Kirsty Wark documentary about Alex Salmond sexual assault case

[Shedbuilder]

Kirsty Wark takes a close look at the Alex Salmond trial this spring in which he was accused by 9 women of sexual assault and he walked away scot-free.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lwld/the-trial-of-alex-salmond

I'm not Scottish, didn't know enough about it to have an informed opinion, but it stinks — and Nicola Sturgeon appears to be implicated. Why, you have to ask, has this been hidden away ay 11pm on a Monday night? It should have been on BBC1 at 9pm midweek.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lwld/the-trial-of-alex-salmond

Whoops — at least I linked twice instead of not at all!

That was a dreadful hit piece. Salmond was found not guilty on 13 charges because he proved in court the alleged incidents didn't happen. Note how Wark's supposed day-by-day account of the trial skips over the two days when the defence witnesses testified.

This included the friend of the alleged victim of the worst charge telling the court that the incident could not have happened because the victim had asked her friend to attend the meal in her stead. (The victim had injured her arm on the day and stayed home).

On one charge it was a not proven verdict. Salmond agreed the incident happened. The question was whether it was a miscommunication between them that amounted to harassment. At the time the victim accepted his apology for him giving her a (fully clothed) cuddle when they were both drunk and she stated nothing untoward ever happened again afterwards.

(Not proven simply means that there was not enough evidence either way - neither the prosecution nor the defence could prove their case.)

Wark has a bit of a thing for Salmond. No idea if it's personal, but there have been a few other pieces she did about him that were less than balanced or impartial.

If you know anything about the case that becomes very obvious. Like the fact that Salmond presented a different defence case than the one he said he would is used to cast doubt on his character. The fact that he had to present a different defence case because the judge didn't allow him to present the evidence he had on his original defence case is not mentioned by Wark at all.

And so on.

he proved in court the alleged incidents didn't happen

Nope.
That’s not how acquittal works.

Certainly in one incident the woman who accused him was proven not to have been in the building/at the event where she claimed the incident happened. I'd say that was proof of innocence.

There is a long and twisty history of SNP infighting and factions. You're right, Shedbuilder, it stinks. I'm no fan of Salmon, but this case seemed unbelievably flimsy, to put it mildly.

*Salmond. So many fish, so few politicians in autocock.

Not proven to me is the 'we hell know you did it but don't have enough evidence' its not saying he's innocent at all

if we have any scottish law types on mumsnet please feel free to jump in ...

Oooh, CharleyParley — look at you accusing Kirsty Wark of doing a hit piece. This was a man who coerced staff to drink with him and then laid his hands on them. I'm with Wark.

We urgently need a programme of education about the way sexual assault trials work, and what the verdicts mean. A man who has been acquitted has not been found innocent, nor has he proved his innocence. Many many rapists are found not guilty. It is astonishingly difficult to secure a conviction in the current system.

Note: I’m not claiming Alex Salmond is guilty of the charges of which he was acquitted. However, I will protest in the strongest terms against any suggestion that the court found him innocent.

I don't know enough about this for an informed opinion so place marking to see what others think.

To answer your original point OP, it was on earlier in the week at 930 on BBC Scotland - we have our own channel and schedule.

I was disappointed by the programme. I feel there's a conversation to be had about sexual conduct and how the FM conducted himself in office, but this wasn't it. The Dani Garavalli article on Tortoise tried to take a wider view, Kirsty Wark didn't really bring any insight to the piece which felt like a bit of a hatchet job. And I am a red hot feminist who things Salmond is a pig.

I wasn't listening quite carefully enough but a Scottish lawyer on the programme mentioned something about Scottish law requiring two supporting sets of evidence. I think she also mentioned another aspect of Scottish law that means that if there are enough people saying the same thing about the accused (there were I think nine women in this case all alleging the same sort of touching behaviour) that can be taken into account. But yes to the PP who said that Not Proven means 'we know you did it, we just don't have the evidence.'

Why, you have to ask, has this been hidden away ay 11pm on a Monday night? It should have been on BBC1 at 9pm midweek.

It was first shown at 9pm, I only caught a bit of it. Apparently BBC then removed it, changed some of the content and reuploaded the programme, but they wouldn't elaborate what the change was.

Apparently it was easy to identify one of the complainers @RozWatching - but I'm not sure. If you can stomach the Twitter I'm sure it will be on there, people were planning to watch them side by side earlier today. I had to delete the app (again) because we seem incapable of having this discussion without targeted misogynistic abuse at the women speaking out.

(Not proven simply means that there was not enough evidence either way - neither the prosecution nor the defence could prove their case.)

"Not Proven" does not mean that. The defence does not have to prove anything. It means the Crown did not prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt; same as not guilty.

