After his arrest in 2008, many more women contacted police to say they had been attacked too.
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The same is true of black cab driver John Worboys, Britain’s most prolific serial rapist. Publicly identifying them encouraged others they had violated to come forward, in some cases earning them even longer prison sentences.Īll fell prey to the false allegations of fantasist Carl Beech (pictured), who claimed to have been sexually abused by members of a VIP paedophile ring when he was a child. Without the help of the media, the likes of Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall and Gary Glitter might never have got the punishments they deserved. My concern lies most with the impact that such a change would have on the prosecution of crimes of sexual violence and abuse. There is a real danger that criminals will escape punishment for some of the most appalling crimes. It is not just that, as a journalist, I believe what Braverman suggests is a dangerous infringement of press freedom, which risks moving this country towards the kind of despotic state in which police can make arrests without scrutiny. He was later jailed for 16 years in 2015 for other child abuse chargesīut the fact is that it was inept policing and irresponsible reporting which led to the BBC gleefully sending a helicopter into the skies above Cliff Richard’s home.Īnd while I understand how horrendous the experience must have been for the innocent men in these cases, it is vital that we have a transparent system of justice in which the Press can report on any investigation prior to charges being laid.
They might have been spared humiliation and suffering had their names been kept out of the Press.Įntertainer Gary Glitter was outed as a child predator in 1997 after indecent images of children were discovered on his computer.
There have also been the well-known cases of former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, D-Day veteran Lord Bramall, and the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan.Īll fell prey to the false allegations of fantasist Carl Beech, who claimed to have been sexually abused by members of a VIP paedophile ring when he was a child. Sir Cliff suffered a terrible ordeal, it is true. Her proposal for anonymity is supposedly a bid to avoid the kind of ‘trial by media’ surrounding high-profile cases like those of Sir Cliff Richard, who won £400,000 in damages from the BBC after it filmed a police raid on his home in Berkshire following false claims of sexual assault. Suppose, for a moment, the police had taken this victim seriously, as they should have done, and pressed charges.Īs things stand, the perpetrator’s name would have been reported in the local paper and other victims could have come forward to help build the case against him and put him behind bars.īut if Braverman has her way, the Press will be silenced and we will have what critics have suggested will be a charter for rapists and abusers of children. Shameful new proposals from Home Secretary Suella Braverman intend to grant anonymity to suspects of all crimes until they are charged
This plan to keep suspects’ names hidden is an absolute disgrace. I have no doubt that he and others like him will continue to laugh at the law under shameful new proposals from Home Secretary Suella Braverman to grant anonymity to suspects of all crimes until they are charged. Sadly, there wasn’t much I could do to help her, and one detail which still keeps me awake at night is that this vile rapist, no doubt aware that the chances of him being convicted were next to zero, ran away from the scene laughing. She had contacted me because she knew I am a long-time campaigner for an end to violence against women. Through a Facebook group for women who had suffered sexual assaults, she learnt that this man had committed at least two other similar attacks locally but had never been convicted. Then 22, and waiting for a bus home after an evening out with friends, she had been dragged on to wasteland and brutally raped by a man she had never seen before.Īfter she’d staggered bleeding and bruised to a local police station, the investigating officers decided that she was too drunk to be a credible witness and, although they subsequently found and questioned her assailant, they let him go. Three years ago, I was contacted by a desperate young woman whose late-night ordeal in a small North Yorkshire town still haunts me today.
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