My heart broke for the woman who was raped, but we cannot imprison innocent men

It was horrific. I listened to the victim’s testimony, sobbing and miserable as she gave her account. The defense had not been harassing, but retelling the ordeal was horrific. At that moment I knew the man next to me was a rapist. A few hours later the verdict was announced – Not Guilty!

I didn’t sleep a wink that night and have thought about that poor woman many times over the years. That I believed her is ultimately no great consolation, since a jury of 15 had enough doubts to acquit her.

Some five years later, as often happens to police, I found myself in the midst of a tactical series of complaints relating to a messy divorce. As is not uncommon in such separations, the husband was accused by the wife of abusing her children. At the time, custody was shared, but in favour of the father, and although I only ever saw the children with him, they always seemed to be full of joy and thriving. In the years that followed, as the divorce approached and became more acrimonious, the frequency and severity of the complaints against the father continued to increase, resulting in his custody of the children being interrupted on and off. The man endured years of torment. He was never charged.

A few years later, I was sent to a primary school where a child had run away and was sitting astride the very high school fence and would not come down. The boy (no older than 9 or 10) was living with his father after his parents separated. On that day, something happened that almost never happened.

There is pressure to increase the number of rape convictions (Image: free)

His mother, armed with a social services protection order – after accusing the father of abusing her son – came to pick him up. The boy was distraught and ran away instead of going with his mother. As we approached, the boy did not move. He was heartbroken that he just wanted to go home to his father. We could not comfort him, and when we got too close, he tried to jump the fence into the nearby woods.

Unfortunately for the boy, I was faster than him and managed to pull him down.

The boy was devastated. He was sobbing and fighting with every breath to escape. In the police car he kicked and bit to escape, the whole time he was an inconsolable, snotty mess – he just wanted to go home. I held him – that was all I could do.

When we left him with the social worker shortly afterwards, he was scared to death. I couldn’t speak. My dear friend Anne, who was my colleague that day, tried to help me process what had happened. I was at a loss for words. To this day I don’t know how the case was solved, but I do know that what we did did absolutely nothing and to this day, in my more thoughtful moments, it brings tears to my eyes.

Fast forward to 2013 – the Scottish Government was making proposals to remove the confirmation requirement in Scots law. Conference season was in full swing and I met a familiar, friendly face on one of the seasonal outings – a remarkable woman who had devoted years of her life to helping women and had helped countless victims of horrific abuse over the years. Her view, shaped by her experiences, was that an accusation (of rape) alone should be grounds for conviction – because it was better for a few innocent people to be convicted than for hundreds of guilty people to walk free.

I have always shied away from the expression “victim justice” because every prefix automatically distorts the meaning of what follows. Justice needs no preface – because justice is justice – without ifs and buts.

But justice is not perfect. It is messy, it fails people, it takes too long to be administered, and when it is administered at all, it usually produces the wrong result in people’s eyes. But injustice should not be measured solely by whether something goes to court, because for many innocents and victims, the process of investigation itself is as devastating and life-changing as the trial. This father and child, like countless others like them, were failed by the justice system, as was the woman who I believe was raped, like countless others like them.

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I have never taken issue with William Blackstone’s principle, but many find it irritating. Just look at the people who call for mass arrests of protesters – but only those protests with which they disagree.

Historical examples of innocents being rounded up just to make sure the guilty were not overlooked are too gruesome to list, but they are not limited to those generally considered “bad” or tyrannical. Find one of the countless innocents at Guantanamo Bay whose only crime was being indirectly accused, and ask yourself whether their detention and treatment served the common good.

Dick Chaney once said, “I’m more concerned about the bad guys who were let go than about the few who were actually innocent… I have no problem with that as long as we achieve our goal.”

Chaney traded justice for injustice. We would do well not to do the same.

Calum Steele is former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation