TRAGIC, YES, BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG TO STOP HER TRIAL

Of all the complex factors behind Caroline flack’s death, one over-riding fact is clear. Her death must not be blamed on intransigent police and prosecutors who should, her fans claim, have dropped the case out of consideration for her vulnerable mental state.

Miss flack, who took her own life while awaiting prosecution for an assault on her boyfriend, was clearly in urgent need of psychiatric help, and her death is an unmitigated tragedy for her family and friends. But, cold-hearted as it may sound, this does not disqualify her from being subjected to judicial process.

That hasn’t stopped some trying to point the finger of blame at the Crown Prosecution Service. Miss flack’s management company has suggested that her ongoing case should be blamed for her untimely death. They reference the fact that Lewis Burton, the alleged victim of the assault, ‘did not support the prosecution and had disputed the CPS version of events’.

That may be true. But it is still no excuse for allowing a celebrity a higher threshold for evidence before any prosecution – a notion that in the past has enabled highprofile figures to commit serious crimes without challenge. We have to have one law for everybody or there’s no law at all.

The guilty must be held to account. And for the innocent, there is no better way to clear one’s name than in a court of law.

furthermore, while it may seem sensitive to take a victim’s reasons for withdrawing support for a prosecution at face value, history shows that often the causes are more complicated than meets the eye.

A victim may have been coerced by the defendant or their family not to kick up a fuss. financial motives may also come in to play; if the accused is responsible for paying a mortgage, the pressure on a victim to withdraw can be overwhelming.

There were 750,000 reports of domestic violence to police in the year ending March 2019. That in itself is the tip of the iceberg; the British Crime Survey indicates that there were more than two million victims. To say it is the epidemic of our times is an understatement.

Indeed, following Miss flack’s tragic death, it seems that many have forgotten that roughly 90 per cent of domestic assault victims are women. Imagine if, instead of a much-loved female celebrity being accused of domestic violence, her male partner was accused of beating her. If that were the case, I highly doubt that anyone would be campaigning for the CPS to restrict its investigations.

Men who withdraw their allegations will generally have different reasons from women. A victim who has been assaulted by a woman more than a foot shorter than him, for example, might subconsciously feel that he could have prevented the attack.

This is why the CPS must be blind to gender, as it is to all similar considerations. The evidence is all that matters. Yet the majority of commentators on social media display very little understanding of this.

That isn’t to say that the CPS couldn’t have treated Miss flack’s case with more sensitivity. It ought to have been handled much faster, to spare her months of mental trauma. That’s partly due to massive cuts to both the police and CPS in recent years. Boris Johnson has pledged to reverse these, and I hope he does.

I also find it deeply troubling that Miss flack was informed of her forthcoming trial on Valentine’s Day. This was clumsy.

THE mental health of a suspect has to be a consideration in prosecution. New guidelines emphasise that CPS lawyers must have regard for the vulnerability of the defendant. This, however, must not be driven by social media outrage, but on medical and psychiatric evidence supplied by defence lawyers.

Whether the case then proceeds depends on the ‘public interest test’: does the risk to the defendant outweigh the possible harm to the public at large? It is a fine balancing act – and the more serious the allegation, the less likely that the vulnerability of the accused will halt the prosecution.

Prosecutors are fully aware that Parliament and society rightly take a very dim view of domestic violence, and want to deter it by prosecuting robustly.

They will also know that after every domestic killing last year (and there were more than 120), the question was asked: ‘Could it have been prevented by earlier action by police and prosecutors?’

It’s not a scientific exercise, but one based on judgment. After all, that’s why we have a blindfolded figure with a set of scales above the Old Bailey.