Yesterday, the Guardian newspaper published the latest in a seemingly never-ending series of dishonest and misleading articles concerning the Eleanor de Freitas case. The “journalist” responsible was none other than leading misandrist Julie Bindel, someone with a history of lying about the issue of women lying about rape.
The article was titled “Women who allege abuse face terrifying libel threats” and an obvious red flag right from the start is that comments are disabled, a sure sign that the paper doesn’t want readers to be able to debunk the nonsense published by the newspaper themselves. We’ll therefore do some of that here.
Bindel claims that:
“Eleanor had made an allegation of rape, which was discontinued by police. The accused then took out a private prosecution against her (later taken over by the CPS).”
Of course, what Bindel should have said here is that Eleanor de Freitas had allegedly made a malicious false accusation of rape after her victim had ended their relationship upon discovering she was a sex worker. The evidence against her was simply overwhelming and she was in fact a serial false accuser, having made accusations of sexual assault against her landlord previously.
De Freitas’ victim spent some £200,000 bringing a private prosecution against her, with CCTV, witness statements and text messages all thoroughly contradicting her claims. The case against De Freitas was so strong that the private prosecution was taken over by the Crown Prosecution Service.
De Freitas took her own life before her trial for perverting the course of justice could be begin, and as a result the Director of Public prosecutions reviewed the decision as to whether it had been right to prosecute. This review found that there was “sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction” and “a strong public interest in prosecuting”.
Everyone knows it’s practically unheard of for an innocent false rape accuser to go on trial. Such trials surely have he highest conviction rate of any crime, owing to the fact there’s such reluctance to prosecute if the guilt of the accused isn’t 100% certain.
However, the real icing on the cake in this situation isn’t so much the findings of any investigation, nor the mountains of evidence against de Freitas. Instead, the key is the identify of the Director of Public prosecutions who make said ruling. It was of course non-other than Alison Saunders who personally ruled it was quite correct to prosecute. Saunders is of course most infamous for a huge scandal of her staff deliberately withholding evidence from innocent men falsely accuse of rape. She is an extreme misandrist feminist, perfectly happy to ensure innocent men falsely accused of rape have their lives ruined sitting in prison and thankfully she lost her job and any New Year’s honours for her crimes. So, despite her extreme views and simply evil and sexist actions, even Saunders couldn’t find any possible excuse to disagree with the idea of putting De Fretias on trial. She stated:
“Primarily CPS believe the rape allegation was false based on dialogue between Alexander Economou (AE) and EDF before and after the event, their accounts of the event and CCTV of the visit to Ann Summers.”
Not happy with talking completely nonsense once, Bindel goes on to claim that:
“Following Eleanor’s death, her father David was sued for libel after he spoke out on radio criticising the CPS for taking over the prosecution of his daughter, who had bipolar disorder.”
Again this is a farcical description of events and less informed readers will take from this remarkably misleading sentence that the CPS somehow or its staff somehow sued David De Freitas for daring to criticise them (or alternatively that something sinister was going on somewhere). In reality, it was of course the victim of the false accusation who brought the libel action, and he did so because statements made in the media continued to imply that a rape had taken place, that Eleanor was a “victim” and thus he was a rapist instead of a perfectly innocent gentleman and in fact himself the victim of an incredibly nasty crime. The idea that anyone wanted to stop criticism of the CPS for prosecuting someone with bipolar disorder is farcical, all they need to do was to word said criticism in a sensible and honest way that didn’t turn reality on its head and continue to falsely imply that a rape had occurred and that a false accuser was he victim.
Furthermore, Bindel’s uses this particular libel case as proof of “terrifying legal threats” is instantly debunked as a lie by the victim’s generous conduct. He made a ‘without prejudice’ offer asking for nominal damages of £1 and 25% of legal costs to settle the case, on condition Mr De Freitas accepted liability. It’s therefore very clear the case was an attempt to simply establish innocence and not used to silence anyone.
The way the likes of Bindel and the Guardian continue to cling onto the De Freitas case and lie about it as a way of promoting their misandrist agenda is simply astonishing. It’s remarkable how they use an open and shut case of a false rape allegation as their favoured “proof” of sexism against women and rape victims and it’s amazing how they blinkeredly continue to insist that even the most obvious false allegation somehow was still a rape, or the accuser is somehow the victim for being held accountable for their serious crimes.
