Police refuse to apologise over rape inquiry ‘failings’
CHIEF REPORTER POLICE are refusing to apologise to a fire chief wrongly jailed for rape after a disastrous investigation into historic abuse allegations made by a serial liar.
David Bryant, 66, spent almost three years in prison until his release this summer after his wrongful conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Danny Day, who made the false complaint, is still suing Mr Bryant for damages in the civil courts.
Dorset Police are refusing to say sorry to Mr Bryant and have also declined to open an investigation into Mr Day for perverting the course of justice. Mr Bryant, from Christchurch, said: “It is so upsetting. It would be nice if somebody senior would just come and talk to me about what went wrong. But they won’t even entertain the idea.”
His wife Lynn said: “We want to get on with our lives but we have this hanging over us.”
Mr Day falsely claimed in 2012 that he had been raped once by Mr Bryant at the local fire station some time between 1976 and 1978. There was no corroborating evidence to back up the claim and Mr Bryant was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail. The lies were exposed when Mr Bryant’s lawyers obtained medical records that showed Mr Day had repeatedly visited his doctor for help for “being a chronic liar” from 2000 to 2010.
In a claim made for his civil law suit, Mr Day said he was a boxing champion with a record better than Muhammad Ali, who gave up his place on the British boxing team at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 because of the trauma of the sexual assault. That claim was also a fabrication.
Mr Day, who waived his right to anonymity in a series of newspaper interviews after the conviction, claimed he had told a friend at the time about the incident but police were unable to find him. Mr Bryant’s legal team did track the alleged witness down who denied Mr Day had made any such claim.
A report last week by Sir Richard Henriques, which examined catastrophic failings by the Metropolitan Police which led to wrongful raids on the homes of leading public figures also criticised Dorset Police’s investigation into Mr Day’s false claims.
Sir Richard, a retired high court judge, wrote: “They failed to investigate this case without fear or favour, having, I suspect, been misdirected by the policy of ‘believing victims’.”
Mr Bryant’s lawyer Rupert Butler, who has written to Dorset Police requesting the force release its files, said: “Dorset Police have not contacted David Bryant since his successful appeal to apologise – instead they have briefed the press that theirs was a ‘very thorough and detailed investigation’, with which statement I would fundamentally disagree.”
Following the Court of Appeal decision, Dorset Police said it would meet the Bryants to hear their concerns. But since then senior officers have failed to make any such arrangement.
In a letter to Mr Butler, sent on Oct 27, Thomas Sowman, the force’s legal adviser, said he would not be making any files available to Mr Bryant voluntarily. He accused Mr Butler of making a request for documents that “amounts to no more than a fishing expedition”.