In 2014, singer Cliff Richard’s home was searched with a BBC TV crew outside, helicopter and all. The news had been tipped off by South Yorkshire Police that the raid was going to take place and the whole thing was a mess. No charges resulted and everybody forgot about it, except Sir Cliff himself.
This is understandable, of course. It must have been very upsetting. But when somebody has been accused of sexual offences, there are certain procedures that the police have to go through. Calling the BBC isn’t one of them, and the whole thing would have been better off without the broadcaster being present, but the rest of it – being questioned and having your place searched – is just part of the deal when accusations have been made. Richard successfully sued the BBC after the raid was broadcast.
It helps to ensure that justice can be done. I wish we could have any faith that “justice being done” was a natural conclusion of credible accusations, but unfortunately it is a very rare thing indeed. But, if there is to be a chance of it happening, the police need to gather evidence.
Richard, however, has never forgiven the system for what happened and has now gathered together with other national treasures ™ including Stephen Fry and Paul Gambaccini (a DJ, apparently) to campaign for a system where people accused of sexual offences receive anonymity.
As part of the group Falsely Accused Individuals for Reform (FAIR), Cliff Richard told reporters “I felt I was in this hole I couldn’t get out of,” he told reporters. “I felt like I had been hung out to dry… my reputation was in absolute tatters. Will I ever get over it? I am past it” and Gambaccini, who had also been accused of sexual offences and never convicted, said that “the law encouraged ‘everyone from liars to lunatics’ to make false accusations”.
Setting aside the deeply disablist implications of the latter comment, the concern among campaigners seems to be that the law says that if you accuse somebody of sexual assault, you are entitled to lifelong anonymity. If you are accused of it, however, you can be named immediately. In the vast majority of circumstances, police will only name an accused person once they have been charged with crimes but occasionally, it can help a case to name somebody who is being investigated.
One of the benefits of a system where the accused can be named is that it can encourage further victims of that person to come forward, which can greatly help the police in their investigations. Once the vast number of allegations against Sir Jimmy Savile came out, the police found themselves with hundreds of victims accusing people – famous and not so famous – of historic sexual abuse crimes. And when more people accuse one man because their case was publicised, with very similar stories and circumstances, it can back up their case.
“There’s no smoke without fire”
In his statement to reporters, Cliff Richard said that he had found that people believed there was “no smoke without fire” where sexual assault allegations are concerned. If you’ve been accused, you must be guilty.
But if that were true, Richard would have been charged. If that were true, we wouldn’t have the leader of the Western world chalking up accusations by upwards of 20 women now. If that were true, every man who ended up in court would be convicted, instead of the paltry figures we see now. People who were accused would be convicted and would never build their lives back once they were released.
This is not the reality of what we see.
In truth, people are accused every day and those around them don’t believe the accuser. Or they justify an assault because “she looked 18” or “she was wearing a tiny dress”. Victims would never hear “but he’s a pillar of the community!” or “you must have misunderstood what was happening” if the accused were not favoured over the accuser.
Yet men fear accusations – false or otherwise – disproportionately. In actual fact, they are more likely to be a victim of rape than to be falsely accused of it, and women are far more likely than that to be victims themselves.
Most victims do not report. The chances of being accused are minimal, and even where accusers do come forward, the chances of the accused being charged, and tried, and found guilty, and imprisoned, are tiny. The system is a patriarchal one that is geared up to favour the cis, straight, white men who prop it up.
The chances of a rape accuser lying about their assault are very small – certainly no higher than people who falsely report any other crime. But the chances of them not being believed are huge. Campaigns like this from FAIR distort the media narrative further, suggesting that men are the real victims when those lucky, anonymous accusers can wreak havoc at will.
The truth is that naming accused men like Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall allowed other victims to come forward and strengthen their cases. The truth is that you cannot compare a rape victim and a person accused of rape where the need for anonymity is concerned. And the truth is that women are not falsely reporting in numbers that anybody needs to be concerned about.
Photo: Hernán Piñera