The Crown Prosecution Service was facing serious questions from MPs last night after a judge condemned it for putting an innocent teacher on trial for raping a pupil following ‘enormous pressure’ from a former Metropolitan Police chief and an ex-CPS boss.

A jury took just 15 minutes to clear high-flying deputy headmaster Kato Harris – who says the ordeal has destroyed his life.

Now, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Sue Akers, an ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner, hired as a private detective by the 14-year-old’s wealthy family, influenced the CPS decision to prosecute by pressurising officers from her old force.

The Crown Prosecution Service is facing serious questions for improper rape charges against innocent teacher Kato Harris (pictured). The CPS decision to prosecute was influenced by the 14-year-old girl's wealthy family's ties despite being warned by police that the case was flimsy

A damning official verdict, written by the trial judge and seen by this newspaper, also suggests Alison Levitt QC, the CPS’s former principal legal adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions might have misled detectives into believing she acted as a ‘minister of justice’ for the CPS. At the time, she too was being paid by the girl’s parents.

Akers and Levitt were hired by the pupil’s family through exclusive legal firm Mishcon de Reya.

In his ruling, His Honour Judge Martin Edmunds concludes that the CPS’s decision to prosecute Mr Harris was an ‘improper act’ and ordered the CPS to pay all his bills. The 23-page ruling also reveals how:

Sue Akers, an ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner, hired as a private detective by the 14-year-old’s wealthy family, influenced the CPS decision to prosecute by pressurising officers from her old force. Akers even pressured old Met colleagues with an 'action list'

Akers gave detectives an ‘actions list’ of tasks, even though she no longer worked for the Met. She denied giving any directions.

Despite warnings from police that the case was flimsy, Levitt demanded detectives contact every pupil Mr Harris had ever taught in his 16-year career.

Levitt pressed officers to seize the teacher’s computer but they found nothing incriminating on it.

Last night, Tory MP Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons justice select committee, said: ‘The fact that a former senior police officer and a very experienced lawyer who used to work for the CPS were both used by the pupil’s parents as advocates to advance their case sets a disturbing precedent.’

And former Labour Justice Minister David Hanson said: ‘The involvement of a former senior policewoman and a former senior CPS adviser in this affair raises very serious questions. Should former public servants be allowed to lobby the very organisations they used to work for in this way?’

Ex-CPS boss Alison Levitt pressed officers to size the accused teacher's computer but they found nothing incriminating on it. Akers and Levitt were hired by the pupil’s family through exclusive legal firm Mishcon de Reya

The Mail on Sunday has established that following the unsuccessful prosecution, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders led a secret review of the CPS’s handling of Mr Harris’s case and other rape trials that ended in acquittal.

The judge’s damning verdict is revealed in a written costs ruling seen by The Mail on Sunday. He wrote: ‘It was one of those immensely rare and exceptional cases where the decision to prosecute and thereafter to continue the prosecution was an unnecessary or improper act.’

The judge highlighted an email in which a clearly exasperated senior detective outlined his frustrations in dealing with Ms Levitt and the girl’s family. The officer, noting that the pupil’s story was ‘poor and heavily prompted’ and not supported by corroborating evidence, added the ‘family and their representatives will settle for nothing less than each and every past and present teacher and pupil from every school the suspect taught at being contacted’.

The 14-year-old accuser was flown to New York by her wealthy parents for weekly therapy sessions, it emerged during the trial. They hired Akers and Levitt to work on their behalf

According to the judgment, Ms Levitt lobbied the police and CPS in a series of emails. In one, sent to a senior officer, she attached a statement from her former boss, Keir Starmer, now a senior MP, which listed Ms Levitt’s own findings in a report published into the Jimmy Savile case for the DPP. The inclusion of the DPP’s statement ‘raises the real risk that her then role as advocate for the parents may be misunderstood’, said the judge.

The judge said he was ‘at a loss’ to see how the CPS decided there was ‘sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction’.

Despite raising questions over Mishcon de Reya’s involvement, the judge added that there was nothing to suggest that those acting for the complainant’s parents acted improperly or that their actions prevented the police and CPS from conducting a proper enquiry.

Mr Harris, then head of geography at an £18,000-a-year London girls’ secondary school, was accused of raping the pupil three times. The allegations emerged a year after the assault was alleged to have taken place and after the girl moved to a new school.

Exceptionally, Judge Edmunds ordered the CPS to pay the teacher’s legal fees from the time he was charged. Mr Harris has spent £183,000 but the CPS has so far offered only £140,000. Generous MoS readers helped raise £35,000 through an online appeal.

When asked to respond to the judge’s verdict that the prosecution was ‘improper’, the CPS said: ‘We have not appealed the judgment.’

A spokesman said: ‘That the case was not dismissed suggests that the defence and the judge were satisfied a reasonable jury, properly directed, could have convicted the accused. We respect the jury decision.’

