Peer
names 'serial liar' whose rape claims sent an innocent man to jail
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,29389-2413024,00.html
Times
- 20th October 2006
Women's
rights groups fear that legal landmark will discourage victims from
coming forward
A LABOUR peer yesterday named a “serial and repeated liar”
whose false allegations resulted in an innocent man being jailed
for a sex attack.
Lord Campbell-Savours
used parliamentary privilege to name the woman during a debate in
the House of Lords on rape legislation. He suggested that women
who make false allegations of rape should be named and prosecuted
for perjury.
It is believed to be the first time that the identity of a woman
who claims that she has been the victim of a sexual offence has
been revealed in Parliament.
Women’s
rights groups said that they feared that the naming of the woman
would further deter rape victims from reporting their ordeal.
It is a
criminal offence to name anyone who complains to police that they
have been the victim of a sexual offence, even if the alleged attacker
is found not guilty in court. But Lord Campbell-Savours is protected
from legal action for comments made in the House of Lords.
Speaking
in the Lords he said: “Is not the inevitable consequence of
the workings of the law as currently framed that we will carry on
imprisoning innocent people such as Warren Blackwell, who was falsely
accused by a serial and repeated liar, (the woman’s name),
who has a history of making false accusations and having multiple
identities? “As a result of her accusations, he spent three
and a half years in prison following a shabby and inadequate police
investigation and was exonerated only when the Criminal Cases Review
Commission inquiry cleared him and traced her history.
“Should
not mature accusers who perjure themselves in rape trials be named
and prosecuted for perjury?” The official record of the Houses
of Parliament, Hansard, included the woman’s name in its report
because it believed it was covered by parliamentary privilege. However,
the Press Association later removed the woman’s identity from
its report of the debate after seeking legal advice, which said
that she was entitled, by statute, to lifelong anonymity.
Lord Cambell-Savours
said last night that he was unable to comment further on the issue
because he would not be covered by privilege outside Parliament.
Mr Blackwell,
36, from Daventry, Northamptonshire, spent more than three years
in jail for a sex attack before his conviction was quashed by the
Court of Appeal last month after fresh evidence suggested that his
alleged victim was a liar.
The Criminal
Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages
of justice, discovered that the alleged victim had made similar
accusations. The Court of Appeal ruled that Mr Blackwell’s
conviction was unsafe in the light of the new evidence that the
complainant had made “strikingly similar allegations”
about other sex attacks, had an ability to lie and a possible propensity
to self-harm.
Lord Campbell-Savours’
comments came after intense debate about the right to anonymity
for victims of sexual offenders and those accused but not convicted.
Anonymity
is granted automatically to the accuser in rape cases, under the
Sexual Offences Act 1976. The woman who accused Mr Blackwell can
be identified only when she waives her right to anonymity or is
convicted of attempting to pervert the cause of justice, proving
that the sexual assault never took place.
Baroness
Scotland of Asthal, the Home Office Minister, told the Lords: “It
is not inevitable that people will be falsely accused. One of the
tragedies in relation to rape allegations is that very few of those
who suffer this most dreadful crime have the courage to come forward
at all.”
Ruth Hall,
of Women Against Rape, said: “Women are being targeted by
the criminal justice system for bringing allegations of rape. It
is a new development that we have seen over the past few weeks.
“There
have been a number of women prosecuted for perverting the course
of justice or having something added to their Criminal Records Bureau
records because they have made allegations of rape.
“The
system is institutionally sexist. We don’t believe that any
assumption can be made that a woman has not been telling a truth.”
At present
5.6 per cent of rape cases result in a conviction. The Government
and lawyers fear that any attempt to remove anonymity would reduce
significantly the number of women coming forward and prepared to
go to court.
Mobile
video clears rape accused 18th September 2006
