January 18, 1982: A Complaint Of Rape is screened. This controversial documentary generated more heat than light, in particular although it showed Thames Valley detectives giving a rape complainant a rough ride, it didn’t show the way they questioned suspects at the time.
I have done a lot of research on this programme. Curiously, I could not find it on the Internet, or perhaps not so curiously, because it is wilfully dishonest. The best I could manage was to dig out an article and a letter from the local press.
Here is the article. Like all the Reading Chronicle articles on this page it is from the TOWN Edition of the paper; all are dated 1982.
The incisive letter immediately below is from the same issue of the Reading Chronicle, page 10.
The bottom line is that this girl was not raped. She was certainly exploited. Again, don’t do this guys, for your own sakes if not for hers. File this one under GANG BANG.
[The above entry was published originally December 2, 2017; it included the first screengrab below. In December 2018, I found the second screengrab by chance while researching another matter; it was added January 2, 2019.]
The two letters below were published in the Telegraph & Argus (Bradford), January 22, 1982, page 9. The first is very important as it points out not only that this young woman was a HEAD CASE but that this was not her first such allegation. If nothing else, she should have been more careful about going off with strange men, especially three of them. This is not victim blaming, think about it, a man tells police his car has been stolen because he left his keys in the ignition overnight. Two or three years later, he tells them the same thing. What would the police think? What would they say to him?
This case was used by legal dominance feminism and the sexual grievance industry to attack the way the police traditionally investigated allegations of rape in this country. For the worse, it might be added, yet nowhere do we hear that this woman was unworthy of belief for very sound reasons. The reader might like to compare this case with the July 2015 Bedford case. The contrast between the attitudes of the investigating officers in the two cases is stark.
Also, here is my December 2017 article about both cases. The website concerned appears to have been abandoned, but the article itself has been archived, so can be retrieved using the WayBack Machine should it disappear from the Internet.
The scans below were added in September 2019.
The article above by crime correspondent Joe Wise was published on the back page of the March 19, 1982 issue.
This article in PDF was published on the front page of the February 5, 1982 issue. As ever, my apologies for the poor quality. As the reader will see, the woman concerned was clearly a HEAD CASE, which is very likely the reason she had sex with this gang of miscreants then accused them of rape. While we can feel some sympathy for people who have serious mental problems, this does not excuse such behaviour.
The article immediately below which appeared on the back page of the April 23, 1982 issue, says the Chief Constable is to make his own film about how rape complainants are to be dealt with. Although I have been unable to trace a copy, the 18 minute video Positive Steps was made in 1987, and was reported on in the London Times on August 19 that year.
Thames Valley supremo Peter Imbert went on to become the Police Commissioner, a post he held from 1987-93. He ended up being made a life peer and died in November 2017.
This scan was uploaded September 14, 2019 but was not linked until August 13, 2022. From memory, it was the TOWN Edition, which was the only hard copy edition of the paper I consulted or was able to consult.
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