Chris Saltrese backs Sir Cliff Richard over controversial historic abuse comments
- November 28, 2018
- Chris Saltrese
- 1 Comment
Solicitor Chris Saltrese has backed Sir Cliff Richard after the veteran singer said there was an “army” of people falsely accused of historical sex abuse.
Appearing on Loose Women, Sir Cliff also said he would rather see 10 guilty predators evade justice than have one innocent person suffer a wrongful accusation. He was referring to Blackstone’s ratio, from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Chris Saltrese specialises in defending contested sexual offence allegations. Reacting to criticism of the singer’s comments, Chris Saltrese said:
“Sir Cliff is quite right to draw attention to the plight of the falsely accused. The scale of this problem is simply not appreciated by the general public who would be appalled at the ease with which the innocent can be imprisoned on the back of false allegations of abuse.
“William Blackstone’s cherished dictum that ‘it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer’ has underpinned our criminal law for centuries; it is part and parcel of the presumption of innocence and the protection of our liberty.”
Speaking about moving on with his life after being wrongly accused of historical sex abuse, Sir Cliff also said the law needed to change to protect the innocent.
He won a High Court privacy battle with the BBC early this year over its coverage of a 2014 police search of his home. He has never been charged with any offence.
While it had been as roughly steady for the previous 12 years, the number of rape accusations has risen at an almost exponential rate since 2013, from 15,000 then to 53,977 now, and yet the crime survey estimate of the number of actual rapes has remained steady at around 85,000.
It is time some serious consideration went into calculating the realistic numbers of false accusations…
“The secret barrister” in her book claims, “for the avoidance of doubt” that 21 prosecutions for Perverting the course of justice with False rape accusations proves how rare these are.
Under this logic, seeing as only 1600 were convicted for rape then those 85,000* (extrapolated from Crime Survey for England and Wales & the Rape Crisis championed figure) – must nearly all be lying, and thus we see that rape itself is very rare…
Of course it isn’t – and given the Rape Crisis statement that 15% of those 85,000 genuine victims went to the police – any rational estimate places the number of false accusations last year at no less than 20,000 and possibly as high as 35,000.
Until such times as we empower a method for rewarding police not for getting cases to prosecution, but for a truthful investigation of every serious allegation and every serious false allegation, then we will continue to be royally screwed by Her Majesty’s government and all its offices.