Vikki Campion: We can’t abandon the principle ‘innocent until proven guilty’

Whether or not Attorney-General Christian Porter is guilty or innocent, we can’t abandon the principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, Vikki Campion writes.

Her last words to him after he left were: “If I can’t have you I will make sure nobody else will want you.”

And even if she never achieved anything else in her life, she sure achieved that.

The father-of-one has been left deep in debt, at times homeless, and forever smeared in his small town after he was accused by his former partner of sexual assault, saved only at trial by an admittance that testimony provided to police was false.

He now struggles, while she continues her life as normal.

There used to be no rules in love and war.

Now, there’s just no rules in war.

The dilemma in many circumstances is the war involving love and relationships is a guerrilla one and truth is the first casualty.

If the consequence of an untested allegation is your life is destroyed, or you are possibly sent to jail, then it is based on an absolute injustice by either the perpetrator or the accuser.

Both have rights that should be preserved.

What is there to stop anyone from falsely claiming abuse if there is no consequence to a lie, an exaggeration, an omission?

Attorney-General Christian Porter publicly denied the historical rape allegations. Picture: Stefan Gosatti/AFP

I no longer subscribe to the theory that every allegation must be believed. I believe victims of criminal offences should be supported through the legal process but God help us when that inquiry is conducted by the parliament or the press.

Through the history of humankind, the testing of an allegation is left to an expert body removed from the general public. It has to be.

In the past, people could be hanged over an allegation. Today they are jailed. Mishandled, and lives can be destroyed by a contrived complaint.

A person who has been wronged should find justice through the proper prosecution of the perpetrator but a spurious allegation means the accuser is the perpetrator.

This complexity is the reason courts are so austere.

An old woman whose earliest memory is being raped by her uncle remembers her mother telling her: “Hush! Don’t talk about that.”

The difference now is we can and must have these ugly, uncomfortable conversations that were silenced by generations before us.

But for the victims of crime to be supported to report and, in turn, attackers to be stopped, we cannot allow false or untested accusations to fly.

Rape is one of the worst crimes, but being falsely accused as a rapist is also an injustice.

We must support victims of sexual assault so they feel emboldened to go to police and go to trial but not at the expense of the presumption of innocence.

Men lie. Women lie. People have different versions of the same truth. Absolutes in stories inevitably are found to have gradations.

Without going through the process of defamation, which is really only available for the very wealthy, there is little threat of retribution for the person who whispers lies.

Saturday Telegraph columnist Vikki Campion. Picture: Simon Scott

In vexed issues, everything requires balance, denial is not a defence. Facts are required but the primary burden of proof lies with the person who makes the allegation.

In Australia, everyone is innocent until proven guilty — if we abandon this principle for cancel culture then we just strayed off the path of almost 1000 years of jurisprudence.

In the state of NSW that presumption of innocence does not exist in politics.

On the same day that Attorney-General Christian Porter stood up in tears in Western Australia and begged the media pack to imagine him just for a moment as innocent, across the Simpson Desert in NSW John Sidoti resigned from the ministry because of ICAC launching a public hearing.

The ICAC often makes recommendations which never proceed to prosecution.

In recent memory, 12 people have resigned from NSW politics and not a single one has been found guilty of any crime.

My argument is not whether or not the Attorney-General is guilty or innocent, I have no idea, and nor am I suggesting his accuser is lying, but the process that some elements of the media have followed would be enough to make Judge Judy blush.

Public opinion is an essential element of reality TV shows, it is not an essential element of a liberal Western democracy.

A person can be disliked, obnoxious, distasteful and utterly innocent, just as they can be magnetic, charming, gregarious and guilty as hell. Unfortunately though, the court of public opinion would find them otherwise.

In a nation that goes back to Breaker Morant and the conveyancing solicitor who was given one day to defend him before he was executed in South Africa, we have in our DNA, a zeal for a fair trial.

It’s more proficient than “the vibe”.