𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I was falsely accused, yet still not treated as a victim. When Carl Beech walked free from prison early due to the Labour Government’s early release scheme – and of course 14 years of Conservative inaction – no one thought to tell me. No one told the family of Lord Bramall. No one told the family of Lord Brittan. No one told those representing Sir Edward Heath. And yet it was our lives his lies helped to destroy.

Beech was jailed for 18 years in 2019 for perverting the course of justice, fraud and other sexual offences. His claims – lurid, grotesque and entirely false – led to the disastrous Operation Midland. My home was raided by more than 20 Metropolitan Police officers. My livelihood was ruined. My reputation was dragged through the mud in the most public and devastating way imaginable. The same is true, in different ways, for others he accused, including men who are no longer alive to defend themselves.

So why were we not even informed of his release? The answer is as simple as it is shocking: in the eyes of the law, we are not considered victims. For offences like perverting the course of justice, the system treats the Crown – not the individuals whose lives are torn apart – as the victim. The human cost is ignored and the real damage is treated as incidental.

It is a profound failure of justice. Because when false allegations of this magnitude are made, it is not an abstract institution that suffers but the real people – and their families – who pay the price, often for the rest of their lives. That is why I have now written, alongside the families of Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and the Sir Edward Heath Foundation, to the Justice Secretary, David Lammy.

We are asking for something simple and fair: that those who are the subject of proven false allegations – cases where the courts have established that lies were told – are formally recognised as victims in law.

That would mean being informed when an offender is released and being told what safeguards are in place. It would mean, at the very least, being acknowledged. At present, we are not.

I have spoken before about the wider failures that allowed Operation Midland to happen – a culture that too readily abandoned the presumption of innocence when Sir Keir Starmer as Director of Public Prosecutions replaced it with the dangerous mantra of “believe the victim”.

But we must also confront what happens afterwards. Even when the truth is finally established – even when the liar is convicted – those falsely accused are left in a strange legal limbo: vindicated, yet unrecognised; cleared, yet unsupported. That cannot be right.

This letter is the first step in addressing that gap. We do not yet know what the Government’s response will be, but the question is now unavoidable. It is an unbearable stain to know that Beech might be free to repeat and expand his lies about me and others – including serial child murder and sexual abuse – which caused so much pain over the last 10 years.

If the justice system cannot recognise the victims of malicious lies, then who exactly is it designed to protect? Because justice is both about punishing the guilty and recognising the innocent – and repairing, as far as possible, the damage done. Until that happens, the system will remain incomplete and those of us who have lived through this will remain, in the eyes of the law, invisible.