Bindel’s article begins with the following paragraph:
Imagine the following scenario: a woman is raped, and reports this to police, as well as disclosing to mutual friends. When the case is passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), it is decided that there is not enough evidence to bring charges, perhaps due to the culture of disbelief within the criminal justice system, or to avoid prosecuting what are considered to be “difficult cases”. The victim is subsequently issued with a terrifying threat of libel from the rapist. There is no legal aid to defend a libel action, and she has no money. She endures the hell of a trial, facing the man who raped her. If she loses, which she may well – bearing in mind the prejudicial attitudes and belief systems around women’s culpability, and the disproportionate media coverage about false allegations – she could be in financial ruin, and will have to pay not only the massive legal fees, but also substantive damages to her rapist.
So, lets now contrast these points in Bindel’s fantasy case, with the actual facts from the sole example false rape-related case she cites.
- “A woman is raped” False – no rape occurred
- “it is decided that there is not enough evidence to bring charges, perhaps due to the culture of disbelief” False – the evidence proved De Freitas was lying. There was indeed more than enough evidence to begin charges but against De Freitas herself.
- “to avoid prosecuting what are considered to be “difficult cases” False – well technically the CPS did refuse to prosecute a “difficult case”, but of course it regards all false rape accusation cases as “difficult” and the victim had to spend £200,000 bring the case privately himself.
- “The victim is subsequently issued with a terrifying threat of libel from the rapist” False – there is no “rapist” nor was there any libel case. That only occurred once the false accuser had died and people went on to spread her lies in the press.
- “She has no money” False – the family were not poor at all and comfortably middle class (and she wasn’t facing a libel action anyhow as noted above).
- “She endures the hell of a trial, facing the man who raped her.” False – the trial never took place and neither did any rape . In fact the CPS even went as far as to intimidate the victim here with bogus charges of harassment and a trial for attempting to stop people smearing him.
- “she could be in financial ruin, and will have to pay not only the massive legal fees, but also substantive damages to her rapist.” False – again the false accuser faced no libel trial, though as we have shown above, the victim in the later case sought damages of just £1 and 25% of costs. It’s the victim of the false accusation who has incurred extraordinarily high costs just in attempting to bring a prosecution and then yet more huge costs on top of this defending both his name and also his freedom in court.
Bindel’s “journalism” here is therefore that of lowest of the low. She starts off with her fantasy premise for a case, and then presents us with supporting real-world “evidence” which couldn’t be less like her example had she tried! In fact most of the time it’s quite literally the exact opposite! Even in all the above debunking of her “points” we’ve still not even mentioned the £10,000 in damages paid to the victim of the false accusation by the police for their misconduct.
All along during this case, a key theme is the Guardian siding with the position of the police (who didn’t want to prosecute) and ignoring and hiding the stance of the CPS who decide (eventually) to do so. The police are now officially guilty of misconduct so that’s yet another massive hole in the Guardian’s narrative, yet despite their obsession with this case they still can’t bring themselves to report such a key fact.
The Guardian’s disdain for the truth when it comes to false rape accusation is simply shocking. In addition to their mountains of dishonestly over the De Freitas case, there are equally sinister tricks they get up to in refusing to tell the truth.
A favoured tactic at the paper is to report extensively on a rape trial and then to simply refuse to report on the outcome should it turn out to be a false or dubious rape allegation. At HEqual we had to force the Guardian to report on the acquittal of a footballer after the paper gleefully covered his trial but not his innocence. This pattern occurred again more recently with Conservative politician Richard Holden and no doubt will happen again in future too.
The likes of Bindel and her employer clearly think that false rape accusers should never face justice under any circumstances and that women should simply have the right to ruin as many men’s lives as possible (or even murder them if they fancy it). Of course, Bindel herself would never do either of those things and instead, as we exposed here at HEqual, she’d settle for sticking men in feminazi concentration camps.
Part two of this investigation will follow next week.
hequal 
Great piece. It should also be said (unless I missed it) that when it was finally discovered that the rape claim was false, the police refused to change the case to one of false accusation, so that this is yet another false accusation that is not recorded in the records as such.
I just followed up on the DeFreitas case and was very saddened to see that not only had Economou lost the libel case but also an appea against the judgment.
This really is astonishing and shows how biased the legal system has become. There is no dispute at all that Mr Economou was seriously defamed causing very significnat damage and no dispute that Mr De Freitas knew that he was damaging Mr De Freitas’ reputation and that he was presenting a delibretaely misleading case in order to do so. What is amazing is that under these circumstances a defence that it was in teh public interest succeeds.
How can it be in teh public interest to knowingly defame somebody. I can see thsi defence when someone believes wrongly that some crime has been committed and fairly publishes evidence of this but what possible public interest is there in knowingly publishing a grossly distorted case?
Reblogged this on JohnAllman.UK.