Vocal Voices

A man spends two years on bail before his trial in court accused of 12 counts of rape and sexual assault.

His trial collapses when it is revealed that police withheld evidence containing 40,000 messages revealing the alleged victim pestered him for "casual sex". The CPS said it offered no evidence in the case and there had very nearly been "a massive miscarriage of justice".

Wrong! There has already been a massive miscarriage of justice. The man's name and photo are all over the Internet. He will carry his 'conviction' with him for all his days and wherever he goes. There will always be a stain on his character and the slate will never be truly wiped clean - there will forever be an * on his notes.

Meanwhile his accuser remains anonymous - for legal reasons.

What must also be a worry is the damage women like her do to 'real' victims of rape and sexual assault. Their confidence in the system must take a real bashing when stories like this emerge: a lose-lose situation.

I saw that one. Whilst I'm furious for what she has done, I'm even more furious at the police and the CPS. I believe he has a good case for a claim against the police and the CPS for wrongful prosecution. They had all the evidence they would ever need to acquit him and hid it.

No win No Fee lawyers have a place in society and this is one of them.

Never mind the * on his notes, He's going to find it difficult to build trusting relationships for the rest of his life. Never mind what has been done about deterring very real rape victims.

Somebody needs to lose their job over this and his accuser needs to go to jail.

None of which will happen though....

In this particular case I'm strongly of the opinion that if sued, the police/CPS would settle out of court.

Fully agree.

He should sue the Metropolitan Police / CPS for complete dereliction of duty, and judging by comments made his TV interview tonight, I think that is maybe on the cards. His chosen career was criminology so I suppose he has to be a bit careful not to upset "the establishment", but even so .....

She should be prosecuted for wasting police time by making malicious complaints. But as the CPS are apparently still nowhere near coming to a decision over whether to prosecute the more high-profile "Nick", I guess this will not happen.

"Nick" allegedly received compensation money. Did this woman received compensation money too? If so, she should be made to pay it back at a very minimum.

I know that there are huge concerns in social services, the police/CPS and the Courts about the rape conviction rate, currently about 6%, and nobody is sure why the rate is so low.

Unfortunately, unless there is hard evidence such as ABH/GBH or DNA samples, many cases often come down to one person's word against another's. Right or wrong that happens to be the law and it is very difficult to prove guilt to 100%. Failure to get a conviction does not make the accused perpetrator innocent, but nor does it make the accuser, the victim, a liar. However, fiddling the evidence in order to up the conviction rate is not, and never will be, the way to go. When it goes wrong, as it has done in this case, it must make victims uneasy - could their cases be over-egged and found out leading to a collapsed trial. And if it succeeds we have the possibility of innocents sent to jail and tarnished for life.

I wish that I had an answer.

It's utterly disgraceful! The police have a lot to answer for here, and as for the woman who made the false allegations, well she should go down for that

Workingman wrote:I know that there are huge concerns in social services, the police/CPS and the Courts about the rape conviction rate, currently about 6%, and nobody is sure why the rate is so low.

It's a hard crime to prosecute because usually as you say, it's word against word.
Also what can happen is that the woman drops the charges because going through with the case can be such an ordeal. They can be portrayed as sluts, have their reputation dragged through the mud by defence counsel and with no guarantee of a conviction.
One man got away with it a couple of years ago. At a party he claimed he thought he was having sex with his girlfriend. despite the fact that he had gone to sleep upstairs with his girlfriend and the girl he assaulted was sleeping downstairs. Despite the fact that the girls hair colour is totally different.
His story was blatant rubbish, but the jury bought it and he was found not guilty. So even when there is a strong case the jury can choose to believe the pleasant faced, fair haired young man in the dock, because surely such a nice looking young man wouldn't do such a thing?
Results like that do put women off going through with the case, and you can see why.

This makes interesting (actually, downright worrying) reading, WM.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12 ... es-review/

Something is very wrong at the Met and CPS.