PUBLISHER'S NOTE: An excellent example of why Cressida, the Met's new Commissioner, has replaced Scotland Yard's policy of believing the victim with one of conducting a complete, impartial investigation of the alleged crime.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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COMMENTARY: " The horrifying tale of how I was baselessly charged with sexual assault – and what it says about the police and CPS Sex crime investigations," by Richard Holden, published by The Conservative Home Daily. ( Richard Holden is a former Special Adviser and former Deputy Head of Press for the Conservative Party.)
GIST: "It’s a Friday afternoon in May at Southwark Crown Court, and a jury has just taken a matter of minutes to acquit me of category three sexual assault, specifically “over the clothing touching”, after a five-day trial. The judge says I “leave court without a stain on my character” and adds “I hope you can pick up your career where it left off.” My barrister, who has practiced prosecution and defence in criminal cases for three decades, tells me that those comments from a judge are practically unprecedented in her career at the bar. It has been, to put it lightly, a bit of an odd week. In what way odd? Prosecution witness after prosecution witness took the stand to give evidence that supported the defence. The officer in charge of the case in the witness box being questioned as to why he ignored or did not pursue, time after time after time, vital evidence that didn’t match the complainant’s story The prosecution QC asked to clarify exactly what I was being accused of – because it keeps changing. Finally, the prosecution pitched to “let the jury decide” what they thought were the version of events I was being accused of because they could not tell the jury. That sort of odd. As I make my way out of the court, exhausted, and strangely empty after the worst 15 months of my life, Charlotte, my girlfriend, turns to me: “How on earth did we end up here?” Good point. How did we end up here?"
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Mr. Holden's account defies reduction. (It should be read word for word to find out indeed " did we end up here); However, I am including the following paragraphs because I found them so impactful. HL; "Then we got the initial stage of the disclosure of the evidence the police had actually gathered. I looked through it, bemused. There didn’t seem to be a single witness who was there who backed up the complainant’s story. One person says that I seemed a bit drunk at one point late in the night. Another person says he saw me hug someone, but that may have been my girlfriend. They are the prosecution’s witnesses. I remember all of the people who said that they had been contacted by the police, but who said they didn’t see anything. I flick through the evidence. No mention of any of them. Nor any mention of my two of my friends, a married couple, who had told me that they had given taped interviews to the police. Because police had comprehensively failed to investigate, a number of friends of the complainant who had attended the party with her, and even Charlotte, hadn’t been interviewed. A senior work colleague whom I was on the phone to for quarter of an hour just 20 minutes before the alleged incident hadn’t been spoken to. About a dozen more people who had attended the party and were there at the time of the alleged incident had been dismissed with no statement taken. I couldn’t understand why the police hadn’t taken statements. My solicitor said it was a case of “pre-interview interviewing” – sifting out people who don’t back up a case that is being constructed – even though the police’s legal responsibility is to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry. My solicitor was going to have a lot of work to do doing basic evidence gathering, all at cost to me. The irony being that the more evidence you have to support your innocence, the more it costs you to defend yourself. The police had interviewed my friend, the married couple, on tape. Then, when we asked for this to be disclosed, the officer-in-charge said it hadn’t happened and the tapes didn’t exist. When we sent them the emails from the officer who took the interviews, in it he said the officer-in-charge had said that they “added nothing” so their interviews “wouldn’t be turned into statements”. We then got the full transcripts of the interviews within a couple of days. Also, the police haven’t bothered to look at the complainant’s phone, her online communications, or any of her social media. We know that she’d ‘Liked’ a photo of herself at the party the day after it had happened. We know that she’d sent messages to her friends on the night, after she alleges she’d been attacked, saying that she’d “had a great night” and “thanks for the invite to the party”. She and I had been in contact via text and Facebook messenger before the party. We ask them to get this evidence as part of disclosure. Thirteen months after interviewing her, they asked to look at her phone. She refused, citing ‘privacy’. Eventually she allowed them to look through her phone. Nothing was there. Whatever was backed up to the cloud had disappeared. There was no mention of anything to do with me or that could be deemed relevant to the case from the last 17 months. Any messages between us, automatically backed up to the cloud, according to the police, from her phone settings, are no longer there. Unbelievable, you may think, but there was nothing there."
The entire commentary can be read at:
