Allison Pearson recites a litany of failed rape prosecutions, in which vital evidence for the defence was not investigated, that were originally instigated apparently in an effort to boost rape convictions in line with the feminist view that every complainant is a victim and every man a potential rapist. She adds that the practical application of this ideology has been ‘confirmed by police officers, both serving and retired’, concluding that the Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders, the ‘architect of a policy that has led to multiple likely miscarriages of justice’, should resign, since ‘her position is untenable. If she won’t go, the Prime Minister must sack her’ (Telegraph, February 7).
And yet Theresa May, who has presided over this scandal, is a former Home Secretary. And, as reported elsewhere, Scotland Yard is ‘currently reviewing 600 sex assault cases amid fears that investigations have been tainted by a failure to fully disclose digital evidence’ – a task that the chief of the Metropolitan police – another woman, Cressida Dick – has warned will mean taking bobbies off the beat. Moreover, it was Mrs May who appointed as Home Secretary fellow ‘modernist’ Amber Rudd, who has shown little interest in the travesty of injustice revealed by the unravelling of multiple rape prosecutions on her watch.
Ironically, the Telegraph also reports that Mrs May is considering issuing posthumous pardons to Suffragettes who broke the law as a ‘good way to honour their memory . . . by encouraging more women into public life’. Ms Rudd has said that she understands where such demands are ‘coming from’, and although she pointed out that issuing such pardons would be ‘complicated because if you’re going to give a legal pardon for things like arson and violence, it’s not as straightforward as people think it might be’, she added that she would ‘certainly look at proposals’.
It is certainly a tricky problem – pardoning the Suffragettes while trying to convict innocent men – and, with the backing of such figures as Theresa May and Amber Rudd, it is a faint hope that Mrs Saunders will resign. It is also a faint hope that while offering pardons to dead Suffragettes, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary will also offer an apology to the men whose lives have been ruined because of a warped and poisonous ideology.
One wonders what sort of women Mrs May believes will be encouraged into politics by pardoning women who committed violent acts as part of their campaign – perhaps those who harass peaceful pro-life prayer vigils, and then accuse the vigils of harassment with absolutely no evidence. But the death penalty was abolished in 1965 and abortion legalised in 1967, thus we have spent 52 years sparing the lives of murderers and 50 years facilitating the killing of the innocent, so Mrs May’s musings should come as no surprise.
We have succeeded in reversing the categories of victim and perpetrator, and are now on the way to declaring all men guilty until they can prove themselves innocent, and all women innocent until proved guilty – apart from those women in the pro-life vigils, who are found guilty even without a trial. Mr Bumble declared the law to be an ass, but worse than that, it has become a political plaything, a means of virtue signalling and above all an opportunity for social engineering; and it is making asses of all of us.
