Jimmy Saville legal loophole that lets child rapists off

[KindCompassion]

Last year I went to the police because I was raped as a 15 year old in 1999. Because he can only be punished by the laws at the time, he cannot be charged with rape because it had to be reported within 12 months, as per the 1956 Sexual Offences Act. If I had been older or younger or a man then he could have been charged with rape.
I am absolutely traumatised by this.

Many of Jimmy Saville’s victims were in this demographic of 13-15 year old girls and I bet he knew full well that if 12 months passed he was home and dry. This is why I call it the Jimmy Saville loophole.

I miraculously got an amendment to the law tabled in the House of Commons in June by Liz Jarvis MP (not my own Labour minister MP who is useless) but they spent more time listening to a Tory whinge about how long it takes to get a shot gun license and they never debated it. I went to the public gallery to watch and my expensive water bottle was stolen when in the care of the Doorkeepers. I had to threaten to sue them to get them to pay me back.

I have written to the Lords who previously talked about this. No response.

I have written to Baroness Casey with my finest fountain pen to ask that this loophole is closed and had no reply. She did the grooming gang review this year that recommended changes to the law to protect teenage girls. She didn’t even include in her report that pre 2004 rapes have this procedural limitation.

I got a reply from Sarah Sackman MP, the Minister in charge. She called what happened as having ‘factual consent’ which as a woman I find a disgusting way to refer to rape.

The Guardian have previously written an article about it. I even wrote to the Daily Mail for help and Nigel Farage because apparently it’s the ECHR which stops the law from being changed to get my justice.

I even wrote to the King, whose secretary did reply but it was useless.

Let’s not even get started on the fact he can’t even be sued now for his assault, like almost every other assault can be sued in civil courts. So if he inherits lots of money from his parents I cannot get it off him.

I am at a complete and utter loss at what to do. There will be thousands of 13-15 year old girls raped between 1956 and 2004 when the new law came into effect, maybe even someone else reading this.

The only people I’ve found who actually care are the Liberal Democrats.

In addition to this, because the man was my brother, my parents and other brother have taken his side, despite admitting that they know I’m telling the truth. I have no blood family now other than my beautiful baby daughter.

I can’t speak to any of the charities that support survivors of sexual abuse because they don’t want to talk to anyone with an active case (they may charge him with a lesser crime).

The police don’t want me to post about this to my large LinkedIn connections in case it is used by the defence as attempting to “prejudice the jury” despite me using a different name professionally.

Oh, and I did try to report within 12 months but the police fobbed me off at the time.

I believe this is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, dwarfing the post office scandal for numbers of victims (who can’t even be counted if they even went to the police).

The world is a truly horrible place that protects child rapists and I am deeply despairing.

So I have read that guardian article, and gone back and read the law, and I am not sure I fully follow what you are saying from that information.

So as far as I can see there already to be two possibilities:

1. Sex with a girl under the age of 16 where she said she consented at the time, even though she was not capable of consent under the law of the time and indeed the laws of now. These are the cases I think the guardian article is talking about and which seems to have the twelve month time limit.
2. "Standard" rape, i.e. sex without any form of consent, whether that was from an underage girl or not, which I think can happen at any point and relate to anyone female? In which case that would seem to still facilitate that reporting of many, if not all, rapes. Or is it that the definitions (woman and man) exclude under 16s and therefore there is no offense to answer for under 16s?

It's the use of "factual consent" in the guardian article that makes me wonder whether there is still an offence to answer in some instances, especially combined with what @GreenGodiva said.

I may be confused but, if there is any chance that there is a case that could be brought, I thought it was worth bringing up the possibility as obviously one wants as many women as possible to be able to report those dreadful historic events.

Wow that’s sad and shocking. Why are people 🫣😭

You’d think so but unfortunately the law groups both those cases together. The fact I was screaming for my life doesn’t matter. The way the law is written doesn’t differentiate. It’s disgusting. So my rapist cannot be prosecuted.

When I researched what factual consent means, it refers to the act having happened, nothing to do with what was in the mind of the victim.

Vile isn’t it?

Forgive me if I am mistaken, but this is my (nonprofessional) reading of the law: your brother is guilty of incest under the 1956 Act, and the twelve month limitation doesn't apply to that. As a girl under the age of 16, you cannot be prosecuted for incest yourself.

Might it be worth following up this route with an actual lawyer?

Thanks. Yes I have. He can’t be charged with incest.

Sorry double tapped post!

I remember a story of someone I met once who got her rapist done years and years later, might be worth checking how she did it? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-57720012.amp

This is very interesting thank you, and what a great memory you have. I’ll ask the police.

I'm so sorry you have experienced this- not only did you go through that but subjected to everything after with the MP's and not able to get justice. . What a sickening miscarriage of justice- the law cannot even do it's job and your family are evil. If they're not going to do anything about it, I would blast this all over social media and to the papers, instagram, facebook, you tube, TikTok, make it go viral and show people that the government Protects Rapists and Pedophiles and they're protecting incestual rapist pedophiles too.

Jimmy Saville was best friends with 'King Charles' -hefty criminal checks are done on Everyone he associated with him so he Knew his best friend was a serial pedophile rapist- therefore he is Not going to do anything as he is 99%likely to be a pedophile himself, else why would he willingly have a best friend like that, why would his brother Andrew be the same, Thatcher also knew about Saville 100%. Why are tens of MP's, Lords and even a Prime Minister known pedophiles and rapists. The law is designed to protect them esp back then it seems, and in the process, protects all pedophiles and rapists. Name and shame if you can- the system is broken. A female MP Sarah Sackman saying that is not surprising, she may well have pedophile friends in government and is a sexist sociopath or psychopath like the others.

Hope you get these people named and shamed publicly and you get some form of justice- also karma is a b*tch and these people will all get what's coming to them eventually.

If you really can’t get anywhere legally I think shaming him publicly is a good idea.
The truth is an absolute defence to defamation plus I very much doubt he would try to sue you.
At least it would be a crumb to help yourself know how much you have stood up for yourself.

@KindCompassion in the thread about reopening 9000 cases re grooming gangs, someone has posted an article by Trevor Phillips. In it he mentioned past documentaries he made, including one about paedophile abuse (that was not grooming gang related I don’t think.)

He certainly seems to feel horror and sympathy. Might he be interested in writing about this dreadful loophole?

Here’s what Sarah Sackman MP said. Contradicting herself entirely and deeply condescending.

It’s so specific and narrow it makes you wonder for whose benefit was it brought into law for.

Sarah Sackman does contradict herself! What she says therefore makes no sense at all.

I can assure you there is no time limit for reporting historic rape under the Sexual Offences Act 1956 ……

However under section 6 girls aged 13 14 15 had to report within 12 months

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 repealed section 6 ….but not retrospectively.

Therefore, MP you are incredibly wrong, and dare I say lacking comprehension, to “assure” Kind Compassion there is no time limit. You appear to not be a fit person to do this work.

If this idiot is in the government what is going on?

(I have knocked out the name here in case I got deleted.)

@KindCompassion I noticed in that letter where it is writing out the 1956 law it said “
though unable to give consent [because underage] “had otherwise given consent”

As you never did give consent, do you know why you are not treated as being outside this category?

BBC Woman’s Hour might cover this?

That’s a good idea. I’ll contact them.

I wrote back to her at the MoJ and pretty much said that. She’s ignored me.

I was just told today that a Lib Dem peer is going to raise another amendment in Parliament soon. No idea how they will get around Sarah Sackman’s MoJ blocking this though.

Vile.

It seems strange that Sarah Sackman could have been trained in law and have the public office she does and yet write so nonsensically.

Maybe she gave the job of answering your letter to a junior and washed her hands of you.

On the 9000 cases reopened thread page 6 has an archive link to the Trevor Phillips article ( otherwise behind a paywall).

Possibly the 1956 - 2004 Sexual Offences Section 6 loophole allowing no retrospective reporting of rape for girls who were 13, 14, and 15 - not even after the law was repealed - might have affected some of those 9000 in question.

People on that thread might be interested to know about this loophole, and know about how Sarah Packman, who should be leading knowledge on all pertinent legal loophole factors, is showing herself to be either ignorant or negligent about something she ought to know; and dismissive of a case she was presented with.

Someone who might listen?
Prosecutor Nazir Afzal: I couldn't defend a rapist
www.bbc.com/news/uk-58047464

Mr Afzal also prosecuted Stuart Hall, the former television presenter who in 2014 was convicted of multiple sex offences against children.

In a wide-ranging interview, he told Lauren Laverne there was "nobody more important in his life than the victims and survivors" that he kept in touch with.

He spoke of visiting one alleged victim of Hall whose case did not lead to a conviction.
"I went to see her and I said, 'I'm really sorry that I couldn't give you closure'. She looked me in the eyes and said, 'You gave me closure the moment that you believed me. My recovery started the moment you believed me.'

"That has never left me."

Re Stuart Hall whom he prosecuted:
Excerpt from
www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-35658025

25 February 2016
Members of BBC management in Manchester were aware of paedophile Stuart Hall's "inappropriate sexual conduct " in his dressing room, a report has found.

It said "rumours" circulated within the Piccadilly Gardens office and it was "likely" he "could have been prevented from committing criminal offences".

The ex-presenter, 86, was jailed in 2013 after admitting indecently assaulting 13 girls - one as young as nine - between 1967 and 1985.

^The BBC said it had "failed victims".
Trust chairman Rona Fairhead said the corporation had "turned a blind eye, where it should have shone a light. And it did not protect those who put their trust in it".^

Victims of Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall will feel let down by the Dame Janet Smith report and will see it as "an expensive whitewash", according to a lawyer representing them.

^'No-one complained'
Dame Janet Smith's review, set up in 2012, examined how Jimmy Savile and Hall carried out campaigns of abuse over decades while at the BBC.^

Hall's sexual behaviour at the BBC
The report found 21 females, the youngest aged 10, were assaulted by Hall at the BBC between 1967 and 1991.

@KindCompassion I am so so sorry for what you went through and the fact that now you are dealing with this.

I had no idea and am devastated to learn about it. I'm not close to reporting anything to the Police and no idea if I would ever want to, but over the last year I have finally spoken (to a therapist) about some of the things that happened to me, that I've never told anyone about before. I was 14 when I started having sex with a family friend, who was in his 30s. Initially I consented - in fact, though obviously not in law. Before the sex started, he had already taken various photos and videos of me and groomed me. He then went on to coerce me into having sex with other men (using violence, money, threats, alcohol and other substances). Between the ages of 14 and 18 he routinely arranged for me to have sex with other men, many of whom raped me.

The idea that he would not be prosecuted for having sex with me when I was 14 is fucking horrendous.

@idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams
i’m so terribly sorry to hear how you were abused by this appalling man. He shouldn’t have done it, and your family should have protected you.

the legal situation I have found to be an addition source of trauma. I hope you are ok x

Thank you @KindCompassion . I am OK. But I am quite shocked by this loophole and the fact that it just affects girls. Wow. The rage.