The CPS has dropped all the remaining charges against Roy Harper, but not before he has spent his life savings and more on defending himself and having his reputation trashed. I guess you can’t sue the CPS or the police for defamation, but the whole situation seems very unfair. At the age of 74, he now has to rebuild his life.
I’m pretty angry about it as a fan of some 35 years. It’s just outrageous.
This is good news indeed. Hopefully from his justified anger will come some artistic expression in the form of music that people will be happy to buy.
That’s great news. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m so happy for Roy. It’s probably ruined his career though.
‘His influence upon other musicians has been acknowledged by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Pete Townshend, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull…’ Sounds like a benefit concert right there, Albert Hall maybe.
Hats Off To (Roy) Harper indeed
I just hope he’s able to create some new work and continue… But at 74 he should have been able to rest on his laurels. What a shame.
Opher Godwin’s take on this.
https://opherworld.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/roy-harper-is-acquitted-but-where-is-justice-in-this-this-is-not-justice-ophers-views/
Slightly pathetic tbh. Veers dangerously close to conspiracy theory.
He makes some good points but cruises close to the tricky question of the rights of the accused over the alleged victim. I can’t help feeling, on balance, that anonymity for both is the only sensible compromise. The whole “other people might come forward” argument seems a licence for fantasists and attention seekers to come out of the woodwork. Proper investigative rigour ought to find all the relevant parties. This ghastly trial by Twitter/newspaper/innuendo business is so damaging get and the rights of the falsely accused don’t come into it at all.
The ‘shaking the tree’ tactic does seem to be effective. The nature of sexual abuse, after all, is that it is a “shameful” secret for many victims. It’s hard to see how ‘investigative rigour’ alone can get around that.
I do agree that the trial by social media thing that it often degenerates into is corrosive and wrong. All the more reason then, not to extend it to the alleged victim too – which the linked post came dangerously close to doing, IMO. Some contributors to Harper’s Facebook page were rather more explicit in their criticism of her; it’s two sides of the same coin.
It’s not quite what I’m referring to above but special mention of the woman who posted (I paraphrase only slightly) “I got shagged at 13 and it never did me any harm, so what’s she complaining about?”
I agree it is very distasteful when it goes the other way too. Other than Jimmy Saville though, of the celebs/public figures who have been through this and then not been charged, shaking the tree doesn’t seem to have done anything other than harm. If there is enough of a case resulting in a prosecution, then names would be named and any other victims could come forward. It’s all about balance, which is a tricky old thing.
Hopefully Roy can get over this, he`s a strong willed guy so let`s hope this is the case. I`ll try and help by filling in any gaps in his discography from his site.
The nightmare of Harper’s situation is echoed by Paul Gambacinni in his recent book .
Hold on. A serious allegation was made. The CPS thought that there was a realistic chance of conviction, so it went to court. What else should they have done?
Hold on, yourself. A ‘serious allegation’ was not made. An allegation of a serious crime having been committed was. Very different things.
Rather reminiscent of the police recently announcing that a ‘very credible’ source had come forward with tales of a VIP paedophile ring and had identified a formerly prominent politician. Where was the presumption of innocence?
This ‘very credible’ source then turned out to be a severely damaged fantasist.
His allegations were described by Knacker of the Yard as “credible and true” – a mangling of both grammar and legal process.
You know, I’ve read that a few times and I still don’t see how “a serious allegation” and “an allegation of a serious crime having been committed” are, in this instance very different at all. Do tell.
I agree that the ‘VIP paedo ring’ brouhaha had a swipe of Salem about it, however I think the allegations against Harper were rather different. There was an actual case to answer and evidence to back it up, which is why it went as far as the courts.
I think what I’m trying to say is that paedophilia is a ‘serious’ crime. Whether I take an allegation ‘seriously’ would depend on who is making it and what evidence there is to back it up.
Totally agree with ianess – some of the people making these allegations are at best chancers hoping for some notoriety or at best a damages payout. I would like to see how many serious allegations are made if the accusers are aware that there is no chance of any payout whatsoever. Sad indictment of our society unfortunately.
