An article that appeared in "Inside Times"

British (in)Justice, why it is so easy to prosecute sex offences

For those of you who are still unaware of the facts, no evidence is required to convict on sexual offences. The Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 1994, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and recent statutory amendments to the criminal justice system have combined to create a two-tier criminal justice system, something that is contrary to the concept of 'everyone being equal in the eyes of the law'. These days a person's legal rights are determined by the offence(s) with which they have been charged.

For offences such as theft, robbery, burglary etc., that are classed as 'standard criminal offences' and therefore not political and not included in tabloid media vilification programmes, the intentionally accepted legal 'norms' have been preserved and the Prosecution are still obliged to prove 'beyond all reasonable doubt' that the defendant committed the offences, and this still requires the corroboration of any verbal accusation made by provision of evidence; i.e. something tangible, to not only prove the offence but also to link the accused to the offence. However, for politically contentious offences, i.e. sexual offences, the international norms have been removed so that the premise of 'innocent until proven guilty' has been removed. The Prosecution no longer have to prove 'beyond all reasonable doubt' that the offence occurred. The civil burden of proof has instead been inserted into criminal trials, leaving the jury to make their decision based on the 'balance of probabilities, which is a much lower burden of proof, whereby no evidence is required to prove the offence and no corroboration is needed for the accusation. The need for corroboration was removed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Section 32 and 33, which make false accusations not only possible but also more probable as well as automatically creating a second class tier of criminal offences for those accused of sexual offences.

This has been achieved simply by changing the rules of evidence and reducing the burden of proof necessary to convict. It has been made easier to convict by the fact that the checks and balances such as the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty had come from Common Law and was therefore not a part of the statutory legal framework, meaning that any change necessary could be achieved by the burden of proof thus changing the treatment of the accused.

So the accused is now, in effect, guilty until proven innocent and has to prove beyond all reason- able doubt that he is innocent of the charges. Before this the Prosecution had the burden of proof which went far beyond mere accusations, but this no longer applies to sexual offences in the UK. This means the defendant is now guilty until (or if) they can prove themselves innocent. And everyone knows that to prove a negative is virtually impossible.

This is contrary to Articles 6 (1) (2) and 14 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which provides the presumption of innocence in criminal trials (see Funke v France (1993) 16 EHRR297). The principle assumes that the Prosecution needs to provide evidence (not merely accusation) of guilt in a criminal trial. Accusation now seems to be treated as 'evidence'.

If true then that seems to bear out what Manitas_at_home said in his post above - Date: 09 Nov 15 - 01:54 PM

These days it seems to be you're guilty unless you're proven innocent.