THE Crown Persecution Service
Judge slams CPS for ‘improper’ rape prosecution of innocent teacher after pressure from ex-CPS and Met chiefs
THE Crown Prosecution Service was facing serious questions from MPs last night after a judge condemned it for putting an innocent teacher on trial for raping a pupil following ‘ enormous pressure’ from a former Metropolitan Police chief and an ex-CPS boss.
A jury took just 15 minutes to clear high-flying deputy headmaster Kato Harris – who says the ordeal has destroyed his life.
Now, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Sue Akers, an ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner, hired as a private detective by t he 14- year- old’s wealthy family, influenced the CPS decision to prosecute by pressurising officers from her old force.
A damning official verdict, written by the trial judge and seen by this newspaper, also suggests Alison Levitt QC, the CPS’s former principal legal adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions might have misled detectives into believing she acted as a ‘minister of justice’ for the CPS. At the time, she too was being paid by the girl’s parents.
Akers and Levitt were hired by the pupil’s family through exclusive legal firm Mishcon de Reya.
In his ruling, His Honour Judge Martin Edmunds concludes that the CPS’s decision to prosecute Mr Harris was an ‘improper act’ and ordered the CPS to pay all his bills. The 23page ruling also reveals how:
Akers gave detectives an ‘actions list’ of tasks, even though she no longer worked for the Met. She denied giving any directions.
Despite warnings from police that the case was flimsy, Levitt demanded detectives contact every pupil Mr Harris had ever taught in his 16-year career.
Levitt pressed officers to seize the teacher’s computer but they found nothing incriminating on it.
Last night, Tory MP Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons justice select committee, said: ‘The fact that a former senior police officer and a very experienced lawyer who used to work for the CPS were both used by the pupil’s parents as advocates to advance their case sets a disturbing precedent.’
And former Labour Justice Minister David Hanson said: ‘ The involvement of a former senior policewoman and a former senior CPS adviser in this affair raises very serious questions. Should former public servants be allowed to lobby the very organisations they used to work for in this way?’
The Mail on Sunday has established that following the unsuccessful prosecution, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders led a secret review of the CPS’s handling of Mr Harris’s case and other rape trials that ended in acquittal.
The judge’s damning verdict is revealed in a written costs ruling seen by The Mail on Sunday. He wrote :‘It was one of those immensely rare and exceptional cases where the decision to prosecute and thereafter to continue the prosecution was an unnecessary or improper act.’
The judge highlighted an email in which a clearly exasperated senior detective outlined his frustrations in dealing with Ms Levitt and the girl’s family. The officer, noting that the pupil’s story was ‘poor and heavily prompted’ and not supported by corroborating evidence, added the ‘family and their representatives will settle for nothing less than each and every past and present teacher and pupil from every school the suspect taught at being contacted’.
According to the judgment, Ms Levitt lobbied the police and CPS in a series of emails. In one, sent to a senior officer, she attached a statement from her former boss, Keir Starmer, now a senior MP, which listed Ms Levitt’s own findings in a report published into the Jimmy Savile case for the DPP. The inclusion of the DPP’s statement ‘raises the real risk that her then role as advocate for the parents may be misunderstood’, said the judge.
The judge said he was ‘at a loss’ to see how the CPS decided there was ‘sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction’.
Despite raising questions over Mishcon de Reya’s involvement, the judge added that there was nothing to suggest that those acting for the complainant’s parents acted improperly or that their actions prevented the police and CPS from conducting a proper enquiry.
Mr Harris, then head of geography at an £18,000-a-year London girls’ secondary school, was accused of raping the pupil three times. The allegations emerged a year after the assault was alleged to have taken place and after the girl moved to a new school.
Exceptionally, Judge Edmunds ordered the CPS to pay the teacher’s legal fees from the time he was charged. Mr Harris has spent £183,000 but the CPS has so far offered only £140,000. Generous MoS readers helped raise £35,000 through an online appeal.
When asked to respond to the judge’s verdict that the prosecution was ‘improper’, the CPS said: ‘We have not appealed the judgment.’
A spokesman said: ‘That the case was not dismissed suggests that the defence and the judge were satisfied a reasonable jury, properly directed, could have convicted the accused. We respect the jury decision.’
A Mishcon de Reya spokesman said: ‘ Victims have enforceable rights under the Human Rights Act to a proper and effective investigation. The parents asked lawyers to advocate and it is perfectly reasonable for the parents to do this.’
A Met spokesman said Greater Manchester Police conducted an independent review of its investigation and ‘found no evidence that the complainant’s representatives were inappropriately given any physical access to information concerning the investigation’.
‘Decision to prosecute was an improper act’ Girl’s story ‘ was poor and heavily prompted’
THE most wretched part of Kato Harris’s story – a false accusation of rape and the resulting public humiliation and personal ruin – is that this inspired teacher will never teach again, and believes that no man should risk entering the profession unless he has nerves of steel and limitless wealth.
His eventual acquittal – the jury took 15 minutes – has not, disgracefully, allowed him to resume his career.
But there is another disgrace. The Crown Prosecution Service – as the trial judge concluded – should never have pursued the case. It is possible that they only did so under the influence of expensively hired ‘ experts’, former police officer Sue Akers and former Crown Prosecutor Alison Levitt QC.
The Justice Department should review this case urgently and in future prevent such senior figures from playing such roles after retirement. Justice must never be on sale. It is even more important that the rich should not be able to pay for injustice to be done, as could so easily have happened in this case.