Prosecution, Or Persecution?

By Herbert Purdy: It is inconceivable that anyone living in Britain today could not be aware of the seemingly endless string of prosecutions of high-profile men for sexual offences that allegedly go back decades. Eighty-four-year-old entertainer Rolf Harris was jailed in 2014 on charges of offences dating between 1968 and 1986, 82-year-old broadcaster Stuart Hall was jailed in 2013 on charges of offences alleged to have happened between 1967 and 1985, 64-year-old weather presenter Fred Talbot was jailed on charges whose accuser said took place between 1975 and 1976. Then there was 70-year-old Max Clifford jailed on charges from 1977 and 1985.
However, a very significant number of other cases have resulted in acquittals. Leonard ‘Chip’ Hawkes, and Richard Westwood, two members of the 1960s pop group The Tremeloes were cleared of an alleged sex attack¹ alleged to have been committed almost 50 years ago. Their case reached trial, but it collapsed when the testimony of their accuser was shown to be riddled with inconsistencies. Eighty-one-year-old William Roache was found not guilty on all charges against him, although it cost him in excess of £100,000 legal costs to clear his name, and 70-year-old Dave Lee Travis who was tried in 2014 and acquitted by a jury on 12 counts of sexual assault going back 20 years, with two further counts upon which the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Travis was made almost bankrupt by the costs of his defence, and then he was tried again on the two undecided counts, with one more added.
The second jury found him not guilty on one of the original counts but guilty of the other by a majority of 10-2. The third added count failed when the jury was again unable to reach a verdict, but Travis was nevertheless sent to jail on the one re-tried guilty verdict.
Then there were the cases that were investigated but upon which no further action was taken: comedians Jimmy Tarbuck (74), and Jim Davidson (59), the entertainers Freddy Starr (71), author and journalist Wilfred Death (76), the broadcaster Paul Gambacini (67), all of whom were ‘dawn-raided’ or ‘gang-arrested’, and, of course, Sir Cliff Richard (74), ‘hung out like a piece of meat’ by the police, as he put put, who were clearly in collusion with the BBC to live televise a mass raid raid on his home while he was abroad, solely in order to elicit new complainants. After a year of investigation, he was told that no further action would be taken against him, but like all the rest, he was offered no apology or any indication of regret or admission of wrong behaviour by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who consistently aver as their justification the public interest clause of their remit, even though a reasonable man might struggle to understand what public interest is served by this sort of activity.
Justice is meant to operate in the public interest – for the greater good – and I for one find it difficult to fathom how the relentless prosecution of vulnerable old men for crimes allegedly carried out in their youth, in a completely different social atmosphere of sexual relationships between men and women that characterised their generation, is in the public interest. Is any sensible person going to say that these men are a danger to women (or even other younger men in the case of homosexuals) at this stage in their lives? Is it reasonable to assume that octogenarians are going to be sexual predators? Who is kidding whom here?

It seems far more likely that the only interest is an ideological one being pursued in the current vindictive spirit of the new age –  the new feminist world order, and we must ask ourselves, how can this be in the public interest?

However, these high profile cases, providing as they do a rich fodder for the prurient press and their propensity for feeding frenzies, are covering up a string of similar cases against ordinary men, who are also being hauled through the criminal justice system on sex allegations – a system that is increasingly coming under widespread suspicion for its lack of impartiality.
In a recent article entitled False allegations: a stain on justice,² published on Spiked Online, Barbara Hewson, a straight-talking barrister, says, ‘Something seems to have gone badly wrong in the UK’s criminal justice system’, and in support she cites the case of David Bryant (63), a retired firefighter, who was tried and sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2014 for raping a boy in a fire station between 1976 and 1978. Not satisfied with the conviction, the CPS appealed his sentence which was increased by the judges of the Court of Appeal.
However, Bryant’s wife stuck by him. She employed a private investigator who uncovered a history of lying by his accuser and, more pertinently from an evidential perspective, that the pool table on which Day claimed to have been raped wasn’t even purchased until 14-16 years after the alleged attack took place.

Bryant was released after three years in jail with an apology from a judge,³ after which he said, “This could happen to any decent citizen that is the frightening thing about it. Somebody has made an absolutely ludicrous allegation, and the police have run with it.”

It has to be said, if a private detective, working with limited resources, was able to uncover these things, what were the police with all their resources and powers doing, acting as they do under the close oversight of the CPS at each stage of an investigation?
And it is not just old men who are being aggressively pursued by the authorities for alleged sexual offences. Young men too are increasingly becoming the subjects of sex allegations – far too many of which are also subsequently proved to be false. In my book, Their Angry Creed, I cite the example of Ben Sullivan, aged 21, the son of a banker and a former pupil of one of the most prestigious private schools in Britain, St Paul’s. He was dragged from his bed in his room at Christ Church College, Oxford University by police at 05.30 on 7th May 2014, and held in custody for 12 hours on an allegation of rape made by a fellow student, whose name he was not told and whose testimony was later proved to be false.⁴  He was subsequently cleared of all charges, but not after an hysterical, orchestrated campaign of vilification organised by Sarah Pine, the radical feminist President for Women at Oxford University Student Union, who led a crusade to further blacken his name.

