With the recent
still fresh in everybody's minds, opinions towards rape and sexual assault cases are now slightly more
extreme than they used to be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it should mean that victims are more likely to come forward and investigators will be more vigilant in their investigations.
However, for one man from England, the police's determination to convict someone of a supposed rape resulted in him being wrongfully charged with a crime he didn't commit.
Liam Allan, a 22-year-old university student, was charged with 12 counts of rape and
after an anonymous accuser said that he attacked her.
Allan was originally accused of the crimes two years ago and has been suffering ever since.
"University is meant to be the best years of your life and the last two years have been spent worrying and not concentrating on anything," he said.
"It has completely ripped apart my normal personal life."
The 22-year-old was only three days into his trial when the charges against him were dropped. The collapse of the case occurred when it was revealed that investigators had withheld a disk which contained 40,000 messages, amongst which were texts from the alleged victim that exonerated the student.
Apparently, the police had looked through the thousands of messages while building their case against Allan, but had failed to disclose them to both the prosecution and defense teams.
Some of the texts between the complainant and her friends showed her describing their relationship as "casual sex", which cast doubt on her allegations that he had sexual contact with her
.
After the case was dropped, Allan revealed that he was suing the London Metropolitan Police over their failure to produce evidence which aided his defense. He also admitted that, while he was glad the case had been dropped, the experience was far from over for him.
"I feel relief on one side, that the case is over, but now there's the stress of getting compensation and the process of suing - so it's not over completely", he said.
In a post on Facebook, Allan thanked the friends and family who had stood by him during the two years he was on bail
and indicated that he would use his experience to advocate for much-needed changes within the justice system.
Though Allan's accuser was not named throughout the process, the student still defends the justice system's decision to keep her anonymous. However, he also believes that accused criminals' names should be left out of the press until they are formally convicted.
"I think every individual [involved in rape cases] should be given anonymity, even afterwards, unless they say they want to go public," he said.
Amazingly, he also showed extreme tolerance when talking about his accuser's decision to press charges against him. He described her actions as "a little white lie" that got out of hand.
“It completely spiralled out of control and it became a story she had to stick to," he said. "She completely lost control of what happened."
Fortunately, Allan was exonerated by the evidence in the end, but many others are not so lucky. Rape cases obviously needed to be dealt with using a great degree of sensitivity and care, but it's also important to disclose all the facts before jumping to conclusions and wrongfully convicting an innocent person.
