Ken Barlow's Jury Out

[Nibble]

and a Tory to boot
but loves cats so has some sympathy from me
he has been found not guilty by twelve people and thats good enough for me
you do not have to like a person to expect a little fairness in the way they are treated

I didn't say I dislike him. I don't know the man. He'll be back on the cobbles in the shake of a lamb's tail.

 

[The Wookiee]

Even though he's not guilty I will always think of Bill Roach as The Coronation Street Rapist.

I will always think of him as the man who cheated on Deirdre with Wendy Crozier

 

[Hugh'sDad]

Personally , and I think this may be controversial , there should be a time limit to report on cases like this , now everyone is trying to jump on the bandwagon . Say if you don't report the accusation for 5-10 years , it needs thinking about but for now lets say 8 years , if a serious accusation is not reported within 8 years then it can no longer be taken to court (I only mean cases like this) 30-40 years ago is a long time to remember anything never mind exact times and what the accused has done , it is near impossible and to have a resulting conviction or acquittal with exact facts is near impossible.

Say the accuser is 14 when it happened (which I think is roughly the lowest age this has happened to someone) after 8 years they will be 22 years and adult enough to stand up and report the case , not when they are 40 or 50 when the accused is a well established celebrity . The sooner cases are reported the better , perhaps the accuser would realise that if she/he had done something about it earlier then perhaps another 10-15 people wouldn't of gone through the ordeal .

This may be controversial but it is a suggestion only and 8 years is just a time I put in as a sample . I know rape and sexual abuse is a serious case and I would not think otherwise.

So how would the Jimmy Saville stuff have come to light?.......This behaviour scars and blights some people for their whole life.
Hopefully the behaviour will be spotted at the time as we move on, from here.

 

[Nibble]

I will always think of him as the man who cheated on Deirdre with Wendy Crozier

I've never seen a full episode I don't think. I keep seeing him on clip shows slamming Deidre Rashid nee Barlow up against a porch wall and I vaguely remember someone with buck teeth and a mullet getting stabbed outside their house in front of his wife and the ginger guy from Home To Roost in it. My Mam used to love it.

 

[Pretty pink fairy]

I will always think of him as the man who cheated on Deirdre with Wendy Crozier

and a person who used his persona to seduce a lot of women OFF screen, BIT OF A SMOOTH OPERATOR MAYBE
regards
DR

 

[vegster]

yes there is, the lawyers always win....

Valid point.

 

[Czechmate]

So how would the Jimmy Saville stuff have come to light?.......This behaviour scars and blights some people for their whole life.
Hopefully the behaviour will be spotted at the time as we move on, from here.

I have not been through it myself fortunately but I guess it is pretty nasty experience , the worse I would of thought for scarring somebody . If someone had come forward earlier with the JS stuff then firstly other people may not of been abused and also JS would be alive now to suffer the consequences . I know it's not easy to come forward but I think there are more child phone lines and help now so I think if it happened today with a celebrity it would not be the same , I hope it would be nipped in the bud a lot earlier.

Actually they did report this earlier but no one believed them or wanted to turn a blind eye , I just hope this would not happen again !

 

[Hugh'sDad]

..........If someone had come forward earlier with the JS stuff then firstly other people may not of been abused and also JS would be alive now to suffer the consequences . I know it's not easy to come forward but I think there are more child phone lines and help now so I think if it happened today with a celebrity it would not be the same , I hope it would be nipped in the bud a lot earlier.

The point is they did come forward in the JS case, and Ester did introduced phone lines 25 years ago

.....but at least, you see my point with your acknowledgement "....the worse I would of thought for scarring somebody "

 

[ofco8]

I am probably quite out of step here but I would rather ten guilty men go free than one innocent man convicted.
That is why these sort of cases make me feel uneasy.

 

[Giraffe]

12 independant people who have listened to all of the evidence have found him guilty. That's good enough for me. Go Ken.

