A story that makes me despair

Horrific. The poor girl not only suffered the physical attack but then is mentally attacked by the very people who should be helping her.

Absolutely dreadful" There has been enough publicity in recent years about the need for the police to set up specialist facilities for anyone reporting a sexual assault.

We only got round to watching "The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies" last week. It is shocking that the police can get cases like this poor girl and Christopher Jefferies so badly wrong.

The added dimension with CJ was his vilification in the press but what the two cases have in common seems to be that the police made their minds up very quickly in a very prejudiced way

Gx2 Exactly, I can remember the CJ case very well as I though it unusual that the police disclosed his name before he was charged.
How many similar errors of judgement by the police never surface.
We (that's the Royal we) watch programmes like George Gently and think that things like that don't happen any more - wrong !

Why don't they recruit more highly educated people to the police force? The police usually sound pretty thick when they are interviewed on radio or tv. I think this where a lot of the trouble lies. I suppose it's all down to money.

Poor girl. So wrong.

Shocking, truly shocking. What an horrific ordeal for that poor girl and for her mother, fighting for justice. And as you say GT, having mental health problems went against her as far as the police were concerned. So easy for them to dismiss her claim as lies, not take her seriously. Thank God for the HRA and a good lawyer. But I am disgusted that three officers were able to escape punishment by resigning or retiring, no doubt on very comfortable pensions.

A good reason for making sure the Tories do not get their way and repeal the Human Rights Act.

Oh dj trust you to shove in a tiresome political point.

Yet again...

It's all political, FarNorth. If the HRA wasn't here, the victim might not have been able to get redress. Read the OP again. It's Cameron who wants to get rid of the HRA.
Perhaps we should all just bury our heads in the sand!

Sorry, it was meant as a joke

I agree with everything that's been said about the horrendous story. How could they think it was okay to just not bother checking the evidence?
We definitely need to keep the Human Rights Act.

but farnorth it is true that threads on any subject end up with political point scoring even if only slightly related asnd is very predictable.
the HRA is not being abolished it is being reviewed
even if the HRA did not exist (as it did not prior to 1998) the ECHR would still have applied. lets stick to the facts.

David Cameron does want to abolish the HRA and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. That is a fact.

He may want to. Whether he'll be able to is another matter the result of which only time will tell. Meanwhile, MPs can be written to and other campaigning resorted to and research into whether the ECHR is in fact adequate.

This thread has become yet another boring political soapbox. Not what the OP intended I'm sure. If you want to discuss HR, start a separate thread. It seems to be the same posters that hijack these threads for political ends everytime.

I don't think the political poster(s) have realised yet that overkill and adding a campaigning message to everything just turns most people off the whole thing - the opposite of their intention, I am sure.

Will we soon get the political implications of knitting garments for fish-and-chip babies ("This is what happens when you vote in the XXXXs") or eating meat ("The XXXXs all love their steaks blue and dripping with blood - it reminds them how much fun it is to go to war and kill people indiscriminately")

I have had a thought - this would make a jolly thread - what else can we blame a political party for? Must remember to use Xs though, we don't want to overtly insult anyone's favourite MPs or ex-PMs.

Perhaps, pompa, you need to read the link in the OP. GrannyTwice managed to highjack her own thread, did she?

That not this - don't want to trivialise this thread.

I fail to see any indication that Gx2 has hijacked her own thread ???

Gx2 and I have been at loggerheads in the past, (note "past"). But here she has started a serious, and potentially interesting, thread about an awful occurrence, that may/will have happened to many others, The thread deserves respect and not be used to score political points.
Let's get back to Gx2's OP please.

pompa The article starts "A rape victim falsely accused of lying by detectives has won £20,000 in damages after suing police under the Human Rights Act." Further on in the report, the lawyer who represented the young woman said:

"Many people wrongly assume the police have a legal obligation to investigate crimes. However, the only way victims of crime can seek justice for these sort of issues is using the Human Rights Act which imposes a duty on the police to properly investigate very serious offences."

So the issue of the Human Rights Act is central to the case and it seems to me quite legitimate for posters to reflect on the possible dangers of getting rid of the Human Rights Act.

What is the point of reading about miscarriages of justice? Is it enough to just say "Oh isn't that awful - what horrible policemen", without discussing the mechanism which is currently available to address such injustices, and question whether its abolition is a good thing?

From other threads, I get the impression that the Human Rights Act is not being thrown in the bin, but that plans are afoot to redraft it and replace it with a new version.

Surely we would be best employed making sure that we know what the new version is to be and that all the safeguards we want are in it. It is just possible that the new version could be made even better than the old one.

Okay, pompa, shall we just bury our heads in the sand about what this government wishes to do with the Human Rights Act?
Or shall we do as Eloethan suggests and take seriously the idea of what will happen if there is no Human Rights Act?

If this government does as it wants and gets rid of the Human Rights Act, anyone in a similar situation to this girl would have no redress. Call it political point scoring if you must. I call it justice and think everyone should have access to it.