Information for former pupils who wish to file a complaint with the Police
Use the following links to jump to the relevant part of this page:
Filing a complaint
The difficulty in securing a conviction
When to file a complaint
Judge Julian Hall – a case study
Filing a complaint
If you attended any school, experienced abuse and after seeing the film you have decided to file a complaint with the Police, call the Police Authority in which the abuse occurred.
Each Police force has a Child Protection team that deals with matters of current and historic sexual abuse. You will find them understanding and helpful.
The difficulty of securing a conviction
See also ‘Judge Julian Hall’ – a case study, further down on this page.
If you are now an adult and your abuse occurred in childhood you will have to accept that any complaint you consider making to the Police (if this is the route you decide to go) is unlikely to result in a conviction. The conviction rate for cases brought against alleged abusers is no more than 2%. The passage of time does not help the Police or the judicial process and it is fair to say that the judiciary has a limited understanding of historic abuse and why it can take so long for victims to come forward.
Why is it so hard to get a conviction for historic abuse cases? It has never been easy, but the R v. Selwyn Bell precedent (February 2003) has made it even harder. In a nutshell, the Selwyn Bell precedent effectively says that as a result of the passage of time an alleged abuser may not be able to receive a fair trial. This is something of a ‘get out of court’ card for abusers who are charged late in life.
Peter Wright, former headmaster of Caldicott, used this legal precedent to successfully have his case ‘stayed’. A ‘stay’ means that the case against the alleged perpetrator does not go to trial, leaving him/her neither guilty nor absolved of the allegations. No stay of a criminal case has ever (yet) been lifted in the English Courts, so far as is known.
Interestingly, members of the judiciary (mostly male) who are licensed to preside over Serious Sexual Offence trials (SSOs) have not had to declare whether or not they themselves were at the receiving end of abuse as children, so they come to the bench with any potential prejudices intact and undeclared.
According to the NSPCC, 3 in 20 adults in Britain have experienced emotional, physical, or sexual abuse as a child. If one were to apply this statistic to the judiciary as a whole, up to 565 members have experienced abuse. Their socio-economic background is such that many will have been pupils at preparatory boarding schools and may adopt the attitude of ‘it didn’t do me any harm’. See Judge Hall – a case study (further down on this page).
Rape has a conviction rate of 4%, and there is significant pressure on the judiciary to increase this dismal rate. Paedophile offences have a conviction rate of 2%.
Do not be optimistic that any complaint you choose to file with the Police will result in a conviction, but if you are of the mind to file a complaint you are now aware of some of the challenges.
When to file a complaint
There is no statute of limitations for a criminal case in the UK. You can file a complaint at any time but clearly the nearer to the commission of the assault the better the chances for conviction. For those who wish to pursue a civil action and thereby secure damages, a complaint has to be filed within 3 years of the assault, or 3 years from your 18th birthday. Outside this extraordinary time limit there are exceptions which you might be able to use, particularly if the psychological consequences of what happened have occasioned your silence. Refer to the recent House of Lords decision in the “Lottery Rapist” case on the Limitation Act – A. v. Hoare reported in The Times on the 31January 2008.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority also imposes a time limit of 2 years from the incident or your 18th birthday, but is prepared to extend time if proper reasons for the delay are given. In the first instance, do not give up, seek advice.
Judge Hall – a case study
Taking a case to court means subjecting yourself to the sometimes unusual behaviour of the judiciary. The New York Times reported on the 11th October 2001 that Judge Julian Hall (Oxford) declared earlier in the same year when a case of sexual abuse was brought against a former teacher at Cothill School in Oxford, “This is the stalest case I have been asked to try" and threw it out.
"I think the best thing that should happen to people who behave in this way,” Judge Hall told Oxford Crown Court, speaking of the former teacher, Jeremy Malim, “is that they should get a very brisk elbow in the ribs at the time or be rejected.”
Rejected – now there is an interesting word from the Judge. Rejection assumes an 11 year-old boy has a choice about being abused by a person in authority and can anyone, other than Judge Julian Hall, imagine an 11 year-old hitting a teacher in the ribs? Isn’t that assault?
The very same Judge did it again in 2007 when Eric Cole received a suspended sentence. Reported in the Oxford Mail on 2 February 2007 the Judge said, “In criminal terms what you did was quite mild but the effects were serious.” He then instructed Cole to pay the 6 year old victim £250 compensation saying “if it buys her a new bike, that’s the sort of thing that might cheer her up.”
And on 23 March 2008 the Daily Telegraph reported on Judge Hall once again when he gave a 17 year-old man a three-year supervision order after he had abused two children.
Sexual abuse has a derisory conviction rate thanks to Judges who seem unable to understand this distressing area of law.
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