Vulnerable victims believe that the establishment covers up when highly placed men are accused of sexual abuse, and the Lowell Goddard inquiry seems to confirm that they are right. Ever more colour is added to their fears when each time a celebrity is acquitted of sex crimes the establishment calls, yet again, for rape defendants to be protected by anonymity.
Victims must particularly wonder at the most recent call for special rules for sex abusers, which emanates from the home affairs select committee. The report was about police bail not rape, cited no research, no evidence and did no examination of the issue.
Paul Gambaccini described to the committee how he suffered on bail, long months with allegations for which he was never charged. He has Theresa May to thank for that, as do the similarly long-bailed journalists in phone hacking cases. She failed to legislate for change in 2011, despite campaigners urging her to do so, when a case called Hookway first highlighted the practice of police repeatedly extending bail. Periods on bail need to be short, and consistent practice adopted on naming of suspects. Gambaccini, and earlier, were named quickly while allegations against Rolf Harris were kept secret for months. However, none of this justifies anonymity for sex case defendants.
The reputations of people accused are jeopardised by publicity about many kinds of crime. It is doubtful that Christopher Jefferies, grossly defamed by the press as the likely killer of Joanna Yeates, was in a better position than Paul Gambaccini. Pornography, child cruelty, torturing of animals, robbery with violence against elderly ladies at home and many more of our viler crimes cause stigma that might not end with an acquittal. Few argue for anonymity for those.
Giving anonymity only to sex crime defendants would send out a clear message that they are in need of special protection that other defendants do not need. They are especially not guilty, the argument must go, because such cases are often flawed, too flimsy to justify naming them and likely to fail. The witnesses against them must similarly be flawed, less capable of belief. In a trial that could present a jury with a picture weighted against the complainant but, rape charities say, even more it tells victims that they start the process with a special stigma attached and will have a hard job being believed. It tells the public that sexual abuse victims are a dodgy cohort of potential liars. Why else would defendants be given special protection against them?
The further well known argument is that when a defendant is named other victims, who would lack confidence to testify on their own, gain courage and also see the imperative of speaking to save others. The committee calls this the ‘flypaper practice’ of naming someone ‘vaguely hoping’ someone else will come forward. Yet it has played a key role in recent convictions, especially of Clifford and Harris.
Reports of sexual exploitation have increased by 60 per cent in the last two years thanks to the successful prosecutions of celebrities like Harris and Hall, and to substantial effort by police and support services to make victims confident that they will be believed. The stories of victims in those trials have helped us to better understand how difficult it is to tell anyone about intimate abuse and how damaging such offences can be. The Labour home affairs team has taken a strong stance on legal change to better tackle abuse and better funding for rape support services. Constant stirrings of the anonymity argument threatens to turn back the clock, discourage victims from seeking help and point the finger at establishment cover up yet again.
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Vera Baird is police and crime commissioner for Northumbria. She tweets @northumbriapcc
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It is time for Parliament to tidy up the shambolic law on sexual offences.
First, the replacement of the offences of rape, serious sexual assault, and sexual assault, with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, enabling the sentences to be doubled. The sex of either party would be immaterial. There must be no anonymity either for adult accusers or for adult complainants. Either we have an open system of justice, or we do not.
There must be no suggestion, in this or in any other area, of any reversal of the burden of proof, which the changes to the rape law at the behest of Harriet Harman by the supine Parliament of the High Blair Era have already gone a long way to compromising, with the CPS now proposing to finish the job unilaterally. Remember, that change was brought to you by the same people who brought you the Iraq War. But for this one, they did not even demand a nominal ban on foxhunting.
Secondly, the age of consent should effectively be raised to 18, by making it a criminal offence for anyone to commit any sexual act with or upon any person under that age who was more than two years younger than herself, or to incite any such person to commit any such act with or upon her or any third party anywhere in the world.
The maximum sentence would be twice the difference in age, to the month where that was less than three years, or a life sentence where that difference was at least five years. No different rules for “positions of trust”, which are being used against male, but not female, 18-year-olds looking after female, but not male, Sixth Formers visiting universities.
And no provision, as at present, for boys to be prosecuted at any age, even if they are younger than the girls involved, whereas girls have to be 16. The law on indecent images is also enforced in totally different ways in relation to boys and girls of the same age, or even of boys who are younger than the girls. That must end.
At least unless they decided as adults to seek to make contact with their children, the sometimes enforced financial liability of male victims for pregnancies resulting from their sexual abuse ought also to be ruled out. How’s that for victim-blaming?
Thirdly, it ought to be made a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides.
No persecution of girls and very young women whose lives had already been so bad that they had become prostitutes. No witch-hunting of boys and very young men who were desperate to lose their virginities. But the treatment of women and men as moral, intellectual and legal equals.
And fourthly, the definition of obscenity as material depicting acts that were themselves illegal, or which was reasonably likely to incite or encourage such acts. Sentencing would be the same as for the illegal act in question in each case.
American-style legislation for internally administered “balance of probabilities” or “preponderance of evidence” tests to sexual assault allegations at universities or elsewhere must be banned by Statute. It is incompatible with the Rule of Law to punish someone for a criminal offence of which he has not been convicted.
As for teaching things in schools, how is that curriculum time currently being filled? Apply the Eton Test. Would this be taught in a school that assumed its pupils to be future Prime Ministers or Nobel Laureates? If not, then instead fill the hours with something that is. Teach Latin. Someone will.