Sexual assault-accused UK celebrities (2018). This insightful blogger briefly summarises 45 cases. Hard not to feel sorry for some of the men given some weak cases. Overall, "in my opinion 12 men were guilty, 29 men were innocent, & in 4 cases the matter is not clear". Discusses the issue in general

wntk · 2022-01-06T01:34:45+00:00

"But the more fundamental problem is that the defence case has come to be so dependent upon unearthing such evidence. The reason for this is that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has, de facto, been reversed in the courts. Were this still the true ethos, lack of evidence would disadvantage the prosecution, not the defence. It is now painfully clear that it is the defence in such cases that depends crucially on evidence gathering. Consequently, it is indisputable that it is the defence upon which the burden of proof now rests. Worse even that this, the mantra of ‘believe the victim’ – which really means ‘believe the accuser’ – goes beyond even ‘guilty until proven innocent’. This brave new morality admits of no defence at all."

wntk · 2022-01-06T01:33:21+00:00

Note, he does say:"This is another reason to be very cautious about reading too much into the statistics of my reviews, i.e., the rate of false accusations here may be very different from that in the general public. Mr Barnett suggested a false allegation rate of perhaps around 20%.

That said, all these observations point in the direction of a distressingly common prevalence of false accusations, whatever the actual figure may be as a percentage."

wntk · 2022-01-06T01:48:18+00:00

"This raises one of the most pernicious aspects of such allegations: once accused, a man’s reputation can never fully recover unless the accuser is prosecuted and shown conclusively to be a liar. Merely having no charges brought, or even being found not guilty at trial, still leaves an indelible taint. And many men will be sacked as soon as they are accused, and never re-employed even when exonerated. What more proof of the permanence of the taint do you want?

The form of words used by the CPS do not help: “‘We keep all our cases under constant review and in this case it was decided that based on the strength of the evidence there is no longer a realistic prospect of a conviction”. Note the “no longer”, suggesting there once was a realistic prospect of conviction. And this form of words is inevitably interpreted by the public as meaning “we think the bastard did it but we just don’t have enough evidence”. In truth it is more likely to mean there is not a shred of independent evidence whatsoever, and never was – and we’ve just been keeping the poor bugger on a leash for a couple of years in case some other accuser might turn up with some evidence."

wntk · 2022-01-06T01:35:39+00:00

"At one time I would have assumed – like everyone else – that multiple accusers must surely indicate the accused’s guilt. No longer. Not when the police pro-actively seek additional accusers and even mention the possibility of victim compensation. In that respect, I wonder how many people are aware that victim compensation is often paid even when the accused is found not guilty – or when no suspected perpetrator is ever identified."

wntk · 2022-01-06T01:43:30+00:00

"It is a great wheeze to accuse celebrities. The police will find it ever so much easier to trawl for other willing accusers. And the police seem to have a particular delight in bringing down the famous, which is not entirely a post-Savile effect, though that is certainly a major exacerbation. It is also a great boon to lawyers when celebrities are accused, because they are the very people who can afford to pay their defence team six figure sums – pretty much the going rate to prove to the system’s satisfaction that a lunatic fantasist with no evidence is a lunatic fantasist with no evidence."

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