Just a brief run down of Simon’s story [mini-thread]. Simon was accused historically by two men of having molested them at school when he was their teacher. He was arrested and charged - and kept in limbo, on bail, for almost two years in total.
Simon, it turned out, had never met or even heard of the two accusers. They claimed he had used his PE lessons as an opportunity to prey on young boys. Simon had never taught PE. He was a modern languages teacher. At trial, he was unanimously acquitted by the jury within minutes.
But despite winning his freedom, two years of having such allegations hanging over him had cost Simon his reputation, his career, his home & his financial security. To add insult to injury, he learned that proper police work & common sense could’ve spared him the entire ordeal...
Simon discovered that the two accusers had accused other people in the past. Their pattern was to accuse people of abuse and then seek Government compensation. He was furious that police were facilitating this and started investigating other cases involving false allegations.
Simon uncovered what he called ‘the false allegations industry’: a network of repeat accusers who serially destroyed innocent people’s lives/reputations with false allegations for compensation but faced zero consequences, as UK law guaranteed anonymity to sex crime complainants.
Simon wrote about attending different trials & running into the same accusers again & again. He came to believe the police/CPS were knowingly aiding & abetting scammers, rather than prosecuting false accusers, as to do so would provoke aggressive victims’ rights campaigners.
In other words, locking up a falsely accused person and letting people believe they were guilty was viewed as a win, in PR terms, for the authorities - whereas charging a false accuser, no matter how clear their fraud, would stir up extremist organisations & cause a PR shitstorm.
Simon spent the rest of his life raising awareness of false allegations/campaigning for consequences for false accusers. For his efforts, he spent his final years being falsely accused all over again, daily, by Twitter morons labeling him a ‘BBC paedo’, a ‘paedo apologist’, etc.
But he was undeterred and fought til the end, putting in years of good work to raise awareness around false allegations and miscarriages of justice. Let’s hope it wasn’t all in vain.
His book about the trauma of being falsely accused is called Presumed Guilty.
RIP Simon.
His book about the trauma of being falsely accused is called Presumed Guilty.
RIP Simon.
