Article content

Hooray for Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, who has formally led her force in abandoning its policy of automatically believing victims of sexual assault.

As The Times of London reported Monday, since taking over the Met about a year ago, Dick has told her officers that of course they are to keep an open mind, treat complainants with respect and dignity and “we should listen to them. We should record what they say.”

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Christie Blatchford: Unlike Canada, U.K. has learned sex assault 'victims' aren't always victims Back to video

But, Dick said, “From that moment on, we are investigators.”

What seems so elementary — that the first job of police isn’t to “support” victims or anyone else, but rather to investigate complaints — got lost in 2014, when the notional acceptance of victims as inherently “being truthful” went to a flat-out recommendation that “The presumption that a victim should always be believed should be institutionalized.”

This “we believe” mindset was in part responsible for the Operation Midland scandal, which saw a number of prominent men ruined (though never criminally charged) by allegations they were involved in a VIP pedophile ring, all on the say-so of a single alleged victim known as “Nick.”