Billionaire silences UK press on rape allegation as online reports reveal all
AN AMERICAN billionaire who gagged the British press after being arrested on suspicion of raping a woman at a top London hotel is at the centre of a legal dispute in the US after allegedly paying money to settle the claim.
The businessman was questioned by City of London Police in May after a woman said she was attacked in the penthouse suite of a hotel in the heart of London’s financial centre.
Details of his arrest emerged the next month, but the father of two went to the High Court, and after paying £100,000 in legal fees, won an injunction against The Sun, which effectively meant no British publication could name him.
But now those allegations have become the subject of a high-profile legal battle in the US, with the businessman suing a public relations firm he accuses of smearing him.
Details of the case have been reported in the US media where the injunction does not apply and are available online for British readers. Even though the man’s US lawyers have issued a statement confirming his arrest on suspicion of rape, the archaic nature of the British legal system means he cannot be named in the press. Critics say the case illustrates the way UK law is failing to keep up with global online publishing.
The entrepreneur was arrested on May 27 when a woman went to Bishopsgate police station and told officers she had been raped at the nearby Ned hotel. The suspect
was questioned before being released under investigation. In June, he went to the High Court to stop the UK media identifying him as a rape suspect and secured a wide-ranging injunction.
A few weeks later, police confirmed the inquiry had been dropped and there would be no further action against the “43-year-old man from San Francisco” due to insufficient evidence. But the businessman has launched legal action against Definers Public Affairs. In court papers lodged in California, he said the firm spread false rumours, including suggestions he paid his accuser to have the rape case dropped. A Definers spokesman called his claims “delusional” and said it had not engaged “in any of the actions he outlined in this complaint, and Definers has never done any work with regards to [him]”.
Mark Stephens, a media lawyer with the firm Howard Kennedy, said: “We are increasingly seeing people gain highly restrictive injunctions on the basis of privacy.”
Geoffrey Robertson QC, the author of a textbook on media law, said: “Now that it is a matter of international public interest, thanks to a court action brought publicly in the US by the man who quite absurdly must remain anonymous in England, the injunction should be discharged by the court at no cost to the newspaper. Otherwise, free speech becomes very expensive.”
Editorial Comment:
Britain has some of the toughest laws governing the press in the world – and the internet is making a mockery of them. In June, a British newspaper reported that a US billionaire had been arrested earlier this year for an alleged sexual assault in a London hotel. In July it was decided that no action would be taken and the subject returned to his native land to file defamation actions against some of his competitors. The details of this complicated case have been picked up by the US press and, thanks to the magic of the internet, are now online. But the accused spent £100,000 to win an injunction in the London High Court to prevent his name being divulged in the UK press.
This is absurd. It is also galling given how insensitively the raft of accusations of sexual impropriety against British politicians are being handled. Charlie Elphicke MP claims that the press was told that he had been suspended from the Tory whip over “serious allegations” before he was. He says he is still not aware of what he is alleged to have done and denies any wrongdoing. And a Welsh government minister apparently took his own life just days after he had been suspended from the Labour Party over, again, accusations of sexual misconduct. He, too, claimed no knowledge of what these allegations actually were.
For justice to be fair it must be applied evenly and with at least a nod towards reality and common sense. The present situation is deeply flawed – and some powerful people are determined to make it even worse. The ongoing attempt to regulate the press by statute is nothing less than a war on free speech. It manipulates very rare cases of journalistic misconduct, misrepresents the current state of the law and hands the right to decide what is said about whom to the very people it is the job of the press to talk about.
To some extent, the Wild West of the internet has already reduced the practical ability to do this, but there is a fundamental democratic principle that must be fought for among newspapers. Regulation either directly stops things from being reported or casts a chilling effect upon the industry, discouraging journalists from taking risks to expose wrongdoing. And without the free flow of information, the powerful can get away with a lot. Britain’s press doesn’t need tougher laws; on the contrary it needs self-regulation and liberalisation – to bring the public the facts, without fear or favour.