To contrast Gambaccinni’s case – arrested on the grounds of an allegation, his name released to the press and then after 12 months the authorities announce the case is being dropped – by which time the damage is done.
His book is well worth a read – it’s too long and there’s too much name dropping, but it does show the Kafka-esque situation he was trapped in.
I think anonymity for the accused must be put in place
Disgraceful. A quick tour with some of the above named mega stars popping in to guest seems in order.
Perhaps they could include ‘Forbidden Fruit’ on the setlist?
What do we want? Anonymity for people whose records we like! When were we bothered about this before? Never!
😉
Teasing, and not talking about anyone on this thread at all, but there’s an element of that in the social media reaction.
Yep, couldn’t agree more and whilst I like some of RH’s music, you’d have to think he’s the tip (sorry) of the iceberg. I mean, come on, being a rock star, however minor, was and possibly still is, a free pass to shag heaven. That RH got picked out is unfortunate for him to say the least but anyone who thinks there aren’t well known names – legends in fact – who haven’t at some stage behaved in a sexually suspect manner, is kidding themselves.
Roy’s mate Jimmy Page, to name but one…
I agree with Twang above and find this whole ‘shake the tree’ approach v. troubling (whoever is involved, Bob!)
With the remit for sexual offences now so ridiculously wide, and the status ‘victim’ conferred upon those making unproven complaints, can there really be anybody left who believes they won’t be heard if they come forward with an allegation?
Thankfully these allegations (and the whole “offenders lists” business) never reach the rest of Europe.
The newspapers (and Police PR departments) responsible for the Harper stories would face serious lawsuits in Germany.
It’s about time that Roy was cleared. I have been following Roy since I first saw him live in 1972 or so and he has been unfailingly open and sincere in addressing this very issue over the years. He wrote an eloquent, honest and very detailed blog about his own very tragic experiences as a young teenager and the hazards/repercussions of consensual sex with a minor (this blog was about 10 years ago). He admitted some errors on his part and clearly felt guilt and remorse, but also a great deal of tenderness and love. He also recounted how times have changed. You have to have read it really. Maybe it is still around in the ether. It was on the Stormcock forum at one point.
I have followed the court case as best I can – it has not been reported well – and it is quite mystifying why a case was ever brought to court at all. The evidence that eventually cleared Roy was apparently the alleged victim’s own diary from the time, which was actually very complementary about Roy and undermined the allegations being made.
And what is your source for the detail about the alleged victim’s diary? Seems an unusual piece of information for the CPS to release, on the face of it.
A man was accused of serious crimes. The police investigated. The CPS decided there was a reasonable prospect of conviction, and that it was in the public interest to prosecute, so they prosecuted him. A jury acquitted him, although from the news reports it appears that there was, in law, enough evidence to convict. Now, the CPS have decided that the remaining charges should be dropped.
That’s how the system is supposed to work. It happens countless times across the country, with no-one taking the slightest bit of interest, but when the accused is famous and/or popular? The outrage!
Now, there’s a separate question of whether someone accused of such serious crimes should have to pay anything for their defence…
Mostly unarguable in theory, though much the same could be said of the ‘show trials’ as regards the ‘system’.
However, this would all be well and fine if neither the police nor the CPS had been politicised by Blair.
Also, as mentioned elsewhere, the police, in particular, have probably overreacted, having been heavily criticised for their dereliction of duty with regards to their friend Savile and the unfortunates of Rotherham.
I’m rather amazed at the insouciance of some posters as regards the effects of the smearing of these various individuals, the career- killing nature of these accusations and the bankrupting of some caught up in this witch hunt.
I’m not at all certain what you’re attempting to claim that there ‘was enough evidence to convict’. In whose opinion? Yours?
I know nothing of the evidence in this case. Nor, I would venture to suggest, do the other posters in this thread. The reporting of a criminal trial never, ever, comes close to capturing all the nuances and details that come out in court.
But these charges made it to the jury. That means that, in law, there was enough evidence to convict. Otherwise the judge would have prevented the case from going to the jury.
