When Hannah Stubbs took her own life in August 2015, Elgan Varney felt she might as well have taken his life, too. The pair met as mature students on a physiotherapy course at Keele University at the start of the 2014 academic year. They began a brief relationship that would end in tragedy on both sides.
Varney ended the relationship, but Stubbs went on to accuse him of sexually assaulting her before spending several weeks in a mental health unit at St George’s Hospital in Stafford. She hanged herself at her parents’ home on 29 August 2015.
Despite her death, Varney stood accused of rape. Just three days before the trial was due to start in March 2017, he was cleared of all charges after the Crown Prosecution Service decided it could offer no evidence against him. ‘When my solicitor told me there was to be no trial, she was happy for me,’ the 33-year-old told me.
I was incredibly frustrated. I was anxious about the trial and fearful of yet more press coverage but I thought at least I’d be fully exonerated. Finally, I thought all the facts would come out in a court and then I could see what was left of my life. I wasn’t even allowed that opportunity.
The allegations contained in Stubbs’s statement to the police made on 12 March 2015 bore no relationship to the allegations she had originally made to university friends. The pair had been part of a tight-knit group of students at Keele University. They studied together, hung out at the KPA bar for mature students on campus and shared a passion for climbing. The others were shocked when one of their number made such serious allegations against another close friend.
• • •
The police and Crown Prosecution Service has come a long way in dealing with cases of violence against women. Stung by criticism of years of inaction, they have finally begun to take the issue seriously.
In 2007, prosecutions relating to violence against women and girls accounted for just 7 per cent of the CPS’s total caseload; in 2016 it was up to 19 per cent.* In 2013, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, blamed a ‘misplaced belief’ that false accusations of rape were commonplace on a failure on the part of the police and prosecutors to investigate offences properly. The DPP was launching a CPS study conducted over a seventeen-month period in 2011–12. This was ‘a trailblazing report’, Starmer said. It was the first time that the CPS had ‘clear evidence’ on this important issue. ‘This report shows that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are very rare, but that they are very serious where they do exist,’ Starmer said.
According to the report, there had been 5,651 prosecutions for rape but just thirty-five prosecutions for false accusations. ‘Victims of rape and domestic violence must not be deterred from reporting the abuse they have suffered,’ Starmer wrote in the foreword to the report. ‘We have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes which are associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife.’ The DPP urged the police not to adopt ‘an overcautious approach’ because of the ‘understandable concern’ that some allegations were false.
Rape Crisis reckon that, of the 60,000 women and girls who get in touch with them every year, only 15 per cent then contact the police. One of the main reasons the group attributes to this statistic is the fear of not being believed. ‘The widespread myth that false reporting is common and that women routinely lie about being raped, perpetuated by disproportionate and distorted media coverage, fuels this fear,’ the group argues.
• • •
When Hannah Stubbs and Elgan Varney were not with each other during their brief friendship, they were glued to their phones, messaging and texting each other, often into the early hours. They exchanged over 10,000 messages during the course of their five-month relationship. An estimated 6,696 messages were sent via WhatsApp, with an additional 4,848 through Facebook. Varney’s legal team transcribed all of them. An additional batch of Varney’s texts was forensically downloaded from his mobile phone.
It was later alleged that over the course of their relationship, Varney had raped Stubbs on two separate, unspecified occasions. The first allegation related to an incident that was said to have taken place sometime between 1 October and 31 December 2014, with a second taking place at some point in February 2015. Then there was an allegation of an assault on a single day (27 February 2015).
But the huge pile of correspondence between the pair undermined the account that Hannah Stubbs had given to the police. Not one message supported the prosecution case or Stubbs’s account. ‘It reveals nothing at all untoward about Elgan’s conduct,’ Varney’s solicitor, Mark Newby, said. ‘It is striking that all their exchanges are entirely good-natured on both sides.’
According to Newby, the overall impression was of a young man trying to extricate himself from a relatively casual relationship but, he added, ‘doing that with sensitivity and trying to remain friends. Hannah wanted the couple to be going steady.’
The great shame is that the police never bothered to read them, despite Varney offering them his phone.
In a statement read outside Stoke Crown Court, Elgan Varney said: ‘Time and time again I read about people in similar positions. The pendulum has swung too far and fairness and balance needs to be restored so that the presumption of innocence is not completely eroded. That is the only way for true justice to be done.’
