Friday, May 10, 2013
'Yewtree' outed as an obscenity completely undermining law
At last, voices are being heard (more powerful than mine) against the deeply obscene idiocy of 'Operation Yewtree'. I urge anyone who has not already done so to read the excellent article by leading barrister Barbara Hewson on the Spiked! website (along with several by others arguing on similar lines on this subject). http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13604/
This follows the hideous spectacle of the police forcing an ill and confused man in his 80s into a 'plea bargain' over incidents from ancient history as trivial as kissing, breast-fondling and a hand up clothing. I'm referring to Stuart Hall, of course. And the others blighted by the police/media trawl have not even been charged.
Hewson's recommendations are exactly right, and as I have long argued:
- Remove anonymity for complainants -- to tackle the high incidence of frivolous, attention-seeking or vexatious false allegation.
- Lower the age of consent to 13 -- to reflect the fall in the average age of female puberty from 17 to 10.
- Introduce a time-limit to avoid making legal cases out of allegations re the distant past that are impossible to evaluate.
The BBC continues to show appalling bias in all this. On the Tuesday BBC1 Six O'clock News a pressure-group spokesman arguing that putting a name of an accused man in the media brought forward other complainants, was not balanced with any expert to point out the research showing that this is precisely what leads to multiple bogus allegation.
# posted by Steve Moxon @ 7:33 am 
