Earlier this week we published an article concerning the failures of the BBC to report on the case of Jay Cheshire, a 17 year old who committed suicide as a result of being accused of rape, an allegation that was withdrawn and many consider to be false. The story was reported by almost every other UK outlet and even prompted a number of comment pieces, both in the Times and now in The Telegraph too.

We received a hopeless inadequate and rather misleading reply to our concerns about the BBC’s failings in this area which are of course compounded quite significantly by their previous grossly inaccurate reporting when it comes to the issue of women making allegedly false rape accusations. Given the BBC’s massive biases on the two stories we’ve exposed, we decided the entire issue warranted a wider investigation. Therefore we decided to fully investigate the BBC’s reporting of other cases where men ad boys have been driven to suicide by false or allegedly false rape allegations.

We already know that the BBC have wrongly chosen to completely ignore the Jay Cheshire story, with senior BBC management confirming to us in a statement that they their failure to report the case was 100% deliberate. About the only other newspaper to ignore the story so completely is the Guardian, a publication notorious for its extreme feminist leanings and blatant sexism against men and boys on a daily basis.

In order to determine if the BBC was genuinely sexist and guilty of bias in this area, we examined ten further suicides of men and boys which were linked to alleged or proven false rape allegations and which occurred in the UK and were covered in the media. We then looked to see what coverage the BBC had provided for licence fee payers. Note: it’s not possible to monitor every single local BBC radio station and a brief report by a smaller local BBC outlet may fail to appear in any search we make and we didn’t search exhaustively for obscure international cases. However, we searched as thoroughly as possible for the slightest hint of any report anywhere on all BBC websites, news, radio and in BBC archives.

The following are the ten cases, listed chronologically:

Stephen McLaughlin

This is by far the earliest case we found, occurring back in 1997. it’s perhaps a little much to expect to have had a comprehensive online operation in 1997 but we chose to include this case as it was relatively well known in Scotland, receiving a number of media mentions the most recent occurring some 16 years after his death. The case was even highlighted in the Scottish parliament. The false allegation by Eilidh Connell was proven in court yet she was spared prison and merely fined pounds 500 and ordered to do 240 hours community service.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Keith Beattie

A suicide from 2000, again in Scotland and again raised in the Scottish Parliament. The day after Beattie’s death his accuser allegedly boasted that she had made the rape claims up. Of further significance due to the family supporting proposed changes in anonymity laws.

Selected further coverage: 1

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Ian Adams

In 2008 Adams who lost his job at IKEA as a result of a false rape accusation and later committed suicide due to the resulting depression. In this case a malicious letter was sent to Adam’s employer stating he had raped a woman and her daughters. The letter was littered with spelling mistakes, contained a false name and address and the sender claimed to work for the local newspaper and threatened to write “somethick” about the Ikea store. Both Ikea and the company employing Adams directly attempted to blame each other

Selected further coverage: 1, 2

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Daniel Devennie

In 2010 a woman known only as “Miss X” accused Olumide Fadayom of rape . Press reports state “Judge Patrick Robertshaw was so horrified it had come to court that he launched a pointed attack on the Crown Prosecution Service for pursuing the case.” and the jury reached a not guilty verdict in 45 minutes. Following the case it was revealed that Fadayom’s accuser had made similar rape allegations some four year earlier against Daniel Devennie. These didn’t even make it to trial due to “lacking in credibility” and Devennie’s was driven to suicide. This astonishing story was widely reported, not just in the UK media but even back in Fadayoms’ home county of Nigeria.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Graham Smith

A 2013 case involving an innocent man accused of child abuse and exonerated by police. He committed suicide by jumping of the Humber Bridge.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Tom Acton

A 16 year old who was falsely branded a rapist on Facebook by drug dealers in retaliation for him reporting them to police. He was found hanged in his bedroom.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Steven Rudderham

A 48 year old father who was falsely branded a paedophile on Facebook in 2014 which drove him to suicide.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Philip Prynn

A pub landlord who died after setting himself on fire following a allegedly false rape allegation with his accuser alleged to have made previous false accusations against her husband too.

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Luke King

A young rugby played who went into a four year long spell of depression following an allegedly false rape allegation which eventually resulted in his suicide.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Garry Parnell

A 51 year old wheelchair bound man accused of historical sexual abuse. His accuser had allegedly demanded a large sum of money to drop the case and his accuser knew he was expecting to receive such a sum of money through compensation for an accident. As a result of the allegations he climbed over a barrier and threw himself off a bridge and onto a motorway.

