Oxford student’s rape case ordeal ‘due to Savile fallout’
AN OXFORD University student spent two years on bail accused of rape because police claimed they were too busy dealing with other reports in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, a report has revealed.
Oliver Mears, 19, was accused of raping a woman at a house party in July 2015, but he was not charged until June 2017. Prosecutors then dropped the case just days before he was due to stand trial in January this year.
Mr Mears, from Horley in Surrey, was arrested weeks after celebrating his 17th birthday. As a result, he left St Hugh’s College, where he was studying chemistry, to concentrate on proving his innocence. The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted police and lawyers had made a string of blunders that prolonged Mr Mears’s ordeal.
A letter of explanation to the trial judge, obtained following a Freedom of Information request. said: “Surrey Police has accepted the investigation was protracted and subject to various delays.the delay… was as a result of the rapid rise in complaints being made to the Surrey Police force post-savile.”