Let’s not turn obnoxious schoolboys into criminals
Ex-law chief in warning over surge in school sex abuse claims
BRITAIN could ‘live to regret’ a rush to criminalise schoolboys after an explosion of school sex abuse claims, a former Director of Public Prosecutions warned yesterday.
Lord Macdonald urged police and prosecutors yesterday not to confuse ‘ obnoxious and unpleasant’ behaviour with crimes.
He spoke out after the national police spokesman on child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, heralded it as the ‘next big child sexual abuse scandal to hit the country’.
Mr Bailey predicted that ‘rape culture’ claims would engulf the entire education sector, leading to referrals to every police force. So far, more than 100 schools have
‘Justice system will just fall over’
been named in more than 8,000 harrowing anonymous testimonies on the Everyone’s Invited website, which was set up to expose misogyny, harassment and assault in schools.
Soma Sara, 22, founded the website along with Meadow Walker, also 22, the daughter of the late Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker. Miss Sara said yesterday there had been a 33 per cent increase in testimonies from the state sector and a 44 per cent increase in accounts from universities since March 9.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who is also an ex-Director of Public Prosecutions, called for an independent inquiry.
He said: ‘There’s got to be an inquiry and it has got to get going very fast, this is serious. There is of course a criminal investigawhich tion and I would encourage anybody who can to come forward and give evidence in that investigation.’
But his predecessor Lord Macdonald cautioned against making snap judgments, saying: ‘We may live to regret a headlong rush into criminalisation.’
The top lawyer, who led the Crown Prosecution Service from 2003 to 2008, said serious offences such as rape and sexual assault must be pursued.
But he warned prosecutors not to jump on the bandwagon and be ‘wary of social media campaigns that may draw in all sorts of behaviour that is obnoxious and unpleasant but not criminal’.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘ Police and prosecutors will face real challenges where complaints are made anonymously and people will need to come forward if cases are to be built.
‘Victims of crime should be reassured that in doing so they will be treated with respect, care and consideration. But prosecutors will need to distinguish between cases where real crimes have been committed and cases where boys are just being obnoxious and going unchallenged.
‘And we need to be honest that cases from the past where it is one person’s word against another will be very difficult to prove.
‘ Imagine a girl saying, “he assaulted me at a party four years ago”, and he’s arrested and says, “No, we just had a snog”.
‘That’s a tricky case to prosecute, to put it mildly. We need to understand that what we are talking about here is bringing young people into a court system with judges and juries and the prospect of prison. This is very serious stuff. It is not an easy environment for victims, witnesses or defendants.’
‘The criminal law is a very blunt instrument. Much of this behaviour needs challenging in different ways. By education and communication. By parents as well as by schools. By peer groups. And by moving resolutely away from the complicit notion that “boys will be boys”.
‘Pornography, social media, the sexualisation of everything – all these play a part.
‘Girls do need protecting. But do not expect the criminal justice system to do this work on its own.’
Another former top prosecutor suggested the CPS would ‘fall over’ if it were to be inundated with criminal allegations about schoolchildren.
Nazir Afzal, the ex-chief prosecutor for the North West who brought down a Rochdale child abuse gang, said: ‘We can barely cope with what the police are already referring in relation to adults.
‘Trials are taking place maybe two to three years after a rape allegation has made and if we are proposing to take a large proportion of these cases through the justice system, it will just fall over. It could not cope. It would let everyone down. There needs to be some real expectation management here.’
‘I am very much in favour of bringing the most serious offenders to justice, but at the same time we can’t have a situation where we are criminalising a whole generation, particularly when it is our failings that have made it happen. An independent inquiry is needed.’
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, which represents more than 1,300 private schools, backed an inquiry. He said: ‘This is clearly a serious issue which needs to be dealt with across society.’
‘Clearly … there’ll be some things which schools can do or should do which other agents can’t do or won’t do.
‘But if it’s going to be an independent inquiry, you’re going to want to look across the whole spectrum of institutions, and also of time, because we know that this is not a new problem.’