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A top barrister has warned that police readily taking rape accusers at their word could be adding to the police disclosure scandal. Her comments come days after a second man in just one week was released due to police errors.

Alison Levitt QC, who is a former adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions, warned that the 'rigid mindset' of believing every accusation could lead police to overlook or miss significant evidence that could clear defendants.

"It is their duty to investigate anything that leads towards the suspect or leads away from the suspect," she said. "There are individuals here, both complainants and suspects, who deserve these cases to be given the careful scrutiny they require. In recent years the police have revised their policy and made it clear that their starting point for their investigation in these sort of cases is that they believe the victim. The criminal justice community has a lot of concerns about that."


Comment: Bullshit. "The Police" did not revise their policies. Feminist politicians and activists forced them to revise their policies.


Levitts comments come in the wake of two major police blunders in just one week, where officers failed to hand over critical evidence to lawyers.

On Tuesday sexual assault charges against 23-year-old Isaac Itiary were thrown out after police handed over text messages to lawyers that showed that Itiary's 16-year-old accuser frequently pretended to be 19 - two months after the evidence was initially requested by lawyers.

Last week, student Liam Allan was cleared of 12 counts of rape and sexual assault when police handed over 40,000 text messages between Allan's accuser and her friends, revealing that the alleged victim had pestered the man she accused of rape for "casual sex."

Allan has since told the media he intends to sue the Metropolitan Police over the blunder, which took up two years of the 22 year old's life.


Comment: Unfortunately suing the Police isn't really the answer. They were forced to take "sensitivity training" and adopt policies and procedures that were antithetical to justice. Unfortunately, the people behind this can't be sued. Most of them were diversity appointments to curry favor with the feminist and social justice lobbies.


Both bungled cases involved the same investigating police officer.

The policy of believing alleged victims was introduced in 2014 by Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor, ordering that the "presumption that the complainer should always be believed should be institutionalized."


Comment: Which was a response to #ListenAndBelieve, an effort by feminists on social media to insist that questioning the accusations of any woman was blaming the victim. It was all the buzz back then.

Listen and Believe had been standard practice in Feminist and SJW activism, but it didn't come together into that catchy hashtag until used by internet feminista Anita Sarkhesian in 2014 at XOXO.

While the hashtag was largely associated with the #GameGate controversy, and used by the opposition to Sarkhesian to mock her specific claims of sexism in gaming, it was also revelatory of the wider SJW mentality.

The culture war that was raging within gaming at the time - but was representative of the larger efforts by activists to push the feminist and anti-masculinity program in vogue - so the origin of the term is a bit obscure.

In a sense, Sarkhesian was merely drawing in the ambient feminist dogma of her surroundings and injecting it into gaming as her particular beachhead in the culture war. This was picked up by the Police, who were frequently receiving accusations of "Supporting and creating Rape Culture" and "Blaming the Victim" by asking routine questions. There is an incredible amount of cross pollination within SJW offensives and sorties into culture.

I cannot find the exact article, it's disappeared down the memory hole, but around that time a senior British Official had written a scathing policy letter to the police, denouncing them for not prosecuting enough rapists. The policies were changed, as I recall, around this time.

Since then, #ListenAndBelieve has become a meme, and is used in the wider culture. It has far reaching effects for such an obscure and hobbyist beginning.


The recommendation has been criticized by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques, who said the presumption of belief should be dropped to keep police neutral in their investigations.


Comment: Now that it's become safer to criticize feminism, sure. They weren't criticizing it then though. This is one of those "sorry only that they got caught" kind of things.

Reminds me of a story. When Krushchev took over the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, he gave a speech before the assembled high ranking party members to announce the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. His speech was filled with the typical rhetoric of a reformer, including anecdotes of how he had known all along what really needed to be done. Just as he finished one of these claims of prescience, someone in the audience shouted out "Well why didn't you say anything then!"

Immediately Krushchev slammed down his fist. "Who said that, who dares interrupt!"

There was silence.

After a few moments Krushchev broke into a laugh. "You see, that is why."