JAN MOIR: Shame on the she-furies who always assume men are guilty of rape...





Oxford Union President Ben Sullivan has been told he will not be charged with rape

Arrested at dawn. Placed on police bail for nearly two months. The target of a feminist crusade to further blacken his name.

What now for Ben Sullivan, the President of the Union at Oxford who has been told he will not be charged with rape? Can he expect an apology from those who campaigned so virulently against him?

Don’t hold your breath.

The 21-year-old history and politics student was arrested in May on suspicion of rape and attempted rape; accusations made against him by two different women. As Sullivan was the head of the debating society, he was a patriarchal cherry on the cake; a very high-profile student in a prestigious university. He was shown no mercy.

Sarah Pine, President for Women at Oxford University Student Union, wasted no time in leading the witch hunt against him.

First, she pressurised a string of celebrity speakers to cancel their appearances at the Union. To their great shame, some acceded to her wishes. Dragon’s Den star and entrepreneur Julie Meyer, composer Eric Whitacre and even the Secretary General of Interpol all pulled out of scheduled speaking engagements.

At least Professor A.C. Grayling refused to join the boycott, stating that Mr Sullivan should not be subject to the ‘kangaroo court of opinion’.

Good for him — yet Pine would not be moved. She argued that the presumption of innocence does not mean ‘business as usual’. Actually, it does.

Innocent until proven guilty is one of the great, unshakeable tenets that underpins our society. It is not up to a pack of she-furies hell-bent on vengeance to decide otherwise.

Sometimes terrible things are done in the name of equality, and rounding on an individual on the basis of an allegation is one of those instances. Depriving anyone — yes, even a man accused of rape — of his fundamental rights is not a step forward for equality — it is the complete antithesis of equality.

The 21-year-old history and politics student was arrested in May on suspicion of rape and attempted rape, accusations made against him by two different women

Had it gone to trial, Ben Sullivan’s guilt or innocence would have been a matter for the courts to decide. And if found guilty, his punishment would have been a lengthy jail sentence. Yet all this happened before the CPS had decided whether or not to charge him.

This is part of a chilling trend in which, on U.S. university campuses, feminists have become self-appointed rape cops. If a male student is accused of a sexual assault on a female student, it has become alarmingly commonplace for it to be dealt with in-house, as opposed to by the police.

University officials consider the evidence, deal with the matter and mete out the punishments to the offenders.

President Obama has already aired his misgivings and does not want to see civil process overtaking the criminal justice system. Let us hope the collapse of the case against Ben Sullivan ensures a similar system does not gain traction here.

Elizabeth Walker’s daughters have gone to the High Court to challenge their late mother’s will after she left half of her estate to a lover 23 years her junior. They claim she wasn’t in her right mind when she made the will. If the sexes were reversed and it was a man who had left his money to a younger woman, would there even be a case?

Who knows what really happened on those drunken nights of student lust. What we do know is that Ben Sullivan has been named, shamed and decreed guilty by a cabal of enraged women before the case even went to court. His life could have been ruined by these accusations.

He now has to pick up the pieces and somehow carry on while they remain anonymous, their identities cloaked for all time.

MP Nigel Evans, who himself was cleared of sexual offences earlier this year, has said that whatever happens, Sullivan’s life will never be the same again.

Evans is campaigning for alleged sex offenders to have anonymity at least until they are charged; one can see his point. Somehow the need for open justice needs to be balanced against the horror of a false rape accusation, something which can leave a life-long stigma.

Tougher sentences for those who knowingly make false claims would be a start.

On the issue of anonymity, I also feel we should either have it for both sides or neither.

Every time a case like this collapses, it is a calamity for everyone involved. No one comes out of it well.

It also makes it a tiny bit more difficult for women who have suffered a sex attack to come forward, for fear they might not be believed.

We all want to see rapists punished — but not at the cost of young men’s lives ruined by these accusations.

And as for Sarah Pine and her wild, ducking-stool efforts to condemn this man before he had even been charged — I hope she is blackly ashamed of herself.

Poles apart on morality

A school in Kent invited girls from a nearby pole-dancing group to perform at its summer fete. You can see where this is going, can’t you?



