Should Defendants in Sex-Assault

Cases Be Granted Anonymity? In my view, the demand should be that the accuser loses anonymity - not that the defendant should get it. In brief, here are some of my arguments for making the defendants' names public. 1. It can highlight the issue regularly - e.g. when famous (even 'locally' famous) people get accused. 2. Successful defendants are more likely to tell their stories publicly after the trial. After all, their names and their predicaments would already be in the public domain. 3. Successful defendants whose names are public can be sought and contacted by others who have been accused and need help with regard to the problem - perhaps in connection with finding a good lawyer. 4. Defendants are more likely to contact help groups for support during a case, and they are also more likely to support such groups after their cases are over, given that their names are already in the public domain. 5. The media are more likely to highlight failed cases because they can attach stories of a personal nature to them. 6. The more that 'not guilty' verdicts or 'not taken to court' situations are highlighted, the more will the public be made aware of the huge number of false accusations that are taking place. 7. The defendants in all other cases are publicly named. Why should this be different in sex-assault cases? 8. Hiding people's faces and keeping information secret is not conducive to justice. 9. The people who really matter to the defendants (e.g. relatives, friends and colleagues) are likely to know that they are facing prosecution for sex-assault even if they do remain anonymous in terms of the general public. For most defendants, therefore, there is not much to be gained by remaining anonymous. And, further, of course, malicious people can, nowadays, hardly be stopped from publicising to interested others the names of defendants via anonymous emails and so on. Indeed, how do you prevent people from other countries, such as America, from publicising names of the accused on the internet? 10. If found guilty the defendants' names are made public anyway. 11. With the defendants' names made public, men's help groups can find them. 12. For successful defendants, being out in the open means that they will have nothing to hide after their ordeal is over - so they will sleep better at night not having to worry about whether someone whom they have kept in the dark will find out about what they have kept hidden. 13. Successful defendants who have based their ongoing lives on hiding the fact that they were once falsely accused will always remain open to some kind of blackmail (even in the smallest of senses e.g. I'll tell your grandmother or your new partner) Openness right from the start is usually the best option in this respect. Why should accusers not be allowed anonymity? 1. Anonymity encourages false accusations. 2. Anonymity shields accusers who make multiple false claims. 3. Anonymity shields lying and manipulative accusers. 4. Anonymity makes genuine accusers less credible as witnesses. 5. No anonymity would, eventually, encourage real victims to come forward. It would not discourage them from doing so - as lying feminists are forever proclaiming. Think, for example, about how the gay movement emboldened others to come 'out' and to show their gayness by having others come 'out' openly rather than remain skulking behind closed doors. If real victims of sex-assault were not shielded by anonymity then, before long, they would also come 'out', for there would soon be no shame associated with being a victim of a sex-assault. Putting this another way: Telling genuine victims that they should remain hidden is tantamount to telling them that they should be ashamed - and that they have something to hide. 6. No anonymity for accusers would also encourage other members of the public to come forward to throw more light on, say, those women who are forever making false accusations. 7. In no other areas in the criminal law - and with many good reasons - are adult accusers allowed to remain anonymous. ... All in all, justice for both men and women would be better served in many ways by demanding no anonymity for accusers rather than anonymity for defendants. Further, of course, if one is falsely accused of a sex-assault, then it is often a good idea to stand up and say, "Here I am. I have been officially accused by this person." It is far better, in general, for defendants to do this - and to prepare themselves for this - than for them to try to cover it all up in the hope that forever into the future others will not find out. Openness is always better for the human psyche than is secrecy and deceit. And this is especially true with the internet now available, because no person can ever guarantee that the accusations against them will forever remain undisclosed. In my view, therefore, there should be no anonymity in the courtroom for either defendants or accusers when it comes to sex-assault cases - or, indeed, in any other cases. Furthermore, secrecy and anonymity are surely the main routes to corruption, deceit and false accusations. And it is precisely through these mechanisms of subterfuge and concealment that feminists have been able to pervert for so long the justice system, and to deceive for so long the public, when it come to domestic violence, child abuse, sex-assault etc. Indeed, there is surely nothing more worrying than the prospect of defendants being prosecuted without good public oversight, whereas complete openness will help to expose to the public what is really going on in these cases. Indeed, if we allow secrecy, thousands more innocent men will be prosecuted, and we will never get to hear about them. Finally, I am not really wanting to suggest that every accused person will benefit by allowing their names to be publicised - as is the case at the moment. My general point is that, overall, it would be of huge benefit to the whole of society if all those parties involved in cases of 'abuse' were denied the right to remain anonymous. And with regard to those people who are falsely accused, openness is unlikely to hurt them more than does anonymity - especially in the longer term. Indeed, my guess is that if no anonymity was allowed, the abuse industry, and the feminist groups that are associated with it, would soon begin to crumble and collapse as the public became more knowledgeable about the issues and about the types of people who get entangled with them. Furthermore, with the names of accusers made public, the media would publish many, many more pieces about false accusations. But without the names of false accusers, the media will not do this ... "If there's no name, there's no story." Dave Brown - senior editor at the Ottawa Citizen End Note: Since I wrote the piece above, it seems quite clear to me that government officials in the police and in the Crown Prosecution Service - whose job, it is important to remember, is to get convictions, not to seek justice; which is the job of the courts - are colluding with false accusers, in secret, and anonymously, to get as many convictions as they can - with most of these hidden accusers aiming to get good compensation money for their testimonies. This is going back to Medieval times wherein people were prosecuted behind closed doors by "government officials" while their accusers were shielded from view so that the public did not know who they were. This kind of chicanery is a serious corruption of our justice system as well as an affront to our democracy. All in all, therefore, accusers in sex cases must not be allowed to hide, in my view - except, perhaps, if they are children. And we must not allow the government to prosecute thousands of nameless people every year in the dark, wherein the public cannot see what is going on. Openness, not secrecy, is what we need.