The vile Vine pressurised celebrity speakers to cancel their appearances at the Union, arguing that  the presumption of innocence does not mean ‘business as usual’, when actually it does. This was shamefully acceded to by Dragon’s Den star and entrepreneur Julie Meyer, composer Eric Whitacre and even the Secretary General of Interpol.⁵

Ben Sullivan is a privileged young man with influential parents behind him, but Hewson also recounts the case of 17-year-old Jay Cheshire, described as a sensitive teenager, prone to depression, who was accused by a young woman (also a teenager) of raping her. The girl later retracted the allegation, but such was the social pressure and heavy condemnation piled upon him, Jay took his own life, hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Consumed by grief, his mother, aged 55, who had seen his life support switched off, hanged herself shortly afterwards.
Which brings me to the egregious case of Mark Pearson, an artist, who was falsely accused of digitally penetrating a sixty-odd-year-old actress from the long running BBC radio show, The Archers,  as he passed her in the evening rush hour in Waterloo Station, London. Pearson’s testimony is horrifying to hear,⁶ and it shows how close to the end of his emotional tether he came as a result. He too was ‘dawn-raided’ by the police and dragged from his home before being subjected to a year of investigation, which culminated in a trial that flopped.
The jury took just 90 minutes to acquit him when it became clear that not only had the actress (whose name is disclosed on an American men’s voice website) been unable to identify him and, indeed, had given a description of a much taller man, the CCTV footage of him and the woman showed that he had never broken stride as he passed her, and he had both his hands in full view for the entire brief period in which the incident is alleged to have taken place.⁷ Then there is the deeply disturbing revelation that during the evidence it was revealed that the footage had been deliberately slowed down to make it look as though he had had more time to commit the offence.
Just a handful of years ago, a case such as this would barely have got past the front desk of a police station, let alone be run to a full trial, especially as the prosecution must have known that the evidence was damningly against them. Yet the authorities ran with it, expending tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money to pursue and destroy an innocent man in what can only be described as a staged show trial, presumably intended pour encourager les autres.

Yet again, and echoing David Bryant all too accurately, Pearson said, ‘One of the many frightening aspects is that this could have happened to anyone.’

The purpose of my recounting these examples is not to pass any comment on the merit or otherwise of the cases that were brought against any of these men: convicted, acquitted, or over whom no further action was taken. Clearly that would be futile as I am not privy to the full range of evidence. My purpose is to join up the dots of all of this, which clearly show that there is a pattern to these cases that supports the serious doubts Hewson, and many others, are expressing about what is behind it all. Doubts that ought to be harboured by all right-minded people who believe that Britain has a criminal justice system that is second to none. It is not.

Barbara Hewson says, ‘There is something that has gone radically wrong with their processes,’ and that certainly appears to be the case. Men, young and old, many of them very vulnerable, some of them wealthy, some not, and far too many of them utterly innocent, are being targeted by our state’s prosecution apparatus, which is scything through them like field of wheat. It all has an unsavoury stench about it, and nobody dare name the cause.

I believe that cause is that our entire criminal justice system is now permeated by, and consumed by, a deeply anti-male culture born of an ideology – feminism – that is out to get men. Feminists now have power in this key organ of the state apparatus, and they are using it in the furtherance of their personal political ideology. Feminism is the beating heart of it all and feminists are to be found at every level in it, from the top in government right down to lowest bobby on the beat – or should that be ‘Bobbie’ in the interests of diversity, equality and political correctness?
In the equality madness that has engulfed our society, our police forces are being taken over by women who are undoubtedly zealously prosecuting the feminist-inspired sexual offences agenda, backed by their feminist counterparts in the CPS who issue the police with guidance at each and every stage of investigations like these. The evidence is there before us. Lyne Owens, for example, former chief constable of Surrey Police and now head of the National Crime Agency, issued an order on taking office to arrest first and investigate later in rape allegations, ⁸ and Sue Sim, discredited former chief constable of Northumbria (appointed, incidentally, by a known radical feminist zealot from Tony Blair’s government, Vera Baird as Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria, and fired for bullying her subordinates). Sim has been described by her own officers as ‘a man hater’, and has responded from a characteristically feminist standpoint, saying, ‘I have a significant fear for female victims of crime, for female officers within the force, for female staff members within the force. If people will be sexist towards a chief constable, then what are they going to do to [these people]?'⁹ –  and these are just two examples of many.
Barbara Hewson names Sir Keir Starmer, former head of the CPS, as being a prime mover in the CPS of the focus on sexual offences, and that is true, but his successor Alison Saunders has even more ‘previous’ for this than him.^{10 11} These people are just the tip of an iceberg of feminist entryists, who have silently assumed power by playing the long game, infiltrating every aspect of our society; every nook and cranny, and as a result, the strict rules and proper principles of criminal justice are being relaxed, reinterpreted, and subverted in what is nothing less than a bullying witch hunt of men who are vulnerable by virtue of youth, emotional frailty, or extreme old age, by an ideologically driven elite, and that is not justice.
In their long march through the institutions, these people have gamed the system, working their way up through it, ultimately gaining high public office from which they are noiselessly shaping our world to their feminist-driven oppression of men using the Sexual Offences Act 2003, created by feminist bigots in New Labour. Along with organisations like Women’s Aid, and Rape Crisis, both of whom have nakedly anti-male, feminist-driven agendas, and with whom both the police and the CPS are far too much in bed (as was the Home Office under Theresa May whose patronage ensured that these organisations enjoyed a seat at the top policy-making table).

