! UPDATE !
Brilliant result against Surry Police. I hope Caroline takes it allll the way 🥂
https://nitter.poast.org/CF_Farrow/status/1793178685190570335#m
Caroline Farrow@CF_Farrow 1h
UPDATE & STATEMENT 22nd May 2024
Surrey Police abandoned their application for this draconian order two weeks later, claiming they were only provided with ‘substantial evidence discrediting the allegations on the day of the hearing’.
This was not, in fact, true. Surrey Police had already received substantial defence submissions refuting the incredible allegations levelled against me some weeks earlier, in May 2022, following my second arrest. They were also made aware of this evidence during two police interviews. Still, Surrey Police chose to pursue the application, which was signed by the Chief Superintendent at the beginning of June.
These submissions were additionally emailed to Surrey Police solicitors in advance of the hearing, but they were only finally read by the police counsel on the day of the hearing, who immediately asked the court for an adjournment so that he could take further instructions from his client. The investigating officer responsible for bringing this application was on holiday and had sent a stand-in to court.
Two weeks later, much to my relief, Surrey Police advised me that they would drop the application.
The terms of the order would have significantly impacted my life. It would have ended my ability to earn a living and put my family, including two vulnerable children with autism, under constant police surveillance and at the mercy of vexatious complaints; therefore, I had no choice but to put up a robust defence.
The bar for costs to be awarded against the police when they bring unsuccessful applications for Stalking Protection Orders (SPO’s) is very high. Public authorities must be encouraged to make and stand by reasonable and apparently sound administrative decisions made in the public interest without fear of exposure to undue financial prejudice if their decision is successfully challenged.
Successful litigants are highly unlikely to recover costs unless they can demonstrate unreasonableness and improper conduct on the part of the police authority.
In this context, I am delighted to announce that Surrey Police have offered to pay most of my defence costs, which run into many thousands of pounds, rather than contest them at a court hearing and risk significant criticism.
However, this is not the end of the matter. Surrey Police had a duty to reimburse the costs that I was forced to incur unnecessarily, defending an application that should never have been brought. A considerable amount of resources could have been saved if the matter had been investigated fairly and impartially in the first place. For reasons best known to themselves, the investigating officers were unwilling or unable to apply professional scepticism to the ludicrous allegations. They chose to traumatise my entire family by arresting me at tea time because, to quote their words, they had ‘reasonable suspicion that Mrs Farrow may have deleted tweets’.
In October 2023, Surrey police informed me that despite their best efforts at case-building, including the seizure and examination of all of my devices, they had not met the evidential test required by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Initially seized in October 2022, my devices were not returned until March 2024.
Over the past five years, my entire family has been put through a terrible ordeal thanks to Surrey Police, who turned a blind eye to appalling threats and harassment directed at my whole family and advised me to stop posting about gender ideology, yet were happy to arrest me to prove or disprove, a patently false allegation. I will continue to hold this force and the officer involved to account by pursuing them for damages for the harm inflicted on myself and my family.
I’m acutely aware that I have been able to mount a defence only thanks to the fact that I enjoy a minor public platform and can harness the generosity of so many ordinary members of the public who were incensed and outraged by my arrest. I have been inundated by stories of similar injustices and police overreach, where people have had to accept appalling restrictions on their freedoms and multiple arrests as a result of hearsay accusations simply because they were not able to access the legal support to which everyone should be entitled