Young lives were ruined and justice was betrayed – Saunders was a zealot, but we finally beat her
Guilty until proven innocent. The tenure of Alison Saunders at the Crown Prosecution Service will be remembered for a monstrous inversion of a fundamental principle of British justice.
I began to campaign for Saunders to be sacked after receiving emails from two Telegraph readers: shell-shocked mothers whose sons were both wrongly accused of rape and left dangling in that purgatory of the disbelieved.
“Google my boy’s name, Allison,” urged one, “and you will still see his sweet face next to the word rapist.”
I was also outraged by the case of Paul Gambaccini. The well-loved DJ, the gentlest and most civilised of men, was arrested in 2013 for historical sexual offences following allegations by two men he had never met, who were allowed to remain anonymous. For 12 months, Paul was plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare, despite there being no evidence against him, and no charge either.
I began getting messages from police officers who had been sent on training courses where they were taught that any woman who said she had been raped must always be believed and referred to as “the victim”. One veteran detective told me he had resigned in disgust after he was reprimanded for pointing out it was customary to conduct an investigation before arresting someone.
This was the frightening climate of unreason and groupthink which took hold of our criminal justice system while Alison Saunders was the Director of Public Prosecutions.
I became convinced that Saunders was a menace. Obsessed with pursuing the VAGW (violence against girls and women) agenda, she was on a mission to boost the number of rape convictions and clearly could not give a damn about innocent men and boys who might suffer on the road to that goal. They were just collateral damage in a vengeful gender war.
Casualties like 17-year-old Jay Cheshire, who took his own life in 2015 after being accused of rape by a girl who withdrew her complaint after two weeks. Described by his mother Karin as “a vulnerable and sensitive boy”, Jay was distraught to be branded a “sex offender”. He had hoped to become a history teacher or a writer when he grew up. Now he never will.
Such false claims can cause tragedy without end. Karin Cheshire wanted to investigate the police’s handling of her son’s case, but she became too depressed.
On the first anniversary of Jay’s death, Karin did what her beloved boy had done, hanging herself in the local park. The thought of that final, lonely act of solidarity cleaves the heart.
When she took up her post as the new DPP back in 2013, Alison Saunders said: “I think women have had, as witnesses and victims, a raw deal.”
Henceforth, there would be a focus on challenging stereotypes. It was a worthy aim. For far too long, those who had suffered sexual assault had been scared to come forward. A new era of sensitivity and support was to be welcomed. However, once it became clear that it was difficult to increase rape convictions by fair means, more creative solutions seemed to come into play.
Increasingly, women were encouraged to see themselves as potential victims. Saunders advised those who “wake up in a man’s bed with no recollection of the night before” to “seek advice from a rape counsellor”. In my day, you’d have had a quick shower and a period of rueful reflection. Treating sexually-confident 21st century girls as quivering Edwardian damsels did not feel like progress.
By October last year, Alison Saunders could crow that a record number of sex offenders had been brought to justice in England and Wales over the previous 12 months. Convictions for rape and other sexual offences had risen to new highs of 5,190 and 13,490 respectively.
What the CPS statistics did not reveal was the embarrassing number of men brought to trial for rape on wholly inadequate evidence, and swiftly acquitted. Saunders wasted huge resources on her hobbyhorse, particularly high-profile campaigns relating to often imaginary historical sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, the crimes most people care about – burglaries, stabbings, shoplifting, public disorder – were booming. Home owners were told that they should not expect to have break-ins investigated, as the police were too busy (quizzing schoolboys who had shared photos of their genitals on Snapchat, no doubt). At the weekend, it was confirmed that the unthinkable had come to pass: London now has a higher murder rate than New York.
Finally, in December last year, there were signs that Saunders’s ideologically driven crusade had gone too far. Liam Allan, a young law student of shining good character, narrowly avoided a jail sentence for six rapes after it became clear there was ample evidence his accuser had pestered him for sex after the alleged assaults. The Metropolitan Police had conveniently failed to disclose crucial phone evidence to the defence. The judge at Croydon Crown Court warned of “serious risks of miscarriages of justice” and called for an inquiry “at the very highest level” of the CPS.
Saunders’s response could not have been more shameful or more damning. “It is regrettable,” she wrote, “that this disclosure happened at a late stage, and I would like to apologise to all parties involved.”
“Regrettable” is what you say when you take someone’s umbrella by mistake, not when a lovely boy has had his reputation trashed and is almost put behind bars for 18 years. Had the CPS really judged there was a high likelihood of conviction in Allan’s case? Had the police claimed that the evidence which exonerated him was “too personal” (in a rape case!) to hand over because bagging another scalp was now more important than getting at the truth?
Whatever the motives, the CPS was forced to order an urgent review of all ongoing rape cases. A stony Saunders tried to defend the debacle, telling Radio 4’s Today programme she didn’t think there were any men in jail who had been wrongfully convicted. Cue hollow laughter. Perhaps I should make myself clear. When it comes to sexually violent men, I would lock ‘em up and throw away the key, unlike the Parole Board which planned to let out the vile, calculating John Worboys.
The black cab rapist was convicted for attacks on just 12 women when he is believed to have assaulted up to a hundred. Meanwhile, Alison Saunders’s CPS insists on bringing the full force of the law down on gormless youths, who could be your son or mine, for getting into bed with a girl who has picked them up, but decides she “isn’t that into him” the next day. Where is the justice in that?
Late on Easter Sunday, The
Telegraph broke the news I had been waiting for. Alison Saunders will be stepping down when her five-year contract finishes at the end of 2018. She should have been sacked but, still, I shouted with joy and immediately emailed the glad tidings to Paul Gambaccini.
He replied within seconds: “Dear Allison, It is going to be my birthday in an hour, but you have given me one of the best possible birthday presents by giving me this news. What a deranged zealot she was. She was a true nemesis. But we beat her!”
Yes, Paul, we did. We beat her. The worst DPP in living memory, a person who politicised and poisoned the criminal justice system, seemed to regard trials as an annoying impediment to locking up the accused, causing untold misery to innocent men and their loved ones.
Yesterday, as if on cue, the Metropolitan Police announced it had “abandoned its policy of automatically believing victims” after a series of flawed inquiries into alleged sex crimes.
Commissioner Cressida Dick said she had told officers they “must have an open mind when an allegation is made and that their role was to investigate, not blindly believe”.
You don’t say! That the police should need to make such a statement of the obvious is a grave indictment of the crazed creed of Alison Saunders.
Let her passing see an end to cruel zealotry and a return to the first principle of justice. You may remember it: innocent until proven guilty.
‘A frightening climate of unreason and groupthink took hold of our criminal justice system’
‘Treating sexually confident 21st century girls as quivering Edwardian damsels did not feel like progress’
‘Let her passing see an end to cruel zealotry and a return to the first principle of justice’