Comment: Heads must roll for the porn trial

Wednesday, 8 August 2012 1:56 PM

By Ian Dunt - Courtesy of www.politics.co.uk


In the end, Simon Walsh was found unanimously not guilty on six counts of possessing extreme pornography. But before a jury acquitted him, the legal process had demolished his professional and personal life. He lived under the shadow of the charges for months.

The prospect of three years imprisonment and inclusion on the sex offenders register will do wonders for your career and social life.

His crime had been to have a few photos in his email server of fisting, an unusual and not altogether pleasant sex act. If you are one of the readers who made Fifty Shades of Grey the most successful British book of all time, you will recognise it. In fact, it is perfectly legal to perform, but possibly not, under the insane and draconian legislation of the last Labour government, to own pictures of.

Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 outlaws images of act which are "likely to result in serious injury to a person's anus". Today a jury decided fisting does not satisfy that criteria. When the law was passed, Home Office spokespeople insisted it would not affect the BDSM (bondage, sadomasochism and all that) community. It was drafted so broadly it was quite plain it could, but officials insisted that police and prosecutors were not prurient enough to use it that way. ACPO even promised not to go around looking for it.

This is why we don’t pass broad legislation: because authorities cannot be trusted. Never underestimate the ineptitude of prosecutors and police. Just months after failing to prosecute Micheal Peacock for possessing similar material under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, they turned their attention to Walsh. Some believe they had a grudge. Walsh, a City professional, had previously prosecuted police accused of disciplinary offences.

They found nothing on his work computer. They found nothing on his home computer. So they had a look on his email account server and eventually found something – although by doing so it appears they may have contaminated the evidence, by making it impossible to assess whether the attachments had actually been opened.

Walsh's jury, like Peacock's before him, acquitted. At least they did not have to go through the indignity of the obscenity trial jury who were forced to sit in front of the video porn for several hours. "They were quite shocked initially [but] they started to look quite bored very quickly," an official said.

The British public is clearly of the opinion that what someone watches in the privacy of their own home is up to them. People are entitled to watch whatever strange, graphic pornography they choose, as long as the actors give consent to appear in it and are aware what they are giving consent to.

The law does not care about consent. It was passed in a typical populist panic by Labour following the murder of Jane Longhurst, whose killer, Graham Coutts, admitted being addicted to violent internet pornography. Any act which would cause "serious harm to the anus, breast or genitals" was banned, as was depiction of scenes in which someone's life was threatened or animals were interfered with.

The law should not exist, not least because British prosecutors are plainly too irresponsible to interpret it sensibly.

Just weeks ago, Kier Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, was found to have stopped his staff from dropping the case against Paul Chambers, whose joke about blowing up Robin Hood airport was turned into a two-year Kafkaesque nightmare. First the Twitter joke trial, then the obscenity trial and now the porn trial. It is clear there is something seriously wrong at the Crown Prosecution Service.

Its misjudgements are so pronounced, its behaviour so vindictive and its morality so out of step with the British public, that we urgently need an investigation. The home affairs committee should be dragging Starmer in himself to explain why a man was hounded by the authorities under a moral assessment which chimes better with Victorian Britain than the country we live in today.

Unfortunately, politicians usually only value privacy and free speech when it’s mainstream and harmless. It takes bravery to get involved in something as messy and awkward as extreme porn. But that's when principles are truly tested.

The Home Office, the police and the CPS are responsible for this appalling abuse of power. Heads should roll.

Former Boris Johnson aide cleared of possession of 'extreme pornography'

Barrister Simon Walsh, 50, acquitted over images that prosecution argued showed activities likely to cause injury. 

Caroline Davies

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 August 2012 15.58 BST

A barrister has been acquitted of possessing extreme pornography in a landmark case over the boundaries of what can be described as "extreme".

The jury was unanimous and took less than 90 minutes to clear Simon Walsh, 50, a former aide to London mayor Boris Johnson, and who served as a magistrate and alderman in the City of London, after a week-long trial.

The case is believed to be the first to address whether images of anal fisting, a sexual practice which is legal, and urethral sounding are extreme pornography, as defined under the controversial section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Earlier this year Michael Peacock was acquitted of charges under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 of distributing obscene DVDs, which featured fisting and bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM).

Walsh was charged with possession of six email attachment images, which were not found by police on either his work or home computers, but on a Hotmail server account he set up to receive and send sexual messages.

Oxford-educated Walsh was sacked from his position on the London Fire Authority on his arrest in April last year. He was a man of impeccable character who had made an outstanding contribution to society, the court heard, and had previously chaired the City of London Corporation police authority and licensing authority. He had been unable to work as a barrister since his arrest on the charges, which carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

His lawyer, Matthew Buckland, told Kingston crown court that the case raised issues of private personal encounters and "how we view them in an inclusive democracy".

Walsh faced five charges under the 2008 act, which stipulates images are extreme if they are "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character" and if they "portray, in an explicit and realistic way" any act "which results in, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals".

The prosecution claimed three images, found in attachments in Walsh's sent box, showed urethreal sounding, where a medical instrument is inserted into the tip of the penis to stretch the urethra and stimulate the prostate, acts that were likely to cause injury to a person's genitals.

Two images showed anal fisting, which was likely to cause injury to a person's anus, it argued.

The defence argued there was no evidence of any serious injury in any of those images, and that the activities were low risk. Walsh had taken the urethral sounding images himself at a New Year's Eve party and sent them only to other participants at the party, the court heard.

A sixth charge, of possessing an indecent image of an underage boy, related to an attachment sent to Walsh which showed a sexually aroused male with a ligature. Walsh told the court he had no recollection of ever opening the attachment on the email, which was unsolicited and unanswered.

The defence claimed the image was not of a child but an adult. It was also not possible to prove Walsh had opened the attachment, the court heard.

Walsh, whose Hotmail user name was "Cityfister" with the password "scat", and who was a registered user of a social networking website called NastyKinkyPigs.com, admitted to police he had an interest in BDSM. He had practised fisting but disputed the claim that the images were extreme pornography.

Giving evidence, he denied ever hurting anyone and said: "I know the limits and I respect them."

Prosecutor Thomas Wilkins told the court Walsh was "a gay man who has what he described as a strange sex life".

Wilkins said: "He doesn't dispute that he uses the email account purely for his sex life. He doesn't dispute that he is interested in bondage and sadomasochism." There was no dispute that Walsh had sent three of the images, but, added Wilkins, "he disputes that they are extreme or pornographic".