Elgan Varney never wanted to talk to the press. He found the prospect terrifying. He just wanted to try to get on with his life. The first time I spoke to Varney, he described himself as ‘a Guardian-reading feminist’. Varney was wary of being misrepresented after seeing the way the press had reported the original allegations. He was also frank about his own history of anxiety prior to meeting Hannah Stubbs.
Varney would not have agreed to an interview had it not been for another article which ran immediately after the CPS dropped charges. A journalist had approached Varney for an interview after the CPS offered no evidence, but Varney had declined. The journalist then spoke to the parents of Hannah Stubbs.
After reading the interview, he realised he had to set the record straight. Not only were there factual inaccuracies in the article but, more importantly, it heavily implied that Varney had raped Stubbs, notwithstanding the dropped charges. Varney was devastated.†
• • •
‘When I started at Keele I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ Elgan Varney told me. Back in September 2014, he had just turned thirty years old and he dreamed that one day he would become a physio for Nottingham Forest Football Club.
Varney used to work in the club shop and played for its Junior Reds team. He didn’t want to spend all his time hanging out with eighteen-year-olds. He told me he was at a different stage of his life. He wanted to focus on his studies and meet people who were interested in doing more than drinking at the student bar.
Hannah Stubbs appeared to fit that category. Both were mature students. Varney recalled his first impressions of the 22-year-old physio student when they briefly spoke at an introductory lecture: ‘bubbly, talkative and a bit cheeky’. ‘After all that happened, people might think that Hannah was withdrawn and vulnerable,’ he said. ‘She was outgoing and could be pretty forthright.’ It is a view of Stubbs echoed by her other friends.
The pair chatted properly for the first time online in a Facebook group for students on the course. Their exchange began at 11.31 p.m. and ended at 1.27 a.m. ‘Hey, are you a mature student as well, Hannah?’ Varney began.
They messaged each other about their excitement for the new course. Conversation flowed as they discussed their travels and their romances. They traded pictures of each other’s pets. Stubbs had two dogs and twelve chickens; Varney had recently lost his childhood dog, Dingo. They swapped numbers.
The two students struck up an easy rapport. Varney was renting a room in a house a five-minute drive from campus and Stubbs was living with her parents, a thirty-minute drive away. Varney didn’t have a car. Stubbs would drop by to chill out and give him a lift into college. Varney insisted on paying her petrol money.
One thing the two students had in common was a history of anxiety and depression. Both had dropped out of earlier university courses. Varney, a straight-A student from a Nottingham comprehensive, left a degree in history and politics at Nottingham University in 2005. He had originally started studying at Keele in 2012 but had taken a leave of absence due to glandular fever and anxiety.
Stubbs had previously studied medicine at Birmingham University, but had also dropped out. When she started at Keele, she was taking antidepressants.
Varney, a keen sportsman, threw himself into university life at Keele. He played tennis for the university, ran with their running club and captained the ‘Neil Baldwin’ football team, its unofficial side. Baldwin, a man with learning difficulties who has become a mascot for the university as well as a kit man for Stoke City, was the subject of the BAFTA-winning BBC 2 film Marvellous.
The couple shared around fifteen hours of lectures each week, socialised together and spent a lot of time at their favourite hangout, the university’s 22-metre climbing wall. Most days they met with two other friends, fellow mature physio students Steven and Hazel, whose names have been changed to protect their privacy.
‘It was very evident they both cared about one another,’ Hazel told me. ‘They always seemed happy together. I would describe their relationship as caring, playful and happy.’
Steven agreed: ‘Elgan and Hannah got on very well throughout the time I knew them both. He was caring towards her, and they always seemed to have a good time together. Hannah enjoyed being in Elgan’s company and wanted to see him as much as she could.’
Hazel’s first impressions of Stubbs was that of someone who was ‘friendly, compassionate – but anxious’. ‘I recall Elgan as being energetic, outgoing and friendly. He could be outspoken, but in a likeable way. He saw both sides of things. He would often go out of his way to help both myself and fellow classmates.’ Steven described Varney as ‘a kind, caring and genuine person’. ‘If anyone needs help, he’s the first one there. I’ve seen that for myself on a number of occasions,’ he said.
The couple never made their relationship ‘official’ (it fell apart because Varney didn’t want anything serious). The relationship was sexual, ‘but it was never just about sex. I genuinely cared for Hannah,’ Varney said.
Their constant messaging revealed that while both were enjoying their time at Keele, Stubbs was struggling with anxiety; something she had been dealing with since before they had met.
