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For others wrongly accused of historic sex offences...
TOPIC: For others wrongly accused of historic sex offences...
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For others wrongly accused of historic sex offences... 15 Years, 5 Months ago
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Re:For others wrongly accused of historic sex offences... 15 Years, 5 Months ago
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Delays can threaten justice in other types of cases also. On a smaller scale, I know someone who had a customs raid early one morning. They had a warrant to search for pornographic CD-Roms. They didn't find any, because he didn't have any. When he asked why they had picked on him they showed him a photo CD which he had ordered from overseas. It had images of children on it, but fully clothed and perfectly legal. He agreed to allow them to take his computer on the condition they brought it back the next day after examination, because he wanted to show fully that he wasn't involved in that kind of thing.
He later called his solicitor who said that he shouldn't have surrendered his computer because once the authorities have it, anything can happen.
A week later a police officer called on him and said they had found indecent images on the computer and that they might ask him to come in to "talk about it" at a time of mutual convenience.
Then he heard nothing until a year and a half had passed. Police came to his house just before mid-day on a Saturday and arrested him for having indecent images on his computer. They made a joke about how because it was a Saturday his solicitor might not be available. His solicitor was not able to make it as he was away, so advice over the phone was to say absolutely nothing during the interview. When he was shown the printouts he saw that one was very old non sexual b/w nude, as you would see in photography books. Two were backs of boys in their late teens on a nudist beach, and the other was just a shot of a teenage boy from the waist up.
The police then took his other computer and kept it for a couple of months, while he was released on police bail. They then recalled him and revealed they had found other indecent images, of a sexual nature, on the second computer. He was charged and sent through the court process. He elected to go to Crown Court. His barrister enlisted the aid of an expert who found that the sexual images on the second computer had no time or date on, and no record of how they got there. They were also so encrypted that only an expert could make them show up. The Crown Court hearing was postponed three times. The barrister approached the prosecution with the findings of the expert, and they agreed to drop all charges relating to the second computer so long as there was a guilty plea on the lesser images.
Now quite stressed by the lengthy ordeal the defendant agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charges and he was fined
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