Anger and relief are words that rarely belong in the same sentence. But they are precisely the juxtaposed emotions many felt when they learned that a catechist had been cleared of sexually abusing a boy in his care.

Anthony Callus has endured a year of hell ever since a 10-year-old boy claimed that he had been touched inappropriately during the course of an outing to the beach with members of the Christian Doctrine Society – MUSEUM.

After he was charged with violent indecent assault, harassment, offending public morals and corruption of a minor (it’s difficult to see what in the book was not thrown at him), the 46-year-old resigned from the society and also stepped down from his post as assistant headmaster.

If all that were not bad enough, he had to endure that horrifying stigma that comes with being a suspected paedophile within the context of living in a small community, where everyone knows everyone and where gossip can often replace edifying conversation.

And yet throughout all this, there was one elephant that persistently refused to leave the room: which is that nobody really seemed to believe the child who was making the allegations.

Children may be young; they may be vulnerable; and every possible step needs to be taken to ensure they are protected from anything untoward… but they can be liars too.

It is the police’s job during the course of an investigation to try and separate the wheat from the chaff and to reach a considered decision on what sort of action to take. What they are doing all too often, instead, is taking record to a complaint from wherever it may come from, seeing what possible offences might be associated with it, and then robotically handing the matter over to the courts.

This cannot go on for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, because this approach is capable of ruining innocent people’s lives and leaving them in limbo for months, even years, on end. In 2006, a teacher spent 77 days in prison and endured a seven-year wait before he was cleared by a court after a false accusation.

It is also a manifest waste of the court’s time, and with the number of cases before them the last thing magistrates and judges need is a case that has no foundation. The magistrate in the Callus instance, Audrey Demicoli, specifically dwelt on this failing, saying: “From the evidence it was amply clear that the district police investigation was not thorough enough and that, had it been handled by a specialist branch, it would not have reached this point.” She also stressed the importance of making children aware of the consequences of making false accusations.

Her comments cannot go unheeded. Especially in cases that involve allegations of sexual abuse against minors – but seve­ral others too – specialist units would be far more preferable to officers who have no expertise in these areas.

However, the method of prosecution needs to be reviewed too. We need to understand why police take the approach to ‘prosecute now and probe the issue later’. Is it lack of training? Fear? Lack of knowledge over what their role is supposed to be?

Whatever it is, it needs to be addressed, One way of doing this could be to take decisions over prosecution out of their hands entirely and park them in the hands of a different body. This would also give police more time to solve crime.

If the situation remains as it is, no teacher will want to have any contact with children. And children may be more reluctant to report genuine cases for fear of not being believed, which would be the biggest tragedy of all.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.