ANALYSIS: TRUE. It’s time we stopped treating all men as sex pests.
Pearson, a 51-year-old artist, was tried for a sex crime simply because he brushed past a 61-year-old female film star during rush hour at Waterloo Tube station without even breaking his stride.
His accuser (who shall remain anonymous for life) claimed Pearson penetrated her with three fingers for “two or three seconds”.
CCTV of the footage irrefutably backs Pearson’s account; it took a jury of nine women and three men just 90 minutes to unanimously reject the accuser’s version of events and find Pearson innocent.
After the case, Mr Pearson, who still suffers anxiety attacks, said, “This could have happened to anyone. For me, half a second turned into a year of hell. I feel I have undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state. Why couldn’t the CPS have used common sense?”
Which begs the bigger question: why, despite having seen the CCTV evidence (there were also no witnesses nor forensic evidence), did the Crown Prosecution Service still see fit to push for prosecution?
Pearson’s acquittal topped off a bad week for the CPS – and a terrible one for men – following a damning report in which HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate concluded that “poor” decision-making in London rape cases was leading to innocent suspects being wrongly charged in an attempt to raise the number of convictions.
So why is what’s been described as a CPS “witch hunt” against men happening?
Increasingly, there is a sense that the courts are becoming the judicial hammer for the anvil of the CPS’s Violence Against Women And Girls strategy. It’s also hard to avoid the argument that innocent men like Mark Pearson are seeing their day in court because the most prolific and evil sex offender of them all – Jimmy Savile – escaped his.
Meanwhile, of course, the Rotherham rape gangs were covered up by officialdom for fear of being called racist. So it’s not actually a war against all men.
The accuser’s name should be widely publicized, and the officials here should be tarred and feathered.