To think Cliff Richard and co should stop their awful campaign?

[PinkyOfPie]

news.sky.com/story/sir-cliff-urged-to-drop-campaign-for-anonymity-for-sex-offence-suspects-10620627

In a nutshell Cliff Richard and other well known men have launched a campaign to grant anonymity to accused sexual offenders.

AIBU to think they should FOTTFSOF? Aside from it being a well known fact the other victims come forward when they see their abuser/rapist has been charged, there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest a 'false' accusation of a sex crime impacts a person more than a false accusation of any other crime. Its a horrible rape myth that damages victims.

Also the official stats false accusations for rape and sexual assault (of which around 35 people are convicted a year in the U.K.) are no higher than false accusations any other crime.

So why in gods name would those accused of sexual crimes ever get special treatment?

Cliff Richard was NOT found innocent. It didn't go to trial because of insufficient evidence - that is NOT the same as being innocent. Only 50% of rape cases that go to trial result in a conviction and the CPS will not send it to court if they don't think there is a reasonable chance of a conviction. I suspect the majority of rapists go un-convicted because it never went to court in the first place.
I totally agree with pinky

I'm on the fence in this debate. It is the stigma attached to rape that grants accusers/victims lifelong anonymity, whether or not charges are brought, and whether or not there is a conviction.

Unfortunately comments like the one above lend weight to those advocating anonymity for the accused.

Unfortunately comments like the one above lend weight to those advocating anonymity for the accused.

Yes, I completely agree collaborate. The principle of innocent until proved guilty has to hold.

seminormal yes, if you think that's bad, you should see some of the bloody comments. In fact, I guess I spend at least an hour each day deleting libellous comments from our FB page. I don't legally have to do it - we're not held responsible for what other people say on FB - but most local papers don't believe that naming and shaming is the way forward when anonymity is there for a good reason (ie child defendants or vulnerable people involved in the case)

There is one libel law for newspapers and one for the rest of the country, and that's not on. I do believe libel and contempt penalties should be stricter for normal people who should think before they post.

Not RTFT but I don't agree with the OP.

As far as I am concerned everyone should enjoy anonymity until they've been found guilty in a court.

If you were accused of shoplifting would you want your name all over the papers even though you were later found not guilty?

Thought not. And sexual offences are so much worse.

Innocent until proven guilty. No naming until proven guilty. You can have open justice without bandying names around.

Must admit, I also think people who have spent their public lives being ostentatiously 'holier-than-thou' - like prominent evangelists or, say, tory MPs banging on about 'family values' - are fair game to be exposed, if they have committed crimes or had less than stellar behaviour.

It's also the case that the higher profile/richer/mor epowerful someone is perceived to be - the less likely any victims will come forward, unless encouraged in some way.

How can we have open justice if we have anonymity?
There is stigma surrounding other crimes as well - child cruelty, murder, terrorism, so rape shouldn't be unique.
As for 'possible spurious allegations' - whenever I hear the word spurious I think of Stuart Hall talking to the press when he'd been arrested on the word of one woman. He referred to her allegation as 'pernicious, callous, cruel and above all spurious' and vowed to clear his name. After he was named, other women came forward and gave statements to the police, and he was charged accordingly. Funnily enough, he ended up pleading guilty to them all. If we had anonymity, you can bet that the other women wouldn't have come forward, the first woman, if it had got to court would have been trashed by the defence, the chances are he would have got off and would be giving interviews talking about how his life was ruined on the word of a liar. That's why we can'y bring in anonymity. Oh, and Jimmy Savile obviously. To those in favour of anonymity, seriously how can you justify it on the Savile case alone?

You know, with my cynical hat on, I think CR's campaign will become unnecessary. After all, I doubt that women will report rape anymore given the CE verdict. I mean, all his victim did was report a stolen handbag and look what happened to her. Were I to be raped, I certainly wouldn't report it now. So since women will most likely stop reporting, there won't be false accusations. That solves that. Hope that will satisfy CR.

