MPs committee strongly recommends anonymity for people accused of sex crimes

[PilchardPrincess]

This is back again:
here bbc

I am wholly of the opinion that this will go through, and handily just in time for when the investigations into historical sex offences by powerful people including many politicians gets underway.

It's just pathetically transparent.

Below the line commenters are all red hot keen, with many advocating for anon until found guilty. A few people saying that this should apply for all crimes (which is a far more logical standpoint unless you believe that women and children are inveterate liars when it comes to reporting abuse) and I haven't spotted anyone saying it might cause problems, although only skimmed top rated.

I think for me, the concept of not being allowed to report until charged, if it applied for all crimes would probably be reasonable and not interfere too much, although you'd need to try it to find out.

The idea that it's needed for sex crimes only as that ruins lives more is just such a load of shit. A person being accused of torturing animals or murder or conning old people out of money doesn't exactly get off scott free in terms of reputation. The reasoning is actually that many people like to think that women and children lie about this all the time for reasons that are never fully explained, and the evil bastards must be stopped.

So if they do this and make it for sex crimes only they are reinforcing the idea that many / most of these reports are lies and that will set things back years. Which will help though because actually people in authority don't want this stuff reported, it costs time and money to investigate, it makes things difficult with their friends, it makes them look bad when it turns out they didn't do it properly (rochdale, jimmy saville etc etc so many examples) and so on. Far better that people who are assaulted just put up and shut up which is what happens most of the time anyway but might push it back even further.

It's basically a large number of (low importance) victims being chucked under the bus to protect a tiny handful of powerful men, plus ca change.

Blood. Rage. Boil. Privilege. Male. White.

I may come back when I can string together a coherent sentence.

Ugh.

Yes, fine, press anonymity for all accused if you like.

But otherwise. Piss off.

It's a great idea, if we WANT to see a big fall in the number of sex crime convictions.

This cannot go through. Suspects are supposed to be named in ongoing cases (except in situations where doing so would harm the investigation somehow) in order to jog the memory of potential witnesses and encourage them to come forward. Hence, when a murder has happened you hear "X is helping with inquires," or "X is a person of interest," - it is done deliberately as a strategy for gathering evidence. In the case of sexual assault naming a suspect might (and often does) bring forward other victims who can corroborate stories and help to build a case before charges are brought. If the suspect is given anonymity, all it does is help that suspect by allowing them to hide other crimes. It is absolutely wrong and indefensible and would never be allowed say, for murders - police would be furious, and would rightly object that their hands were being unacceptably tied. But for sex cases, who cares eh? It's not like real people get hurt.

Everyday Victim Blaming have a peition on change.org, not sure if |I'm allowed to link it though.

Link away, it's relevant to the thread.

In fact I don't know how they can justify this at all. Often with sex cases the only way to even bring charges in the first place is to get the word out there and hope that others come forward - because there is so often a lack of forensic evidence the only way to build a strong enough justification for charging someone is a pattern of evidence from multiple victims/witnesses.

I mean for fuck's sake look at John Worboys. Multiple people reported him and he still wasn't hauled in. Imagine if he was given anonymity??? He could still be out there, adding names to his huge list of victims. Even without anonymity the police are horrendously bad at connecting crimes.

I feel sick at the thought of this. What sort of fucked up topsy turvy world do we live in? Men don't protection from women. Women need protection from men. Where the FUCK is that?

I also wonder what this means for eg reconstructions, calls for information, suspect was last seen X and was wearing Y and they had Z distinguishing features, as the whole point of that exercise is to try to identify the suspect.

Grey area I think?

Also as Cailin says when they are looking for someone, that happens quite often. That they say if anyone sees X can they contact the police as they want to speak to them.

For me the main issue here is surely that it officially corroborates a massive rape myth that people have been working so hard to dispel. The ramifications of that will be huge surely? We already know that people in authority disregard and disbelieve victims, which has led to some horrendous serial perpetrators being left alone to get on with it. This officially recognises that disregard and disbelief are the sensible and appropriate responses, in direct opposition to what some arms of the same institutions are saying when they report on failings and what needs to change.

And of course victims are going to be even more discouraged to report these crimes as it is "official" that they are very likely to be making it all up. Which I do wonder would be seen as a positive effect - "sex crimes falling" would be the headline possibly "as an effect of anonymity" and lord even onto "so obviously it was mostly lies and now women and children can't ruin lives like they want to they're not bothering with their lies any more".

Um yes that's the way this will go I would imagine?

Its tricky, i strongly believe unless charged all accusations of any crime should be kept discreet so that that some actual credence to allegations is established before launching media en masse to camp outside the families house and terrorise them. However that wont happen ...no real solution seems ideal.

Does this work

petition

I cut the stuff out of the link with my info etc in it!

The big problem here is the media isn't it. Their reaction to what they see as "juicy sex scandals" it's awful.

I mean the report comes out "famous person accused of multiple counts of child sex abuse" and the papers think "brilliant!".

