Today's verdict in the Dave Lee Travis case completes a rollercoaster two weeks for all concerned about the way we deal with sexual abuse in our criminal courts.
A week ago, last Monday, Tracy Shelvey jumped from the roof of a shopping centre in Rochdale, following the acquittal of the man she had alleged had raped her. Because of a hung jury, she had been required to give evidence twice, which inevitably provoked comparisons with the case of Frances Andrade, who almost exactly a year earlier had committed suicide after giving evidence against a choir director and his ex-wife accused of indecent assault in Manchester.
Two days later, Hugh Henry, a teacher at Nick Clegg's old school, Caldicott preparatory school, was found dead on a railway line after being convicted along with his former colleague Roland Wright of a string of sexual offences against pupils at the school dating back to 1959.
The same day, and receiving a lot more coverage, saw the acquittal of William Roache on charges of rape and indecent assault. That ignited an intense debate about whether offences dating back many years should be pursued and, more pointedly, whether the authorities were engaged in a post-Savile witch-hunt.
Today the jury at Southwark Crown Court cleared the former BBC Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis of 12 counts of indecent assault, but failed to reach a decision on two further charges. Obviously very little can be said about his case while he remains on bail pending a decision on whether there should be a retrial on the remaining charges. But if ever there were a time for calm and rational analysis of what the outcomes in all these cases tell us, it is now.
The verdicts in the Caldicott cases, along with the earlier high-profile case of the broadcaster Stuart Hall, remind us that it is wrong in principle to bury allegations merely because they date back many years. In the Caldicott case, the judge sentencing Wright, who was 83 years old, said that a long custodial sentence was necessary because of the "lasting effect" that the abuse had had on the victims. That is not unusual in these types of case and the fact that older cases are hard to prove because of the inevitable memory problems is not a reason to consign them to the "too difficult" box.
On the other hand, dealing with events dating back many years is difficult for all concerned, whether prosecution witness or defendant. Great care needs to be exercised before such cases are brought; and, equally, great care needs to be exercised before jumping to conclusions at the outcome.
The fact that some people are convicted and others acquitted reminds us that the test for a prosecutor in determining whether to bring a case and the test for a jury in deciding whether to convict are fundamentally different. A prosecutor has the unenviable task of trying to assess without the benefit of testing the evidence whether there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction. The jury, with the benefit of testing the evidence and, often, of hearing from the defendant, has to be "sure" that the defendant is guilty. Applying these tests, it is inevitable in our legal system that some individuals may be quite properly charged and equally quite properly acquitted.
It is this last feature of our legal system that persuades some people that there should be anonymity for rape defendants. It is an attractive argument. Nobody should underestimate the profound effect that an unproven allegation of rape can have on an individual. But although I am not unsympathetic to the argument, ultimately it comes up against two formidable obstacles which, for me, militate against any change in the current arrangements.
First, there are undoubtedly cases where further victims come forward once a defendant is named. The Stuart Hall case is perhaps the best known example of this. Last year a number of victims came forward once he was charged, and he subsequently pleaded guilty to a number of offences. There are many other examples. In 2009 John Worboys, a cab driver, was notoriously convicted of a string of very serious sexual attacks on 12 women. Six of them only came forward after he was charged and identified. He is now serving a long prison sentence.
The second difficulty is that if the basis for anonymity is the unshakable effect of the allegation, which cannot be displaced by an acquittal, why limit anonymity to rape defendants? Logically many other sexual allegations fall into the same category, most obviously an allegation of child abuse or even murder. Should Mark Bridger, who was convicted last year for the sexually motivated murder of April Jones, have been protected by an anonymity order until his conviction? If so, there is the real prospect of anonymity becoming the norm in a whole host of criminal cases with an inevitable impact on our "open justice" principle.
So I return to the need for rational analysis. High-profile sex cases, particularly involving events some years ago, inevitably evoke strong reactions. Every police officer and every prosecutor knows when bringing such a case that in the event of a conviction the criticism will be that the case was not brought sooner and more robustly, and that in the event of an acquittal there will be charges of a witch-hunt. This lurching from one side of the road to the other only serves to store up problems for the future. One of the reasons that the cases of the four victims who did report allegations against Jimmy Savile to the police during his lifetime were not pursued is because, stung by earlier criticism that they had "trawled" for victims in the past, the police were over-cautious and decided not to tell any one victim that they were not alone in making their allegation. Do we really want another Savile moment?