so, if he didn't do it...?

So, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was yesterday 'released' from suspicion of having committed a sexual assault on a 29 year old woman who was reportedly connected to the Lib Dems in a report I read last week. Scotland Yard said that they have now dropped the case and no further enquiry or action is envisaged.

Is that it then? Did he do it but the police judged that, it being his word against hers, there would be no chance of a successful prosecution?

Perhaps the millionaire MP paid her to drop the charges?

Perhaps she sobered up and realised what she had done and admitted that her claims were false?

This wasn't a page 17 column 5 two-inches of 'newsprint' story, but front page in every newspaper and on the broadcast media and now it seems it has completely been dropped. Surely that cannot be right.  If it's a cover-up we should be told about it. If she lied to police in order to get this guy arrested then she should be named and prosecuted for at the very least wasting police time.

I don't give a stuff about the individuals involved in this case, the political parties involved etc., but the principle that an accused can be named in the media when the accusation is made but then, if the allegation is subsequently proved to be false, the accuser is niether named nor charged with any crime, must br wrong. It cannot be right in a fair society that reputations, relationships, marriages and public standing can be ruined by false allegation, without there being some jeopardy for the accuser.

I realise that women often find it difficult to make such accusations and that it can be a very intrusive and difficult process taking a case to prosecution, but if the accusation is false, motivated by malice or drink or perhaps some financial reward, then the perpetrator must face some kind of punnishment that goes at least some way towards matching the massive damage that can be sustained by the accused in such a case.

There have been a number of cases of teachers having their careers, marriages, lives ruined by false accusations by female students.  The law should be changed in this area so that justice can not only be done, but be seen to be done.