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

The BBC has an absolutely colossal annual budget of almost £5 billion per year, employs thousands of journalists and absolutely dominates UK news out put with close to 50% market share! We’ve identified these ten men and boys driven to suicide by extremely dubious or demonstrably false rape claims, often extremely notable stories yet the BBC couldn’t find the time or resource to write so much as one word about a single one of them. We’ve checked every single name not to mention any of the accusers who were named and convicted and nothing comes up whatsoever. We’ve even used various keywords to search the BBC website to see if they’d reported any different cases and again there’s not a single mention of any victim. The best material we found was an article from 2000 which quoted men’s human rights activist George McAuley mentioning that two men had taken their own lives in Scotland due to false rape claims. However, neither victim was mentioned by name and the paragraph was merely a quote of McCauley’s claims and thus still not a case of the BBC reporting such information themselves as verifiable fact. In the BBC’s entire output we only found one single instance of the organisation itself acknowledging fact that false rape claims can result in the victim’s suicide (and that occurred over seven years ago).

To see how scandalous this situation is, it’s worth examining the range of sources we’ve linked to above for reports on the ten cases. Bar the Guardian and the Independent, every single major UK newspaper and online outlet has reported on one or more of the above cases. Furthermore, with their recent reports on the Jay Cheshire case, the independent has now officially removed itself from the official list of media outlets with operating a policy of “we don’t give a damn about male driven to suicide by false accusations”.

These stories above feature in local press, national press, even internationality making it to Nigerian and Polish media too. Two cases were discussed in the Scottish parliament and therefore appear on its own website too, so you can find this material pretty much anywhere, other than of course at the only outlet we’re actually forced to pay for and that actually has the legal obligation to act in a neutral fashion and thus report such notable cases.

So why exactly does this matter? Well any preventable phenomena that causes such tragic deaths on a regular basis is clearly an extremely important issue yet the BBC’s blatant and 100% cover-up of these types of stories means many people simply won’t be aware that such things happen. The BBC’s market dominance means there are many people out there who get almost all their news from this organisation, and so they could visit the BBC website daily, read every single article and watch every national bulletin for 18 years straight and not see a single case of a man driven to suicide in this cruellest and most evil way. People get annoyed at feminists for their denials of the reality when it comes to false rape accusations, but to be fair if their choice of media is limited to the BBC and Guardian then you can see exactly how they could develop such a one-sided and clearly false view of this issue.

To compound matters further still, the BBC also took the decision to give blanket covered to the Eleanor de Freitas case, with at least 20 separate articles about the story, some even plastered on the BBC front page. Therefore all we’ve ever heard from BBC on the matter of false rape accusations and suicide is the one solitary known case of an alleged false accuser killing herself, rather than the far more tragic and unjust reality of actual victims of such accusations killing themselves time again, (not to mention those responsible for their deaths receiving a £500 fine). Our list a far from exhaustive but shows three cases in 2014 alone and of course we’ve ignored all attempted suicides or less clear cut cases too not to mention all those where the rest of the press “did a BBC” and failed to report the story. While some of the stories above are undoubtedly far more newsworthy than the de Freitas case, others are clearly less so. Even if we assume balance would be achieved by giving each story just one third of the coverage given to the de Freitas case, then that’s still an incredible 72 articles, tv broadcasts or radio programmes that the BBC has failed to produce.

You’re probably sick of reading how bad things are at the BBC in this area, but wait there’s even more. You see not only was the De Freitas coverage excessive in quantity and its profile, there’s the further issue of its actual content. As so often occurs, the BBC essentially cut and pasted it’s coverage from the misandrist and wholly dishonest Guardian report, going as far as describing her as an “alleged rape victim” the complete opposite of reality which as that she was clearly an alleged false rape accuser and to stand trial as such. We famously forced the BBC to retract its headlines but we’ve since discovered that this wasn’t an isolated incident and the bias persisted. Even in May 2015 the woeful BBC tv programme “Victoria Derbyshire Live” featured an interview with Lisa Longstafff of “Women Against Rape”. The host of the show, Joanna Gosling, allowed Longstaff to describe De Freitas’ victim as “her rapist” on multiple occasions in the broadcast without challenge. So defamatory was this statement that the BBC have since been forced to issue an apology (hidden away of course) and every clip or link featuring the smear has been deleted and it doesn’t even appear on WAR’s own Youtube channel.

We’ll be getting back in touch with BBC management with these new findings about their incredible failings in this area and I think even they’ll do well to defend what’s happened here or to come up with an excuse. Perhaps one day they’ll report on a man or boy driven to suicide due to a false rape claims. After all, there isn’t exactly a shortage of these deaths and so (unfortunately) they can’t use the lack of cases as an excuse.

Please feel free to contact the BBC about this scandal and perhaps your local MP too.

SEPTEMBER 2018 UPDATE

There are now two further cases of note that the BBC has failed to cover:

Ross Bullock

A forklift truck driver from Redditch, who took his own life in 2015 after being accused of rape by a woman who was in a relationship with another man at the time they had sex. Evidence on his phone supports his innocence and his accuser is now being investigated by police for allegedly perverting the course of justice.

Selected further coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)

Michael Isherwood

An an inspecting engineer at Vauxhall who took his own life after being falsely accused of filming a girl on his mobile phone. His family called on the police to take action against false accusers.

Search result: NOT COVERED ANYWHERE BY BBC (or Guardian)