Sister Frances Dominica

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

The present preoccupation with sex crime and victims of crime has given rise to a new type of victim: the falsely accused.

These victims, both males and females, and their supportive partners rarely receive the attention from policy-makers they deserve. Their institutions can be equally rejecting, such as the teaching and medical professions and even the church, The collapse of some recent high profile investigations has prompted a more sceptical approach to some accusers, but

I believe that victims of false accusations, routinely abandoned and ignored, deserve more consideration.

Magna Carta.

Any objection against the fashionable ideology ‘believe the victim', supported by former Director of Public Prosecutions and now Leader of the Labour opposition in the UK, Sir Keir Starmer QC, immediately supported by Tory Theresa May and her puppy Alison Saunders would be out of step with current CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) practice. The convention of blaming the accused without trial has become endemic in the profession.

Various victims of false accusations, of whom the most outspoken is the well-known BBC radio presenter Paul Gambaccini, have voiced dismay at the authorities’ willingness to entertain complaints that in the past would have been seen as vexatious.

How It's Done.

There at least 11 pathways to false allegations of sexual assault. These are:

Lying; Implied consent; False memories; Intoxication; Antisocial personality disorder; Borderline personality disorder; Histrionic personality disorder; Delirium; Psychotic disorders; Dissociation; and Intellectual disability.

These omit the honest but mistaken person. A classic example of this is the rape victim who misidentifies his or her assailant in an identity parade. Easy to do when the pressure is on, you're in an alien environment and you feel the pressure to do something positive.

Many Motives.

People may lie about sexual assaults for a variety of motives: to inflict harm on the accused and his family; as revenge for some perceived slight or failure; for monetary gain; to get out of trouble; to explain a pregnancy; to gain the upper hand in a custody dispute, to be awarded benefit for a third child in UK, or to fit in with a group that is making accusations against a particular person or institution (the ‘bandwagon effect’). It is also recognised that people who start by lying may come to believe in their own stories.

Confusion over consent

An added problem has emerged as a result of the redefining of what is meant by consent.

Many feminists have campaigned for the introduction of ‘affirmative consent’ policies. These place the responsibility on male partners to obtain consent to every stage of a sexual encounter. In San Francisco last autumn, one health educator told a class of 16 year-olds that they should "Obtain consent every 10 minutes" during sex.

This excessively prescriptive approach may cause some young people to later redefine the nature of the contact with an encounter as non-consensual, with the benefit of hindsight. What they do not understand is that their behaviour could plausibly be interpreted as consensual at the time. What does not help is if others, who are consulted, become obsessed with trying to establish if the scenario amounts to a rape case. Some feminists believe every sexual encounter is a rape.

Drugs, Alcohol.

The intoxication of both or one party to a sexual encounter can create particular difficulties. Alcohol and other drugs can dis-inhibit; they can also create cognitive distortions, memory gaps and blackouts. Persons recovering from a drugged state may confabulate to fill in memory gaps and develop a narrative of what they think ‘must have’ occurred. People can also develop false memories of abuse, for example as a result of contact with therapists, pressure from peers or from significant others (such as partners or parents), or even from reading stories in the media.

Mental Disorder.

It is a sad fact that those with mental disorders or learning disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable to sexual assault. But it should also be recognised that third parties – such as care providers – may stand to benefit from a false allegation. That mental problems could potentially lead to false allegations is rarely discussed. But it is a very serious issue, which would benefit from wider debate. Those with personality disorders may be motivated to make false accusations out of motives of revenge, or attention-seeking. Some may mis-perceive non-sexual events as sexual. Those who are delusional may also make false accusations of sexual misconduct as in the case of my own false accuser. Those who are learning disabled may innocently make sexualized comments, which may be seized on by those caring for them as a sign of abuse. They can be highly suggestible.

Disclosure of Medical and Other Records.

Disclosure of medical records, counselling and welfare or psychiatric records is often a difficult and time consuming process for the defence. The prosecution frequently take an obstructive view whereby only a small sample of records are obtained which confirm a report of sexual abuse at some point in a long medical and psychiatric history. On the other hand, there may be a blanket refusal to disclose medical records because there has been no prior report of abuse. Often there is a fundamental divergence of interest here. First, the police and CPS take the view that the past history is either irrelevant to the investigation or else a product of the alleged offences. Second, the defence on the other hand are concerned as to life history and alternate causes of problems, disposition to fabricate or fantasise and the potential effects of suggestion, prescription drug and alcohol abuse. This may result in a failure to address legitimate disclosure requests, redacted records disclosure giving misleading impression, incomplete records, the need for a court application at a late stage, and late disclosure on material on the day of the trial. I my case, the failure of the police and CPS to disclose damning psychological information which they had held from the outset of the investigation did not come to light until the moment their final prosecution witness was cross-examined and she inadvertently let the information slip. This resulted in the dismissal of the jury and an apology to me for a wrongful prosecution! Hence my new knowledge that the police do sometimes knowingly and deliberately manoeuvre themselves into the position of being an implacable and unprincipled deadly enemy.

For more than 30 years, my dear friend Sister Frances Dominica was a constant presence at Helen House, the children’s hospice she founded in Oxford in 1982. To generations of ill children and their families, the slight, softly-spoken nun became a friend and a lifeline in the darkest of times, while the small centre built in the grounds of her convent inspired a growing network of similar refuges from Canada to South Africa to Japan. If the children’s hospice movement had a figurehead, it was the unimpeachable nun, who was awarded an OBE by the Queen, interviewed on desert Island Discs and showered with honorary degrees and awards.

In 2013, however, her relationship with the hospice was abruptly severed. One July afternoon the charity’s chief executive contacted the Anglican sister, born Frances Ritchie, and said he had been told that two women had made allegations of historical sexual abuse against her. He told her she was immediately barred from having any contact with residents, family members or staff while the matter was investigated, and that she was not to set foot in Helen House or its sister hospice for young adults, Douglas House.

Sister Frances was never prosecuted over the allegations, which she wholly denies. In November 2013, four months after Oxfordshire county council first informed the hospice of the accusations, Thames Valley police interviewed her under caution and she was bailed. She heard nothing further, she says, until July 2014, a year after first coming under suspicion, when the Crown Prosecution Service informed her it would be taking no further action due to “insufficient evidence”.

“But if you don’t go to trial, you are never found innocent,” the 73-year-old now says.

After conducting a lengthy confidential risk assessment, the trustees of Helen and Douglas House announced in July 2015 they would be making her temporary ban from the hospices permanent. They said in a statement that though “no conclusions about the allegations could be made”, the safeguarding standards of their regulator, the Care Quality Commission, obliged them to continue to bar her permanently from the premises. “Our unswerving dedication to care and proper governance made any other course of action unthinkable,” the trustees said later.

Sister Frances has now reluctantly resigned as a trustee. Her relationship with the hospices she founded is now conducted at a distance of several hundred metres, looking out across her convent’s carefully tended lawns at the centres she is officially deemed too risky to enter. No one other than the nun and her accusers can be absolutely certain that she is telling the truth in insisting on her innocence, and the allegations do not relate to Helen and Douglas House or to children. Speaking to a similarly falsely accused film-maker for YouTube Sister Frances acknowledges that to some people her name will never be clear of the whiff of suspicion.

https://youtu.be/BtP_mpeZZVo

Her gender makes her case unusual, but she is far from alone in finding herself in a form of reputational limbo – publicly accused of serious crimes, but neither convicted of them by a jury nor able fully to clear her name.

The sensational collapse of the metropolitan Police's 'Operation Midland', investigating claims of a VIP paedophile ring made by a now adult man called “Nick”, (Carl Beech) means that the former MP Harvey Proctor has been added to the lengthening list of figures – including the DJ Paul Gambaccini, former armed forces chief Lord Bramall and TV personalities Jim Davidson, Freddie Starr and Jimmy Tarbuck – who have all been investigated and publicly named over sexual abuse allegations, have seen their investigations dropped, like that of Sister Frances, because of insufficient evidence.