But I agree that in general, the behaviour of the police and, to a lesser extent, the CPS, has been very poor. The whole closeness of the police to ExaroNews, for example, is a disgrace. As is the CPS’s habit of gloating after a conviction.
Artery appears to have followed the case as best he could.
Initially, you stated that ‘from the news reports … there was enough evidence to convict’.
Now, you’re stating that, just because ‘these charges made it to the jury…that means that, in law, there was enough evidence to convict’.
Artery points out that it appears that, inter alia, the accuser’s own, contemporaneous diary undermined the case.
In every criminal trial in England and Wales, at the end of the prosecution case (so after the defence have been able to cross-examine the victim and others), the defence can make a submission to the judge that there is no case to answer, based on R v Galbraith. There are two different angles that the defence can take here. Firstly, they can argue that there is no evidence at all the the accused committed the crime. Secondly, they can argue that the evidence against the accused is so weak or tenuous that no jury, properly directed, could convict.
So whatever evidence was led about a diary, and it would have been part of the cross-examination, it was not enough to weaken the case to the extent that the jury could not properly convict.
Because the news reports state that the case made it to the jury, that means that there was enough evidence, in law, to convict.
I would suggest the ‘no case to answer’ submission rarely succeeds, so is a fairly high hurdle for the defence to clear.
I would also imagine the acquittal rate in such cases is rather high. As stated above, I believe the CPS and the police are overreaching themselves in many of these sleb cases.
“I know nothing of the evidence in this case”, only enough to proclaim that “it appears that there was, in law, enough evidence to convict”.
Hmmmm.
The very fact that the case made it to the jury means that in law, there was enough evidence to convict. You don’t need to know the evidence to draw that inference, you just need to know how criminal cases work.
When the accused is neither famous or popular there is still outrage, but it is confined to a much narrower group of people by the narrower breadth of reporting the event attracts. Read the Eye every fortnight and be outraged almost every time.
There’s no doubt that, post Saville, Smith and co that the Police are – possibly were, because it may have lessened – under pressure. That there were certain ‘names’ being picked off is indisputable.
Not too many people here would nominate Jim Davidson as one of their favs. But he too had a sexual allegation (and charge) to deal with.
His book –
is an occasionally cringe-worthy sometimes victim playing but essentially honest read.
Quite the mad shagger in his day, JC tells a few tales l’amour that are ethically questionable, if not necessarily illegal.
Jim of course believes he got picked off for being famous, successful and – uh? – Tory, but really can you complain when you make a career out of being Jim ‘Nick Nick’ Davidson?
JC?
Well, you know I don’t like to brag….
Ha! Brag away. JD does!
Yeah, sorry I’m late. I’ve been up all night shagging.
I know. Tiring, int it?
I agree that this string of failed prosecutions reflects very poorly on the CPS, and smacks of an agenda.
However, I do have one question that’s been rattling round my head, based on the feedback in this thread and elsewhere when this issue has been raised.
On the one hand, people are saying it’s a disgrace that Harper was charged, and that the lack of evidence suggests the CPS had malicious intent and brought charges without foundation.
On the other, there’s a frequent undertone on this blog, and elsewhere, of “everyone was shagging minors in the 60s/70s, different times, etc”. Artery’s excellent post above is an example of this (I’d be interested to read that blog post if anyone has it).
So, are we aggrieved because the police have “defamed” Harper, to paraphrase the OP, or because we feel that the universal nature of these sorts of activities (consensual, natch) in that time period make contemporary attempts to prosecute a nonsense?
There seems to be an acceptance that Harper and others almost certainly DID break the law, coupled with a sense of outrage that they should be accused of doing so.
That’s not to say that I support this rash of prosecutions – I’ve been convinced by recent events that Archie’s various arguments against were correct – more a curious anomaly that I’ve noticed in the response.
It’s not an ‘or’, it’s an ‘and’.
I’m not sure I have ever seen anyone here defend sex with minors, now or in the 70s. Care to cite a few examples?
