False accusers should be named and shamed - they can't get away with blatant lies
It's time for a level playing field when it comes to false allegations, says Ann Widdecombe
Andrew Rosindell, the MP for Romford since 2001, has been exonerated following a two-year investigation by police after an allegation of sexual assault. During those two years he was not allowed to enter Parliament and that even cruelly extended to an occasion on a Saturday when the daughter of a family friend was being married in the House of Commons crypt.
All you have to do these days to destroy an MP, teacher, priest or whomever is to make a false allegation. No more is necessary. Your name won’t be published and even if the allegation is a deliberate malicious falsehood born from revenge or greed you will face no retribution, while the person you have wronged loses friends, livelihood and reputation, to say nothing of suffering the mental agony of a prolonged investigation.
Mr Rosindell is the fourth of my MP friends to have been accused and subsequently exonerated. One at least grew nearly suicidal with the prolonged mental strain.
Why on earth do the police take so long? Recently I heard from a friend that a priest he knows well was accused of the unspeakable but only found out after a year – yes, a year! – what the actual details were, at which point he gently explained that he was working at a mission in Africa at that time and that, furthermore, he had also kept a journal so that he could show exactly where he was and who saw him.
As the police put their heads in their hands he asked, reasonably enough, why they could not have told him the details at the start, thereby saving not only him a lot of fear and mental agony but also the police a lot of time and the taxpayer a lot of money.
They replied these were set procedures which governed how they operated. Why, in heaven’s name? Needless to say, the accusers suffered no consequences despite blatant lies. It is time for a level playing field.