She looked to the older Varney for advice and he was more than happy to help. In November, Stubbs started seeing a university counsellor at Varney’s suggestion. ‘I think you’re going to be a little proud of me,’ messaged Stubbs when she reported back on her first appointment.
The two were so close that at the end of the first term Stubbs repeatedly messaged Varney to ask him to spend Christmas with her family. He was reluctant, and although they spent Christmas evening and Boxing Day together, they exchanged more than 750 messages in the few days either side.
‘We have to [wrap] presents in a second. Currently hiding in the toilet,’ Stubbs messaged at 8.43 p.m. on Christmas Eve. ‘Is it bad that I’d rather be at yours watching a film? Dislike all the faff of Christmas at times.’
If exchanges were intimate, then they were affectionate. ‘Not got my grizzly bear to cuddle up to though unfortunately,’ Stubbs messaged the day after Boxing Day. ‘I like falling asleep with you,’ she wrote in the early hours. ‘I like waking up with you too though;),’ she added a minute later.
At the start of January, when Varney’s landlady unexpectedly gave him notice to quit his flat because her boyfriend was going to move in, Stubbs’s first response was to ask Varney to move in with her family. The boyfriend never moved in, Varney continued to live at the flat and his landlady volunteered to speak in court on his behalf. Later that month, when Stubbs realised that her period was late, Varney was concerned. As ever, he was ready with support, suggesting that she take a pregnancy test. When it turned out to be a false alarm, she messaged: ‘There’s no need to worry about baby Elgans 
.’
• • •
As well as the two counts of rape, Varney was also charged with a sexual assault that Stubbs alleged took place on 27 February 2015 – the day after Varney told Stubbs he didn’t want to be in a relationship. Her messages show that she wanted to see him: ‘Could watch a film maybe 
?’ Varney wasn’t keen. He replied: ‘Up to you… but if it’s gonna make you feel bad…’
Stubbs later told the university that Varney had persuaded her to go to his flat ‘against her better judgement’. The following evening, the pair continued to exchange friendly messages, with Stubbs imploring Varney to go over to her house. Stubbs told Varney that her family was asking after him, keen for him to visit and curious as to whether she was still ‘seeing’ him.
It was clear that Stubbs was struggling to come to terms with Varney’s decision to call it a day. He was polite and the exchange ended on good terms. ‘Have a good match tomorrow ,’ she said.
They signed off.
• • •
Stubbs made her first allegation in early March after a strange episode at the university climbing wall, when she claimed to have injured her back while play wrestling on gym mats with fellow students (not Varney).
Varney recalled students, especially the trainee medics, crowding around and ‘making a fuss over Hannah’. Varney thought that this was an overreaction and that Stubbs was attention-seeking. Nevertheless, when Stubbs asked if he would accompany her to the hospital, he agreed and got into the ambulance with her. Although Varney was sceptical about the hospital visit, he still took pictures at Stubbs’s request of her smiling on a spinal board. She later posted them on Facebook along with a thank you for going with her.
Other students joined them at the hospital and one, James, drove everyone home after Stubbs was given the all-clear after 3 a.m. That evening, Stubbs told James that Varney had inappropriately touched her.
James was shocked by this allegation. He then messaged his friend Michelle; she seemed like the right person to turn to. Michelle, whose name has also been changed to protect her privacy, had blogged for the university’s mental health awareness week the previous year about her own long history of self-harm after she said she had been raped.
A few days later, Michelle spoke to Stubbs.
The following day, Varney received a Facebook message from Stubbs. It would be the last:
Elgan, due to what happened last week when I came over to yours I have decided that I don’t want any contact with you. I don’t feel like you respected me or how I feel. I had been clear with you on the phone that I didn’t want things to happen again, and yet you still went ahead. I think I made it clear by sitting on the floor and not wanting to join you on the sofa that I meant what I had said on the phone.
The day prior to this, the two students had exchanged friendly messages.
• • •
Hannah Stubbs was not alone when she sent Varney the message. One of those who was present was the former couple’s close friend Steven. He later said in a witness statement: ‘I fully believe that [Stubbs] was not raped or sexually abused by Elgan.’
He said that the message had been ‘formulated by Michelle’. ‘It seemed that Hannah had little input into this,’ he said. He also mentioned that Michelle was ‘the first person to mention the word “rape” to me’. ‘I was shocked by this. I recall that Michelle soon became heavily involved with Hannah and seemed to have a lot of influence over her.’
