Incredible and Untrue
Today a jury convicted Carl Beech, who under the pseudonym of "Nick" falsely accused a number of prominent figures of murder and of running paedophile rings, of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud.
This was for making the perjured allegations which a senior Metropolitan Police detective mistakenly described as "credible and true."
The lies told by Beech led to the setting up of Operation Midland, a police operation which consumed vast resources in terms of both time and money and ended with no charges or arrests being made but the reputations of a number of completely innocent people being seriously damaged.
Shortly after the death of Jimmy Savile in 2011, when the truth belatedly came out what kind of monster he had been, the penny finally dropped in the minds of the British public and establishment alike that up to that time there had been far too great a willingness to dismiss claims by vulnerable people that they had been abused.
However, the conviction of Carl Beech removes any possible remaining doubt that in the aftermath of the Savile case the pendulum swung too far in the other direction and at least some people who were falsely accused of vile crimes have been treated as if they were guilty until proven innocent.
In 2015 I wrote a post on this blog and on Facebook called "Innocent until proven guilty" which you can read here. I argued then as follows:
"Call me old fashioned, but I happen to think the idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty is an essential part of any legal framework which aims not merely to be called a Justice system but actually to deliver Justice. It is an important defence against the danger of innocent people having their lives wrecked by false or mistaken allegations.
When allegations of a serious crime are made, whatever the alleged crime, whoever is the alleged perpetrator and whoever is the alleged victim, they should be properly investigated and should not be pre-judged as true or false.
You do not get justice by ignoring or rubbishing allegations, but witch-hunts do not deliver justice either. It is the negation of justice to shout to the rooftops about the accusations against someone while paying no attention to whether there is any evidence in their defence."
In the light of the conviction of Carl Beech a number of people and organisations need to take a long hard look at how they responded to his allegations.
A few brave journalists and politicians called out at the time that some of the allegations from "Nick" appeared to be utterly ridiculous. Michael Brown, a mortal enemy of the late Ted Heath who nevertheless refused to believe Beech's allegations against him, explained some of the reasons why even a cursory examination of the evidence should have given rise to grave doubts about the allegations in an article he wrote four years ago which can be found here.
People like Brown, Matthew Parris, David Aaronovitch, and Dan Hodges who expressed scepticism about "Nick's" allegations have been proved right.
I hope both those who were taken in by Carl Beech and society as a whole can learn the lessons in a balanced way so that the next set of false allegations from some malicious liar are not as devastating in destroying the lives of innocent people, but without the pendulum swinging back so far that we go back to the era when genuine victims found it almost impossible to get a hearing.
This was for making the perjured allegations which a senior Metropolitan Police detective mistakenly described as "credible and true."
The lies told by Beech led to the setting up of Operation Midland, a police operation which consumed vast resources in terms of both time and money and ended with no charges or arrests being made but the reputations of a number of completely innocent people being seriously damaged.
Shortly after the death of Jimmy Savile in 2011, when the truth belatedly came out what kind of monster he had been, the penny finally dropped in the minds of the British public and establishment alike that up to that time there had been far too great a willingness to dismiss claims by vulnerable people that they had been abused.
However, the conviction of Carl Beech removes any possible remaining doubt that in the aftermath of the Savile case the pendulum swung too far in the other direction and at least some people who were falsely accused of vile crimes have been treated as if they were guilty until proven innocent.
In 2015 I wrote a post on this blog and on Facebook called "Innocent until proven guilty" which you can read here. I argued then as follows:
"Call me old fashioned, but I happen to think the idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty is an essential part of any legal framework which aims not merely to be called a Justice system but actually to deliver Justice. It is an important defence against the danger of innocent people having their lives wrecked by false or mistaken allegations.
When allegations of a serious crime are made, whatever the alleged crime, whoever is the alleged perpetrator and whoever is the alleged victim, they should be properly investigated and should not be pre-judged as true or false.
You do not get justice by ignoring or rubbishing allegations, but witch-hunts do not deliver justice either. It is the negation of justice to shout to the rooftops about the accusations against someone while paying no attention to whether there is any evidence in their defence."
"I do not wish to live in either a society where children can be abused with impunity because nobody will take their word seriously, nor in one where one false or mistaken allegation is all it takes to destroy someone's reputation because all allegations are presumed to be true."
In the light of the conviction of Carl Beech a number of people and organisations need to take a long hard look at how they responded to his allegations.
A few brave journalists and politicians called out at the time that some of the allegations from "Nick" appeared to be utterly ridiculous. Michael Brown, a mortal enemy of the late Ted Heath who nevertheless refused to believe Beech's allegations against him, explained some of the reasons why even a cursory examination of the evidence should have given rise to grave doubts about the allegations in an article he wrote four years ago which can be found here.
People like Brown, Matthew Parris, David Aaronovitch, and Dan Hodges who expressed scepticism about "Nick's" allegations have been proved right.
I hope both those who were taken in by Carl Beech and society as a whole can learn the lessons in a balanced way so that the next set of false allegations from some malicious liar are not as devastating in destroying the lives of innocent people, but without the pendulum swinging back so far that we go back to the era when genuine victims found it almost impossible to get a hearing.
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