lost everything … you don’t know what is going to happen until that crucial evidence emerged just so late in the day.
‘So it’s a real feeling of relief today that it’s all over and the nightmare is finished.’
Mr Armstrong added: ‘Why was the evidence so late? The police were having difficulties getting hold of it.
‘It seems there is a systemic problem … The police are struggling under the weight and volume of cases the CPS is encouraging them to bring … the CPS have statistics and hopes to get these conviction rates as high as anything. There’s a competitive atmosphere.’
Mr Armstrong called for anonymity for men accused of rape. Accusers are legally entitled to anonymity.
‘It is of course going to be the number one thing people will think of when they hear my name for the rest of my life,’ Mr Armstrong said. ‘I don’t think it’s possible that I can have a proper full political career.’
In 2015 Mrs Saunders suggested any woman who wakes up in a man’s bed with no memory of how she got there should see a rape counsellor.
Last year she published prosecution guidelines that required a man to demonstrate he had been given consent for sex – regarded by critics as effectively requiring a man to prove his innocence.
Currently, 6 per cent of all complaints of rape result in convictions.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘The disclosure of evidence in [Mr Armstrong’s] case was undertaken properly and in line with our legal obligations.’
‘Easier not to ask difficult questions’