Steven, who later went to Hannah Stubbs’s funeral, also said that Stubbs had previously made allegations against James, claiming that he had touched her inappropriately. Hazel was also prepared to go to court to speak on Varney’s behalf. ‘Prior to the wrestling incident, Hannah and Elgan were very comfortable with one another,’ she said.
She also claimed that Stubbs had made allegations to her against another student. She is convinced that the allegations were unfounded. ‘I do not think she understood the consequences of the allegations. I am not sure it was entirely a malicious act. I don’t think it was a thought-out process.’
It was Michelle who first rang the police about the allegations. Several weeks after the allegations were made, Michelle self-harmed again. This time it was on a camping trip in front of a group of freshers. Steven helped run the climbing club and was present when it happened. The club decided to ban Michelle, who unsuccessfully appealed the decision, arguing that she had not been in control of her actions on account of her mental illness.
Over thirty people signed witness statements attesting to Varney’s good character, including ten Keele students, and more were prepared to go to court. Hazel described Varney as ‘a very sensitive individual, if not too sensitive’. ‘He tries to help people and goes to extremes to help them.’ It was a perceptive comment.
• • •
Three weeks later, Elgan Varney was asked by the police to attend a voluntary interview. ‘The interviewing officer seemed friendly and polite, but I had no idea what to do. I had never been in this position before,’ he recalled. ‘I thought I didn’t need a lawyer because I had nothing to hide, but was told by a friend in the police I needed one.’
Varney spent much of the interview trying to persuade the officer to read the messages. ‘I was surprised she didn’t just take my phone then but she told me the tech team would be in touch,’ he said. ‘I thought the whole thing was completely crazy and that the truth would be clear from the messages.’
Two weeks before speaking to Varney, the same officer had interviewed Hannah Stubbs. The transcript and video interview was later made available to Varney’s legal team. Stubbs was reluctant to make any concrete allegations and repeatedly referred to her lack of faith in her own memory. In Stubbs’s description of her first sexual encounter with Varney, she said she couldn’t ‘really remember if I wanted him to or not, but I think I must’ve done’.
She mentioned Michelle’s role. ‘People have said to me, like my friend Michelle … if you’ve said to them you don’t want them to then they shouldn’t.’
Six months after making the allegations against Elgan Varney, Hannah Stubbs took her own life. ‘Hannah’s death has left a sense of loss that is impossible to put into words,’ said her family in a message posted on Facebook.
Friends and family remember her fondly – but there is no doubt she was deeply troubled. The full history of her mental health never emerged; instead, it was widely reported in the press, as a result of interviews with her family, that the trauma of being raped had led her to take her own life. Yet her suicide note did not mention Varney or being raped.
The inquest into her death recorded that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress at the time of her death – but this was not a result of her being raped. According to notes provided by the university to the inquest, Stubbs disclosed to her personal tutor that she had a history of mental health issues and was ‘burnt out’ by her experience at Birmingham. That experience resulted in ‘a long period of mental illness during which she had suicidal thoughts’. She also spoke of a previous suicide attempt that took place before she started studying at Keele.
Also disclosed was her internet search history in the run-up to her suicide. This included multiple searches in August 2015 on false allegations, searches on how to withdraw prosecutions, as well as research into the kinds of personality disorders that drive such allegations. Two weeks before her death, Stubbs downloaded CPS guidance on perverting the course of justice and making false allegations – twice.
Dr Peter Naish, a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University, was instructed by the defence team to act as an expert witness in the case. He had access to a wide range of confidential documents, including Hannah Stubbs’s medical notes. He was so concerned he volunteered to go public after it was announced that the case would not proceed.
From time to time, Dr Naish is called upon to act as expert witness. He regards it as ‘interesting work and a service to society’, but that doesn’t mean that he fails to see problems in the system.
He believes the Varney case provides a stark illustration. I asked him for his thoughts on the case and he wrote me a note. ‘It is a human characteristic that, when we incline towards a particular belief, we seek evidence to confirm it,’ it began. ‘Evolution gave us that habit as a rough and ready solution for a brain of limited processing power. This is not the scientific way.’
‘If we are developing a theory that seems to fit the facts we have so far, then rather than trying to find yet more facts that fit, we should test the theory by seeking out any facts that do not,’ Dr Naish reflected. ‘Many miscarriages of justice would be avoided if the police adopted this approach. In this distressing case, a miscarriage was avoided, but the last minute rescue was no real escape.’