Well, I dunno about “defending sex with minors”, as that’s not what I said, but in terms of the “everyone was at it, different times” argument…. will the post directly above yours do?
Sorry, that came out snarkier-sounding than intended.
The efforts of the Drupal hackers mean it’s impossible to cite examples, and I’m not sure I’d be inclined to go hunting for them even if it were otherwise. I’m not looking to finger point, just asking a question I’ve genuinely been wondering about.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting anyone has ever argued that it’s fine to interfere with kids. There were definitely, however, a few people who suggested that these current prosecutions are reflective of a more prudish attitude to consensual sex with the narrowly underage which has developed since the 70s, as well as a recognition that most of the rock gods of the day probably had relations with girls and boys below the lawful age of consent.
I’m just trying to square that with the cries of “defamation” in this thread. I understand the argument that this prosecution may have been politicised (in fact, i’m inclined to agree). I don’t understand the indignation at Harper being accused of something which it sounds was entirely commonplace in his field, based on what I’ve read on here this week and previously.
Oh, and it has to be an “or”, rather than an “and” – a true statement cannot be defamatory.
There you go, using those inverted commas. What were they there for if not to distinguish between “defamed” in some imaginary sense, and something more concrete?
Dude, let it go. It’s Christmas – go have a mince pie or something.
There’s no smoke without fire. Fact.
Yet you can have Smokie without Chris Norman..? Bizarre!
I feel the police have definitely become politicised and agenda-driven in recent years.
This may seem a trivial illustration, but I found two recent, football related, tweets troubling (as I do the very concept of the police tweeting about anything other than the most general ‘keep safe’ stuff):
Merseyside Police apologise over Twitter ‘rape joke’
and
Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney declared ‘missing’ by Greater Manchester Police in ill-advised Twitter joke gaffe
No doubt the PR depts of both forces thought this was a good way to engage but…..
Without speaking about this case in particular, but addressing the general.
One might expect that when the police receive an allegation, they investigate impartially and reached a decision based on the objective evidence.
I’m not sure if they still make these statements, as I have better things to do than read them, but there was a flurry where the boys in blue essentially sided with the victim – and said as much. Not the complainant, which is the language that the courts usually use, but the victim.
As soon as they label an unverified complainant as a victim, they’ve picked sides. And they really really shouldn’t.
Precisely. When the complainant becomes a ‘victim’, then the accused must become a ‘perpetrator’. Also, their siren call for more ‘victims’ to come forward.
I have no more and no less sympathy for any villain because I happen to like their music. But the publicity thing has always bothered me since I heard a radio discussion about this years ago, with a normal bloke on who had been accused of rape. It ruined his marriage, he lost his job and most of his friends. The girl then admitted she’d invented the whole thing. I was really struck by how awful that must be, and there’s no recourse. Rape is unforgivably awful, but destroying someone’s life is pretty bad too. I was simply saying there should be more consideration of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, and as we know these days the court of public opinion is out there 24/7 hopping from one foot to the other waiting to be outraged about something.
Hear hear!
My attitude is a little coloured by a friend being wrongly accused of sexual assault by a baby sitter. It led to him being convicted (six months), having to close his business and ultimately emigrating. After he came out of gaol, he appealed and the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction. Not before his face had been splashed across the front page of the papers. It can be very costly being wrongly accused.
Someone asked about the alleged victim’s diary as used in the initial Harper prosecution that was found not guilty. Well, the case was held in open court and some fans attended the court, though I did not. Seemingly the diary was introduced by the prosecution as evidence of a historical relationship, though no sexual allegations were contained within it. Subsequently the defence counsel were allowed to examine this evidence and quoted extracts in court that were entirely complimentary about Roy. The jury came to their own conclusions.
When Roy was himself a minor in Blackpool he got his girlfriend pregnant (also a minor) and wanted to marry her. I think both were 15. However both families conspired to immediately end all contact between the parties. Roy was distraught and suffered a mental breakdown; he was was given electric shock therapy. He also served time in prison as a teenager.