Stephen Green congratulates Raj Bhachoo outside Dartford Magistrates Court after his victory on 24th September 2012
A Christian evangelist has been found not guilty of a public order offence after he handed out leaflets criticising Tesco’s decision to donate £30,000 to the 2012 London Gay Pride parade.
Raj Bhachoo, a Christian Voice member, was arrested, kept in a police cell for hours and charged with “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 following a complaint by the manageress during a leafleting exercise outside the Tesco store in Gravesend, Kent in January 2012
The case was due to be heard by Dartford Magistrates this morning. But on reviewing the evidence and recent legal decisions including that involving Sandown Free Presbyterian Church, the prosecuting barrister offered no evidence.
The magistrates duly dismissed the case.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, was asked by the defence to give evidence in the case, but, for the second time in a case involving Mr Bhachoo, his evidence was in the event not required.
Mr Green also prepared expert evidence for a case in March of this year when Raj Bhachoo was acquitted after sending a highly critical email to the Stonewall lobby group. A key Stonewall witness failed to turn up in court and the case collapsed.
Michael Phillips, solicitor, represented Raj Bhachoo on both occasions.
Just a week ago, Mr Phillips represented two Christians from the Abort67 group, seeing all charges against them thrown out by magistrates in Brighton. Last February, Michael Overd faced a trial in Taunton after two homosexuals objected to his preaching. Mr Overd, who subsequently joined Christian Voice, was also acquitted.
In September 2006, Stephen Green was himself arrested, locked in the cells for four hours and charged under the same Section 5 by the South Wales Police Minorities Support Unit for handing out evangelistic leaflets at the homosexual Cardiff Mardi Gras. At the subsequent hearing, an embarrassed prosecutor dropped all charges.
Stephen Green said today: ‘Christians just keep winning these Section 5 freedom of speech cases. It is not against the law to preach against sodomy, to tell the public the facts about homosexual lifestyles, nor to display graphic images of the effects of abortion. These things might upset people, but they are not threatening, they are not abusive, they are not insulting and they are not against the law.
‘We actually need no change in the law, but we do need police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service to provide training to officers and prosecutors on the law and on their duty to protect people exercising their freedom of expression.
‘In the abortion case, the police officer who attended admitted in court that the only training he had ever had on the implications of freedom of speech was ten years ago.’
Further Reading:
The Tesco Leaflet
A defence of the Tesco Leaflet (Witness statement prepared by Stephen Green for Raj Bhachoo in the Dartford Magistrates Court 24th September 2012)
And:
‘Stonewall Insult Their Opponents‘
‘Links Between Homosexuality and Child Molestation’
‘Queer is no longer a pejorative term’
(From the expert witness statement prepared by Stephen Green for Raj Bhachoo in the Camberwell Green Magistrates Court 7th March 2012)
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5 comments
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Lydia
25 September 2012 at 21:22 (UTC 1) Link to this comment
This is good news! Its about time common sense and good morals were recognised by the Law, and start looking at this nonsense we have to put up with every day, which is a blight on all our lives.
Good on this brave soul.
ChrisU
25 September 2012 at 23:48 (UTC 1) Link to this comment
What an abysmal reflection of the quality of training – and the level of intelligence – of the arresting officers and CPS jobsworths who brought these cases to court. But I suppose we must at least be thankful that some courts are still endowed with enough common sense to take a dim view of their timewasting antics.
Stephen
26 September 2012 at 09:59 (UTC 1) Link to this comment
In fact it was the CPS-instructed barrister who saw the case had no legs, and he asked the CPS to withdraw it. They came back and told him to ask for an adjournment to give them space to look at it again, but when he asked the magistrates for adjournment, they, fresh from hearing the Lord Chancellor’s instructions to courts not to adjourn cases for stupid reasons, told him to jolly well get on with it. So he went back to the CPS again, and this time they said, ‘Oh, scrap it, then.’ So he went back in and offered no evidence. ‘The judgment is God’s’ (Deut 1:17).
Bob Hutton
26 September 2012 at 09:08 (UTC 1) Link to this comment
As a street evangelist working mainly in Canterbury and Ramsgate I have followed these cases with interest. It seems that the Police often work on the premise of one law for Christians (ie stop them at all costs) and another law for everybody else. Nearly every section 5 case involves Christian evangelists or protesters.
I sense, here, not only a hidden agenda by police to silence the Bible, but also a spiritual warfare – the devil knows that we have the truth and he is trying to stop the spread of God’s infallible word. However, as the Psalmist said “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered”. Psalm 68 v 1.
Stephen
26 September 2012 at 10:06 (UTC 1) Link to this comment
I used to think that the police would smile on evangelists and be happy if there were more converted, law-abiding Christian people walking the streets. But on the other hand, the police earn their living nicking villains, and no end of them are deep in sin themselves and challenged at a personal level by street preaching.