Dr Naish argues that there were two victims of this case.
No one would dispute that Hannah was a victim, because, whatever the cause of the unfortunate young woman’s suicide, something has gone disastrously wrong when a person of her age feels that death is the only course remaining. It is less obvious that Elgan, too, has been a victim; after all, he has ‘got off’ without even having to go to court.
But what if he had gone? It’s said there’s nothing to fear if you are innocent, but what about those miscarriages of justice? Elgan was staring into that abyss. Had he been found guilty, not simply of the horrible crime of rape, but also, in effect, of the victim’s death, then he would have been facing a long custodial sentence. Those convicted of sex crimes are not treated kindly in prison.
For month after month, Elgan lived in this dread, his life on hold, his mental health besieged. As an expert, I was privy to a wide range of information, not just the mental health issues of the key players, but communications between them, family matters, actions of friends and so on. If the case had come to court, I would have presented what I knew in Elgan’s defence and everyone would have heard it. With no trial my lips must remain sealed. This is very unfortunate. If people care to wonder why the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue the case, they might assume that it was because the CPS had insufficient evidence to prove Elgan guilty, not because there was so much that proved him innocent. The hope of humane treatment for the accused has been thwarted by publicity where there should have been privacy, and silence where there might have been explanation.
The frailties of the finite human brain are inescapable; errors are inevitable. That is why safeguards are required. Protective measures have been likened to slices of Swiss cheese – they inevitably have holes. In safety-critical situations, such as an aircraft cockpit or a nuclear power station, multiple levels of protection are employed: lots of ‘cheese slices’, in the hope that the holes will not line up. Air or nuclear accidents destroy lives, but so do errors in the administration of justice. Elgan, and those like him, deserve and demand effective safeguards.
• • •
Hannah Stubbs’s death was traumatic and confusing for Varney. ‘The news of her death made me physically sick. I cared about her. It was shocking and difficult to process. I was confused, sad and angry all at the same time.’
After her death, Varney didn’t hear from the police for over six months. He was eventually charged on 11 March 2016. ‘After I’d considered the evidence it was very clear that Elgan was innocent and should never have been charged,’ Anna O’Mara, his solicitor until she took maternity leave, told me. ‘It was remarkable that the CPS and police held so much evidence which undermined their case and strongly pointed to Elgan’s innocence, but that they failed to act on this until a few days before the trial.’
She repeatedly asked the CPS to review the case. The judge at a preliminary hearing also urged the CPS to rethink dropping the case. O’Mara was particularly shocked by the police interview. ‘Hannah initially was reluctant to commit herself to making an allegation against Elgan,’ she pointed out. ‘This eventually led to the officer explaining the legislation to Hannah, pointing out to her what the police would need to prove a case. It was only after Hannah had received prompts from the officer that she hesitantly developed a disjointed allegation against Elgan.’
At one point the officer encouraged the young woman to close her eyes and try to recall the events. An approach that perhaps might only be considered appropriate when dealing with a historical allegation. Stubbs’s interview occurred only days after she alleged that the last assault had happened.
The lawyer points out that the defence continually sought disclosure of further material that they claimed to know existed, but that the police were not forthcoming. ‘The police knew that the complainant had made previous similar complaints, but took no steps to investigate this whatsoever until they were continually pressed by the defence,’ she said. Hannah Stubbs was eventually questioned by the police about previous allegations of rape she had made against another man, but that only happened because Varney’s legal team raised the issue in court that previous complaints would need to be considered.
‘It is awful that the CPS took so long to act, and the traumatic impact it has had on Elgan’s life can’t be underestimated,’ O’Mara said. ‘Something in the system needs to urgently change to prevent innocent lives being torn apart.’
His barrister, Matt Stanbury, has described the failed prosecution as ‘perhaps an unrivalled case study in how a false allegation can come about’.
It is often assumed that a false complaint must be the result of a vendetta. This case shows that it can be very much more complicated. It seems there were numerous factors at play. There can be little doubt that Miss Stubbs was influenced by her more mature friends, and ultimately the police, to believe that she had been a victim. Her reluctance to complain was mistaken for a misplaced loyalty; her vulnerability mistaken for victimhood.
Hazel and Steven both believe that Stubbs would not have gone to the police had it not been for the intervention of Michelle. ‘Similar allegations had been made in the past with previous partners and they had not escalated to the point of getting the police involved,’ Hazel told me.