Theresa May, now Prime Minister, was infamously photographed wearing a T shirt saying ‘This is what a feminist looks like’. (Just look on on the Fawcett Society’s Pinterest site and see for yourself). This allegedly conservative politician is the heroine of a key Marxist- feminist pressure group, joined by a common sisterhood identity, and one can only speculate about the long term feminist goals this self-identified feminist harbours as prime minister.¹²

Add to that the nakedly feminist academics whom the government employs to inform policy, such as Professor Jennifer Temkin and her rape myth campaign to interfere with jury decisions (which I also deal with in in my book, in some depth), and it is easy to see how feminists now rule the entire system from top to bottom. And it doesn’t stop there.
In the headlong rush to convict as many men as possible for rape, one cannot escape the stark possibility that the rules are not just being bent, they are being openly and shamelessly abandoned. This has all the hallmarks of a hijacking and subversion of our nation’s criminal justice system for ideological, one might say totalitarian, ends. Like all totalitarianism throughout history, it certainly looks as though zealots are seeing to it that prosecution power in Britain is being used to dominate and rule a specific social group in order to impose a particular ideological worldview – feminism – which is nakedly and unashamedly misandrist, and is intent on prosecuting an evil gender class war of gigantic proportions.

The vile feminist Catherine Comins once said, ‘Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience,’ and it seems as clear as the nose on your face that this evil ethos is running rampant through our entire criminal justice system today. But men do not gain from the experience. Invariably, they are financially ruined, often they are unutterably traumatised for life, and they sometimes kill themselves. This foul feminist attitude is as inhumane as it is dangerous to everyone.

And who benefits? In their newspeak language, the excuse invariably given by feminists (endlessly repeated by the feminist controlled mainstream media) is that these men are ‘perpetrators’ whose ‘victims’ need justice. However, the fundamental principle of justice in a civilised society is not to obtain justice for individuals, or for specific causes, and least of all to prosecute an ideology. Justice is not a personal fiefdom of those in high office who seek to use it for their own ends. True justice belongs to society as a whole, and it is done by society, to society, for society.
In a civilised nation, a criminal justice system is meant to work with two implicit justifications:

1. The principle of desert: the punishment of criminal wrongdoing by exacting punishment in proportion to the criminal act (as in ‘He got his just deserts’, or ‘The punishment fits the crime’.)
2. The principle of utility, the socially useful accomplishment of the control of crime, which in turn also has two underpinning principles: the proportionate incapacitation of offenders to prevent them continuing to do harm to society, based on the use of imprisonment or other curtailment of freedom (such as tagging, etc.), or through financial incapacitation by way of fines, etc., and the return or rehabilitation of offenders into broader society.

Furthermore, justice needs to be cold, not driven by emotions – least of all anger – and those who administer it must see themselves as servants of justice, not moral crusaders with partisan aims who are intent on changing society using he power vested in them.

In a civilised society, a man is innocent until proven guilty by the overwhelming weight of evidence against him, collected dispassionately by the police and presented for objective evaluation by a jury of his peers, not his superiors – the ‘twelve good men and true’ who decide on his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Only on that basis can a conviction be considered safe. Yet, the pattern of these cases, their nature, and their targets – particularly the old high-profile ones – together with the undoubted selectivity in evidence collecting procedures, and the hanging out of suspects like Sir Cliff Richard to fish for complainants all points to a planned and concerted attack on patriarchy, that sworn enemy of feminists. (I mean what better examples of patriarchs could you get than old men?)
The idea of arrest first and investigate later is an abomination (as well as being illegal, incidentally, as a matter of legal principle). Hanging men out like a piece of meat in a jungle, hoping to attract predators, is an outrageous abuse of process under the law of a civilised nation. Prosecuting men for multiple offences that have no common thread or common modus operandii, with very little evidence that would allow each individual allegation to stand on its own, is just a numbers game. It amounts to nothing less than a scatter-gun approach that is designed to throw enough dirt at someone in the hope that some of it will stick. But that is not justice, and it is not the honest dispensation of justice.

