Allegations of Sexual
Abuse |
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The Telegraph Last week, Anver Sheikh was
released from prison after the Court of Appeal ruled, for the second time,
that he should never have been sent there. On May 9, 2002, Mr Sheikh was convicted
of sexually assaulting two boys at the care home at which, more than 20 years
ago, he used to work. He was branded a paedophile. His world collapsed as he
was sent to prison for the unspeakable crimes that he did not commit. The
only evidence against him was the uncorroborated testimony of two former
inmates of the care home. But the jury believed the accusers and not Mr
Sheikh: he was sentenced to eight years. In 2004, Mark Newby, his lawyer,
managed to locate the employment documents proving that Mr Sheikh had not in
fact been at the care home at the time the alleged abuse was supposed to have
taken place. The Court of Appeal quashed Mr Sheikh's original conviction, but
ordered a retrial. The same two complainants, made aware by the police of the
problems in their evidence, changed it. At Mr Sheikh's second trial, the only
evidence against him was again their uncorroborated allegations that he had
abused them. Again, the jury believed Mr Sheikh's accusers rather than Mr
Sheikh. He was given another eight years. Last week, the Appeal Court
recognised that Mr Sheikh's second conviction for sex crimes was
"unsafe". Fresh evidence again implied that one of the complainants
against him could not have been telling the truth. Moreover, the prosecution
had failed to disclose records that suggested that possibility. For instance,
the complainant had alleged that he had been so distressed by Mr Sheikh's
abuse that he had attempted suicide five times. But his medical records
showed that he had never even been to his GP complaining of depression, let
alone been treated for an attempt at suicide. The prosecution, however, had
not passed on those records to the defence, so the trial had proceeded
without the jury being made aware of what they contained. For one who has been through the
harrowing ordeal of being imprisoned for something he did not do, Mr Sheikh
was surprisingly calm on his release last week. He remarked only that he was
"bitter at the system at the system that failed me". He had good
reason. The system for dealing with accusations of sexual abuse is a
disgrace. It has manifest failings that are known to lead to wrong verdicts
but which remain uncorrected, and which continue to send innocent men to
prison. Chris Saltrese is a solicitor who
has handled many appeals for those accused of sexual crimes. It was not his
original area of legal expertise, however. "I started as a commercial
lawyer," he explained to me, "an area of law that is considerably
more lucrative than this one. I ended up handling cases of alleged sex crimes
only because it became obvious to me that there was an injustice of colossal
proportions taking place." Mr Saltrese believes that there are
"certainly scores, and very possibly hundreds" of men who have been
convicted of sexual crimes who are rotting in prison with no prospect of
release, but who are not guilty and should never have been sentenced. These men have all been convicted
on the uncorroborated allegations of people they knew 10, 20, sometimes even
40 years ago, and whom they have not seen since. It seems incredible that, in
English law, such unsupported allegations should be enough to get a man sent
to prison for a decade or more. But that is the present situation. Thanks to
the steady erosion of the rules of evidence governing sexual offences,
culminating in decisions by the Law Lords in 1991 and 1995, a defendant can
face multiple allegations at the same trial. None of those allegations need
have any corroboration; each, considered on its own merits, may be
insufficient to suggest sexual abuse took place, but the effect of the Law
Lords' rulings has been that together, multiple allegations are, in law,
enough to prove not just that the abuse happened, but that the defendant was
the perpetrator. How could England's most senior
judges come to insist on a rule of evidence so transparently unreliable as
that? It is a question to which only they know the answer. Their underlying
assumption had to be that allegations of sexual abuse should be accepted as
true, even if there is no evidence to support them. The result is that the
burden of proof is on the accused to prove he is innocent, not on his
accusers to prove his guilt. People are regularly being
convicted of sex crimes because that dangerous principle has been embedded
into our law. The situation is made worse because of the way the police
collect evidence in "historical abuse cases". Knowing that multiple
allegations can produce a conviction, they attempt to trace all former
residents at care homes where abuse is believed to have taken place, and to
then ask if they have any recollections of abuse. Police interviewers do not always
take "No" for an answer. They justify multiple visits and
interviews of the same individual on the grounds that they need to
"build a relationship of trust with the witness", and that the
"trauma of the event will lead many to deny it at first, and only later
to be able to admit what happened". Such interviews are not video
recorded or even taped by the police as a matter of course. As a consequence,
it is impossible to identify whether or not they have "coached"
witnesses. Police officers can also point out
to the people they question that there are financial advantages to making
accusations which lead to men being convicted, as victims of sexual abuse are
entitled to compensation. Care homes are liable for misconduct by their staff
and their insurers will not defend claims for compensation when the alleged
perpetrator has been found guilty in the criminal courts. The average
compensation pay out is in the region of 20,000, but can go as high as
100,000. The combination of financial
incentives for making allegations, and rules for evidence which do not
require those allegations to be corroborated by anything except other,
similar allegations, is a recipe for injustice. Entirely predictably,
complainants have admitted to making up their accusations. Unfortunately,
their admissions usually happen only after people have been imprisoned
because of their initial complaint. George Anderson and Margaret
Hewitt, for example, were convicted in 2004 of 70 counts of abusing children
at a Barnardo's home more than 20 years earlier. Their convictions were
quashed after one complainant admitted that his allegation was entirely
invented. He said he had lied in court, and insisted that the other
complainants had lied, adding that he knew they lied because he had spoken to
them before the trial took place. Furthermore, it was established at the
appeal hearing that one of the police officers who had gathered the original
evidence had taken the complainants to see a compensation lawyer before Mr
Anderson and Mrs Hewitt had even been arrested. In a sense, people such as Mr
Sheikh, Mr Anderson and Mrs Hewitt are the lucky ones, for they have been
able to demonstrate their innocence. "There are scores of men in prison
today who do not have grounds for appeal," explains Mr Saltrese.
"They were convicted on their accusers' word alone. The records that
might prove their innocence have been lost or destroyed. There is literally
nothing they can do to prove that they did not do what they have been accused
of doing except reiterate that they did not do it. And that, of course, is
not enough." More innocent people will be
convicted unless the law is changed so that uncorroborated allegations are
not enough for a guilty verdict. Trials under the present rules are clearly
not fair. The Government knows it, and has known it for years. But there are
no plans to change any of the procedures to increase the likelihood that
those accused of sexual crimes will be acquitted. On the contrary: the
Government insists the conviction rate is too low, and wishes to change the
rules again to make convictions more likely. It can only mean that there will
be many more people who end up "bitter with the system" because
they have had their lives unjustly destroyed by it. |