When is a man guilty of rape? When he is accused by more than one alleged victim, according to one MP. Fortunately, the law sees things differently.
It is widely believed that rape is a greatly under-reported crime; not everyone shares this view, especially the False Rape Society. As they point out, no one knows for certain how many genuine rapes are not reported. The flip side is rapes that are reported but never occurred, and the sad thing is that it doesn’t take much of a search to unearth a mass of these.
As that Shakespeare bloke might have said but didn’t, a woman scorned is not to be trusted. There is also a well-known saying about not mixing business with pleasure, one that Mr Mouna should have heeded, because a quick bunk up with nanny Tina Greenland cost him his job and could have cost him a great deal more if the police had believed her lies. Fortunately this lady – if she may be called that – was even more stupid than mendacious, because after having sex with him she sent him a text saying “Had a lovely night... hope you don’t think I’m some kind of tart.”
Whether or not he did, he decided that once with her was enough, a rejection that led to her accusing him of spiking her drink and then raping her. Last month, that lie cost her a two year sentence at Canterbury Crown Court for perverting the course of justice.
At the other end of the country, the false allegations made by Jodie Simpson against her step-father were more odious and totally baffling. Either she had some deep seated grudge against the poor bloke for some unknown reason, or she has serious mental health issues, quite likely both.
She was given a 21 month sentence at Bradford Crown Court. Fortunately, the allegations she made against him were so outrageous – including participating in a gang rape of her – that her story soon fell apart.
The court was told that seventeen officers were involved and “264 hours wasted, along with 62 hours of support staff time at a cost of £17,000 to the West Yorkshire force”.
The money is not so important, but look at the time and hours wasted. How many genuine crimes could these detectives and others have been investigating and potentially solving if they hadn’t been sent off on a wild goose chase?
Interestingly, when the man who had been falsely accused was arrested, the police seized his computer, among other things. They seem to do this routinely now, often out of pure spite. Fortunately though in this case, the right person was brought to book, and hopefully will in similar cases that will undoubtedly happen in the future.
These cases are cut and dried. When a rape – real or imagined – is reported fairly promptly, there is a high probability of its being resolved satisfactorily, with the caveat that the world would be a better place if there were no rapes and no false allegations of same. What though if an allegation dates back not a week, not a month, but fifty years? Such is the case of 67 year old Geoffrey Genge who was alleged to have raped one girl, attempted to rape another, and to have attempted to rape a third whom he is also said to have indecently assaulted, between 1957 and 1962. Unsurprisingly,when the case came before Judge Francis Gilbert QC earlier this year, he threw it out, Now though, the MP Gary Streeter has named and shamed Mr Genge using Parliamentary privilege.
At the time these alleged offences occurred, Geoffrey Genge was between 12 and 16 years old. For a 12 year old boy to face a charge for any sort of sexual offence is extremely rare. Without some sort of corroboration, how in all fairness can any prosecution proceed after such a length of time? The fact that there were three allegations rather than one should make no difference; clearly the judge made the correct decision, though it remains to be seen if Mr Streeter did.
[The above op-ed was first published December 11. 2012. Its original title was the grammatically incorrect False Rape and Alleged Historic Rape; I don’t know how that happened.]
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