It's time we stopped treating all men as sex pests

Mark Pearson seen on CCTV footage recorded at Waterloo Underground Station  

• Martin Daubney

9 February 2016 • 11:51am

 

“The law is a ass – a idiot,” declared Mr Bumble in Charles Dicken's classic novel Oliver Twist, which was released 178 years ago to the month.
Bumble would have no doubt have added some choice expletives to his observation if he’d been in Blackfriars Crown Court in London last week, to witness the unjust case brought against Mark Pearson.

Mark Pearson said he had endured a year-long "Kafkaesque nightmare" as a result of the complaint Credit: ITV / This Morning

Pearson, a 51-year-old artist, was tried for a sex crime simply because he brushed past a 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.

Mr Pearson seen with his right hand on his bag strap on CCTV footage recorded at Waterloo Underground Station at 18:40:24 

Mr Pearson seen passing the woman on CCTV footage recorded at Waterloo Underground Station at 18:40:25 

Mr Pearson seen on CCTV footage recorded at Waterloo Underground Station at 18:40:26 

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?

We see the poisonous mindset that male sex pests are everywhere in the NUS’s misplaced war on “lad culture”

Martin Daubney

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.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the highest courts in the land merely reflect an endemic mindset that tells us all men are potential sex offenders.
While only the battiest radical feminist still opines “all men are rapists,” there's a strong social presumption – fuelled in part by the vocal campaigning of groups such as the Everyday Sexism Project – that men are desperate to grope women on the tube. Jeremy Corbyn echoed that nonsense with his absurd and misandric proposal for women-only Tube carriages – an idea that was thankfully derailed by common sense.

Commuters give their views on women-only carriages Play! 02:12

We also see the poisonous mindset that male sex pests are everywhere in the NUS’s misplaced war on “lad culture” and exclusion of “cisgendered men” from “safe spaces”.
We see it in YouTube videos where sexual harassment of women by men incites reaction but violence against men is ignored.

The demonization of men is now an entire industry where lucrative academic, journalistic, charity and even governmental careers are forged. And top of the tree is the CPS’s Director Of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, who has long been accused of a systematic “witch hunt” against men.
Saunders has been under fire over a series of high-profile Operation Yewtree failures to convict ageing TV stars Bill Roache, Jimmy Tarbuck and Freddie Starr and DJs Paul Gambaccini and Dr Fox.
Perhaps sensing that celebrity scalps were drying up, last January Saunders turned her campaign against male sex offenders to the general public. She introduced tough new affirmative consent rules designed to protect drunken women – and increase convictions against men. This culminated in the farcical, false rape case brought against history student Louis Richardson, 21, which was thrown out of Durham Crown Court after just three hours of deliberation last month.

Louis Richardson of the Durham University debating society Credit: Facebook

By jurisdiction, the post of DPP is meant to be independent and impartial. There is a feeling – exacerbated by Mr Pearson’s case – that the CPS is no longer making proper, informed decisions. In short, doing its job.
Are the CPS terrified of not prosecuting even the feeblest of cases for appearing to be siding “against” women accusers? Are they so headlight-frozen with cowardice they are deferring to juries the work they should be doing at the outset? Or are they after high-profile PR, where men like Pearson and Richardson are the poster boys of shame?
At ground level, men are being made to feel increasingly hated by a society and legal system that seems to say “all men are capable of evil – if only you look hard enough”.
In my work as an educator on internet pornography safety, I see confusion and often genuine terror in teenage boys’ (and girls’) eyes when I tell them about Saunders’ guidelines on affirmative consent. Who can blame an increasing number of Men Going Their Own Way – the MGTOWs – who feel sex is so risky they are giving up on sex and dating altogether?

Blackfriars Crown Court in central London Credit: Alamy

Like crazed parking wardens in pursuit of bonuses, the CPS currently seems intent of destroying innocent men’s reputations in the pursuit of conviction quotas.
Most shamefully of all, in today’s Britain we have a legal system that piles a wrecking ball through that unsurrenderable, central pillar of justice: that a man is always innocent until proven guilty.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/its-time-we-stopped-treating-all-men-as-sex-pests/

“Half a second turned into a year of hell.” How a man who brushed past an actress was accused of sexual assault.

