Despite the fact that I foresaw all this years ago. So did you. So did anyone with the slightest knowledge of the principles of law. So did anyone who had ever read a fricking detective novel.
The Times reports,
Metropolitan Police ditches practice of believing all victims
Britain’s biggest police force has abandoned its policy of automatically believing victims after a series of flawed inquiries into alleged sex crimes, The Times can reveal.
Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said she had told officers they must have an open mind when an allegation is made and that their role was to investigate, not blindly believe.
“You start with a completely open mind, absolutely,” she said. “It is very important to victims to feel that they are going to be believed. Our default position is we are, of course, likely to believe you but we are investigators and we have to investigate.”
The issue has become one of the most fraught for the police service since a national policy instructed officers to believe alleged victims automatically. It was aimed at encouraging people to come forward with the confidence that they would be taken seriously, particularly in sexual abuse cases.
The guidelines were put in place after revelations in 2011 that police had failed to properly investigate abuse allegations, including by victims of the former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, who was revealed after his death to have been Britain’s most prolific paedophile. However, the Met was later severely criticised after its detectives placed their faith in a man known only as Nick, declaring that his uncorroborated claims of a Westminster abuse ring were “credible and true”. The Crown Prosecution Service is considering whether Nick will be charged with perverting the course of justice after his claims were shown to be false.
Sir Richard Henriques, a retired judge, identified failings in Operation Midland and said that the instruction to believe a victim’s account should be withdrawn. It undermined the principle of suspects being innocent until proven guilty, he said in 2016.
Ms Dick took the helm at Scotland Yard nearly a year ago, after the collapse of Operation Midland. Asked if she was rethinking the belief policy, she said: “Rethink? I’ve rethought. I arrived saying very clearly to my people that we should have an open mind, of course, when a person walks in. We should treat them with dignity and respect and we should listen to them. We should record what they say. From that moment on we are investigators.”
She said that the police had been criticised for not being open-minded enough. It was important to encourage victims to come forward and she wanted to “go on raising confidence”.
She said: “Our job in respect of investigations is to be fair, to be impartial, and where appropriate to bring things to justice — and of course to support victims, but it isn’t all about victims.”
That is progress. But I note that she is still saying “victims” instead of “those who claim to be victims”.
None of the above has got anything to do with the surprise departure of Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions, who has absolutely not been forced from her job because of garbage such as this.
Anyone who disputes these “*facts*” will be subject to a visit from the Boys (and girls) in Blue.
Long ago, Montesquieu observed that abuse of power was greatest when the laws did not anticipate it.
Political correctness (the “You can’t say that” culture) is all about ensuring that rational discussion, let alone the law, cannot anticipate whatever obvious downside of today’s fashionable opinion is about to become common precisely because of that refusal to anticipate.
Like many another piece of political wisdom from a dead white male, Montesquieu’s point is ignored because of the very problem it would correct.
I’m wondering if there hasn’t been an unwise blurring of lines between the roles of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and the police.
Traditionally, the police need to meet a standard (in US terms) of probable cause. They need to begin each encounter with a complainant by initially believing the complainant, and then investigating whether competent evidence exists that shows probable cause that a crime has been committed by a suspect. In the course of that investigation, they may find a lack of such evidence, and then they are free to begin disbelieving the complainant, but they must start the process on the complainant’s side.
Prosecutors need to meet a higher burden. They must prove that a crime has been committed by a suspect (again, in US terms) beyond a reasonable doubt. That means that many submittals of investigations from the police to the prosecutors are dropped at that stage.
But if the line becomes blurred (usually because the two functions always end up working together in some respects) then both the police’s investigatory role and the prosecution’s role become bastardized. The checks and balances that are supposed to form a wall between the two disappear.
When I see Allison Saunders excoriated because of police investigatory failures, it makes me think that your problem isn’t the evidentiary threshold that merits a serious police investigation, but confusion about the proper roles of police and prosecutors. (Yes, I know she was also excoriated for prosecutorial failings – but at least half of the criticism I’ve seen of her performance has been driven by investigatory errors, which should not be within her proper role.)
Your real title would be Prophetess, Natalie! Or do we now subscribe to PC-talk, and remove gender differences?
I have it in the back of my mind Commissioner Dick is a bit of… well a bit of a dick, but I don’t have any evidence to support it, just vaguely remembered impressions of what she said or did in the past.
But in this it seems to me she has it exactly right. The police should be welcoming and open minded to hear accusations of crime, but by no means should be credulous. Bobby B has some excellent insight above, and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t even play one of TV. However, my understanding the the prosecutorial process is one of filtering. First imagined victims determine if the putative crime is worth prosecuting, then the police filter out some more, then the public prosecutors filter out again, and the judge filters out at summary judgement, then the jury filters out again, and finally the appellate process filters once again. At each stage an independent, responsible person makes a determination as to whether to move forward or not. And that person must surely come to the table with an open mind to decide based on the facts, the law and whether the law should even apply (for surely police and prosecutors are the biggest users of nullification of anyone in society.)
So despite my feeling in my gut that I am not a fan of Ms. Dick, I think she is pretty spot on with this one.
Of course, here in the former colonies, we dispense with any investigation providing that a woman claims to be a sexual victim. #MeToo and #ItsAboutTime are very clear that the victims MUST be believed and the verdict and sentence be carried out forthwith. No Statute of Limitations or definition of crime is allowed. It’s all very simple and easy. Unless you’re on the receiving end, then Abandon All Hope of recovering your reputation, employability, etc. Truth, facts, and evidence (or lack of same) are meaningless in the whirlwind of Social Justice.
