Traviss verdict exposes false accusations

The not guilty verdict in the rape case brought against the late singer Amy Winehouse’s ex-boyfriend illustrates the potential for false accusations in rape cases.

Reg Traviss was acquitted last week of two counts of rape.  His accuser claimed he had raped her at his home while she was too drunk even to stand, but CCTV footage from the last nightclub they visited showed her walking normally and unaided in high heels.  The police had initially refused to disclose the footage, saying it held ‘nothing of interest’.  In fact it demolished the alleged victim’s account.

It isn’t the first time that CCTV has come to the aid of a man facing a false rape charge,

In a case which did not make it to court, a female complainant alleged that, while on a night out with friends in a local nightclub, she was grabbed by an unknown male, dragged into nearby toilets and raped.

CID went to the nightclub and checked the CCTV.  The police said afterwards: ‘CCTV shows her and this man climb over this rope together, go upstairs, and disappear off into one of the toilets. About twenty minutes later, they come out. You can see her straightening her clothing—I think she gives him a peck on the cheek—and then they exchange telephone numbers before going away.’

What makes matters worse is that accusers of rape are protected with anonymity by the law, but defendants are not.

Reg Traviss is now making the very fair point that the criminal justice system, by siding with his accuser in granting her but not him anonymity, has forgotten the basic biblical principle, that all are equal before the law.

Camilla Tominey, writing in this week’s Sunday Express, said about anonymity in rape cases:

It does not seem fair but it would be an even bigger travesty of justice if those accused of rape were allowed to remain anonymous because it would suggest that rape victims were generally not to be trusted.

While there will always be women who “cry” rape, most of those who do pluck up the courage to go to the police are genuine victims and should be treated as such.

Such is the social stigma around rape that women not only feel too embarrassed or ashamed to report the crime, they are also frightened that they will not be believed.

That situation would get worse if those accused of rape were afforded the special privilege of remaining anonymous.

… the police … do women no favours whatsoever by attracting publicity for the very rare cases when rape victims are making it up.

Is Camilla Tominey right?  Are these ‘very rare cases’?  Are most complainants ‘genuine victims’?  Not according to the figures.  Only about 10% of rape complaints make it to court, and of those, just over half, 58%, result in a conviction.  Since the law was changed in 1994 to allow cases to be brought with no corroborating evidence, rape cases are often now ‘his word against hers’.  The more plausible of the two is likely to be believed, wherever the truth lies, resulting in miscarriage of justice.

An Exeter man was acquitted in September 2010 of raping a woman who claimed she was “too drunk and frightened to resist” as she walked home.

Daniel Abeyomi, 19, told the court that he noticed the woman arguing with a man then crying alone, while he was walking home along Heavitree Road.  He said she walked with him, they chatted and she kissed him, asked to go back to his home, which he refused, then she initiated sex.

Defence counsel Ian Strongman, summing up his case, said the woman was not making “malicious allegations” but she had “gaps in her memory” from that night, and her friends had then wrongly assumed that she had been raped and had “persuaded her” that this was the case.

In some cases, evidence, often from CCTV, shows the alleged victim was making it all up.

Also in 2010, one Sarah-Jane Hilliard was found guilty of perverting the course of justice, but she received only a 12-month suspended sentence after falsely accusing student Grant Bowers of raping her.

Hilliard, 20, dragged Grant into a Basildon railway station toilet for sex, but later told police that he had forced himself on her.  Just a week after the alleged attack, she applied for criminal injuries compensation, which could have netted her £7,500.

Her plan came unstuck when CCTV footage and mobile phone records proved Grant’s innocence. But her twisted story drove Grant to the brink of suicide after he was hounded out of his home and spat at in the street.

A teenager from Barry in South Wales, Kenny David Westgate, spent months in prison awaiting trial before being cleared of rape by a jury at Cardiff Crown Court.

What his sister called ‘six months of hell’ started when a woman alleged that he had raped her in a park in 2011.
The court heard that the woman, who said she had drunk more than eight pints of lager and drank spirits during the evening, gave different accounts to police of what had happened. She also texted a friend to tell her she was pregnant, before telling her she had been raped.

CCTV images showed the pair leaving a pub in Holton Road together.

Researcher Dr Candida Saunders explains:

‘False complaints may arise for a variety of reasons. Examples commonly mentioned by respondents during research interviews included: a complainant’s attempts to conceal or deny discovered infidelity; minors concealing consensual under-age sexual activity; consensual sexual activity that is subsequently regretted; and historic complaints following the breakdown of a relationship.’

Rape is a serious crime; a capital crime in the eyes of God.  It is a devastating thing to happen, and equally devastating to be accused of wrongly.  In far too many cases, too much drink impairs the capacity to make a rational decision, and regrets in the morning turn to a rape accusation.

On other occasions, false accusations can be made to deny a father access to his children in divorce cases, or just to be spiteful after a marriage has come to an end, or perhaps when the husband remarries.

To contradict Camilla Tominey, a ‘special privilege’ – that of remaining anonymous – is already given to rape accusers.  In fact, on her own Sunday Express page, she contradicts herself.  Having said that women ‘very rarely’ make rape accusations up, she describes 80% of women as liars in a footnote:

‘More than half of British women admit to flirting with men to get their own way, with a fifth saying they do so at work.  Just 20%?  What a load of fibbers!  It might not be what feminists want to hear but a woman who does not use her wiles to get what she wants does not have a pulse.’

That is not to say those acquitted of rape have always behaved impeccably.  Our society has slid into a swamp of sexual license where promiscuity abounds and sexual intercourse has become, less the holy expression of love in marriage, more a recreational activity.  If we respected biblical morality, young women would be chaste and modest and young men chivalrous and protective.  But those whose cases are cited above were innocent of the crime they were accused of.

And just as there are rapists walking free who would be behind bars if it were not for their eloquence in a court-room, there are innocent men in prison just because an untruthful woman was more plausible on the day.

That cannot be right.

Amos 5:24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

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