Saunders has poisoned the justice system, she must go
‘It is dismaying that feminism… is happy to depict us as potential victims’
The time has come for Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to stand down or be sacked. A young man of shining good character has just narrowly avoided a lengthy jail sentence after being accused of six rapes when there was ample evidence to prove that his accuser had pestered him for sex.
Thousands of messages, which police had not disclosed to the defence, reveal that the young woman in question fantasised about rape and rough sex. When it came to the charges against Liam Allan, she texted a friend: “It wasn’t against my will or anything.”
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? In any justice system that was working fairly and properly, the accuser admitting the claim she made is untrue should be enough. But our justice system isn’t working properly or fairly. Not when it comes to allegations of sexual assault.
Under Alison Saunders, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has become so obsessed with pursuing the VAGW (violence against girls and women) agenda that the “victim” is always to be believed and men like 22-year-old Liam must take their chances.
Last week, after the case was thrown out, the judge at Croydon Crown Court warned of “serious risks of miscarriages of justice”. He demanded a review of the disclosure of evidence by the Metropolitan Police and called for an inquiry at “the very highest level” of the CPS. This was Ms Saunders’s response: “It is regrettable,” she wrote, “that this disclosure happened at a late stage, and I would like to apologise to all parties involved.”
Regrettable? Let’s say that again in our best incredulous Lady Bracknell voice, shall we, so that she can hear us.
REGRETTABLE? That a criminology student, who has been raised by his mother to be a caring and considerate boyfriend, should be arrested and spend nearly two anguished years on bail.
That the investigating detective should admit that the case against him was “weak”.
That the CPS still judged there was a better than 50per cent chance of conviction. That the crucial evidence provided by the complainant’s – oops, sorry, Alison! – the victim’s phone record was not given to the defence because it was “very personal” (how convenient).
That this grievous error was only uncovered the day before the trial began because a robust, independent (non-cps) new counsel for the prosecution (take a bow, Jerry Hayes) spotted there had been a flagrant breach by the police who had failed to disclose a CD containing thousands of items that exonerated the defendant. That Liam and his family had their lives cruelly derailed by incompetence at best and institutionalised political correctness and dishonesty at worst.
Sorry, but a placid, complacent “regrettable” doesn’t really cover it, Ms Saunders. Try “absolute bloody disgrace”.
Also, members of the jury, please note that Ms Saunders says, in the approved weasel manner, that she would like to apologise to all parties involved. Do you suppose that includes the vengeful liar who nearly got an innocent man sent down for 12 years while retaining her anonymity? In the Kafkaesque world of the CPS, anything is possible. Not long ago, Saunders said that a rape acquittal didn’t mean the alleged victim wasn’t telling the truth.
Reporting of Liam’s case has focused on the failure of the Met to disclose evidence. Far more worrying is an underlying climate, cultivated by warlock-hunter-inchief Ms Saunders, which puts pressure on officers to boost rape convictions.
I was contacted a few days ago by someone who had attended a CPS rape training day. She said she was disturbed that prosecutors appeared “indoctrinated”, spouting “gender-studies platitudes”. Another woman spoke of a “cult” mentality in which police, lawyers and judges are guided by advocates of “trauma theory”. One expert apparently argues that the more incoherent and changeable an accuser’s account, the more believable it is. God help us! Police who deal with sexual assault complaints are told that challenging them is traumatic for the accuser so, as my informer says: “You have an absurd scenario where they are expected to take everything at face value.”
So convinced are Ms Saunders and her ilk by their own righteousness, they can’t even bring themselves to admit when they are wrong. After the appalling lapses in Liam’s case, the CPS offered no further evidence, because “there was no realistic prospect of conviction”.
Eh? Translation from Legalese Defensiveness into English: no realistic prospect of conviction = the defendant was innocent.
Remember innocent? Well, I’d hang on to it if I were you. The concept of innocent until proven guilty is fast disappearing in a #Metoo age, where a woman’s memory of being made to feel “uncomfortable” can wreck a man’s entire career. Normally, I admire Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, for her cheery Brummie forthrightness, but even Ms Phillips was at it this week, writing a Gothic-horror account of working alongside certain male politicians under the headline: “At Westminster, those accused of abuse still walk among us.”
Well, yes, love, the key word there is “accused”. Accusation is not yet considered hard evidence, although give Ms Saunders time...
What I find so dismaying is that feminism, which fought so long and hard for women to be taken seriously and treated as equals, is happy to depict us as potential victims, always in danger of “inappropriate touching”.
Sir Ian Mckellen, the great actor, has just put himself in the firing line, pointing out that, during the Sixties, one theatre director showed him photographs he’d got from actresses looking for work. “DRR” scrawled at the bottom of a photo meant “directors’ rights respected”. “In other words,” Sir Ian recalls, “if you give me a job, you can have sex with me. That was commonplace from people who proposed that they should be a victim. Madness. People have taken advantage of that and encouraged it, and it absolutely will not do.”
Women are not angels. We deserve to have our complaints of sexual harassment and worse taken seriously as, too often in the past, they were not.
We also deserve to have our allegations thoroughly scrutinised so that lying wretches aren’t allowed to destroy a man’s life. Ms Saunders’s CPS may think it is advancing the female cause by putting nice guys like Liam in the dock on “weak” evidence. It isn’t. It shamefully undermines and belittles the suffering of every genuine rape victim.
Malicious allegations of sexual assault feel like they are on the increase, as social media encourages attention-seeking behaviour.
In August, Jemma Beale was jailed for 10 years after claiming that she had been sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine. The judge described Beale as an accomplished liar who “enjoys being seen as a victim”; her life was “a construct of bogus victimhood”.
If things don’t change, I fear there will be many more Liam Allans put through mental torture to satisfy the lynch mob. It’s not enough for the police and the CPS to examine their own failures; an independent inquiry is necessary to shine a light on a warped official mindset that chooses to call accusers, even bogus ones, “victims”. Liam’s accuser must lose her anonymity and be charged with perverting the course of justice. For more than two years, she lied to the police and put a sweet boy through hell. That is plain wicked.
Liam’s shocking ordeal can be traced to Ms Saunders and her brand of vengeful gender politics. He wasn’t believed because the bias against believing him was too great. It is not fair. It is not just. It is not what we want in our Director of Public Prosecutions. Resign.