Dragged from bed at dawn, branded a rapist, his reputation trashed: President of Oxford Union tells the utterly horrific story of his year-long nightmare

Oxford University president arrested following rape allegations in May

Ben Sullivan was woken at the crack of dawn by two detectives at his door

Was held in a cell for 12 hours before being released on police bail



Six weeks later, he received a call saying no further action would be taken

In this exclusive interview, he recounts his horrific ordeal over past months



It was the instant the police officer stretched out his hand and seized the belt from Ben Sullivan’s jeans, apologetically telling him he wasn’t allowed to wear it, that the reality of just what was unfolding began to register.

Moments before, groggy and disorientated, the 21-year-old Oxford student had been woken by a rap on his bedroom door. Expecting to find one of his flatmates on the threshold, he yelled for them to come in. Instead, filling the doorway were two uniformed officers and a plain-clothed detective from Thames Valley Police.

‘It was surreal, scary and a bit stunning,’ Ben says, reliving that moment on May 7. ‘I recall glimpsing the clock and noting the time – I don’t know why. It was 6.50am.’

Ordeal: Ben, pictured, last week at the Radcliffe Camera, wants people accused of rape to remain anonymous

Calmly, the officers told him he was being arrested. An allegation of rape and one of attempted rape had been made against him, and he was being taken to Oxford’s Abingdon Road station to be formally questioned.

It was as Ben, President of the Oxford Union, the university’s 191-year-old debating society, hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater that one officer told him he couldn’t wear the belt. ‘A suicide risk,’ Ben explains with a wry smile. ‘It seemed like something from a cop show, a television drama. But it was scary. It was happening. It was real.

‘I had a total sense of disbelief and that pit-of-the-stomach anxiety when you can’t believe what is going on.’

While his arrest was shocking, Ben had been privately dreading such a knock at his door for more than a year, since rumours had begun circulating his college, Christ Church, that a student was planning to accuse him of assault. When the allegation eventually came, Ben was held for 12 hours before being released on police bail. During that time he spent four hours in a cell, and three being questioned.

It was another six tortuous weeks before the history and politics student received a telephone call, at 3.49pm last Wednesday, from his solicitor, saying: ‘Ben. Take a deep breath. No further action on both counts.’

In the interim, a gifted young man, educated at £22,000-a-year St Paul’s School and who had never before been on the wrong side of the law, has endured moments of real despair.

He has seen his own reputation trashed, witnessed the distress of his mother Betsy and father Paul, a banker from Maryland in the United States, and been forced to pay £15,000 in legal fees.

He has also been desperately worried about the impact on his two younger brothers, aged 19 and 12. Today, in his first full interview about the ordeal, Ben barely resembles his now-familiar newspaper picture. Instead of the Oxford undergraduate in a dinner jacket and bow tie, he looks wary and appears to have lost around a stone in weight.

Oxford Union President Ben Sullivan was arrested on suspicion of one count of rape and one of attempted rape in May

‘Seeing my reputation trashed has been sobering and painful,’ he reveals. ‘My whole life has been rifled through and examined. It has been utterly draining.’

Yet Ben, serious-minded and with the clear potential to enter politics if he wished, is determined that something positive should come out of his situation. He is seeking a change in the law which would grant anonymity to those accused of crime before charges are laid. Forcefully, he says: ‘These were deeply poisonous allegations. When I was arrested the police had only spoken to the complainants.’

In the babble of publicity following Ben’s arrest, many students stood by him, while others sought to force his resignation as Union President.

A campaign, organised by Sarah Pine, President for Women at the Oxford University Student Union, and a cabal of outraged students also contacted at least 30 of the Oxford Union’s forthcoming speakers, urging them to boycott the debates unless Ben resigned. Intriguingly, they were urged to support the call for Ben to stand down in what they described as a ‘push for equality’.

Some did. Luminaries such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman, Interpol secretary-general Robert Nobel, David Mepham, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, and Julie Meyer, the American entrepreneur from the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, are all believed to have pulled out. Professor A.C. Grayling, however, refused to join the boycott, saying Ben had been subjected to a ‘kangaroo court of opinion’.

One Oxford student said: ‘While the majority of students, Ben among them, abhor sexual violence against women, many in the college believe he has been the target of a feminist crusade.’

And although an interim President was selected while Ben was on bail, he refused to resign.

He was rusticated (temporarily suspended from the university) while investigations were ongoing and was also forced to remain silent while his plight was played out in the media. He became a cause celebre – scrutinised and debated over while he was forced, for legal reasons, to remain silent.

‘It’s been a very difficult and very sobering experience,’ Ben says, choosing his words with care. Here, in the quiet library at the Oxford Union, he seems a tiny figure to have borne such a burden.

‘These poisonous allegations have made me re-evaluate everything. It has been very testing. I wondered how anyone could believe something so vile. I wondered how I was going to withstand all the poison.

‘But did I ever have a moment of self-doubt? Did I ever think, “Am I sure I remember exactly what happened?” No, never. Not once. Yes, I had sex with the girl who claimed I raped her. But it was consensual. That is the truth.’

Yet Ben wasn’t altogether surprised when Thames Valley Police knocked on his door. For almost a year he had to endure whispers and gossip around campus that he was facing allegations of rape. Although the woman claimed the rape took place in April 2013, after a ‘crewdate’ party, she waited more than a year to make her complaint to police.