The only thing I wonder though is whether this will have a domino effect with ther cases. Obviously other juries for DLT and Rofl Harris for example will know the result of this and will that influence their decision? Possibly?

If I was on a jury it wouldn't change my mind I would assess it on the case, but the jury is a cross section of society which suggests you could have right plum heads on any jury who just want to get out of there as quickly as possible.

 

[Titanic]

Christ on a bike, there are some painful attitudes on here.

To whoever suggested a time limit for victims to come forward: what if your daughter (or son) came up to you aged 30 and told you your next door neighbour had repeatedly sexually abused them when they were ten? Would you be happy to tell them to forget it? What if your next door neighbour had been a celebrity- would you tell them to forget about it because the perpetrator was famous? I think not.

To suggest that, because an accused is found not guilty, that the aggrieved party must be making it up, is akin to saying that if a player who goes down in the penalty box didn't dive, then it must be a penalty. It's simply not true.

Sometimes (quite a lot, unfortunately, when it comes to sexual offences, due to the nature of the offence) juries don't feel they have enough to convict someone, but that doesn't mean they didn't do it. I would bet my life savings on one thing here, chaps: there are far, FAR more unconvicted abusers, rapists and assorted other offenders out there walking around than there innocent men who've been falsely accused.

If one random woman comes up to the police and says she was attacked by Celebrity X, the CPS won't prosecute without other evidence. If several, completely unconnected, women contact them, and give remarkably similar accounts, independently of each other, wouldn't that tend to suggest that there may be some truth in it? That's how these cases are coming to court.

There's a lot of people on here passing judgement with seemingly very little knowledge of the justice system, or, indeed, the way in which sexual abuse affects victims for many years afterwards. I've met plenty, and I can tell you it's frequently a traumatic experience for them even to come forward and speak about it, let alone contemplate standing in a court and having a celebrity's expensive barrister ask them "Is it not true you were flattered by my client's attentions [aged thirteen]?".

Jeez.

What a pity for these victims, who were brave enough to speak up, that they haven't got the justice they were seeking. I hope it doesn't put off other abused women and children from coming forward.

No winners except the lawyers and the gutter press. Sad all round.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Time for a thread title change

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Vera (Dustin Gee): That Mike Baldwin got me round the back of the factory last night. You could hear the screams half way down Coronation Street.
Mavis (Les Dennis): Oooh, whatever did you do Vera?
Vera: Oh it weren't me kid, it were 'im.

 

[ofco8]

What a pity for these victims, who were brave enough to speak up, that they haven't got the justice they were seeking. I hope it doesn't put off other abused women and children from coming forward.

No winners except the lawyers and the gutter press. Sad all round.

Perhaps Bill Roache has got the justice he was seeking. The jury definitely think so.

 

[RowleyBirkinQ.C(deceased)]

What a pity for these victims, who were brave enough to speak up, that they haven't got the justice they were seeking. I hope it doesn't put off other abused women and children from coming forward.

No winners except the lawyers and the gutter press. Sad all round.

I absolutely agree with your comments about abused women and the only winners being the lawyers and gutter press but what an extraordinary comment about the women in this case.
Unless you know the women in question and you're privy to evidence that wasn't heard in the court case, the verdict suggests you and the accusers are very wrong.

 

[nwgull]

What a pity for these victims, who were brave enough to speak up, that they haven't got the justice they were seeking. I hope it doesn't put off other abused women and children from coming forward.

No winners except the lawyers and the gutter press. Sad all round.

Is it only 'justice' if they find the defendant guilty?

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

Christ on a bike, there are some painful attitudes on here.

To whoever suggested a time limit for victims to come forward: what if your daughter (or son) came up to you aged 30 and told you your next door neighbour had repeatedly sexually abused them when they were ten? Would you be happy to tell them to forget it? What if your next door neighbour had been a celebrity- would you tell them to forget about it because the perpetrator was famous? I think not.

To suggest that, because an accused is found not guilty, that the aggrieved party must be making it up, is akin to saying that if a player who goes down in the penalty box didn't dive, then it must be a penalty. It's simply not true.

