Our thanks to Stu for this. The start of the piece in the Telegraph:

Photographs and social media accounts do not necessarily need to be fully checked in rape cases, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service has suggested.

Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, insisted she does not believe anyone is in jail after being wrongly convicted because of failures to disclose crucial evidence. [J4MB: Saunders is lying, and she knows it. She could get a job as a ‘comedian’ on the BBC with that one sentence alone, and we hope she’ll soon have the time free to pursue that line of work.]

Ms Saunders’ insistence that the justice system is working comes after Scotland Yard launched an urgent review of approximately 30 sex cases due to go to trial after the collapse of two rape prosecutions in a week in December.

Anna Soubry, the Tory MP and former barrister, said she was “appalled” at Ms Saunders’ “ill informed comments” relating to disclosure. [J4MB: At last! An MP criticising the toxic feminist harridan publicly!!!]

Later in the piece, in relation to the Samson Makele case:

Ms Saunders rejected suggestions that it should have been obvious to check for photographs.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Well it is not because if you have a case where people have briefly known each other there is nothing that says there will be photographs. [J4MB: The weasel words ‘there is nothing that says’ could be said for any type of evidence. It would surely take very little time to check a phone for photographs taken around the time of alleged sexual assaults.] What the police obligation is is to pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry. [J4MB: With heavily politicised police forces being required to arrest more men with the hope of more convictions, ‘reasonable lines of enquiry’ will be a VERY low bar.]

“That doesn’t mean going into every single avenue of your life. They would look to see if there was contact as in text messages which they did and which we looked at and we served.

Our thanks to James for this. Outrageous. From Emmeline Pankhurst’s Wikipedia page (the emphases are ours):

In 1903, five years after her husband died, Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to “deeds, not words”. The group identified as independent from – and often in opposition to – political parties. It became known for physical confrontations: its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions. As Pankhurst’s eldest daughter Christabel took leadership of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually the group adopted arson as a tactic, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family.

Enjoy (video, 1:02:15). The piece has attracted over 70,000 viewers in a few hours. Meanwhile, the Channel 4 YouTube video of the interview has attracted well over one million hits, making it the #3 trending YouTube video globally.

Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Nihal Arthanayake and Sarah Brett on BBC Radio 5 Live three days ago. We’ve just posted the file (audio, 40:54) on our YouTube channel. A video of the final (very moving) 5:38 is here.

Our thanks to Martin for this (Fox News video, 4:53).

Just published. Collins cites a Telegraph article from 2006, pre-dating Operation Yewtree and Savile. An extract:

The system for dealing with accusations of sexual abuse is a disgrace. It has manifest failings that are known to lead to wrong verdicts but which remain uncorrected, and which continue to send innocent men to prison.

Chris Saltrese is a solicitor who has handled many appeals for those accused of sexual crimes. It was not his original area of legal expertise, however. “I started as a commercial lawyer,” he explained to me, “an area of law that is considerably more lucrative than this one. I ended up handling cases of alleged sex crimes only because it became obvious to me that there was an injustice of colossal proportions taking place.” Mr Saltrese believes that there are “certainly scores, and very possibly hundreds” of men who have been convicted of sexual crimes who are rotting in prison with no prospect of release, but who are not guilty and should never have been sentenced. [J4MB: Collins later writes, “With more than 12,000 men in prison for sexual offences, the number of innocent men in prison must be at the very least several hundred. I’m now inclined to believe it is probably in the thousands.” [Our emphasis] We’re confident he’s right, it’s probably in the thousands.]

These men have all been convicted on the uncorroborated allegations of people they knew 10, 20, sometimes even 40 years ago, and whom they have not seen since. It seems incredible that, in English law, such unsupported allegations should be enough to get a man sent to prison for a decade or more. But that is the present situation. Thanks to the steady erosion of the rules of evidence governing sexual offences, culminating in decisions by the Law Lords in 1991 and 1995, a defendant can face multiple allegations at the same trial. None of those allegations need have any corroboration; each, considered on its own merits, may be insufficient to suggest sexual abuse took place, but the effect of the Law Lords’ rulings has been that together, multiple allegations are, in law, enough to prove not just that the abuse happened, but that the defendant was the perpetrator. [J4MB emphasis – Collins later turns to the issue of how the police financially incentivise people to make accusations.]

How could England’s most senior judges come to insist on a rule of evidence so transparently unreliable as that? It is a question to which only they know the answer. Their underlying assumption had to be that allegations of sexual abuse should be accepted as true, even if there is no evidence to support them. The result is that the burden of proof is on the accused to prove he is innocent, not on his accusers to prove his guilt.

Our thanks to Nigel for pointing us to Padlock, a short film (17:40) co-written and directed by Ben Hyland. It starts off a little slowly, but it’s worth sticking with. Ben writes:

Hello everyone,

After 14 film festival screenings and a handful of awards I’m delighted to let you know that Padlock is now available online to watch and share.

The film carries a very important message and I’ve already received feedback from people that have watched it today that have experienced abuse and that are thankful that this is being discussed and their voices are being heard.

Please feel free to share the link on your social media. With your help we can reach more victims and give them the courage and support to become survivors. The video can be copied and pasted from the link below:

https://vimeo.com/251323354

Much Love and thank you once again for supporting this important project.

Ben & The Padlock Team

We’ve posted a lot of material on Jordan Peterson in recent days, and he deserves all the appreciation he’s been getting. Time to give a little exposure to another remarkable Canadian, the inimitable Karen Straughan, and her new piece, Too dreadful even for Metro… (video, 29:32). Ably assisted by Dr Randomercam, the piece bears Karen’s hallmarks of clear-eyed honesty, intellectual and emotional impact, and humour. She never disappoints.

Karen has spoken at all the International Conferences on Men’s Issues since the first in Detroit, in 2014, and at the coming July conference her talk title will be, “Why women must consign feminism to the dustbin of history”. The speaker list is here. Dr Randomercam too will be at the conference, albeit not giving a talk.

You can book your ticket(s) here.

Our thanks to John for this. We look forward to Douglas Murray’s article in the next edition of The Spectator.

Enjoy (video 1:30:32). We believe this was the talk Peterson gave on the evening of Monday, 15 January.