{"id":6978,"date":"2014-02-06T21:47:31","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T21:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=6978"},"modified":"2014-02-06T22:12:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-06T22:12:29","slug":"2014feb06law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/2014feb06law\/","title":{"rendered":"Roache verdict casts Yewtree in poor light"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"William<\/a>Coronation Street actor William Roache has been cleared of rape and indecent assault charges by a jury<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Mr Roache, 81, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, was found not guilty of two rapes and four indecent assaults after a trial at Preston Crown Court.<\/p>\n

Five women had claimed he assaulted them when they were aged 16 or under between 1965 and 1971.<\/p>\n

But the testimony of all of them broke down under examination.\u00a0But Louise Blackwell QC, defending, said the women’s evidence “lacked sense and credibility”.<\/p>\n

In court, the woman making the rape claims changed her mind about how old she was at the time.<\/p>\n

Another woman initially told police she was warned about Mr Roache by actor Johnny Briggs, who played Mike Baldwin, but when it was discovered he was not in the show at the time she said the warning had come from a different actor.<\/p>\n

After the case, Lancashire Constabulary said the allegations had been “thoroughly and professionally investigated by specialist detectives”.<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesman said that “all the evidence was subjected to careful scrutiny before a decision was taken to charge, in the belief that there was sufficient evidence to justify a realistic prospect of conviction”.<\/p>\n

He added that the force “entirely respect the verdict reached by the jury”.<\/p>\n

The case came to court as part of ‘Operation Yewtree’, the police investigation which began with Jimmy Savile and expanded in ‘Savile and others’ and then ‘Others’. \u00a0Mr Roache was investigated in the latter category.<\/p>\n

Lancashire Constabulary probably thought that\u00a0five separate women could not possibly all be making it up. \u00a0But this is precisely what the jury has found, and each one of the accusers should now be charged with perjury. \u00a0They remained anonymous while Mr Roache’s name was dragged through the mire in full public view. \u00a0That is an injustice, despite the not guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

Equally, the police may have been swayed by Mr Roache’s admitting to broadcaster Piers Morgan<\/a><\/strong> that he had slept with ‘more than a hundred’ women and his admitted infidelity to his first wife Anna Cropper. \u00a0He has plainly acted like a cad, and has described this behaviour as ‘inadequate,’ but maintained throughout that he had no interest in under-age girls or non-consensual encounters.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the verdict casts doubt on all the non-Saville parts of the Yewtree investigation, leading ordinary people to conclude that celebrities may have been targeted for some perverse reason by their accusers.<\/p>\n

The prosecution said that, if the actor was telling the truth, he was the victim of a “huge, distorted and perverse witch-hunt”. \u00a0Those comments may come back to haunt them and the Yewtree investigators.<\/p>\n

A greater sadness is that there are genuine victims of horrific sexual abuse who cannot secure justice because their abusers were too well-connected or evidence has been mysteriously lost. \u00a0They have not been well-served by this debacle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coronation Street actor William Roache has been cleared of rape and indecent assault charges by a jury. Mr Roache, 81, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, was found not guilty of two rapes and four indecent assaults after a trial at Preston Crown Court. Five women had claimed he assaulted them when they were aged 16 or under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[986,987],"class_list":["post-6978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice-policing-crime","tag-william-roache","tag-yewtree"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":14,"rttpg_category":"Justice, Policing & Crime<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Coronation Street actor William Roache has been cleared of rape and indecent assault charges by a jury. Mr Roache, 81, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, was found not guilty of two rapes and four indecent assaults after a trial at Preston Crown Court. Five women had claimed he assaulted them when they were aged 16 or under…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}