George Galloway: The lynching of John Leslie reveals how ruinous false accusations of sexual assault will be

This week a jury took simply 23 minutes to clear the previous Blue Peter TV presenter of any wrongdoing, however nonetheless his life and popularity lies in tatters.

Although he’s a Scotsman of a sure age I’ve by no means met John Leslie. Our paths simply by no means crossed, his path being a stroll on the wild aspect in comparison with mine. Not that he had extra enjoyable, in reality, his life has been depressing for a few years, regardless of being tall, darkish and good-looking.

When he wept within the dock of Southwark Crown Courtroom this week, cleared by a jury after simply 23 minutes of deliberation of a cost of feeling a lady’s clothed breasts for “three seconds” ten years in the past at a celebration, it was troublesome to not weep with him.

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The Metropolitan Police spent hundreds of kilos investigating this “crime” which seems by no means to have occurred in any respect. However the justice system frolicked and taxpayers’ cash prosecuting it. This is not the primary time they’ve accomplished it, it isn’t even the primary time they’ve accomplished it to John Leslie.

There have been no witnesses to Leslie’s alleged crime, though it was stated to have taken place in a membership at a celebration in London’s Soho – the place I’m myself a member of two golf equipment, the Union Membership and the Groucho Membership.

I point out that latter, apparently extraneous, truth for that reason. What if somebody got here ahead and claimed that ten years in the past in Soho, I had touched their breasts by means of their garments for 3 seconds, however that no person had witnessed it? Would the police cost me? Would the justice system prosecute me? Would my life be ruined as John Leslie’s has been? The place’s the justice in that?

Mr Leslie’s accuser retains life-long anonymity, in fact, however any man so accused is recognized instantly, and in lurid retrospective technicolor. Throughout any trial he stands accused and is seen to be accused. Cleared, even in simply 23 minutes, the choose tells him he “leaves the courtroom and not using a stain on his character,” however everybody concerned is aware of that is not likely true. And John Leslie resides proof.

In 2002, my good friend and former colleague Matthew Wright erroneously named John Leslie, on tv, because the nameless man referred to in a rape allegation made in a e book by the then party-going tv star Ulrika Johnson. Wright subsequently apologised and, very unwisely because it turned out, Leslie accepted the apology.

What occurred subsequent was an extended path of stalkers and wannabes falsely claiming that Leslie had sexually offended in opposition to them. Every time the police took it critically, every time the allegations have been disproved, discredited and even dropped, from time to time truly within the courtroom!

A canine had been given a nasty title – fully falsely – encouraging different false accusers to come back ahead. If their allegations had led to conviction, they’d have had the fitting to waive their anonymity and money in.

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With painful irony, a day after John Leslie’s newest acquittal, Matthew Wright’s stalker was informed she is likely to be despatched to jail after admitting a six-month marketing campaign of harassment in opposition to him. 

The radio and TV star had been stalked by a member of his small TV studio viewers who felt that the married man had “developed emotions for her.” So she adopted him house and commenced to harass his pregnant spouse and him. She claimed in courtroom that Wright “checked out (her) in a sure means” and that “it had been a very long time since anybody had given me that type of consideration.” Later she stated that she should have “misinterpreted it.”

In fact, that was her fixation speaking. No such “appears to be like” ever occurred, no “emotions for her” have been ever there. They have been innovations, identical to these confronted by John Leslie.

Thank God, Matthew Wright remains to be a extremely paid and profitable persona, however John Leslie is ruined and has been going downhill ever since Matthew Wright’s false declare about him virtually 20 years in the past. Leslie was as soon as a big-earning star – larger than Wright – on BBC. Greatness beckoned. Now he’s a DJ in a neighborhood Edinburgh pub. If he had been convicted this week he would have misplaced even that gig.

As one other good friend and former colleague of mine, Ian Hislop the editor of Personal Eye as soon as stated, “if that was justice, I am a banana.”

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