From the moment a BBC helicopter hovered over Sir Cliff Richard’s £3m Berkshire mansion broadcasting images of police inside riffling through his belongings, the investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse against him has been mired in controversy.
Since that search, which took place at a time of a media frenzy over claims that celebrities might have been involved in child abuse in the past, the investigation by South Yorkshire police has rarely been out of the spotlight.
Throughout it all, Richard has never been arrested. Instead he willingly attended police interviews in 2014 and 2015 over claims that he had abused young boys, as embarrassing details of how the police cooked up a deal with the BBC over the search of his home in August 2014 emerged. Richard described his experience as “being hung out like live bait” on Thursday.
“Ever since the highly publicised and BBC-filmed raid on my home I have chosen not to speak publicly … I have chosen to remain silent … despite the widely shared sense of injustice resulting from the high-profile fumbling of my case from day one. Other than in exceptional circumstances, people who are facing allegations should never be named publicly until charged,” he said.
The “hanging out like live bait” was perhaps not just by the media. A decision by the home affairs select committee chair, Keith Vaz, in February last year to publish a letter to the committee from David Crompton, the then chief constable of South Yorkshire, caused more headlines. This from a committee that was investigating why details of an ongoing police investigation were leaked to the media, namely the BBC.
In the letter Crompton revealed that police had expanded their inquiry into the global pop star.
The inquiry into how the search of the star’s house became public was damning. It said the fact that the BBC was told about it in August 2014 “certainly interfered with his privacy and may well have caused unnecessary distress”.
The investigation into Richard continued into this year, and nine allegations were examined. Five did not meet the threshold to pass on to the Crown Prosecution Service, South Yorkshire police said on Thursday. The Guardian understands at least one allegation came from a prison inmate, whose claims were littered with allegations about a number of other high-profile individuals.
Police continued to investigate with CPS guidance, and in May this year they passed a file of evidence to the prosecutors that was demolished by lawyers within weeks when they found insufficient evidence to prosecute Richard.
The speed with which the CPS announced that there would be no charges is damning. There will now be serious questions raised over the police investigation, its proportionality, the testing of any allegations and whether any attempts were made to corroborate them before such a public raid of the star’s home.
The MP David Davis said that in light of another investigation that failed to result in prosecution it was time for a “complete review of police procedures surrounding high-profile sex abuse cases and the publicity surrounding these cases”.
“Whilst it is important to protect victims and maximise the chances of a successful prosecution, this must not result in the gratuitous destruction of people’s reputation,” he said.
Richard said he was “obviously thrilled that the vile accusations and the resulting investigation” had been brought to a close.
He said, however, that an injustice remained. “I feel very strongly that no innocent person should be treated in this way. I know the truth and in some people’s eyes the CPS announcement doesn’t go far enough, because it doesn’t expressly state that I am innocent, which of course I am.”
The decision not to bring charges against Richard comes only months after the Metropolitan police closed down an inquiry into allegations that a ring of Westminster paedophiles was involved in the sexual abuse and murder of young boys – allegations stemming from one individual that were never corroborated by other complainants.
Since the revelations about Jimmy Savile, there have been notable successes in the investigation and prosecution of powerful individuals whose dark past has finally been exposed. They include Gary Glitter and the paediatrician Michael Salmon. Richard, however, said it was the tarnishing of the reputations of the innocent that caused him and others great concern.
While the investigation into him is now over, a multimillion-pound inquiry by Wiltshire police into the late Sir Edward Heath continues. The force recently recruited more staff for the investigation, in part to support plans to examine the Heath archive at the Bodleian Libraries, which is made up of about 4,500 boxes of material.
Prosecutors were forced to issue new guidelines last month to deter officers from sending them files of evidence on dead people for charging decisions.
Senior police officers have stated this was being done in order to help complainants achieve some closure in the knowledge that, had their alleged abuser been alive, he would or would not have been charged. Since the CPS guidance, however, forces are no longer seeking such decisions.
For adult victims of child sexual abuse, the focus on high-profile individuals is an unwanted distraction from the reality: that perpetrators are mostly family members or someone known to the victim.
As Operation Hydrant, the overarching inquiry into non-recent child sexual abuse, continues to build its database of cases, the investigations carried out are increasingly into this kind of child abuse and not allegations against high-profile individuals.
The scale of those inquiries is huge. The Guardian reported last month that the Goddard inquiry into child sexual abuse was referring new cases to Operation Hydrant at the rate of 100 a month. It is a figure that is only likely to increase.
