Alleged victims who waive their right to anonymity

[slowdown73]

I was watching the news tonight and some guy within the football profession has publicly waived his right as a potential victim to anonymity by coming forward and announcing through the media that he was sexually abused in the past by someone within his profession.

I didn't know alleged victims had the right to waive their anonymity. But what about the rights of people who are on the other end of being accused? His actions have already led to four others supposedly coming forward to report further abuse but his case has not even been tested to reach the evidence threshold required to charge.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that his allegations are false or condoning the actions of people who do perpetrate abuse. However, once these kinds of accusations are made public there is no way of retracting the damage they can cause. This kind of attention can also generate malicious allegations from people with a vendetta or trying to make a quick buck.

As a victim myself of an extremely nasty false allegation made against me two years ago, the damage to my career would have been immense if my accuser had decided to waive his anonymity, even though I was the real victim. And even though I was never charged or arrested, if he had gone public then I would have had to live with the fact of everyone knowing he had accused me of something which carries a great deal of stigma and shame. Isn't it about time our legal system gave people who are on the receiving end of these awful allegations some basic rights? After all, you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

[experience3]

Yes it is, but the question relates more to a sense of balance.

Over the last few years the balance of the legal system has been "adjusted" to favour accusers of sexual abuse, however no checks have been put in place.

The evidential bar in terms of sexual offences has been lowered with accusers being given ever more protection however nothing has been added to counteract this on the other side although solutions are available.

One of the great issues is around anonymity of those accused, this is now (very slowly) being recognized, although nobody is in a rush to do anything about it. A great many people favour anonymity of those accused, although the Police (perhaps fairly) say that sometimes they release names in order for other people to come forward, particularly for historical offences.

I favour a slightly different solution - a kind of "double jeopardy" approach. Borrowing form the corporate world, if a rumour starts circulating that company "a" is about to launch a takeover attempt for company "b", it is recognized that if this rumour persists then it is extremely damaging potentially for company "b". Subsequently the authorities contact company "a" and give them a short period to either launch a formal bid or issue a statement denying it (after which they are barred from launching a bid) this process is known as "put up or shut up".

It seems to me that a similar process could be used for sexual allegations. That is to say that should an accused persons name become public knowledge then the Police would become "under the gun" in terms of time and clarity. That is to say they would have 28 days to charge or, issue Publicly a statement saying that there was no case to answer (not NFA).

There would then either via a court process or by a Public Police announcement be a record saying that the allegations were untrue.

Taking Cliff Richard as an example the Police tipped off the press, raided his house live on National TV then did not even send the file to the CPS for 2 years. In effect they have "sentenced" him to three years without any evidence. Now whilst I personally think that "Mistletoe and Wine" should be illegal in its own right, he should not be sentenced (even for that) without a court hearing, which is essentially what has happened.