Defendant Anonymity

Debate between Maria Eagle and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

May I begin by paying tribute to the excellent maiden speakers? In that, I single out the astute comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who mentioned all his local newspapers. It made me wish that I had mentioned during my maiden speech what fantastic publications we have in the Oxford Mail, the Oxford Times, the Abingdon Herald, and the Oxford Journal.

From the outset, I must declare that I have great sympathy with some of the objections that I heard today. Just last week, there was an attempt to abduct a young girl in my constituency from outside a primary school just five minutes from my home in Oxford. I would not want to support any action that would make it harder to find that man and bring him to justice, or action that would make it harder to prevent him from actually succeeding on a future occasion.

I have spent some time investigating sexual violence in conflicts for the Conservatives’ human rights commission and as a volunteer for the local domestic abuse group. I have met, and heard the testimony of, victims of some of the worst crimes imaginable. Those testimonies are seared on my memory, and it is difficult for me to remain completely objective on this issue. As a result, the suggestion of granting anonymity to rape defendants made me very nervous. I am worried that the proposal will send the wrong message to rape victims at a time when we have managed to turn around the culture of disbelief and the poor treatment of rape victims by police and the courts. Credit must go to the previous Labour Government and some of my hon. Friends for the impressive work they did in the past decade to achieve that.

I am also concerned that anonymity will prevent women who find out that their rapist is charged with another offence from coming forward. At the same time, we must accept that in this country, innocent until proven guilty is the fundamental tenet of our law, and we must defend it fiercely. The imperative to protect ourselves, our families and our communities is one of the strongest that we experience, but we must ensure that in trying to do that, we do not give away the very life we want to protect. The rule of law shields us in our innocence and punishes us only in guilt.

I must disagree with some of the comments made today. On the moral spectrum of our culture, sexual offences—especially rape and paedophilia—rank higher in public disgust than many other offences. It is for that reason that if we heard that a teacher at our child’s school or a local GP had been accused of rape, we would find it very difficult not to take action to protect our children on the basis of that suspicion, but if we found out that one of the governors had been accused of theft, we would wait to test the veracity of the allegation before taking action.

[Maria Eagle]

The Government’s proposal is not to give anonymity to those accused of paedophilia. Rumours abound in schools when things go wrong, and if someone were protected by anonymity and another child were to be hurt by that perpetrator, what kind of signal would that send to society?

[Nicola Blackwood]

I am merely trying to make the point that our culture ascribes greater disapprobation to sexual offences than it does to other offences—as some in this Chamber have claimed.

I have a constituent who was wrongly recorded as being a sex offender for 15 years before he discovered the error, and the distress that he has experienced has been extreme. Ironically, the very fact that conviction rates for rape are so very low and reoffending rates so famously high perpetuates this culture. When so many defendants are acquitted, there is a sense that it is not because they are innocent but because the system is so poor that it is letting off the guilty. There is a sense that even if they got off that time, the likelihood is that they will do it again and probably do something worse. That means that acquittal in sexual offence trials accords the defendant legal innocence, but does not necessarily accord them innocence in the court of public opinion—they may have lost that for ever.