A Mishcon de Reya spokesman said: ‘Victims have enforceable rights under the Human Rights Act to a proper and effective investigation. The parents asked lawyers to advocate and it is perfectly reasonable for the parents to do this.’

A Met spokesman said Greater Manchester Police conducted an independent review of its investigation and ‘found no evidence that the complainant’s representatives were inappropriately given any physical access to information concerning the investigation’.

'I was cleared in just 15 minutes of raping pupil ... but the nightmare will stay with me forever': Teacher Kato Harris talks to Ian Gallagher and Simon Murphy

By the age of 16, Kato Harris was already certain that he was destined to teach.

In his GCSE lessons, he paid close attention to the techniques his tutors used to try to bring subjects to life, and a sense of the kind of teacher he hoped to become began to crystallise in his mind.

Throughout his 16-year career, he always adopted the same meticulous approach to his craft and was rewarded, aged 35, with the job of deputy headmaster at the prestigious St George’s School in Ascot.

Today Kato Harris's dream of being a headmaster lies in pieces – all thanks to the word of a deeply troubled 14-year-old schoolgirl

He was driven by the joy of helping pupils achieve goals they had previously considered beyond them. He was good at it too. Epithets frequently applied to Mr Harris included ‘inspirational’ and ‘brilliant’.

But in December 2014, a troubled, attention-seeking 14-year-old pupil at his previous school – who, according to one of her teachers, was competing with a friend ‘as to who could have the biggest story’ – decided to accuse Mr Harris, a man of impeccable character, of rape. Their game should have ended as soon as it began.

Instead, as Mr Harris, now 38, details today, he endured a 17-month ordeal during which he was publicly named, humiliated and dragged through the courts, an experience, he says, that left him suicidal.

His ordeal finally ended when a jury cleared him after just 15 minutes’ deliberation. Tragically, it was too late. The damage could not be undone.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Harris reveals that the girl’s false claims have destroyed his career – and extinguished his once irrepressible spirit that endeared him to legions of children.

‘I had to give up my dream because of a crime I didn’t commit,’ he says. ‘I am unemployed, living in a bedsit and will soon be on housing benefit. I am toxic.’

He is now considering a job at a crematorium ‘putting bodies in the fire’. And of his once-adored profession, he says: ‘If I knew on the day I qualified what I know now, I would never have become a teacher. I will never work with children again – I will never put myself in that position of vulnerability.’

I had to give up my dream ... I'm unemployed, living in a bedsit and I'm toxic

He can hardly be blamed for sounding jaundiced. Set against the many other high-profile injustices which followed the posthumous exposure of Jimmy Savile’s sex offences in 2012 – a period when, at times, hysteria conquered reason – Mr Harris’s experience stands alone.

Few institutions emerge with credit: the Crown Prosecution Service charged him without the evidence to do so; his school failed him when he was cleared; his local Anglican church turned him away simply because he was awaiting trial. He says a priest told him: ‘We’ve had a meeting and we’ve decided you’re not permitted on the premises.’

There were individuals, too, who didn’t have the courage to support him. Yet after his acquittal, he received thousands of messages of support from pupils past and present, colleagues and parents.

Perhaps the most troubling question of all is why he was prosecuted in the first place.

From the outset, detectives doubted the girl’s ‘poor and heavily prompted’ account of being raped on three separate occasions in a classroom at lunchtime.

Mr Harris is convinced the case would have been dropped but for the deep pockets of the girl’s parents, who hired the services of both Alison Levitt, the former principal legal adviser to the head of the CPS, and Sue Akers, an ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner.

Their job was to keep the detectives on their toes. By all accounts, they succeeded.

Mr Harris is convinced the case would have been dropped but for the deep pockets of the girl’s parents

Later, in a damning assessment, the judge said that despite the paucity of evidence, Levitt and Akers put ‘enormous pressure’ on the police and the CPS to prosecute Mr Harris.

It was a decision that the judge called ‘improper’ when he ruled in January that it should pay all of Mr Harris’s costs.

Shamefully, three months on, it is still quibbling over the final amount.

Referring to Ms Levitt and Ms Akers, Mr Harris says: ‘If you have enough money, there are former senior members of the police and the CPS who you can pay to use their experience and contacts in these organisations to improve your chances of securing a prosecution.

‘What they did was perfectly legal. The system allowed them to do it.’

In court, it was suggested that his highly strung accuser – who enjoys the right to lifelong anonymity – may have targeted him because he once made a small joke at her expense, though in truth he doesn’t really know.

‘I genuinely believe she picked me because she had to pick someone. One of the biggest challenges I face in the future is learning to forgive her. I will do, just not now.

‘I know that she would have gone through a lot of distress and guilt after I was arrested, as she knew I was innocent.’

Following his trial last July, Mr Harris ‘couldn’t wait’ to return to St George’s ‘with my head held high’.

