Broadcaster, who was on police bail for a year before being told there was no case against him, also says suspects should remain anonymous until charged

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

People found to have made false accusations of sexual abuse should be prosecuted or offered medical attention, the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini has said.

Gambaccini, 66, was on police bail for a year after his arrest for suspected sex abuse before he was told there was no case against him.

No charges for Paul Gambaccini over alleged historical sex offences Read more

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, Gambaccini, who was promoting his new memoir, said sex crime suspects should be given anonymity before they are charged and consideration should be given to how false accusers are treated.

The former BBC Radio 1 DJ, who has since returned to work on BBC Radio 2 and 4, also attacked Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan plice commissioner, and Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions.

“We need anonymity before charge, as recommended by the home affairs select committee, and we need to look at false accusers and how we treat them,” he said. “False accusers need to either be prosecuted or offered medical attention.”

Gambaccini was arrested on 29 October 2013 and police handed papers to the Crown Prosecution Service on 10 February 2014 but it was 10 October 2014 before he was told that there was no case against him. His bail was extended seven times during that period.

He has previously revealed that he forfeited more than £200,000 in lost earnings and legal costs during the 12 months before police and prosecutors told him there was no case against him.

The broadcaster lashed out at police and prosecutors during a home affairs select committee hearing in March claiming he was used as human “flypaper” with his arrest publicised in the hope other people would come forward to make allegations against him.



He has been an outspoken advocate of introducing a 28-day limit on the use of police bail, which the home secretary, Theresa May, announced in March and was included in policing and criminal justice bill in the Queen’s Speech.

Gambaccini told BBC Radio 4 he might have been dissuaded from writing a book on his experiences if it was not for the way Hogan-Howe and Saunders behaved after the case against him was dropped.



“I could have been dissuaded had two people chosen to be decent, honest people and they chose not to be,” he said. “One was the commissioner of police Bernard Hogan-Howe and the other was Alison Saunders.”

Gambaccini said Hogan-Howe was given an opportunity to apologise after his case had been branded a “travesty of justice” in the press but dodged the subject.

“Here’s a man whose organisation attempted to destroy my life and my career and when they fail – as they had to fail – they would not admit error, they would not apologise, they would not say you’re innocent,” he said.



Asked whether police should take allegations seriously, the broadcaster said they should but listen more carefully to what is being said.

“In these cases if the central accusation is false, the details around it are usually howlers,” he said. “I have found false accusers gild the lily with details that can’t possibly be true.”

He revealed his two accusers claimed he had committed the offences in “the decade before I started having same-sex relations”.

“They were not only in the wrong day, the wrong year, they were in the wrong decade,” he said.

Fellow broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was called by detectives working on Operation Yewtree, the investigation launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, to see if she wanted to make allegations against Gambaccini or others.

“It is a tactic of the police to call out and ask if people would like to make accusations,” he said.

Gambaccini’s comments come as police forces face increased scrutiny over investigations into alleged historic sexual abuse. There are a number of operations open across the country including Operation Yewtree, Operation Midland, which is examining claims of a Westminster paedophile ring, and Operation Athabasca, which is looking at claims of abuse at Elm Guest House in south-west London.

Former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor accused police of a ‘gay witch-hunt’ when he disclosed that he had been questioned over alleged child murders at Dolphin Square as part of Op Midland.

Elsewhere, senior figures in a separate judge-led public inquiry into historic child sex abuse have reportedly been told there is no substance to allegations made by a key witness in the investigation, known only as ‘Nick’.