Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Guilty

I may have misunderstood.  I am sure I heard that the education secretary is going to try and make it a criminal offense to make false accusations against teachers.  Now I totally and 100% am behind the fact that spurious accusations against people (especially ones of inappropriate behaviors towards minors or violence of any kind) causes mud to stick.   No smoke without fire people say.  False accusations blight lives.
But think about it.  What is a false accusation and what are the effects of such things.  There are the obvious occasions where a young person, after making such an accusation has admitted it to be false as a way to get at an adult in authority (teacher etc).  The second type of course, where the young person never admits it is when a jury finds the adult not guilty.  If a jury finds him or her not guilty then by definition this must be a false accusation.  This is a terrible position.  No longer is a jury finding a person not guilty but its immediate effect is to find the person making the accusation guilty (it now being a criminal offense).  How can the two not co-exist by definition.

The danger now then is that with the prospect of being a criminal if you make an accusation (false or otherwise) you may either not make the accusation in case you are not believed and prosecuted or worse, having made a false accusation never want to admit it for fear of being prosecuted.  What kind of pressure will young people be under in court.  Deals done?  Say its false accusation and we will not prosecute.  You can hear the deals being done as I write.

This is a terrible step backwards and I see no good coming of it.  If an accusation is made then the matter must be dealt with justly.  By all means keep the name of the accused private and undisclosed until the trial.  But to put mechanisms in place that will certainly influence justice to this extent is madness.  Even the outcome does not justify the means.  Young people with criminal records does not stop the 'no smoke without fire' brigade.  The teacher is no less labeled.

No good can come of this