Don’t honour failed DPP, say men wrongly accused of rape
TWO men wrongly prosecuted for rape have pleaded that the prosecutor who oversaw “catastrophic failures” in their cases be denied an honour.
Alison Saunders, who steps down as Director of Public Prosecutions at the end of the month, has been heavily criticised over several rape cases that collapsed as a result of the prosecution failing to disclose evidence.
Despite the controversy, Ms Saunders is expected to receive a damehood in the New Year’s honours list for her work heading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
It would follow an automatic honour principle that has applied to all her predecessors since the CPS’s formation in 1880.
However in a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, two victims of the disclosure failures, Liam Allan, 23, and Sam- uel Armstrong, 25, insist that Ms Saunders should not be awarded the honour.
They say that numerous people have “suffered enormous harm” from what they believe was a “convictions-at-anycost culture”.
The men write: “We were wronged by a justice system that was supposed to protect us.
“In the botched processes that followed, many of us lost jobs, homes and relationships. It appears to us that many of the issues raised have still not been properly resolved.
“Such devastating failures cannot be allowed to ever happen again.
“That’s why – as victims – we say that the exception must be made to the ‘automatic gong principle’ for Alison Saunders.”
The pair added that Ms Saunders “must not be rewarded for failure” and it is vital that anyone who takes on the role of DPP in the future “must know that wreaking such misery will have consequences”.
Mr Allan was accused of rape in 2016 and charged with 12 counts of rape and sexual assault.
But his trial collapsed in December 2017, after crucial evidence emerged
from a computer disk, which police had already looked through. The disk showed messages from his alleged victim pestering him for “casual sex”.
Mr Armstrong, who is a former aide to Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, was cleared by a jury of raping a woman in her 20s.
It was later disclosed that she had not wanted to release medical records showing she suffered depression and anxiety. Phone records also revealed that hours after the alleged “attack” she had tipped off a tabloid newspaper to try to get a sympathetic account of her story published.
Mr Allan and Mr Armstrong believe that giving the controversial outgoing
‘In the botched processes that followed, many of us lost jobs, homes and relationships’
head of the CPS a damehood would be a “double-slap” to victims of the disclosure scandal.
They say it would also call into question the integrity of the honours system. Under the leadership of Ms Saunders, the number of prosecutions in England and Wales that ended in the case collapsing because of a failure by police or prosecutors to disclose evidence increased by 70 per cent in two years.
In 2016-17, 916 defendants had the charges against them dropped over a failure to disclose evidence – up from 537 in 2014-15. Ms Saunders, who replaced Labour MP Sir Keir Starmer as DPP in 2013, earned £250,000 last year and leaves the CPS with a £1.8million pension pot.
She is departing to take up a position with legal firm Linklaters after she chose not to renew her five-year contract earlier this year. Ms Saunders was approached for comment.
In January this year, the CPS apologised to Mr Allan, who spent two years awaiting trial, for the investigative and disclosure issues in his case.