Free Money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uMgcRUYBs

There may be many respectable character witnesses willing to write to your solicitor, and some even willing to give a personal testimony to Crown Court witnessing to your good character. There were over 200 in my case. It mkay also be that your accuser's fantasies are almost beyond belief. The jury themselves may have a strong suspicion that there is an element of malice, a desire to get financial reward, or serious delusion in your accuser's testimony

But the outgoing assumption of guilt by the court provides a powerful disincentive to any jury to challenge the prevailing culture. For them do do this would require them to question their own dependence upon a civilised and fair legal system working to sustain a law-abiding society that has always provided them with the assurance of their own safety and security. To challenge the assumption of the court, indeed the very language used - labelling the accuser 'the victim' and the accused 'the perpetrator', would seem to strike at the heart of the very culture of which they have been the lifetime beneficiaries. They are part of this culture. The Crown Court is the sage and reliable institution that is concerned with justice, and no-one wants to see a Savile walking free and unpunished from their courtroom. Given this understandable reluctance to go against the trend, the pressure for a guilty verdict must be enormous.

And yet the human right of every accused person is the presumption of innocence in a court of law. 'Innocent until proven guilty.'

Juries in sex cases - and only in sex cases are thus conflicted.

According to Richard Webster (The Secret of Bryn Estyn: "The Making Of A Modern Witch Hunt." Oxford The Orwell Press) Cheshire police officers conducting investigations into Greystone Heath and other institutions for Operation Granite in their search for perpetrators and victims of sex crime made special arrangements with the prison authorities to interview current adult prisoners who had been incarcerated in homes as children. These were prisoners who had surfaced following police trawling operations and who were willing to allege that they had been victims in various institutions as children. The men were taken from their jails and interviewed in police rape suites. No surprise then that very soon the word that there was money to be made in compensation soon swept through the prisons, producing a tsunami of prisoners alleging abuse. No other word was used to describe these claimants in these interviews, resulting reports, investigations and court cases than 'victims'.

It is a worrying trend that these so-called 'victims' are encouraged by no-win-no-fee solicitors, who are promising on their websites to be able to obtain compensation for injuries, physical or emotional where or not there ends up being a conviction. This is an open invitation to corruption. Of course, as with any alleged victim of a sexual offence, the protection offered by The Sexual Offences Act means the complainant's name cannot be published for the whole of their lifetime. This restriction lasts for the whole of the lifetime of the complainant, no matter how strong the evidence is that she (or he) has lied.

A new field of miscarriages of justice has emerged from the methods employed by the police in investigating various allegations of abuse of children in residential care homes at the close of the 20th century (BBC Panorama " In The Name of the Children." Producer David Rose). This was first revealed by a Home Office inquiry into police methods. The end result was that over-zealous police activities, along with personal injuries lawyers promising large amounts of financial compensation had been a major source of these miscarriages. Claimants were sought out and of course many came forward for the money. And yet politicians were apt to discount this area of injustice. No policies were put in place to counteract the practice, and there was precious little academic research activity in this area. As reported in "Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse." Ros Burnett It hardly appeared in any textbooks or research papers.

After the 2001 general election Lord Woolfe, Lord Chief Justice observed in an interview that that might well have been wrong convictions in historical abuse cases and that evidence given by complainants may not have been accurate when they had been 'tempted' by compensation awards. The dangers were particularly acute when police asked, 'Did anything happen to you?' (Telegraph 24th November 2001).

Labour MP Chris Mullen chaired the Commons Select Committee on home affairs, at which David Rose, a journalist among others, gave an affirmative answer to the question put to them, "Is there a risk that the advertisement of prospective awards of compensation in child abuse cases encourages people to come forward with fabricated allegations?" The resulting report warned that recent trawling operations into historic child abuse cases had produced 'a new genre of miscarriages of justice'. Following publication of the report Mullins himself commented, " I am in no doubt that a number of innocent people have been convicted, and that many other innocent people who have not been convicted have had their lives ruined." The future Prime Minister David Cameron was a member of that select committee, and it has been clearly demonstrated by the court trauma that I and my family have suffered, and continue to suffer are some of the innocent individuals whose lives have been utterly ruined by fabricated allegations. We are victims both of a miscarriage of justice, and of the agonies of consequent approbation of the people of power in my profession. We find ourselves by poverty without recourse to the law. Our hopeless expectation is that we shall have no satisfactory resolution in our lifetime.

The Balance of Probability

The Criminal Injuries Compensation system reassures claimants that they need not even wait for the conclusion of a trial in order to obtain their payout. If in the opinion of the administrators of the scheme, whilst the evidence for the trial is being gathered, the balance of probability is that the offence took place, compens-ation will be paid. Google 'Sexual Assault Compensation' and you will find law firms offering helpful Compensation Calculators for you to to see how much you can 'earn' according to how much you have suffered. The police cooperate with this. The money comes out of the taxpayer. They would be less keen to play in this beautiful game if it came out of the police budget.

In our ordinary daily interactions with friends, colleagues and families we all make little mistakes. It's our common experience of living. This experience is so common and international that the Christian gospel is based in an acknowledgement of personal sin and guilt, because even in these tiny errors, including those we neither planned nor intended we feel remorse. But when one of these tiny errors is directed against us personally we feel a level of moral indignation when the accusation is false. The reason is, that as social animals, it strikes at the heart of our moral being. I believe that it is in this area of our existence that we find our humanity. (See Brand. 2007:19 "Fractured Families: The Untold Anguish of the Falsely Accused." BFMS). If the justice system you are caught-up in accepts uncorroborated allegations as evidence of guilt, labelling the accused as 'the perpetrator' before any trial, there is no possibility of escape.

On some estimates 97,000 people claim to have been raped each year. On average 15,670 become recorded crimes, and in 2012-13 there were 2,333 convictions. A CPS review found that over a 17-month period, prosecutions for false allegations made up only '0.69% of rape cases'. Their figures. In terms of hellish suffering though, taking their figures as accurate, that's 388 individuals and their families - say 1500 people - every 17 months. Over a period of a decade that 180,000 people. Collateral damage? In light of these peobablt conservative figures the tag 'only' seems somehow inappropriate. These figures do not reflect the fact that most falsely accused men especially after having to go through the financially and emotionally debilitating process of court procedure, a good number of them suffering symptoms of PTSD as a result of their stress, do not have the financial o r emotional resources to prosecute their false accusers. After their war, they find themselves washed-up almost lifeless on the enemy beach. This is not literary licence. It accurately describes my and many others' ongoing experience.

What is left of their hollowed-out existence they spend trying to restore their lives and reputations. They become engaged in trying to shovel-out the sewage false accusers have caused to flow through their homes rather than getting revenge or, if only, justice.

No-one sees the secret damage that is done to the heart, bones and soul - just as painful as that of the actually sexually abused, and just as life-changing. Other people, like my family, try to find a way to forgive and understand - move on. We do not believe in the eye-for-an-eye morality in a world where the seeing man in king. Nor do we abandon the hope for a reconciliation and for cultural, sectarian and moral healing. This is the kind of healing that can't be achieved in the context of financial compensation. It can only be gained, we believe, through truth and justice. A willingness to acknowledge sin and failure. It is, we know, a vain hope, and it will never happen. But at least, it enables us to hang on to the final threads of our humanity.