Stuck Up a Yewtree

The on-going investigation into celebrity-based sex offences in the UK (Operation Yewtree) has once more been in the News with the conviction of the former ‘National Treasure’ Rolf Harris.

The investigative process into cases of ‘historic abuse’ asks three basic questions:

Question One: Did the alleged behaviour constitute a criminal offence?
Question Two: Is there sufficient evidence to make a conviction a realistic possibility?
Question Three: Would prosecution be in the public interest?

The Crown Prosecution Service has had little difficulty in deciding that all such cases are in the public interest, but answering the first two questions is not quite as straight-forward.

Question One: A particular alleged action might be intrinsically offensive but not constitute a criminal offence. Even though there has been both a perpetrator and a victim no crime has been committed.  Alternatively, another alleged action might not be intrinsically offensive, never mind criminal, even though someone genuinely took offence at it. In neither case would a prosecution ensue.  

Question Two: Insufficient evidence might reflect difficulties in making the truth ‘stick’, in which case a guilty individual goes free. Alternatively, insufficient evidence might reflect false or mistaken accusations in which case an innocent individual has been spared the ordeal of prosecution, Mud, however, is still likely to stick.

Even when a case has been brought to trial, all is not, necessarily, clear. A defendant might be found not guilty because the jury is not convinced that a crime has been proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, a high threshold of proof. Only in those cases where a criminal offence has occurred and there has been enough evidence to bring the case to court and a jury has found the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt, is there an absolutely clear-cut outcome.

All of which brings me to my point. While knowing virtually nothing about the circumstances, I have found myself hoping for certain outcomes in various trials. Even if I sometimes have to face down a visceral and indefensible bias towards members of my own sex in some of these cases, I have had to recognise other influences at play. I have hoped that individuals like Rolf Harris, with whom I felt an affinity, would be innocent; other personalities that I found unattractive, I rather hoped would be guilty. I have also speculated along similar lines with regard to those celebrities who were charged, but not prosecuted. This is, of course, an untenable position: my personal preferences do not determine the truth neither are they indicators of right and wrong.

I suspect, however, that I might not be alone in reacting in this way. There are deep-seated, stubbornly tenacious reasons why we react as we do and we need to be uncompromisingly and uncomfortably honest about exposing them if we are to put the truth before prejudice. Yewtree extends its reach beyond its immediate participants; when we follow these cases, I suggest that more than the defendants are on trial.