Our thanks to David for this, from 2013. From the article:
Judge Michael Stokes QC, The Recorder of Nottingham, said: “This was outrageous behaviour by the defendant against a wholly innocent man who had been saved by the recording on his phone.”
The implication of the word ‘saved’ couldn’t be clearer. Without the recording the man would have been charged and probably found guilty, without there being any evidence supporting the woman’s claim. The 16 months prison sentence for Astria Berwick was outrageously lenient. From the article:
Mr Asif, a father-of-two from Carlton, Nottingham, said the experience had torn his life apart, leaving him unable to face working again for a month, having problems sleeping and causing him to lose a stone in weight.
He said: “She changed my life. I’m completely different now. I’m scared to go out.
“I keep thinking, ‘I just dropped her off, she was just a normal passenger, why has she done that?”
Why did she do that? Because she lives in a culture that tells her she can, without consequences. Hopefully other taxi drivers will be similarly careful to ‘always be recording’.