So since women will most likely stop reporting, there won't be false accusations. - will most women be likely to stop reporting? I'm wondering why you're jumping to such a conclusion to be honest. The fact that a lot of people on this thread have said that people should be named in order to get other women to come forward suggests to me that we need more people reporting their rapists, if only to give weight to the next woman who comes forward with a claim against the same person? (I appreciate it is not an easy thing to report given everything a victim has to go through). My personal opinion is that rape will, sadly, always be a very very difficult crime to get a guilty verdict on as a lot of the time it is your word against theirs - they admit sex but insist it was consensual, how do you go about proving it was non-consensual? An extremely difficult thing for a jury to decide in a lot of cases IMO.

I did say it was with my cynical hat on. Also, my reasoning based on CE case not PP. Am still so angry about that verdict.

If some PP were the people women reported rape to, suspect many more would feel ok about doing so. Unfortunately, they're not.

Once you are charged in court, it should be a matter of public record, in my view.

With Cliff Richard, what I disagreed with was someone in South Yorkshire Police tipping off the media. Coincidentally at the time that South Yorkshire Police were being questioned in the inquest and ultimately criticised for their disgraceful conduct at Hillsborough.

SemiNormal that's another myth - that rape is one of the hardest crimes to get a guilty verdict in cos it's one person's word against another. Often there is other evidence that will back what what a woman is saying, but a lot of the time police investigations are sloppy and biased and the CPS still use rape myths to not charge. There's a lot we need to be changing to get the rape conviction up, and it starts from withing the justice system from the moment someone reports.
The last thing we need is anonymity for men.

I think that it was unfair for Cliff Richard to be publicly arrested and named before he had been charged. I think perhaps it would be fair to grant anonymity until a person has been charged, but not afterwards.

Anyone else who had been similarly affected as the victim could then still come forward.

Have you rtft? There been other posts about everyday people having their lives ruined, so not just a 'handful of privileged men' confused.

Yes I have. If you have read my post properly, you would have seen that in 99 per cent of rape cases the nodefendant is not named by newspapers before charge because they are not a celebrity and therefore, a change in the law to allow naming after a charge would only benefit celebrities.

If they are named on social media then that is an entirely different matter, and I said in my post that I would support tougher penalties for members of the public who are in contempt of a specific court order when they name defendants and victims.

Those who have had their lives ruined have largely not had them ruined by their local newspaper, but local newspapers are the main group that would be affected by a change in the law.

And if you're talking about people having their lives ruined by having details of an ongoing court case published, then that's another separate matter.enlaw on that is very specific - judges cannot make orders banning the names of defendants being said in open court to protect the comfort of the defendant. It flies in the face of open justice.

OP:
Yes. Methinks CR doth protest too much...

the problem with waiting until someone's charged before naming them is that many cases dont even reach the CPS, and not of those that do get charged. Sometimes what's needed for a charge is more evidence, and that evidence can come on the form of other women's statements. Which there won't be because other victims won't know that their attacker has been accused by someone else.

Cliff Richard / loose women special?

I wonder if it will be so bad, it's good?

I did have permission from the family member to post that btw.

The family member in question is a regular poster but has avoided posting on discussions about Jay as they were wary of the reactions they would get.

Again I'm not accusing anyone of anything here. I'm just saying that you need to think twice before automatically branding someone a liar. - unless they've been accused of rape of course, then the alleged victim must always be automatically believed and it is the accused who simply MUST be lying because false accusations don't happen. Ever.

I don't think there was any speculation in that post. It just says that there is info the media hasn't reported (which is pretty much always the case) and that the girl and her family have had a bad time.

That seems fair enough to me - nothing incorrect or offensive. If MN deleted it I'd be disappointed in them.

Fwiw, I actually complained to several newspapers about their use of the words 'false allegation' in relation to that particular case. I don't know anyone connected with the case, but I do know that, going by what was reported, there wasn't anything to prove that it was in fact a false allegation.

JaniceBattersby Wed 19-Oct-16 00:00:58

"We attend only the most serious rape cases. Maybe three every year, due to staffing. Should there be anonymity for the accused, we wouldn't attend any rape cases at all. It is impossible to report a case without naming either victim or defendant. It becomes 'a man raped a woman in a place that we can't name because it might identify the defendant or the victim etc etc.' And is just a complete nonsense. "

You may be interested to hear that this was how it worked in Sweden until fairly recently- I am not sure how current guidelines go. The accused would be referred to by his age. Not saying it was a good system: it clearly did eliminate the chance of identifying further victims of e.g. rapists. But as far as the journalists were concerned it was perfectly doable.