Starmer’s Shambolic CPS
Starmer’s Shambolic CPS, previously dubbed ‘an enemy to women’, proves he is unfit to serve as a member of parliament, let alone leader of the opposition.
In her role as Home Secretary, Priti Patel has already crafted the attack lines the Labour Party will face if Sir Keir Starmer becomes its next leader. After having been appointed head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in November 2008, Sir Keir’s half decade in the position oversaw cases as large and polarising as the Rochdale grooming gang scandal, mass sexual abuse scandals involving entertainment figures such as Jimmy Savile, and the John Worboys case. Patel noted Sir Keir has a complete ‘lack of interest in prosecuting horrendous crimes against women’, a statement hard to argue with when presented with his record.
Arguably the biggest scandal during his time as DPP came right at the beginning of his tenure. A victim of the Rochdale Grooming gang had reported to Greater Manchester Police the sexual exploitation she’d been experiencing since the age of 15, including becoming pregnant by one of the men abusing her. When referred to the CPS, they decided that the victim was ‘not credible’ and that due to ‘insufficient evidence’ there was an ‘unrealistic prospect of conviction’. Victims continued to be plied with alcohol, drugs and gifts and were prostituted out to multiple men a night, multiple times a week for a further five years.
In 2011, Nazir Afzal, who was then the chief prosecutor in the North West, reopened the case. The evidence previously deemed ‘insufficient’ by Starmer’s CPS — evidence which included DNA and eventually led to 47 other victims allegations — proved vital to securing the convictions of ten men. One of the victims was still not seen as ‘credible’ enough by the CPS because, despite being abused herself, she had later assisted in recruiting other girls to be groomed. The CPS did not want to call her as a witness and had ruled it was not in the public interest to prosecute the men who had abused her, but they needed to use the victim’s evidence. The CPS chose to name this victim as a co-conspirator without informing her that she had been named on the indictment along with the men who had trafficked and raped her. This resulted in social services attempting to remove her child from her custody, and the resignation of the Detective Constable overseeing the case resigning from the force — so that he could publicly criticise the CPS’s treatment of victims.
Local authorities had previously blamed their reluctance to prosecute on the fear of being perceived as racist due to the fact the perpetrators were of South Asian origin and the victims were mostly white British girls. This reluctance and inaction saw a rise in far-right agitation across northern England; a father of one of the victims even joined the BNP for a short period over frustration at the lack of action by authorities. After significant public backlash, Sir Keir was forced to apologise for the mishandling of the case, saying that prosecutors shouldn’t “shy away” from the “issue of ethnicity” which had to be “understood and addressed”, and that ‘a number of assumptions, myths and stereotypes’ about sexual violence had resulted in the previous decision to ‘no further action’ the case.
This response feebly indicated that the CPS needed to review how staff viewed sexual violence and the treatment of victims. Unfortunately, as later demonstrated by repeated failings on such issues, any internal review that may have gone on seems to have further embedded assumptions, myths and stereotypes within the institution. Retrospectively looking at Sir Keir’s language, it is quite clear now that his wording, though seemingly confident on this issue, lacked any substance.
In 2009, whilst Jimmy Savile was still alive, police in Surrey and Sussex referred 4 cases to the CPS alleging that Jimmy Savile had abused 3 girls under the age of 16. Savile was interviewed under caution at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where one of the incidents allegedly took place in the seventies. Within the same month, the CPS had received the files from police, but dropped the case due to ‘insufficient evidence’’. It would later emerge after Savile’s death that he had abused up to 500 victims over a four-decade period. In 2012 Emily Thornberry, Sir Keir’s former opponent in the current Labour leadership contest, stated that she found it “deeply disappointing” that the CPS was “presented with evidence of a clear pattern of sexual assaults by Savile and decided not to act.”
However, one of the most crucial cases is related to John Worboys, the black cab driver who spiked the drinks of scores of unsuspecting women before sexually assaulting them while they were unconscious in the back of his taxi. Worboys was convicted in 2009 of 19 charges against 12 women. It was suspected that there were over 100 more victims. But Sir Keir ruled not to pursue further charges. What is most interesting about the case is that Carrie Symonds, the current partner of Boris Johnson, was a victim of Worboys. If Sir Keir is elected Labour’s next leader elected, the party would face a situation where they would have not only failed to elect a woman leader, but they would also elected a man who oversaw the mishandling of a high-profile rape case involving the prime minister’s partner.
Sir Keir also oversaw the dramatic decline in the prosecution rate of rape cases as a result of the introduction of new guidance which led to police referring fewer cases to the CPS for charging decisions. The guidance saw an increase in the burden of proof from 50% to 60% which resulted in more complex cases that were more difficult to prosecute being dropped, with thousands of victims seeing their cases ‘no further actioned’ due to ‘insufficient evidence’ and an ‘unrealistic prospect of conviction’. These are the same things the victims of both Savile and the Rochdale grooming gang were originally told, which points to systemic failures resulting in untold numbers of abusers walking free without ever facing trial.
A senior Met officer told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that ‘referrals (to the CPS) had dropped as a result of policy change put in place in response to the CPS director’s 2011 guidance on charging’. This has contributed to the current crisis in the criminal justice system where campaigners have described rape as being ‘effectively decriminalised’. As a result, the End Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition and Centre for Women’s Justice have brought a judicial review against the CPS for their failure to prosecute rape cases.
Sir Keir also failed to end the process of survivors who are disbelieved by authorities, or who withdraw their allegations from being charged for ‘false reporting’. The fear of false accusations is hugely disproportionate to the frequency of this occurrence. False allegations are extremely rare, ones that are labelled as ‘false’ often result in being true years later or are legitimate allegations that were withdrawn under pressure from the attacker, family and friends or the police.
After Sir Keir’s resignation from the role, he called on the CPS to implement changes to how rape cases were investigated and even helped the Labour Party draw up a victim’s law outlining how it could be done. This was after he had the power to push for these changes himself within the institution. Instead he left deeply held biases and myths go mostly unchallenged, allowing for a culture of disbelief to continue, paving the way for the further decline of conviction rates. Survivors deserve support and justice, but Sir Keir reserved that for a small few choosing suspicion first and foremost, even in cases with multiple victims like the Rochdale grooming gang and Jimmy Savile scandals.
As shown when it comes to sexual violence, Sir Keir is not a man of principle, he won’t champion justice or stand up for human rights, he will actively deny you them. Sir Keir doesn’t believe sex crimes to be in the public interest to prosecute. Evidence of this is on public record for all to see. If Labour Party members ignore Sir Keir’s history at the CPS we risk sending a damning message that his previous judgements as DPP do not matter and by extension those victims who were let down don’t either.