When Stubbs took her own life, neither friend thought that it was because she had been raped – they didn’t believe she had been.
• • •
Elgan Varney’s case was not a one-off. Liam Allan, a 22-year-old criminology student at Greenwich University, spent two years on bail after being charged with twelve counts of rape and sexual assault. He told police that he had had sex with the alleged victim but that it had been consensual.
The two students’ cases are different in significant ways and alarmingly similar in others. Both came very close to being sent to prison on the word of their accusers, despite a wealth of digital evidence.
In Varney’s case, the police didn’t bother to go through his messages with Stubbs. In Allan’s case, the police downloaded 40,000 text and WhatsApp messages from the complainant’s phone but refused to pass this evidence on to the defence, despite repeated requests from Allan’s lawyers for the messages to be disclosed before the trial. They were told there was nothing to disclose. The case against Liam Allan collapsed three days into his trial at Croydon Crown Court.
The messages revealed that his accuser had pursued Allan for what she called ‘casual sex’. She had told friends how much she had enjoyed sex with him and discussed fantasies of being raped.
It was the prosecution counsel, Jerry Hayes, who demanded that the messages be passed over to the defence. This move averted near-disaster. The barrister had only taken on the case the weekend before the trial started.
Hayes, who describes his approach to law as ‘old-school’, took the view that if the defence wanted to see evidence then they should have access to it, unless the case was ‘a fishing expedition’. All 2,400 pages of messages were handed over. ‘It blew the prosecution case out of the water,’ he said. ‘Clearly the officer hadn’t reviewed it in any detail. He had failed in his duty of disclosure.’
The barrister told the judge that this was the most appalling failure of disclosure that he had ever encountered. According to Hayes, the forced disclosure took place in ‘the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour’. By then, the complainant had given her evidence and Hayes had started giving his evidence to the jury. Hayes had been told by the officer in charge of disclosure that he had seen it but that it was ‘clearly not disclosable as it just contained very personal material and nothing capable of undermining the prosecution case or assisting the defence’.
‘The system nearly failed,’ Hayes said. ‘This is a criminal justice system which is not just creaking, it’s about to croak.’
The public was rightly appalled by the Allan case. As a broadsheet leader put it, there were ‘competing narratives’ over the reasons for the debacle. The prevailing view was that this was a consequence of the fact that the pendulum of criminal justice had swung too far towards protecting victims and away from defending the rights of suspects. The Criminal Bar Association accused the police and CPS of ‘unconscious bias’, which prevented them from properly investigating complaints in sexual offence cases.
Secondly, the case was cited as further evidence that our criminal justice system was becoming increasingly overstretched. Noting that the rules around disclosure had been introduced in response to cases like the Birmingham Six, The Observer argued that over twenty years the amount of data involved in criminal cases had ‘ballooned’ as a result of computers, tablets and mobile phones. It was argued that this made the investigation and prosecution of criminal offences ‘far more complex and time-consuming than ever before’ and the massive volume of data confronting the police in all sorts of cases made ‘meeting their obligations on disclosure increasingly difficult’.
Following Liam Allan’s case, it was revealed that the number of prosecutions in England and Wales that collapsed because of a failure by police or prosecutors to disclose evidence had increased by 70 per cent in the past two years. But the idea that this is all about deficits in resources seems fanciful. After all, how long does it take for an officer to turn on a mobile phone and scroll through messages? It took around six hours to read over Varney and Stubbs’s conversations.
Liam Allan has accused the police and CPS of chasing rape convictions ‘like sales targets’. As it currently stands, only 11 per cent of rape allegations end in a conviction, and the Met are under increasing pressure to improve this figure. The Met have revealed that there has been a dramatic rise in the recording of rape allegations, which has gone up by 60 per cent in the past four years.
• • •
In August 2017, Jemma Beale was jailed for ten years after having made a series of false rape claims. She alleged that she had been seriously sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine, all strangers, in four different incidents over three years. The judge, Nicholas Loraine-Smith, described her life as a ‘construct of bogus victimhood’. ‘These false allegations of rape, false allegations which will inevitably be widely publicised, are likely to have the perverse impact of increasing the likelihood of guilty men going free,’ he said. ‘Cases such as this bring a real risk that a woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted may not complain to the police for fear of not being believed.’
