DLT not guilty..

The thing that as always irritated me with these cases is that the woman never gets named afterwards even when the man is found not guilty by every member of the jury. Now im sure someone will say that naming the woman will stop other women coming forward in the future but I disagree, if it was only the genuine cases coming to court then I reckon the strike rate for conviction would be a lot higher

 

His name's Dave Lee Travis, he was famous in the 60s/70s/80s as a Radio DJ, first with Pirate radio and then Radio 1. He was also one the Radio 1 DJs who presented Top of the Pops. He's still been a DJ since then with various commercial Radio Stations but not as high profile as he once was. Famously, Aung San Suu Kyi is a fan of his as he presented a show on the BBC world service which she listened to.

We're not being all Hemsworth calling him DLT. That's what everyone knows him as, that's what people call him and that's what he calls himself. That and the hairy cornflake.

 

Criminal convictions (rightfully) have a strict burden of proof. Even if something probably happened, that isn't sufficient to convict. So the fact that all the members of a jury find someone innocent doesn't mean the woman was lying. If she was obviously lying she can be prosecuted for perjury.

Seems a pretty good system to me.

 

Okay, I'll say it then!

Just because the jury find the accused not guilty, it doesn't mean they didn't do it. It just means the evidence didn't convince the jury that he was guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. So not 99% sure he did it, but 100% sure. There is a good argument that it's almost impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt on cases decades old with no physical evidence, DNA samples, CCTV, etc, so you do wonder why some of these cases whereby the accused so strongly claim their innocence go to court, but that's another matter.

The reason that the accused get named is because sexual offenders are rarely one offs. As sexual offences are so difficult to prove, it is in the public's interest that serial offenders are revealed to be such. If the victims of Jimmy Savile knew how many of them they were many would have come forward during his lifetime. Freddie Starr was arrested and named and has since been arrested a further three times, so the police are building a much stronger case against him. On the flipside of this Michael Le Vell was named and nobody else came forward, so it seems that not guilty is the correct verdict for that one. Similarly, despite the allegations made against Woody Allen by Mia Farrow there have been no other people coming forward, so it looks likely that the suspicion that she has made it up and has manipulated her daughter may well be true.

It must be horrible to be accused of something that you didn't do, particularly this type of thing, but as a father of a daughter it must be far worse to see an offender get off because he was given anonymity when in actual fact he'd been offending for years. You can't have it both ways and whilst the current way it is dealt with is not ideal, it is the better of the two options. Perhaps the press and the general public need educating in not attaching the stigma to people found not guilty. Judging by the way David Jones is greeted by sections of Reds fans perhaps the education can start with us.

And Just because the accused is found not guilty, it doesn't mean that the accuser is guilty of anything, so why should they be named. The likelihood is that something may well have happened, but it just cannot be proved without reasonable doubt. In cases of clear perjury the accuser will be tried and will most definitely be named.

You have hit the nail on the head, if the accusers are shamed and plastered all over the papers as being liars then even less instances of this horrible type of crime will be reported. Here are the figures.

Only 40% of sexual assault crimes are reported.
Only 10% of sexual assault crimes lead to an arrest.
Only 8% of sexual assault crimes lead to a trial.
Only 4% of sexual assault crimes lead to a conviction.
Only 3% of rapists spend even a single day behind bars.

So I think the law is already pretty stacked in rapist and sexual offenders' favour, without naming accusers just because a jury had a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused.

 

I thought that was Greek Man that said that ? How many more times are you going to register on here ?

 

You are using a dangerous and perverse logic here namely that if a lot of people make accusations they are unlikely to be true but if one person makes an accusation it is more likely to be true. Alos,
I don't think you should be making a judgement on Woody Allen or Michale La Vell.
We can only hope the juries are getting it right - despite the difficulties particularly when the case involves incidents which happened decades ago.

 

I've got to question that line of argument. Not all offenders are repeat offenders. I'm not saying Michael Le Vell and Woody Allen are guilty, I'm just saying that some people do only offend once, or multiple times with one victim, but never with anyone else.

I nicked something from a shop once. Some of them temporary tattoo* things where you licked your arm then pressed the thing on and got a tattoo of a ship or whatever (this was when I was a kid, not last week). I wanted them, I didn't have enough money, so I robbed them. I wasn't caught, I didn't give them back, but I didn't like the way it made me feel (guilty as hell for days) so I never did it again.

The lack of further victims coming forward isn't a sign of innocence in a case.

I wonder how many murderers there are alive right now? A bloody lot I would imagine. And serial killers? I would bet it's just a small fraction of that number.

*Edit - just remembered you got some bubbly with it. I was selling myself short, turns out I'm an insane criminal mastermind.

 

Things were different when these accusations were levelled at DLT - in the 1960s and 1970s and I suppose up to more recently it was seen as ok to put your arms around a 'bird' and feel her tits or nip her arse or just give her a kiss.
Unfortunately for men and women (depending who the man was) those days have gone............and we are a much poorer society because of it.
Things were done more innocently then..........people try to complicate things and read too much into things now.

In saying that.........what Saville did was an absolute disgrace..........but ask any women about Jimmy Saville.......and I used to hear it from women when he was at his most popular.............women had got Saville sussed out over 40 years ago........some (most?) woman knew all the time what type of character Saville was..........so it dosent come as a surprise to many women about Saville.

A few women have said to me over the years (40+ years)..........."I don't like Jimmy Saville, there's something dodgy about him".