By Ann Widdecombe for the the Express
Read original at: http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/830351/law-justice-prosecute-false-rape-accusers
It is axiomatic that justice should be pursued with absolute independence from any political pressures.
The Rochdale child abuse scandal arose from the fear of inflaming racial tensions, the perpetrators being nine Asian men.
Ethnicity should never have played any part in the police investigation.
Justice is blind: she does not see black, Asian or white.
She sees, or rather should see, only victims and wrongdoers.
Rochdale may be the most dramatic illustration but one-sided justice where race is involved crops up time and again.
I still feel anger at the case, many years ago, of a young soldier who was prosecuted for insulting a Muslim.
The Muslim admitted in court that he had begun the quarrel with racist abuse at the soldier but only the latter was prosecuted.
Justice surely decrees that it should have been neither or both in the dock.
Similarly politics has governed the attitudes of police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to violations of the 1967 Abortion Act.
Even when doctors were caught pre-signing forms in bulk there was no prosecution.
Indeed there was not even a fitness to practise hearing despite a blatant breach of the law.
Now it is rape which has been politicised with the playing field tilted at an ever steeper angle against the accused and false allegations hardly ever prosecuted.
Readers may remember Alexander Economou, who was falsely accused of rape.
The police decided at an early stage that no action should be taken against him but failed utterly to follow through his own complaint of false allegation.
So he began a private prosecution and only then did the CPS start taking it seriously.
He also complained about the police and a subsequent report which upheld his complaint and which he has made available to me, contains some very strong indications of police reluctance to take action against those who wreck lives with lies.
The policeman investigating the case sought to explain the inaction thus: “It’s a brave step for somebody to suggest that a rape victim is making up an allegation…”
It then gets worse as he later observes: “It is a dangerous precedent to set if we start accusing any rape victim of making up an allegation…”
Worse still comes the admission of a political approach: “If we were to have assisted with prosecuting the victim we would undermine the work we achieve in encouraging victims to come forward and report… We would be sending out the wrong message…”
Note the use of the word “victim” even where there was no crime but that is the least of it.
This is a clear and unequivocal admission that the police simply do not want to pursue those who lie because it sends out “the wrong message”.
So much for justice.
This very week we have seen an experienced judge rapped over the knuckles for daring to question the wisdom of bringing rape accusations to court when there is no evidence to convict beyond all reasonable doubt.
Sadly this policeman’s account of a one-sided approach to justice is both credible and true.
Read original at: http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/830351/law-justice-prosecute-false-rape-accusers