I believe the time has now come for action to be taken to investigate this subversive, socially destructive phenomenon that is sweeping through our criminal justice system, and to stamp on it, hard.

I believe the time has come for a full public inquiry to be instigated to carry out:

1. A full analysis, case by case, of the evidence collected by police and the CPS, to include an analysis of all charging decisions in these recent cases, including those where no further action was taken, to ascertain what rationale was applied when initiating the investigation, and particularly what steps were taken to ascertain that the complainant was credible, rather than just being implicitly believed
2. A detailed examination of the use of public interest clause consistently offered by the CPS as their justification for proceeding in these cases
3. An assessment of the extent to which feminist dogma have been part of the evidence collection process, and charging decisions. For example the implicit belief that the claimant must be implicitly believed without objective corroboration being sought, and whether the ‘rape myths’ myth was a factor in the process
4. An assessment of the extent to which feminist dogma are being incorporated into criminal justice policy. In particular, have organisations such as Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis been actively at work drafting policy?
5. An assessment of the extent to which individuals in public office might have been applying their feminist beliefs to the execution of their public duties

And, depending on what is found, we need a total clear-out of entryist feminist ideologues from our entire criminal justice system. Individuals need to be named, shamed, and not only sacked but prosecuted for misconduct in a public office.
I also believe the time has come for the creation of an open register of public servants who hold feminist beliefs, and for it to be made a legal requirement for everyone currently employed in public service, as well as those making job applications, to register on it. Feminism is a deeply divisive, openly partisan political ideology, and those who are likely to apply it in their work for the nation, need to identify themselves.
I believe the bizarre legal anonymity of accusers in sex offences cases must be lifted. It is utterly against the spirit of justice that an accuser can have her name protected by law for life, especially if she is a false accuser. If a woman makes a false accusation, it is not right or just that her victim (for that is what men who are falsely accused are) has his name bandied around in the press and social media from the moment of his arrest (or even without an arrest being made, as in the case of Sir Cliff), while she enjoys lifetime anonymity. Even if the man is vindicated, dirt sticks, and that man will carry the stigma for life.

Apart from the fact that it is obvious that guaranteed anonymity must be an encouragement for women to make false or unfounded accusations, because they know there will be no consequences, in a truly equal society a woman who makes a false allegation should be at the same level of jeopardy to her good name as the man she is accusing.

Giving men the same legal anonymity as women is not the answer because justice not only needs to be done, it must be seen to be done, and in any case, to paraphrase a saying from the  Old Testament, those who ascend the hill of the law need to have clean hands and a pure heart.
Anonymity of anyone in criminal proceedings is fundamentally against the spirit of justice, especially in the context of the common law, which is crafted by the people for the people. It is the people’s property, and the people’s servant, not the servant of kings, despots, or the state. The people, whose criminal justice system it really is, need to be able to see justice being done, and that means being able to assess the veracity, motives, and character of an accuser as much as those attributes of the accused. That is the only way justice can be fully seen to be done.
I also believe the time has come for a statute of limitations to be created for sexual offences, as is the case in most states of America. This would prevent the distortions caused by the prosecution of historical allegations, which, apart from the obvious – that sex abuse today would not have been even remotely considered as sex abuse only 25 years ago, let alone 50 years ago – allegations of historical offences must inevitably be based on reconstructed memory. Our brains have evolved to seek patterns and be engines of meaning from very little fact. They work on frighteningly small amounts of data to arrive at conclusions, and often those conclusions are wildly wrong.
In any case, as again I point out at more length in my book, false memory syndrome can be induced by the way interviews of women who make sexual offences claims are now being carried out, and it is a known phenomenon. Psychologists have understood it for years, and in the absence of hard evidence, such as DNA, which is conspicuously absent from these historical offence cases, it adds to the already present danger of unsafe convictions, which do seem to be largely based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence.
Hearsay has never been admissible as evidence and circumstantial evidence cannot be the central plank of proof, only as a support of hard evidence. However, that is precisely what seems to have been going on in the cases I have mentioned. God knows how many more have passed this way.
Finally, and very importantly, I believe that false accusers need to be vigorously, publicly, and mercilessly prosecuted, also pour encourager les autres. Only that way will we return to a place of social sanity and even a semblance of civilisation.

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