"Not proven" is a historical accident- nobody seems terribly clear what it means. It should be done away with.

Thanks Lonny. God that's depressing.

Please note I said he was found "not guilty". I did not say he was found innocent.

He was tried for 14 charges. For 13 he provided witnesses who were either there when the alleged incidents happened and who disagreed with the alleged victims' version of events or who provided evidence those incidents did not happen at all.

He was the FM. There are official records when events in Bute House actually took place. He cannot - as alleged - have done something at an event that did not take place. Another alleged victim claimed (in support of her own allegation) to have met a person who was not even in Scotland at the time, because that person's father had died. And so on. For those 13 charges he was found Not Guilty.

The Not Proven charge was for an incident where Salmond went through an official civil service process at the time, accepted full responsibility and apologised. During the trial, that particular incident was presented differently from the way the alleged victim had done at the time of her original official statement. And this was the charge where the jury could not reach a verdict.

I recommend you find the trial transcripts or the very few blogs that reported both the prosecution and the defence case and see for yourself. You might find them illuminating. None of the media reported the defence case; the judge refused his much stronger original defence case and he was found not guilty anyway.

This isn't Scotland's MeToo moment, this is a serious abuse of power in action. If you really hate the SNP, you should look into this trial a bit more closely.

@DidoLamenting

(Not proven simply means that there was not enough evidence either way - neither the prosecution nor the defence could prove their case.)

"Not Proven" does not mean that. The defence does not have to prove anything. It means the Crown did not prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt; same as not guilty.

"Not proven" is a historical accident- nobody seems terribly clear what it means. It should be done away with.

I stand corrected. However, research with mock jury trials has shown there is a difference between the Not Guilty and the Not Proven verdicts.

Well no, @CharlieParley it clearly isn't Scotland's Me Too moment as the fact - the uncontested fact - that we had at the very least a drunk handsy first minister in office for years who was defended in court by a senior advocate who openly boasted on a train about ' putting a smell on a witness' has gone mostly unremarked by the public, who prefer to comment on the manners and morals of the complainers. We really aren't interrogating the situation at all - it's like we've collectively said 'ah well, he's not guilty, I always knew women were brazen hussies, let's just pretend it never happened.'

With some notable exceptions and I include Kirsty Wark in those, although as I said upthread I thought the angle she took in the programme was odd and didn't add much to the conversation.

Treating it as an SNP civil war doesn't help either - it's bigger than that.

The facts as laid out are that Salmond at times acted like a drunken sleaze of a boss. However he didn't appear to use fear of violence or retribution (unlike Weinstein). At least once he accepted responsibility and apologised. Whilst his behaviour was sleazy, embarrassing and unprofessional I can't see how it should've been treated as criminal. And the insistence on pursuing it through the criminal courts is what makes it seem to me like there was something else going on, such as a concerted effort to bring him down. Not sure who is behind that, possibly a number of groups have their motives.

Admittedly I haven’t followed this case in any great depth, other than Salmond had 9 women making allegations against him.

Now I do believe in innocent before guilty, if it was one woman, perhaps it would be hard to prove, but none?
Did nine women really decide to make false allegations against him? Seriously.

The two evidence requirement is that you need two witnesses to corroborate the version of events... this rarely happens in sexual assault because victim and perpetrator are alone. One part of it was disgusting, a woman described how he had touched the side of her breasts and moved down to her backside and defence said “and you call that groping for you?!” And he had touched her slightly lower than she would have liked indicating that it was hardly a criminal offence! Don’t know how he managed to get away with it.

@fatblackcatspaw

if we have any scottish law types on mumsnet please feel free to jump in ...

I am a criminal lawyer in Scotland and familiar with the circumstances here - and the law surrounding sexual assault trials.

@CharlieParley It’s such a shame you’ve taken such a clearly biased stance on this within the thread. And made the thread go in one way when it should be going in the other. It’s obvious you have fallen down the rabbit hole of this being a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. And that prosecutors and the police have been complicit in that. But you seem to ignore the fact that there was a sufficiency of evidence to bring the case to court.

Who are you accusing of a serious abuse of power?

@Iggypoppie he didn't have to use 'threats' of retribution - his very position was threat enough. If you think that a prime minister doesn't have power over female civil servants you are being naive - he didn't have to threaten to wield power that he clearly holds. The unofficial 'don't work alone' policy was never refuted.

And actually, as a proud Scot I expect more from my first minister than I do from some random movie producer. The adherence to a higher level of behaviour was supposed to be baked into the bricks of Holyrood and was one of the reasons I voted for devolution all those years ago. An awful lot of women have got skin in the game here and this should be our MeToo.