Great British Justice

Thousands of men have been convicted in the UK of historic sexual assault, often on the basis of a single accuser without any corroborating evidence. Many of these are known to be based on false allegations, with innocent men locked up inside a legal system that now considers someone guilty until proven to be innocent.

www.falselyaccusedhsa.co.uk

The feminising of justice that makes it hard for men charged with rape to get a fair trial, writes human rights lawyer BARBARA HEWSON

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3538907/The-feminising-justice-makes-hard-men-charged-rape-fair-trial-writes-human-rights-lawyer-BARBARA-HEWSON.html

The fact is that our criminal justice system is supposed to be founded on two critical principles. First, the presumption of innocence. Second, due process: the belief that criminal accusations must be proven beyond reasonable doubt, by fair procedures.

However, when it comes to sexual assault, decades of campaigning by feminists and more strident members of the victim lobby have browbeaten judges and policy-makers into a change of approach. The prevailing attitude seems to be that it is unfair to anyone claiming to have been the victim of a sexual attack that they should have to accept that their alleged attacker is 'innocent until proved guilty' and that the case has to operate under due process. As a result, the system has been re-engineered to make it more difficult for the accused to defend himself...

A further worrying development is that the police and CPS seem to see themselves as advocates for complainants — though they should be acting impartially. The result is that they appear to shut their eyes to any evidence that might complicate their plans to bring a prosecution. This phenomenon is known as 'confirmation bias'...

This creates a new class of victim: the falsely accused, or those who are prosecuted, who are presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.

No man is safe.

Dangerous convictions?

www.chrissaltrese.co.uk/dangerous-convictions

Successive governments’ commitment to ‘redressing’ the criminal justice system in favour of victims has had a precarious effect on the fairness of sexual offence trials over the last twenty years. Safeguards against wrongful conviction have been destroyed, while other measures directly prejudice the defence...

Before 1994, judges in uncorroborated sex offence trials warned the jury that experience demonstrated that it was dangerous to convict on uncorroborated evidence...

The mandatory corroboration warning was abolished by statute as being ‘demeaning to victims’. Since that time, the presumption of truth in sexual allegations has become commonplace in the media and criminal justice system. Complainants are routinely termed ‘victims’, while there are strict rules on the extent to which they can be cross-examined on credibility at trial, because it is felt to be a traumatic form of ‘re-victimising’...

Most allegations cannot be definitively disproved and rely on one person’s word against another’s.

The rise of historical allegations and prosecutions has exacerbated the risk of wrongful prosecution and conviction...

In historic cases, there is usually scant evidence to directly contradict an account.

Consequently, it may be both more likely that a case is prosecuted and also that a defendant is convicted on fragile evidence.

Why it is so easy to prosecute sex offences

www.insidetime.org/british-injustice-why-it-is-so-easy-to-prosecute-sex-offences

No evidence is required to convict on sexual offences. The Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 1994, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and recent statutory amendments to the criminal justice system have combined to create a two-tier criminal justice system, something that is contrary to the concept of ‘everyone being equal in the eyes of the law’...

For offences such as theft, robbery, burglary etc., that are classed as ‘standard criminal offences’... the internationally accepted legal ‘norms’ have been preserved and the Prosecution are still obliged to prove ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ that the defendant committed the offences, and this still requires the corroboration of any verbal accusation made by provision of evidence; i.e. something tangible, to not only prove the offence but also to link the accused to the offence.

However, for politically contentious offences, i.e. sexual offences, the international norms have been removed so that the premise of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has been removed. The Prosecution no longer have to prove ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ that the offence occurred. The civil burden of proof has instead been inserted into criminal trials, leaving the jury to make their decision based on the ‘balance of probabilities, which is a much lower burden of proof, whereby no evidence is required to prove the offence and no corroboration is needed for the accusation.

The need for corroboration was removed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Section 32 and 33, which make false accusations not only possible, but also more probable, as well as automatically creating a second class tier of criminal offences for those accused of sexual offences...

So the accused is now, in effect, guilty until proven innocent and has to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he is innocent of the charges.

Cross-examining UK Rape Laws:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GYhZ5Fcvl0

Psychological Impact of False Accusations of Sexual Abuse:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=scSQc9iauuw

Liam Allen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTYHrMOtSRc

Mark Pearson:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIG7nXR4LZQ