Statement by John
Hemming
I am pleased that the
Police have now made it clear that there has been a concerted effort
to promote false criminal allegations against me and that the
allegations had no substance whatsoever.
I would like to thank
Emily Cox, my children, Ayaz Iqbal (my Solicitor), my local lib dem
team and many others who supported me through this dreadful
experience. There are many worse things that happen to people, but
this was a really bad experience.
It is bad enough to
have false allegations made about yourself to the police, but to have
a concerted campaign involving your political opponents and many
others in public creates an environment in which it is reasonable to
be concerned about ill founded vigilante attacks on your family and
yourself. Luckily there was a more substantial lobby to the contrary
as well, which included many people who were themselves real
survivors of abuse, which has helped.
I am normally someone
who helps other people fight injustice. Being subject to an unjust
campaign of vilification is something I do not wish to repeat.
The police themselves
have handled the allegations well. However, although it was obvious
from the start that the allegations were nonsense, it has taken two and a half years for this to be resolved. Identifying why that is will take
time, but I believe that the system is too tolerant of false
allegations. The current CPS guidelines on handling false
allegations are in my view too tolerant of malicious allegations and
need review. The unnecessary delay of around 2 years in resolving
the issue I believe arises from procedures that are being used being
flawed.
It has been in the
public domain for 2 years that the complainant changed her
allegations in early 2015 from those she had made publicly previously
and that she had stated publicly that she had never met a politician.
It is worth people more
generally learning a little about criminal procedure particularly
that when someone is not arrested they are most likely to be innocent
– even an arrest does not imply guilt. The police asked me not to
put key information in my defence into the public domain, I agreed to
keep that out of the public domain. That obviously made the public
campaign against me harder to handle.
This sort of situation
is inevitably an attack on my family not just myself. I am still
in discussion with the police about some of the criminal incidents
involving my family and myself during this process. Therefore I do
not wish to make further comment on those at the moment.
It should be noted that
the newspapers generally have handled the issue reasonably well.
Exaro and Exaro's funder have behaved dreadfully. Sky should
recognise that not only was their broadcast of the original
allegations in May 2015 a complete nonsense, but also had it been
based upon truthful allegations that it would have undermined a
criminal investigation. The attempts to drum up additional false
complainants through the use of publicity highlights a difficulty
with publicising cases whilst a police investigation is going on.
There are people who will make false allegations merely because
someone suggests that they are looking for such allegations.
Some members of the
Labour Party, including my opponent in the last two General
Elections, have invested considerable time in promoting these
allegations. The promotion of the complainant as an expert in this
subject area as a consequence of these allegations has caused
addtional difficulties for my family.
I am not myself aware
of another situation where members and supporters of a political
party have promoted such allegations in such a public manner –
essentially arming the villagers with torches and pitchforks and
setting off on a lynching. There were public attempts to prevent me
from standing as a candidate because of allegations made maliciously
by a Labour Party member backed by other members of the Labour Party.
Many Labour members will find this unacceptable and it is an issue
that needs consideration by the Labour leadership.
I have asked the police
to investigate this attempt to pervert the course of justice and
await their response. There are, of course, many procedural options
that are open to me to obtain justice for my family. I will consider
those over the near future.
ENDS
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