That is not the correct response to that information.

Yes, pilchard with these cases its the families who are living in terror and harassment largely ...the press so need reigning in.

I am coming around to the view that the greatest barrier to securing convictions in sexual crimes is in how the police have historically investigated.

I'm not sure where I stand on this specific issue. I appreciate the arguments on both sides, but I would personally like to see police practises and attitudes tackled first: more training, sensitivity towards victims, accusations taken seriously.

I am not automatically of a mind to oppose anonymity of accused, but if it does come up it should be part of a broad remit examining the totality of how we treat sex crimes legally and not just from this single narrow perspective of how it affects the wrongly accused.

Thing is how many men accused of rape are people the papers are interested in?

How many accusations are false?

How many rapes and other sex offences go unreported?

How many rapes and other sex crimes have been reported and no crimed, dismissed, shelved, mishandled etc etc

How many sex offenders are serial offenders?

How massively have victims been let down over the years, how do their numbers compare to those who have been in the papers and accusations have been found to be false? Or against those whose accusations have been found not guilty?

It is weighing up thousands of (not powerful) victims against a handful of powerful men, putting them in those US scales if you like, and the handful of powerful men come out as more in need of protection and assistance than the thousands of not powerful victims.

Like I say, plus ca change and the timing of this is so utterly transparent it's just, utterly pathetic.

MPs committee needs to be looked at carefully to ensure none of them are on the radar for historic sex crimes.

And no, I stand by that, and won't retract. It's struck me more and more that the type of person who demands this kind of special treatment of men who attack women and children is the type of person who thinks there but for the grace of God.....

You see it a lot with the Rapist Evans' supporters. And with people my vile SiL who thinks that Jimmy Saville was fitted up, along with all his pals. despite the evidence and her being a lawyer and stuff

Theypeople you're talking about living in terror and fear of harrassment is as a result a member of their family being charged with criminal behaviour.

Legally and morally, surely the imperatives to uphold justice and ensure that victims of crimes are able to come forward and be believed trumps some hyperthetical 'harrassment' to an unknown person?

Anyone would think MPs want to keep the identity of people charged of sexual offences secret and limit the number of victims speaking to the police .

I agree. Not just on the radar personally though, it's a closed "old boys" club (even though there are a few shocker women in there now) but they're all in the same "gang" even across parties when it comes to things like this.

They will protect their own, obviously. I'd be amazed if there are many people who can't see how obvious this all is.

That was an I agree with Puffins, but christina you too.

To be clear though this is about anonymity until charged. Not all the way through. What impact that will have on ability to see if there are other victims, and ability to get enough evidence to get to charge, I'm not sure if anyone knows.

I would probably be comfy with this - as our media are such utter scum - as a trial run and for all crimes. Just sex offences - no fucking way in hell.

I think this article puts it well - even Thatcher repealed the anonymity laws because the consequences were so dire.

Like that bloke who got an awful time in the press over that woman who went missing and was murdered, and it turned out it was someone in the house. I forget the names. They picked on this bloke, as far as I could see, because he had bad hair. At the time I thought WTF they are going over this bloke's life and there's nothing to say he's done anything wrong.

The PRESS is the problem here FGS. Well them and the vast numbers of sex offenders we have at large in society, obviously.

Well this thread has me convinced anonymity is a bad idea under the current climate. Still not opposed to it in principle, but other things need to change first.

Yes, the press is a problem in many ways. I'm sure that we all remember the paediatrician being mobbed and harassed for being a 'paedophile' some years ago.

But the press is a different, albeit related, issue.

Not releasing information in case someone 'might' be harrassed is clearly the thin end of an extremely slippery slope.

Agree about the members of this committee, and their friends, and their friends, and their friends.....

I keep wondering if someone will break rank (as has happened with the undercover police covert surveillance), although in this instance it would likely involve confessing to a crime, so likely not.

Dervel.... do you also think that accused muggers should have anonymity? Murderers? Fraudsters? I know that seems snarky, but it's not meant to be, because I know you get a lot of this, but this is singly about sex crimes, so is extremely problematic.

"What impact that will have on ability to see if there are other victims, and ability to get enough evidence to get to charge, I'm not sure if anyone knows."

Pilchard, the impact is blatantly obvious. Police would never ever put up with such a rule being put in place for robbery, for example, because it would kill such a large number of cases before they got off the ground. Imagine, a shop owner reports a large theft of money and accuses John of it. But there is no other evidence linking John to the crime so he is not charged and he can't be named. What do the police do? They can't ask about John's whereabouts, they can't ask other store owners in the areas if they've seen John being a bit suspicious. So, hands completely tied, case closed, unsolved. It completely stops an investigation. It allows John to walk off, cash in hand, big smile on his face. It means that if you commit a crime and leave no forensic evidence, you're laughing. Putting it in place for sex crimes basically legalises rape/sexual assault in some circumstances as it prevents police from investigating the crime. Do it right, and you can get away with it.