Katie Glass

The feminist case for naming names in sexual assault cases

Google ‘Mark Pearson’ and the first thing you will learn about the 51 year-old artist is that he was accused of a sex attack. You can read all about how at Waterloo Station Pearson supposedly sexually assaulted a woman before striking her.  Then, if you have time, read on: and you’ll also discover this never happened. That a jury, shown CCTV footage proving the incident never took place, acquitted Pearson this week.

Yet while now, and perhaps forever, Pearson’s name will be linked to a crime he did not commit, what we will never know is the name of the women who falsely accused him.

Right now we wait in the wake of a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee, which recommended that suspects in sexual offence cases be given the same right to anonymity as complainants, unless or until they are charged. Highlighting the damage to individuals named in the media in such cases, the HASC report urged the legal system to ‘stop shaming suspects’. Yet despite agreeing with some of their findings, I think the Home Office recommendation is wrong. Those accused of sex crimes should not be granted anonymity, but neither should those accusing them.

There are strong arguments for preserving the anonymity of those accused of sex crimes. Publicly naming the accused in such cases not only risks defaming them, as their name and image is widely shared in the media, but more significantly impedes the presumption of innocence that should be rightly afforded everyone before trial.

We saw this in the case of 21-year-old Ben Sullivan. He was president of the Oxford Union when he was accused of rape and attempted rape; after his arrest, calls were made for speakers to boycott the union and a petition posted for his resignation. Subsequently he was proved innocent.

Such effects are even more concerning in the case of deliberately false rape accusations. As Keir Starmer has noted, ‘false allegations of rape are rare, but they can, and do, devastate the lives of those falsely accused’. Yet even after a false claim is proved to be just that, while the accused must live with the fall out, the complainant’s anonymity remains protected.

The injustice of this was recently highlighted by the case of an anonymous witness know as ‘Nick’ who accused Lord Bramall and Jimmy Saville, amongst others, of historic sex abuse.

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