Headteacher Sarah Warshow invited the Revolutions Pole Academy to give a demonstration.



‘They are involved in aerial skills and it’s run by someone in our community,’ she trilled. So that’s all right then.

Cue appearances by little girls in make-up and gold hot-pants writhing up and down poles, doing the splits and all sorts. No wonder parents looked on in horror.

We all know that gymnastics involves poles and dancing — but once layered with the sexualisation of glitter, crop-tops and make-up, it becomes something else altogether. Something inappropriate.

What happened to hockey and hurdles as a way keeping little girls fit? Or running around in the gym with a medicine ball, if all else fails.

Hair today - but will it cause years of regret?



Adele has just had all her hair cut off and looks wonderful

Does long hair have an age limit? This is something I ask myself again and again, usually when studying photographs of my hairoines Elle Macpherson and Jerry Hall.

Surely there comes a time in every woman’s life when you have to ditch the bun, burn the wigs, give up childish things and cut your elbow-length hair short, short, short?

No, for a part of me suspects it means bursting into tears and spending the next five years trying to grow it all back again.

Not always! Look at Adele, who has just had all her hair chopped off — and it looks wonderful. The man behind her new look is my own hairdresser, Lino — the celebrity crimper who also cuts David Cameron’s hair.

‘It would suit you, too,’ said Lino this week, wielding his scissors

Eeek. Maybe not this week . . .

Brazilians always know the best way to score



When it comes to pre or post-match sex, where do you draw the foam line? It all depends what team you play for.

At the World Cup, different countries have different sex rules. Bosnia-Herzegovina’s national team are under a strict no-sex curfew, but the manager said they can please themselves.

The Russian, Chilean and Mexican players must abstain in every way, but the Brazilian team is allowed to have as much sex as they like, so long as it is not too ‘acrobatic’ — how very Brazilian of them! The English are fine on this, because their idea of acrobatic sex is to stand on one foot while they take their other sock off.

Sexy time is permitted for the Germans, the Spanish (much good it did them), the Americans, Italians, the Aussie Sexeroos, the Dutch, the Swiss and the Uruguay team.

The French can have sex (but not all night) while Nigeria can sleep with wives but not girlfriends. Or no away team friendlies, as it is otherwise known.

Make way for Entrepreneur Barbie, the latest can-do doll in the iconic Mattel range. ‘If you can dream it, you can be it,’ is her slogan. All the better to encourage little girls to have serious career ambitions and break the plastic ceiling. Shame she is still a size 0 in a pink dress, with killer heels and unfeasibly balloonish breasts. As a measure of her take-me-seriously intent, she’s got a smartphone and a tablet packed inside her shiny black handbag. So has Coleen Rooney, but that didn’t exactly make her the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the year.





Gap year parents' agony



Chezyne Emmons, 23, died on a trip in southern Asia after mistakenly drinking ethanol in a bottle that had been labelled as gin

Mid-June and, by now, hundreds and thousands of them have fled the family nest. Fledglings, off on their gap years, to take up internships on the other side of the world, to taste their first steps of adult freedom.

A friend’s son is in Hanoi, cheerfully reporting to his parents that his hotel room has no window. Another’s daughter is in Australia, and spent £300 of her allowance on clothes in her first week. Facebook pages show late-night carousings, new friends, bungee-jumping and worse.

At home, mums and dads nibble their fingernails and pretend not to worry.

Which is why the terrible story of backpacker Chezyne Emmons, 23, who died on a trip in southern Asia after mistakenly drinking ethanol in a bottle that had been labelled gin, is so horrifying.

Her parents are being amazingly brave by trying to find some good out of this tragedy. Their quest is to warn as many young people as possible of this awful hazard and the unscrupulous people who kill partying youngsters just to make a few quid.

To find the strength to do this in the midst of their grief and sorrow takes real courage. We can’t wrap young people in cotton wool. However, we should make sure they are as well prepared and warned of danger as possible.

Christy Turlington was always was the most beautiful of the Nineties supermodel intake.

Like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, she still looks amazing.

And guess what? She has said she doesn’t want to look younger and is happy to age naturally. I’d feel the same — if I looked like her.

Christy Turlington is happy to age naturally