Writing about the case, Guardian journalist Zoe Williams said it was ‘a well-documented nightmare to bring a charge of rape’, before asserting that to do so falsely was ‘vanishingly rare’ for that reason. She quoted the 2013 CPS study which found that there had been 5,651 prosecutions for rape but just thirty-five prosecutions for a false accusation – in other words, 0.6 per cent of all prosecutions involving rape were for false allegations.
Obviously, that figure did not include allegations of rape that failed to reach court. Many false allegations, if they come to light at all, are not deliberately false, and as such they do not constitute a chargeable offence.
The 2013 report found that a significant number of false allegation cases involved young and often vulnerable people. Around half of the cases involved people who were twenty-one or younger and a significant number suffered from problems with their mental health. It was the notion of a false allegation of rape or domestic violence made purely out of malice that was ‘extremely rare’.
A 2005 Home Office study suggested that only 4 per cent of cases of sexual violence reported to the police were found or suspected to be false. A 2010 Ministry of Justice Evidence and Practice Review estimated that as many as 11 per cent of rape allegations could be false. The ministry noted that the overestimation by police and prosecutors, poor communication with complainants and limited understanding of the law all contributed to misconceptions about the number of false allegations. ‘This means the view that false allegations of rape are common and/or are made by vengeful or desperate women cannot robustly be supported or denied,’ it added.
Against that uncertain and unsatisfactory backdrop, some police officers have taken the view that false allegations are so scarce as to be negligible. Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who is in charge of the national initiative set up to share good practice between forces investigating historical abuse cases (Operation Hydrant), has said that 0.1 per cent of all complaints might be false. That was the figure he gave to Sir Richard Henriques, the judge appointed to the Operation Midland review.
Sir Richard said that the claim ‘bore no relation’ to his own judicial experience or to his experience during the review. ‘I remain most concerned that the Hydrant team fail to appreciate the danger of false complaints and that a cardinal principle of the criminal justice system is that the complaint may be false.’
Why do people make false allegations? Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the reasons are varied and complex. Felicity Goodyear-Smith, a professor at the University of Auckland, has created a ‘typology’.‡
She has identified a number of individual ‘motives and drivers’. Categories include ‘self-serving false narratives of abuse’ (e.g. seeking revenge against a former partner, as well as the desire for sympathy and attention); ‘sincerely believed false allegations’, where people persuade themselves that an incident they have imagined, heard, read about or seen on film actually happened to them; and ‘partly true allegations’, where details are embellished or else there are inaccuracies that are honest mistakes.
According to Professor Goodyear-Smith, it is wrong to attribute blame or responsibility solely to those who make false allegations. Allegations can be ‘jointly constructed’ with psychologists, victim support workers and the police who are ‘on the lookout for signs of abuse, who recognise symptoms and jump to conclusions’. In this context, she highlights the dangers of suggestive interviewing techniques, particularly in relation to developing memories in children and young people.
• • •
Elgan Varney remains furious at the police and the CPS for their lack of impartiality in investigating the case. ‘It collapsed because there was no evidence. I should never have been in court in the first place. Two years of my life have been ruined, my career prospects have been ruined, family and friends have suffered, and public money wasted,’ he told me.
‘I want to be clear how tragic Hannah’s death was. As someone who only ever cared about her, I would like to send my sincere condolences to her family. I always treated Hannah in a respectful way,’ he said. ‘I know that I was not responsible for her death. I am completely innocent and should never have been in court in the first place.’
Steven was a friend of both young people and went to Stubbs’s funeral. He wanted to make the following point: ‘It is clear to me that Hannah was ill, and I have absolutely no doubts about Elgan’s innocence. It’s crazy that he was charged and put through hell, only for the CPS to admit their mistake at the eleventh hour. The whole thing is just so tragic for all concerned.’
Elgan Varney wants to get on with his life, as he should be allowed to. But, as he put it: ‘You can’t move forward when the fact that you have been accused is one click away on Google. Being cleared is not enough. Except in the most exceptional circumstances, there needs to be anonymity for anyone accused of rape while due process takes place.’
* According to the CPS’s annual ‘Violence against Women and Girls report’ 2015/2016.
† The newspaper’s readers’ editor eventually agreed to take the article off its site. It took the best part of a year to achieve this outcome. According to the readers’ editor, a decision to take down an article is only taken in ‘exceptional circumstances’. Elgan Varney has only given one interview.
‡ In an essay for Dr Ros Burnett (ed.),Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)