A week later, a second woman came forward, claiming Ben had attempted to rape her in January 2013. The second-year student, who is alleged to have met Ben in a nightclub, claimed she was attacked when she went back to his room.

In the meantime Ben was also ‘outed’ as a member of Oxford’s ‘Banter Squadron’, allegedly an elitist drinking club much like the infamous Bullingdon Club, whose alumni include Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

Mr Sullivan, appearing on Newsnight, was kept in a cell for 12 hours following his arrest before being released on police bail. Six weeks later, he was cleared of both counts

‘That,’ insists Ben, ‘is nothing but a red herring.’ Pained at the suggestion he could belong to a ‘Hooray Henry’ band of students, he shifts awkwardly in his chair. ‘It isn’t even a club. It’s just a joke. It isn’t even a real group, never mind an elite drinking society.’

So what was the truth of that night in April, when some 20 Oxford students met for a ‘crewdate’ between Ben’s club and a women’s sports team? In the parlance of The Urban Dictionary such dates include ‘consuming vast quantities of alcohol... side effects may include vomiting and the transmission of sexual diseases.’ In truth they are little more than a boozy night out, with high jinks thrown in. The common student fodder.

‘About 20 of us from two colleges went out that night,’ Ben recalls.

‘We went to a restaurant and then about 15 of us piled back to my room. Yes, we were all drinking, but it was just a fun night.’

Late in the evening all the students left except the woman who was to accuse him of rape.

One student who was at the event is in no doubt that what happened next was consensual.

‘She was around Ben all night, they were happily snogging,’ he remembers. ‘At one stage Ben was standing against a desk and she was pawing all over him, with her legs wrapped around him.’

Ben is adamant the sex was consensual but within weeks rumours were flying around his college.

Some students suggest the young woman ‘allowed the gossip to continue’ because on the day she slept with Ben she had just got back together with her boyfriend and was terrified he would find out.

It is believed that she sent Ben a series of messages after the alleged assault. In them she apparently explained that her friends had misunderstood her tears after the encounter – they had assumed Ben had forced himself upon her when, in fact, she was upset about sleeping with him because she had resumed her previous relationship.

Now exonerated, Ben has had much time to ponder the intricacies of the law surrounding the naming of those accused of crime before any charge is brought. It is little wonder he has strong feelings.

He explains: ‘I’m not an extremist. I’m not suggesting your identity should be protected until you have been convicted, or even necessarily after being charged.

Mr Sullivan says rumours he would be accused of assault had been circulating Christ Church College in Oxford for around a year

‘But an individual’s identity should not automatically be revealed the minute they are arrested. There needs to be some happy medium where their identity is protected initially, until at least the conclusion of an investigation.

‘Police investigations may sometimes need people’s identities to be revealed so that witnesses come forward. But these were utterly poisonous allegations against me.

‘They were completely spurious, yet this was enough for an arrest. In cases like mine, everyone should have the right to anonymity as the inquiry is at a preliminary stage. The police and CPS should then be able to go to a judge and ask for the anonymity be waived, if they need it.

‘I understand why naming people is useful – naming Jimmy Savile obviously had a huge impact in getting people to come forward. But when inquiries are at such an early stage it is vicious, and it can be at a huge cost.’

Ben, of course, has borne that cost. Shortly after his flatmate answered the front door to police and woke Ben, he was driven to the station where he spent four hours in a police cell awaiting interview.

Eventually the questioning began. ‘Lying in that cell was nightmarish. The worst part was giving police my parents’ phone number and asking for them to be called so they could sort out a solicitor.

‘I had talked through with my parents what had been going on during the past year. I’d told them of what it was like to have people point and stare, how I could see people in college whispering, “It’s him.”

‘The stress they have had to live with is enormous. It has been tough, too, for my 12-year-old brother. He attends my old school, all the teachers there know me. Going to school every day has been tough on him.

‘But the amount of support I have received where I was brought up in London has been terrific. On the day my arrest was made public I got an email from a guy I went to school with but wasn’t particularly friendly with. He was so supportive – things like that make a huge difference.’

The student said today: 'My priority is to get my life back. The biggest thing I will take away from this is the importance of liberty. But this has done terrible damage done to my reputation'

Ironically, yesterday was Ben’s final day as Union President. Quite simply, his tenure is up. But he is proud he stood firm against calls for his resignation and is determined to put the past year behind him – something he admits will be difficult.

‘My priority is to get my life back,’ he says. ‘The biggest thing I will take away from this is the importance of liberty. But this has done terrible damage done to my reputation. That has been incredibly difficult. In the age we live in anyone can find out anything about you so quickly. My age group are very afraid of who has dirt on them.’

The adverse impact on his future employment prospects are another worry. After all, as President of the Oxford Union, where politicians such as London Mayor Boris Johnson cut their teeth, Ben could have hoped for a celebrated public career.

‘That was never for me,’ he says. ‘It isn’t the sort of career I would have mapped out. Right now I am looking forward to getting my laptop and mobile back from police… and to taking some time to deal with everything that has happened.’

Although Ben has had girlfriends since the incident more than a year ago, he is currently single. Painfully, still sees the women who accused him of rape in Oxford.