“In this country you are supposed to be innocent until you are proved guilty,” Sister Frances says. “But in any kind of safeguarding issue, it feels as if you are guilty until proved innocent.”

That vexed issue was unlikely to be made any easier to resolve by the halting of Scotland Yard’s Operation Midland investigation. The force has said that one of its senior officers was wrong to have said that he considered Beech's claims to be “credible and true”. Three days before the Midland collapse, however, the College of Policing wrote to forces reiterating its guidance that complainants should be believed unless there was “credible” evidence to the contrary. A month earlier, writing in the Guardian, the chief constable of the Metropolitan police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, had said public confidence would only be restored if all alleged rape victims were not unconditionally believed by police.

The death Of Justice

Unlike many of her fellow accused, the investigation of Sister Frances was not immediately made public. Her name entered the public domain only when it was leaked to the Daily Telegraph in 2015, two years after she was first accused. She echoes Gambaccini and others in calling for the law to be changed to allow those accused of sexual abuse to have anonymity

“Until and if you are convicted. If you got through trial and are convicted, then of course your name should be out there. Ninety percent of the time, though, I think we should have anonymity just as the alleged victims have anonymity.”

She says she agonises over questions of guilt and innocence in others. “You read reports, you hear people speak, and then you hear the very opposite from somebody else. All anyone can honestly know is their own involvement, either as victim or perpetrator. We will never know the truth about other people. It’s very, very complex.” Her own protestations of innocence, of course, fall into the same category. “I suppose I just have to carry on knowing in my heart that I am innocent and doing my best,” she says.

Being separated from her work at the hospices has been immensely painful, she says, “because if you have journeyed with families through illness and death, and the funeral and the bereavement – and bereavement, as you can imagine, goes on for a long time after the child dies – you are very close to them.” Sebastian’s Action Trust, another charity of which the nun is a patron, offered her its full support after the investigation was dropped, saying it had found “absolutely no reason to exclude Sister Frances from our activities”.

In her own case, says the Sister Frances, the fact that her name is known in connection with the allegations is not her biggest concern. “I was nervous about it at the beginning, but I really don’t mind now that people know because I think it’s part of my role.” That role, she says, is to become a voice for those in her position – particularly teachers, fellow carers or clergy – who find themselves similarly accused, often similarly excluded from their roles because of safeguarding concerns yet unable ever to prove their innocence. “I think, without meaning to be arrogant, I think I want to be a voice for the voiceless. Because I have been …” She trails off. “I was going to say I have been a victim.” Is she uncomfortable with that word? “Yes, because I don’t feel it. But there are a lot of people in my situation who do feel they are victims, and feel very alone in it. And that’s where I am. I’d like to be alongside, in whatever way is appropriate.

Sister Frances is currently the President of the national charity F.A.C.T., (Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers), of which I am also a board member. https://factuk.org/

See also the film in which I and others provide a brief insight into our own stories of false accusation. https://youtu.be/Zwafn2NO0mw

I want to see the implementation of the Henriques recommendations to ensure impartial and complete investigation in sexual offences cases. This includes the examination of complainants' computer and mobile phones where indicated and an end to the current practice of allowing the complainant to cherry pick and provide evidence as suits them.

I want to see a thorough investigation according to the CIPA code of practice prior to a charging decision, effective sanctions for failure to comply with the CPIA code and disclosure obligations to include all communications with effective remedies to acquitted defendants, the training of police and CPS that includes an understanding of obligations and case strength/frailty, charging decisions and disclosure which would include training by appropriate defence lawyers.

Statutory Guidance

Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act (CPIA) Code of Practice is the Revised Code of Practice governing disclosure of unused material in criminal cases.