Shauna Anderson

 

 

A commuter has told of how a simple trip through a busy train station changed his life after he was accused and sent to court for a “sex crime” that never took place.
Mark Pearson, a 51-year-old artist and picture framer, was accused of sexually assaulting a well-known actress at London’s Waterloo station while he was on his way home from work.
It was a commute he took every day, a routine, almost mundane part of his life, but what he didn’t know as he briskly walked through Waterloo Station on his way home was that this day was to change his life.
In the year since the encounter Mark Pearson has been labelled a sex criminal, he has been maligned and his reputation almost ruined. He now suffers anxiety and sees a therapist.
All because of a chance happening with a complete stranger.

Mark Pearson was accused of sexually assaulting a well-known actress at London’s Waterloo station. ( Image via IStock.)

The encounter took place in December 2014. The woman, who was headed to a rehearsal, had just been to a yoga class and was rushing through the busy station. She claimed that Pearson penetrated her with three fingers for “two or three seconds” followed by a violent blow to her left shoulder.
Their subsequent encounter drew Pearson into what he calls a year-long ‘Kafkaesque nightmare’ from which he has only just escaped.

CCTV of the encounter was released by the court. Via BBC News.

The actress reported the assault to police who tracked down Pearson through his travel card and arrested him. Four months later he was told he was being prosecuted and would go to trial.
‘It is horrible and frightening to contemplate going to prison for a crime you haven’t committed. Particularly a sex crime. We have all heard about how sex offenders are treated in prison” he told The Mail on Sunday.
While CCTV did not conclusively prove there was any form of physical contact between the two strangers it still led to the arrest.

CCTV of the encounter was released by the court. Via BBC News.

The actress told police that Pearson “clocked her” and then gestured with his newspaper for her to pass by.
“The next thing I know, his hand is up me…. and then I felt this enormous blow on my left shoulder” she said in her statement.
Her evidence claimed “I staggered and yelled… and people just stopped all around me, and I was looking back after him.’ Then she said he ‘shot off… legging it towards the ticket barriers.”

CCTV of the encounter was released by the court. Via BBC News.

After a lengthy investigation the woman finally had her day in court. This week after a three day trial a jury of men and women at Blackfriars Crown Court took 90 minutes to clear Pearson of the charge of “sexual assault by penetration”.

CCTV of the encounter was released by the court. Via BBC News.

The court was shown the CCTV with Pearson at Waterloo Tube station that was used to prosecute him. In it he rushes through, in his left hand-  the one which he is supposed to have used to assault the actress -Pearson carried a newspaper and in the right he holds his bag.
Without even breaking his stride he brushes past the woman.  His pace does not change, he does not “shoot off”. In fact his contact with the woman is less than half a second.
Pearson’s lawyer, Mark Bagshaw told the court that the allegation was not true given the half-second time frame.


Mr Pearson told the court “I would have had to crouch down, put my hand up the woman’s skirt… penetrate her, take my hand out again… all while holding the newspaper and walking along the concourse… It’s preposterous… It is against everything I believe in as a human being. I did nothing.”
In the three-day trial there were no witnesses, no forensic evidence and the actress failed to pick out Mark Pearson in an identity parade of video images after the alleged assault.
The jury heard that the woman, who can never be named, was wearing a coat and jacket and a thin dress over “training pants” following a yoga class,
Mr Pearson told the Mail on Sunday “One of the many frightening aspects is that 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.
“It is just bizarre.”
He questioned why the charges were brought forth in the first place when the CCTV clearly shows him holding a newspaper and only brushing past the actress for half a second.
“Why couldn’t the CPS have used common sense?”
The case has sparked much debate in the UK with one journalist, Martin Daubney the former editor of men’s magazine Loaded calling for an end to “ treating all men as sex pests”.
He said Mr Pearson’s case highlights a “misplaced war” on men.
“At ground level, men are being made to feel increasingly hated by a society and legal system that seems to say “all men are capable of evil – if only you look hard enough”.

 http://www.mamamia.com.au/mark-pearson-assault-allegations/

How a ‘half-a-second’ sex assault charge ruined this man’s life

MARK Pearson was walking through the busiest train station in the UK during peak hour when his life changed forever.

