Today the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published a report following its short inquiry into police bail. As part of that report the committee recommended that, just as those who say they’ve been the victim of a sexual offence enjoy anonymity,
the same right to anonymity should also apply to the person accused of the crime, unless and until they are charged with an offence.
In response I’ve written a piece for Independent Voices. As well as opposing this idea on principle (I think it relies on wrong-headed ideas about the presumption of innocence and fairness) what struck me when writing this was how often it’s MPs themselves who keep resurrecting this debate, and how superficial their approach to it is when they raise it:
It’s worth noticing how lightly MPs have dealt with this over the years. They knew better than Dame Rose Heilbron in the Seventies, and many of them knew better than the Criminal Law Revision Committee in the Eighties. The Coalition knew better than its own manifestoes, and the Home Affairs committee knows better today, though it only heard from five witnesses – and spoke to them mainly about police bail, in fact. MPs simply don’t approach this issue with the seriousness it deserves.
I hope you’ll read the whole piece.
Another interesting post, thanks. I am not minded to give too much credence to the report of the Heilbron Committee which, in addition to the matters commented upon, was content to leave the law on mens rea in rape as decided by the majority in Morgan v DPP. We know what a awful decision that was, fobbing off the victim (to paraphrase the dissenting Lord Simon) with the reassurance that (at the time) her attacker unreasonably but honestly believed that she was consenting to his assault. Thank goodness the politicians (finally) saw through the ‘unreasonable but honmest’ legal pettyfogging and did away with that defence through s1 Sexual Offences Act 2003.
Heilbron’s re-framing of the question here so as not to treat those accused of rape in the same way as their accusers, but rather in the same way as those accused of other crimes also misses the point and is over-due for political correction.
It is rather obviously desirable to give potential (pending verdict) victims of rape anonymity. To the general public interest in convicting criminals is added the particular public interest in ensuring that victims of rape report it so that their right to physical integrity and the rights of others to such integrity can be protected. I would actually be inclined to extend such anonymity to potential victims of other sexual crimes as they are likely to suffer the same – objectively unjustified but subjectively powerful – sense of shame and embarrassment at what happened to them, and then having to give an account of it time and again, but I suspect I would have little support on that one.
Until we are willing and able to treat the offence of rape (and perhaps other sexual offences) in the same way as any other crime – and I am far from sure that this can or should be done – the only proper comparison to make is between accuser and accused in such cases. This means that the cost of granting potential victims of rape anonymity because of the particular public interest in encouraging their complaints is that those they accuse should be treated in the same even-handed way until the point of conviction. If that means prosecuting a convicted rapist again where there are further complaints against him revealed after his first conviction, then so be it.
So, I am with the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Your piece is untypically lacking in analysis. The argument is basically that because some committees with legal bigwigs in them thought about it and came up with one answer, MPs should fall in line.
Any analysis of this issue has to include an examination of the justification for rape complainants having anonymity, since it is that which leads to pressure for an “equivalent” protection for rape accuseds.
Examination and evaluation of the competing arguments and principles would be more illuminating that statements of what other people or committees have thougth.