Innocent men can’t be victimised just to boost rape clear-up figures
Why were four young men at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester put through absolute hell on a dubious rape charge that has just collapsed in court?
The men – boys, really (all in their early twenties) – were accused of sexually assaulting a female student on the night of an annual in 2014. They claimed the sex was consensual. On Monday, just as the trial was about to start, the prosecution announced it would not be offering any evidence.
The police investigation was outrageously poor, with evidence in the men’s favour apparently being omitted or not recorded in the first place. A message from the woman’s phone, which allegedly suggested that she may have consented, appears to have been missed or overlooked. It seems that the “victim”, who enjoyed anonymity while the men were named and shamed, may have been worried that a recording of group sex on social media made her “look bad”, and only then did she tell police she had been raped.
Five months later, the woman was involved in another “rape” case, where she allegedly gave “different accounts” of what went on. That incident, which revealed the woman’s interest in group sex, was only mentioned to the defence at the very last minute. Well, you can see why, can’t you? The evidence might have harmed the chances of bringing the four students to trial and putting a big fat tick in the police’s rape target box.
A similar thing happened near me in Cambridge recently. The accused, a shell-shocked student, had to take a year out of his studies while the police pursued a case that a doctor friend, who was asked to provide medical evidence, told me was “totally unbelievable”.
When I wrote in this column about the case of the footballer Ched Evans, which I believe was a miscarriage of justice, two police officers emailed to say that I would not believe the pressure they were under to “improve” their rape figures. That included “seeings things from the victim’s point of view”, regardless of how unreliable a witness she seemed to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for righting the historic injustice whereby rape victims were humiliated and rapists got off on the flimsiest pretexts. Rape is vile. I would lock rapists up and never let the scumbags out. But two wrongs do not make for righteousness. Bringing charges against young men based on flawed evidence cannot be part of any police strategy to make lacklustre rape figures look good.
The officers who investigated and prosecuted the Cirencester case need to be investigated. If anyone has done wrong, they should be named and shamed like the blameless quartet whose lives they so nearly ruined. Men can be victims, too.