Sometimes (quite a lot, unfortunately, when it comes to sexual offences, due to the nature of the offence) juries don't feel they have enough to convict someone, but that doesn't mean they didn't do it. I would bet my life savings on one thing here, chaps: there are far, FAR more unconvicted abusers, rapists and assorted other offenders out there walking around than there innocent men who've been falsely accused.

If one random woman comes up to the police and says she was attacked by Celebrity X, the CPS won't prosecute without other evidence. If several, completely unconnected, women contact them, and give remarkably similar accounts, independently of each other, wouldn't that tend to suggest that there may be some truth in it? That's how these cases are coming to court.

There's a lot of people on here passing judgement with seemingly very little knowledge of the justice system, or, indeed, the way in which sexual abuse affects victims for many years afterwards. I've met plenty, and I can tell you it's frequently a traumatic experience for them even to come forward and speak about it, let alone contemplate standing in a court and having a celebrity's expensive barrister ask them "Is it not true you were flattered by my client's attentions [aged thirteen]?".

Jeez.

Agree with your post (and it needed to be said) but talking of 'attitudes' I note your comments are addressed to the 'chaps'. Are you suggesting that in your experience this issue is confined to male on female assaults?

I appreciate that the current series of cases involving celebrities seems to be largely male on female and can accept the majority might well be male on female. I also recognise that maybe the majority of less enlightened opinions on this subject are among males. But having spent a fair amount of time at Court hearings I was surprised at the frequency of cases relating to same gender and female on male sexual assaults and other serious crimes.

I haven't even mentioned the on going issues surrounding the Catholic church, which largely relates to same sex assaults many of which were historical so less easy to prove but no doubt just as traumatic for the victims, especially when perpetrated by a Priest in a highly responsible position of trust.

It would be interesting to know the proportions of such cases and secondly whether the success rate for convictions (especially where the allegations are historical, are in the absence of forensic evidence and difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt) is similar - or not?

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Agree with your post (and it needed to be said) but talking of 'attitudes' I note your comments are addressed to the 'chaps'. Are you suggesting that in your experience this issue is confined to male on female assaults?

I appreciate that the current series of cases involving celebrities seems to be largely male on female and can accept the majority might well be male on female. I also recognise that maybe the majority of less enlightened opinions on this subject are among males. But having spent a fair amount of time at Court hearings I was surprised at the frequency of cases relating to same gender and female on male sexual assaults and other serious crimes.

No, not at all. When I write on NSC I tend to be addressing a largely male audience, and I probably fell back on that, that's all. Not suggesting for a moment that males are the only offenders, or that females are the only victims. Many, many boys who fell victim to abuses covered up by the Catholic church for years will attest to that.

 

[Hillian1]

Perhaps Bill Roache has got the justice he was seeking. The jury definitely think so.

This.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

No, not at all. When I write on NSC I tend to be addressing a largely male audience, and I probably fell back on that, that's all. Not suggesting for a moment that males are the only offenders, or that females are the only victims. Many, many boys who fell victim to abuses covered up by the Catholic church for years will attest to that.

Thanks. I suspected your comments were aimed more at the prevailing demographic on NSC and maybe did not fully reflect not your wider experience in the real world.

The current news stories relating to same sex assaults within the Catholic church, Head teachers etc are perhaps helping to highlight the prevalence of sexual assaults among same sexes. But I also fear this may create perceptions that these largely occur within very specific groups and environments (churches, schools etc) - so there is still not the understanding among the wider public of the scale of same sex and female on males assaults in society as a whole, many of which are occurring in far more everyday situations.

A fairly recent Court hearing I happened to witness (as it delayed the start of the case I was attending) was a male defendant found guilty of male rape on a much younger victim (plus other related serious offences) and being sent down for a decent sentence. The Judge's sentencing comments were chilling and described this man as having a horrendously predatory history, which did restore my faith that justice can be done, even in an historical case.