In the UK, there’s a pendulum swing against upfront and rabid media coverage of unproven sex allegations against high-profile figures; the same issue needs examining here, CLA says
Pendulum swings in sex abuse cases
By Bill Rowlings*
There seems to be the start of a pendulum swing-back around cases of historic allegations of sexual abuse.
A trend is clearly evident in the UK – a trio of high profile people has come out publicly as a campaign group in newspapers – but there is less public evidence of movement in Australia so far.
“There is no doubt it is important to get the balance right,” Civil Liberties Australia president, Dr Kristine Klugman, said.‘We believe academics and legal researchers should be analysing the trends in Australia, and advising whether some protections are needed for unconvicted people who face charges as perpetrators of sexual abuse crimes, particularly where the allegations relate to a long time ago.
“There are clearly very many genuine cases, and very many where instances are not reported at the time, when they should be. But it is also true that it’s quite easy for individuals, or the police, for their own ends to make unfounded allegations that someone is a pedophile, or has abused children.
“There’s very little publicity for the number of people acquitted, but blazing publicity for those convicted, so the public is left with an impression that everyone charged is guilty.
“The problem is that a person – usually male – has his reputation trashed the moment an allegation is made public, so it is wide open to use in a revenge attack against someone for a perceived slight, now or many decades ago.
“It requires virtually no effort to destroy someone in that way. It is many months and sometimes years before the charged person gets a chance to defend himself in court.
“Then, if found innocent, his reputation remains trashed in 99% of cases, because the publicity given to innocence never approaches the banner headlines, photos and video footage devoted to the initial ‘expose’,” DrKlugman said.
‘Clear and present flaw’
“That is a clear and present flaw in our justice system, and one which needs full and proper analysis to determine whether we should change procedures to protect people until they are proven guilty.
“We must not allow the media to become judge and jury in Australia.
“While the same legal protections should apply to everyone, it is true that high-profile people attract more publicity and have much more to lose in terms of national reputation.
“CLA is closely watching one case where there is a distinct possibility that an historical sexual allegation, of a very minor nature and decades old, may be being used to silence a critic of police. We will be most interested to see what the outcome is: we trust that, when the case is tried, the judge will outline the full circumstances behind the laying of the charge, and the way additional females may have been ‘encouraged’ and assisted to ‘remember’ things from many decades ago.”
Dr Klugman said men – overwhelmingly men – were also at grave risk of facing fabricated allegations when marriages break down.
“Family lawyers says that not infrequently wives make sexual abuse allegations against husbands to try to get the upper hand in divorce cases. Anecdotally, women sometimes go overboard in trying to ensure that they retain total, or maximum possible, control of any children of a marriage. ”
“Sexual abuse is wrong. It is wrong if perpetrated by a man. It is wrong if false sexual abuse allegations are perpetrated by a female or by a man, or by the police, against a man, or against a woman,” she said.
It is hard to find quality data around the use, or abuse, or such allegations in Australia:
Family law court cases in Melbourne and Canberra between January 1994 and June 1995 found that one half of all the cases which went to pre-hearing conference involved allegations of some form of abuse. In Melbourne, 24.1% of those involved allegations of sexual abuse and 48.6% in Canberra (Brown, Frederico, Hewitt and Sheehan 1998, as quoted by Bravehearts: Child Sexual Assault: Facts and Statistics Dec 2012)
“The 20-year-old statistics are nowhere near a good enough basis for current legal reform to be debated,” Dr Klugman said. “It is certainly time lawyers and academics devoted much more effort and funding to ensuring that cases of males, or females, being destroyed by sexual abuse allegations are minimised.
“On the face of it, there’s a major anomaly in the allegations of marital sexual abuse in one major Australian city being twice the rate of another major city, as the Bravehearts site reports.
“Unfortunately, we no longer have a proper Australian Institute of Criminology to undertake proper studies. They have been absorbed into the Australian Crime Commission, which is entirely unlikely to prioritise such studies…even if it had the expertise to carry them out,” DrKlugman said.
Campaign builds in England
Meanwhile, in England, there’s a formal campaign building, even as police there in February 2016 have thrown seven more charges at Australian singer-entertainer Rolf Harris, 85. He was locked away in 2014 for six years in jail for sexual abuse of children.
The Observer recently reported that the UK’s former international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has joined forces with BBC radio presenter Paul Gambaccini and comedian Jimmy Tarbuck to press for greater protection for people under investigation over historical sex abuse allegations.
Mitchell was the Minister at the centre of the ‘Plebgate’affair, which hinged on what he had said to police on duty at the entrance to Downing Street, where the British PM and Treasurer live.
Jamie Doward and Rod Ardehali, writing in The Observer, said Mitchell was lobbying for legal changes in the UK to protect high-profile figures against false historical claims
“Mitchell has personally lobbied the justice secretary, Michael Gove, over the issue and said that Gove – who also holds the title of lord chancellor – was giving ‘serious consideration’ to the mounting concerns about the way in which high-profile figures have been wrongly accused of paedophile acts,” the Observer reported.
“I think the treatment of Paul Gambaccini by the British justice system was a disgrace,” said Mitchell, who accompanied the veteran DJ to a meeting with Gove shortly before Christmas 2015, when Tarbuck’s concerns were also aired. Both Gambaccini and Tarbuck were arrested and questioned by police investigating historical child abuse allegations, only to be told months later that no case would be brought against them.
After his arrest, Gambaccini described the allegations as “total fiction” and added: “I knew the so-called file on me wouldn’t have anything in it.” Appearing before a House of Commons select committee in 2015 to give evidence, he said he believed he had been used as a human “flypaper” to encourage other people to bring similar allegations against him, adding that he had lost more than $400,000 in earnings and legal costs.
PHOTO: Lord Brammall…his treatment ’should shame every one of us’.
Tarbuck was arrested by North Yorkshire police over claims that he had assaulted a boy in Harrogate during the 1970s. After his arrest he was later investigated over six separate allegations.
After the case against him was dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence, Tarbuck expressed his distress at the accusations. “The real thing that annoys me is these people can remain anonymous,” he said, adding that the experience had shown him “who your friends are, your real mates”.
The two are among a number of high-profile figures, both living and now dead, who have been accused of sex abuse. Allegations against Edward Heath, the former Tory prime minister, have been rejected by his friends. “We had a new low for the British justice system when a police officer stood outside the house of a most distinguished former prime minister and effectively labelled him as a paedophile,” Mitchell said.
There is growing disquiet about the way Sir Cliff Richard has been investigated, with police tipping off reporters before the singer’s home was raided.
Mitchell said calls for changes in the law were being heard by the British Ministry of Justice. “There is huge and widespread concern on all of these counts, and we went to see the lord chancellor to express those concerns. The lord chancellor listened. Clearly, there is forthcoming legislation and the lord chancellor undertook to give serious consideration in framing that legislation to what we had said to him.”
Concerns about the way police investigate historical sex abuse allegations resurfaced recently when the former head of the army, Lord Bramall, 92, was told by the London Metropolitan police that he faced no further action after it had investigated claims against him. Bramall, a D-Day veteran, was never arrested and denied the allegations.
His son, Nicholas, said the man who accused his father, known as “Nick”, had been “peddling unsubstantiated and uncorroborated information” and called for him to be investigated.
“The treatment of Lord Bramall adds a new tier to all of this that should shame every one of us,” Mitchell said. http://tinyurl.com/zm4cndp Analysis by The Anorak website: http://tinyurl.com/huetmfm
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