Britain today is the land of the vigilante pack. Innocent people are being hounded over horrific allegations, brought without any evidence or credibility, and stoked to fever pitch on social media.
The police should be doing all they can to control this volatile, dangerous situation. More than anyone, they should be the bulwark of our ancient justice system, where the accused are treated as innocent until proven guilty.
Instead, especially in the case of the Metropolitan Police, I believe their actions have incited and provoked this vigilante mentality — stirring up hatred, encouraging wild allegations.
This week we learned that the man known only as ‘Nick’ — one of the most influential figures in the police investigation into what eventually proved to be a non-existent VIP Westminster paedophile ring, which has tarnished the names of some of our most respected former politicians — is now himself facing child sex offence charges.
Former Lib Dem MP John Hemming (pictured here with his partner Emily Cox) has accused the police, social media giants, the BBC and the CPS of behaving like a lynch mob
‘Nick’ is a proven fantasist and serial liar, yet the Metropolitan Police chose to treat him as an unimpeachable source.
Following his bogus claims that he was raped by the Tory former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, D-Day hero Lord Bramall and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor among others, the Met raided both Brittan’s and Bramall’s homes and launched an inquiry into Proctor, trashing all these individuals’ reputations.
It’s a sorry state of affairs that brings shame upon our country. And one with a terrible personal cost to individuals who have been falsely accused, as I know only too well.
On a Saturday morning during the 2015 General Election campaign, I had a phone call from a journalist telling me that allegations had been made against me, accusing me of sexual abuse in the forest at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire many years previously.
Knowing this was nonsense, at first I was inclined to dismiss it. The police didn’t seem to be too concerned either. But when my accuser, a woman called Esther Baker who is now 35, went public with her ludicrous claims, in an interview with Sky TV in late May, the story was in the open. For my family and I, it was the start of a nightmare.
Discredited allegations: Ester Baker accused Mr Hemming of abuse in 2015. It was September 2017 before the case was finally dismissed
I was not named publicly by Baker or by the police, but piecemeal clues soon revealed the ‘suspect’ as a 55-year-old piano-playing Liberal MP who had lost his seat that month — and there was only one person who fitted that profile.
I would far prefer to be accused of bank robbery, or even murder, than of child abuse. Nothing is more repellent to me, or stirs up more hatred among the public. When I say that later this month I will be giving evidence against a person on trial for threatening to kill me, readers will understand how poisonous life became for me.
My children were traumatised. A journalist from a Sunday red-top laid siege to my home. Though the mainstream media behaved with restraint for the most part, social media certainly did not.
I was unable to go ahead with business investments. I even had to avoid performing with my jazz band (my favourite form of relaxation) because of concerns that someone might physically assault me.
For a time I drank heavily, to escape the stress. That didn’t help matters for anyone. My only excuse is that alcohol helped me to sleep, which otherwise was impossible.
So much misery, all from the deluded or malicious claims of one woman, whom I’ve never met — a woman who had even declared on Twitter only a few months earlier that she had never met a politician in her life.
Mr Hemming accused Labour MP Jess Phillips of using the allegations as political ammunition
Yet when she claimed to reporters and police that she had been repeatedly raped, between the ages of six and 11, by me as well as by a well-known, much-respected politician, now dead (I won’t dignify the lie by repeating his name), her story was taken seriously.
I could disprove it easily. My diaries, my bank records, my receipts from that period all showed it was nonsense. But the case dragged on for more than two years because of Crown Prosecution Service delays and procedural problems, and it was September 2017 before the case was finally dismissed.
Even today, my accuser is somehow regarded as such a credible witness that she has been awarded ‘core participant’ status at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse — the investigation into historic allegations, set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. (Core participants are individuals or organisations who are given special legal powers and privileges to help shape proceedings.)
My problem was that, however strong my defence, and however weak the lies, slime like that sticks. There is an automatic assumption in the public mind that the allegations must be true — otherwise, the police and justice system wouldn’t be treating them so seriously.
One colleague, a local councillor, told me that he’d heard I had been charged, convicted and imprisoned. That made me angry, but not as angry as I felt when my rival Labour candidate Jess Phillips (who unseated me in Birmingham Yardley in the 2015 election), used the rumours as political ammunition in a nakedly cynical exercise to promote her own interests.
Twenty police raided the home of war hero Lord Bramall, pictured alongside his late wife Avril
She not only supported Esther Baker on Twitter, calling her ‘brave’, but encouraged others to speak out. That was a cold-blooded attack on me and my family, and she should be held accountable, for assuming my guilt and for inciting hatred.
Twitter is guilty, too, though its directors regard themselves as above any sort of law — legal or moral. As I learnt to my cost, if one complains that people online are making up allegations of child rape, and stirring up mob hatred, Twitter executives will argue that this ‘does not contravene their terms and conditions’.
Other web-based organisations, such as the short-lived and highly damaging Exaro ‘news’ site, which ran so-called journalistic investigations and ludicrously treated ‘Nick’ as a credible source, appeared to work on the premise that many politicians were paedophiles.
That’s not simply stupid, it’s dangerous, to individuals and to society.
Former MP who lost his home: Harvey Proctor
Technology has advanced in huge strides this century, but human nature has not. The problem with social media is that it is not policed and provides liars, fantasists and malcontents with huge audiences.
The police should be doing all they can to control this situation.
I have few complaints about the overall professionalism of the Staffordshire force that investigated the claims against me, but the behaviour of London’s Metropolitan Police is a different story. I believe their irresponsible behaviour has incited people to come forward with false allegations.
The BBC also behaved with reckless irresponsibility when BBC News allowed ‘Nick’ to tell his lurid claims of rape and abuse in Westminster in an interview in November 2014, and when false allegations were made against Cliff Richard.
Never forget how the Corporation filmed a raid on his home. By broadcasting aerial footage of police surrounding the property, in effect turning it into an action movie, the BBC virtually hung, drew and quartered poor old Cliff.
To add insult to injury, these fantasists are offered rewards, with the promise of criminal injuries compensation. Many of the accusers are mentally ill or psychologically unbalanced, and need no motive other than attention, but many more are attracted by the possibility of making some money courtesy of the state and the taxpayer.
Put all these things together — the financial incentives, the thirst for publicity and attention, the rabble-rousing of amoral politicians, the unbridled appetite of social media for salacious rumour — and you have a toxic mix.
Now add the shocking behaviour of the Metropolitan Police, who seemed hell-bent on pursuing a vendetta against public figures with no regard for that age-old British tradition that every man and woman is presumed innocent unless found guilty, and you can see why so many lives have been destroyed and whole families subjected to the cruellest torments.
It has to stop. Legislation must be used to prevent spurious cases from dragging on for years, and to hold social media giants accountable for spreading lies.
Above all, the Metropolitan Police have to resume their role as guardians of the peace, and stop behaving like a Wild West lynch mob.