For a year it has looked like Alison Saunders, the former U.K. top prosecutor who withheld evidence from the defense in numerous rape cases, would not receive the nation’s top honor of damehood.
In December 2018, The Daily Wire reported that Saunders would be the first in her position as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to not receive the honor during their tenure or shortly after their departure. Saunders resigned last year after it was discovered that the Crown Prosecution Service withheld exculpatory evidence in multiple rape cases.
Despite this miscarriage of justice, it looks like Saunders has now been granted the honor. The Independent reported that Saunders’ honor “was believed to have been withheld after then prime minister Theresa May demanded an end to automatic honours for civil servants accused of failing in their roles.”
The outlet reported that Queen’s Counsel Daniel Janner, who is the son of late Labour Party member Lord Janner who had been accused of child abuse, told news outlets that Saunders was “the worst DPP in living memory,” and said it was “appalling” that she would receive damehood.
“She completely made a hash of my innocent late father’s ridiculous allegations,” he told outlets. “These have now proved to be false like the allegation that ‘Nick’ made, and she presumed guilt and introduced, followed or continued a policy of all victims are to be automatically believed.”
“As a result of this policy, it led to huge injustices against many well-known people and not so well-known people – people like my late father, Paul Gambaccini, Harvey Proctor and Lord Brittan, and many, many others,” he added.
“This is an appalling honour which brings the honours system into disrepute,” Janner concluded.
Saunders reportedly told The Times of London that she received the honour for “30 years of public service.” Apparently, in the United Kingdom, merely occupying a position is enough for someone to be rewarded.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Saunders oversaw the rape allegations against Liam Allan, who was accused of rape until the charges were dropped once exculpatory text messages were turned over to the defense:
One of those cases involved 22-year-old Liam Allan, a London resident who three years ago was accused of rape. A year went by before Allan finally obtained information about where his case stood, and was told the detective in charge recommended no charges be filed. But two hours later, he was told he was being charged for allegedly raping the woman 12 times.
Two years went by before Allan and his attorneys were able to obtain more than 40,000 text messages from the Croydon Crown court from his accuser. The messages made clear the woman consented to sex with Allan and continued to seek more sexual encounters with him.
In another case, a man was accused but cleared after CCTV footage showed him walking arm-in-arm with a woman who claimed he raped her. The woman also sent a text message asking for her mental illnesses to be concealed so she could get “more leeway to hide certain aspects and mould what comes out.”
In another case, photos and a diary were withheld from police that showed an Oxford University student didn’t violently rape a woman who claimed otherwise.