But during his long ordeal, the headmistress, who had given him unequivocal support, moved on and the school’s attitude towards him then seemed to change.

Despite being given the green light by social services to continue teaching, a number of parents complained about his proposed return. The school sided with the parents – who pay annual fees of £33,000. Mr Harris has now apparently been forced out but says that he is unable to talk about his departure beyond confirming: ‘I did not resign.’

The school refused to respond to a series of questions from The Mail on Sunday, with headmistress Elizabeth Hewer saying only: ‘Mr Harris decided not to return to teaching and left St George’s in November.’

What Mr Harris can say is this: ‘I would certainly advocate that no man qualify as a teacher. It is just not worth it. What is the lesson here? There is nothing to protect the male teacher.’

He adds: ‘There’s a narrative in schools about “perv” teachers and you’ve got to be a male teacher to see it. I could try getting another job as a teacher but now – because of the internet – there is always going to be someone who says, “Did you read about Mr Harris? He’s a paedo.” And I’m not going to work in that environment.’

Yet back in December 2014 his prestige had never stood higher and he had never been happier. His partner was pregnant with their daughter.

‘Personally and professionally, I was looking forward to a great future,’ he says. ‘Life was like a wonderful dream.’

On the last day of that Christmas term, he was told that some police officers wanted to speak to him. ‘I wondered what I might have seen, or witnessed,’ he recalls.

As weeks turned to months, he resolved to kill himself if charged

They told him a girl had accused him of rape – and arrested him on the spot. ‘I was in total shock,’ he says. ‘If it’s possible, when they told me what I was being arrested for, it was a relief because it was so ridiculous that I knew immediately it was a terrible misunderstanding. Raping a child when you’re a teacher is perhaps the most wicked crime of all.’

Children on the way to a carol service watched as he was put into an unmarked car and driven away. The accuser’s name registered with him and he could just about picture her. But he had never taught her and he could not recall if they had ever spoken.

‘It was like a random pick from the school roll,’ he says.

Because of TV crime dramas, being processed at the police station seemed oddly familiar. ‘When you’ve got no history with police and you go into custody, there’s a part of your brain that’s telling you that you’re having a guided tour,’ he says. ‘It’s very difficult coming to terms with being arrested and being a suspected criminal.’

But the accusations made him feel sick. The girl, it later transpired, did not volunteer that she was raped until prompted by a housemistress.

When he was finally charged in November 2015, one detective told him: ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’

After his police interview, Mr Harris felt ‘absolutely convinced’ that he would receive a call or letter the following week telling him it had all been a terrible mistake ‘and I could go back and teach at this wonderful school I had found’. Instead, as weeks turned to months, he resolved to kill himself if charged. Ultimately it was the arrival of his baby daughter – ‘it felt wonderful to be a daddy despite what I was going through’ – that gave him the strength to carry on and ‘show everybody I was innocent’.

When he was finally charged in November 2015, one detective told him: ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’

Awaiting trial, he would wake up every morning ‘and for five seconds feel refreshed before this freight train of reality would hit me. The nightmare didn’t end until I took the pill that would knock me unconscious at the end of the day’. Playing cricket offered a ‘gentle bubble’ and helped him forget. But because of bail conditions – which stated he must not ‘associate’ with children under 16 – even this was not without humiliation.

The school he attended and first taught at, Alleyn’s School, in South London, banned him from the grounds when he was charged. The headmaster, Gary Savage, also lobbied the Edward Alleyn Club, which runs a cricket team that Mr Harris captained, to ban him, as the side plays on separate land leased from the school.

In the end, the cricket team’s committee reached an agreement with the Edward Alleyn Club so that he could play, but only under a bizarre set of conditions.

When he heard the words not guilty, ‘two years of stress and tension flew out of my body – except it wasn’t over, though I didn’t know that at the time.’

‘I was given humiliating special conditions under which I was allowed to play at the club,’ he says. ‘I had to be accompanied to the toilet. When not playing, I had to sit in my car – tea would be brought to me there. At the end, I had to be escorted off the premises.’

A club spokesman said: ‘The decision on conditions was made by the club committee who follow ECB [England and Wales Cricket Board] guidelines on safeguarding children.’

Headmaster Mr Savage, said: ‘Mr Harris is no longer restricted entry to school premises.’

Mr Harris says that giving evidence at his trial in July last year came easily. ‘That’s the thing about innocence.

‘I was unhindered by any need to try to be consistent with what I’d said before.’

Towards the end of his trial, when the prosecution’s lack of evidence was laid bare, he was sure he would be cleared.

When he heard the words not guilty, ‘two years of stress and tension flew out of my body – except it wasn’t over, though I didn’t know that at the time.’

As he gets up to leave, he says: ‘I’ve looked into the abyss. But every day I wake up and I’m a daddy and not in prison – and that’s the best thing that I could have hoped for.’