In his left hand he was carrying a newspaper. His right hand was holding the strap on his backpack. As he brushed past a woman walking in the opposite direction, their shoulders colliding briefly, the 51-year-old thought nothing more of it.
The woman, an actress on her way to a rehearsal, later told police Mr Peason sexually assaulted her. She offered details of how he “penetrated her” on the concourse of Waterloo Station despite the fact she was wearing “training pants” under a dress and despite footage showing he never broke stride.
Mr Pearson said the case against him was “preposterous”, but still his name was dragged through the mud. For a year he defended himself in court and out of court. When he explained to people that it never happened like his accused said it did, he knew people were thinking: “Of course you would say that”.
A jury spent just 90 minutes deliberating before finding Mr Pearson not guilty last week. It came as a relief to the married picture-framer but the damage had already been done.
“Anybody who has seen the CCTV images knows that I couldn’t possibly have done it,” Mr Pearson said.
“It is against everything I believe in as a human being. I did nothing. I would have had to crouch down, put my hand up the woman’s skirt ... penetrate her, take my hand out again ... all while holding the newspaper and walking along the concourse.”
He says he now suffers from anxiety.
“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.”

CCTV footage shows Mark Pearson never took his hands off his bag or his newspaper. Picture: BBCSource:Supplied

Prosecutors unsuccessfully argued Mark Pearson sexually assaulted an unnamed actress at Waterloo Station a year ago. Picture: BBCSource:Supplied

The case was pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service despite no witnesses and no forensic evidence supporting the woman’s claims.
Martin Daubney, the former editor of men’s magazine Loaded, penned a passionate plea for common sense headlined: ‘Stop treating all men as sex pests’. In it, he said Mr Pearson’s case highlights a “misplaced war” on men.
“At ground level, men are being made to feel increasingly hated by a society and legal system that seems to say ‘all men are capable of evil — if only you look hard enough’.”
Mr Pearson’s wife Carol said she knew all along that her husband was innocent, incapable of doing what he was accused of doing. On social media, users demanded the name of Mr Pearson’s accuser be made as public as his.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/how-a-halfasecond-sex-assault-charge-ruined-this-mans-life/news-story/9252ea521fd7c7a572c8d7e518f4d852

Man falsely accused of sexually assaulting actress feels like he has undergone 'mental torture sanctioned by the state'

• Caroline Mortimer
• @cjmortimer
• Thursday 11 February 2016

A commuter wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a "well-known" actress after brushing past her at a train station has spoken of how “half a second turned into a year of hell”.
Mark Pearson said he felt like he had “undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state” after he was charged over the alleged incident at Waterloo station in December 2014.
CCTV footage showed the 51-year-old walking through the station holding a newspaper in his left hand and with his right hand on his bag strap when he brushes past the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The alleged victim later told police he had “penetrated” her and hit her on the shoulder - although footage showing he had never broken his stride.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were found to have deliberately slowed down the footage, which made it appear Mr Pearson had more time to assault the alleged victim.
Mr Pearson’s defence barrister Mark Bagshaw explained the footage had been slowed down from one frame per second to one frame per two seconds.
There were no witnesses or forensic evidence.
A jury took just 90 minutes for jurors to clear Mr Pearson of any wrongdoing at his trial at Blackfriars Crown Court.
Speaking BBC Radio Five Live, the married picture-framer called the charges “preposterous” and said “anyone who has seen the CCTV images knows that I couldn’t possibly have done it”.
He said in court: “It is against everything I believe in as a human being. I did nothing. I would have had to crouch down, put my hand up the woman’s skirt ... penetrate her, take my hand out again ... all while holding the newspaper and walking along the concourse.”

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/man-falsely-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-actress-feels-like-he-has-undergone-mental-torture-a6867366.html