Abigail Bright, a barrister from Doughty Street Chambers who represented Makele in court, said after the case: “It should be a minimum requirement that [police and prosecution] should look at the downloads from the phones around the period of an alleged offence". Both prosecution and defence ideally ought to be allowed access to all downloaded evidence through a secure online account, she suggested.

www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jan/15/lond...ase?CMP=share_btn_tw

They should look at internet searches too, in case someone has been trawling abuse/assault stories for inspiration. I'm positive that happened with one of the accusers in the Rolf Harris case. Not the one whose accusations were overturned on appeal, though I wouldn't be surprised if she, or indeed the others, had been up to similar.

On the news - more about this and further shouts but nobody appears to talk about the dozens of wrongful convictions where the dice did not happen to fall in favour of the defendant. Without that break of luck, all three cases within weeks would have ended in long jail sentences. And how many have done? Doesn't anybody care?

JK2006 wrote:
On the news - more about this and further shouts but nobody appears to talk about the dozens of wrongful convictions where the dice did not happen to fall in favour of the defendant. Without that break of luck, all three cases within weeks would have ended in long jail sentences. And how many have done? Doesn't anybody care?

It seems not.

I think there are many people who care or are starting to wake up. But who has the power to stop the tsunamis of collective emotional contagion and hysteria that rear up whenever a new 'horror' story appears in the media?

You're right MD - every time there is publicity about a case illustrating the appalling false allegations industry, it is trumped (I use the word intentionally) by another horror story often involving historical "abuse" of an innocent "victim" who quite often seems to have enjoyed the "abuse" for years on end.

Maybe someone needs to stick their head above the parapet and challenge the Savile allegations in order to start the ball rolling. Surely it's absurd that someone should have spent several decades of their life committing crimes against scores of people up and down the country and not a single one of them had parents who found out and reported it to police or, once they reached adulthood, reported it themselves - until they all popped up at once a year after his death. It's as if we're supposed to believe that he cast a magic spell over the entire nation, rendering everyone mute and incapable. It wouldn't be impossible if the main reason for the Savile hysteria was the fact that he was had funny hair and wore shell suits. The elderly and mildly eccentric looking landlord of Joanna Yeates was pilloried in the media and smeared as her killer before it was discovered that she had been murdered by her normal looking youthful neighbour. How much easier to pillory the dead.

I think more and more people are starting to think somethings smells about the Savile fiasco. Likewise poor Rolf Harris. And DLT and others. And this includes those who have been part way through a similar experience - Jim Davidson, Tarbie, Gambo, Cliff, Fox, Roache, Le Vell... but it's not yet time for many to risk saying so; the media did a pretty solid job smearing and shaming. You can beat the police, the courts but rarely the media. However, if the media sniffs a good story...