For about three years I served on the Probation Liaison Committee in Sheffield, a group designed to facilitate good communications between the Probation Service and the local Magistracy.
In one such meeting, a probation officer was outlining a case and stated that the felon-in-question had been abused as a child.
I asked how she knew that this was the case. There was a pause, silence and eventually we were reluctantly told that the information had been given by the offender himself.
It was as if I had passed wind in a crowded lift!
Not being too easily embarrassed, I followed up to find out if this was the typical way that such information was gathered - and IT WAS!
I immediately realised that the vast majority of such claims are inevitably going to be false.
Unscrupulous lawyers will, as a matter of course, advise clients to make such claims; the streetwise will know to make them automatically.
The sickening thing here of course, is that the much smaller numbers of genuine cases are utterly devalued by their association with the many fakes.
This is the kind of world we inhabit today. Wild accusations can be made without a shred of evidence which typically will not be investigated but WILL all be believed. Which member of the judiciary would dare to challenge any such assertion?
Yet one more amongst the myriad ways in which our justice system is undermined.
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