Eventually this will collapse from its internal contradictions, and from being directed against the “wrong people”, i.e. others on the Left. This will take a couple of years, after which no one will be believed.
Strange, when juxtaposed to the girls of Rotherham et al. In their cases, the PC powers that be didn’t believe them, or their parents, at all.
A step down from ‘survivors‘, at least. Anyone who implemented this policy should be convicted of misconduct in public office under common law, and get a life sentence.
Dick’s career should have been over the second she okayed splattering Jean Charles De Menezes’ brains all over a London tube train in front of terrified commuters.
Instead she continued to slither her way up the ranks. What’s a little life-ruining investigatory incompetence compared to that?
She must have powerful friends.
@jadedL
She didn’t just ok the final execution, she presided over a grade A clusterf*ck throughout the operation and was then promoted.
JadedLibertarian (April 3, 2018 at 7:41 am) and Clovis Sangrail (April 3, 2018 at 8:00 am), as regards
She has. She ticks two of those victimhood ‘identities’ that ensure that anyone who objects to promoting their holders should always be believed to be merely prejudiced. Identity politics is a powerful friend, albeit also fickle. I suspect Dick has made this change “at the right time”, not “too soon” – but we’ll see how that prophecy turns out.
“Accusers”, surely.
Good post and good comments.
Also….
Why are there no mass protests, by feminists and others, about the massive number of women and girls who REALLY HAVE been sexually attacked? The activities of the Islamic rape gangs continue to draw a massive silence from the left – including from “educated Conservatives” who seem to have partly “internalised” the doctrines of the Frankfurt School of Marxism at school and university. The alliance between Islam and the establishment “liberal” left is bizarre – until one takes into account the education system (including many private schools) teaching that the forces of Islam are the victims of the “Imperialist”, “Colonialist” West which has “exploited” and “oppressed” them – and that any opposition to Islam is “racist”.
Still Winston Churchill did not just denounce Islam (for which he would sent to prison in the modern United Kingdom) – he also denounced the NON Islamic abusers of women. And, alas, there have always been many such abusers.
One of the last speeches Winston Churchill made in the House of Commons was about a man who had scratches on his arms and had admitted (after first lying his head off about it) that he shoved a women through a porthole whilst on a ship. The man was obviously guilty of rape and murder (the murder to cover up the rape) – and should have been hanged by the neck till he was dead. However, a campaign was launched to protect the murderer and he was out of prison within a few years – and the BBC is still pushing the line that there are “doubts about the case”.
Note to the extremely stupid – if you have just had voluntary sexual intercourse with a women and she passes out, you call for medical aid (or, if you are total coward, you run away), you do NOT shove her body through a porthole into the sea (and where did all the scratches come from?). One can doubt anything – but there is no REASONABLE doubt of the man’s guilt.
Hopefully the next DPP will get away from pushing his/her own political narrative and return to a more appropriate level of neutrality.
Surely the good, old-fashioned legal term “plaintiff” would be more appropriate, although given that the DPP are the one’s bringing the case rather than those who make the allegations, maybe that’s not quite right.
Certainly the use of the term “victim” is loaded to the point of prejudice.
…because it undermines the narrative Paul, but you know that and are just questioning this as a rhetorical device.
We all – Paul, too, I feel quite sure – know the answer(s). I take his rhetorical question to mean: who can express that knowledge most pithily and precisely? As weaponised empathy is not empathic, so feminism, which weaponises its alleged regard for women by definition, feels no innate sympathy for the actual suffering of real women. If you’re not on the agenda, you’re off it.
(For our transatlantic readers, the specific legal case Paul mentions was at a time when the anti-capital-punishment brigade were corrupting the legal process to abolish the death penalty de facto as far as they could, some years before the formality of a parliamentary vote could get around to abolishing it in law. If you are familiar with the methods of Judge Rose Bird on your side of the pond, you will know enough of their modus operandi. They sometimes lost: when Tony Blair came into office in 1997 he gave Bentley a posthumous pardon; Labour had kept warm their anger at not forcing their absurd version of that case on judge, jury and/or home secretary for 40 years!)
The policy of believing rape accusers was brought about because of protests from feminists and campaigners for women’s rights complaining about what they see as the low conviction rate for the crime.
How odd that these people never make a fuss about the 0% conviction rate for FGM, or about the fact that the authorities are reluctant to get involved at all in cases of mass sexual abuse of young girls by predatory gangs of men.
I have some sympathy for the police. It must be as difficult for them as it is for the rest of us to keep up with the rules of political correctness, and to avoid censure and dismissal for breaking them.
The Times is reporting (behind a paywall, I have seen the print edition), that the police were trained to hide exculpatory evidence from the defence in a lot of rape/sexual assault cases, and the CPS were in on it. In my view, this has all the hallmarks of there having been a conspiracy to commit misconduct in public offence and/or to pervert the course of justice.
@Mr Ed
a conspiracy to commit misconduct in public offence and/or to pervert the course of justice
Absolutely! I wrote to my MP to this effect after the first “withholding evidence case” came to light. Maybe we should all have a go now.
Saunders was appointed under the rule of –and is I believe–a creature of the Fish Faced Cow. Who is also full of BluLabour marxian femmi-shite.
Saunders needs to be on the receiving end of a whole raft of “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice” charges,
Judges too. I knew a man who died in prison, after a judge suppressed evidence that his accuser had perjured herself in the witness box.