The PSNI Who Cried Wolf.

After Natasha Doherty was arrested for perverting the court of justice, the question arises: where was common sense and basic morals hiding in the police force?

Hansel and Gretel cautioned against trusting strangers; Pinocchio warned against telling lies; Shrek challenged the definition of beauty. These fairytales were not just for fantastical frivolity; each embodied an important lesson intended to seep into our young, untainted minds in the hope of moulding conscientious, moral and decent beings. The Boy who Cried Wolf, the tale that forewarns people who tell lies will not be believed, is one that has crept back into our reality. Echoes of the anecdote resonate in the recent case of Natasha Doherty, a mother of two from Armagh who was arrested after she reported that she had been raped. The 24 year old claimed that she had been attacked in a wood near her home in Bessbrook, South Armagh in March 2011. On the 19^th of August of that year she was charged with perverting the court of justice and wasting police time. The charges were subsequently dropped, on Wednesday the 4^th of January at Newry courthouse.  

This case conjures images of the young shepherd and his flock, the police having accused Doherty of lying just as the villagers accused the young boy. The difference being, of course, that the shepherd was lying. In Doherty’s case, there is no substantial evidence to prove that the young mother was insincere or that everything she reported was not completely true. Nevertheless, her plea for justice was not only silenced but deemed fictitious. Do the police believe they are reinforcing the Boy who Cried Wolf moral with this arrest, catching the young shepherd before the mistake is repeated? Or have they completely missed the point? Have their minds become transfixed with the fable allure and bypassed its core message? Whatever their thinking, there are serious implications embedded in this villainous arrest.

A major obstacle in tackling rape is victims’ reluctance to report an attack, fearing the difficulty implicit in proving the veracity of their allegations. This recent police action will inevitably quiet even more rape victims: Doherty’s arrest gives substance to their concern, verification to their building doubt no matter how unfounded their friends persuade them that they are. In the past, victims have spoken of their distress at seeing their name in connection with being a victim of sexual assault in the media. This arrest publicly aligns Doherty not only with being a rape victim but a fraudulent one, a dreaded fear realised. Not only will it stifle the victim, it also widens the safety net of the attacker, cushioning their anonymity with added reassurance that their heinous crime will be one without any repercussions. The message that the police are transmitting is that yes, they are tackling crimes, but they are capturing the wrong figure.                                                       

 This is not a protestation of Natasha Doherty’s innocence; whether she is or is not is almost irrelevant. It is to stress the rippling effects this arrest could potentially ignite. The numbers of rape cases that are convicted are slim-nine out of ten rapes are not reported. If police are unable to prove sexual attacks with certainty how can they verify a false report of one with such gusto? It would seem, like a rapist, the police preyed on Doherty’s vulnerability. They tried to reinforce the message of the Boy who Cried Wolf by attempting to assert that one, she had lied and secondly, had tried to punish her with replicating the effects of the specified incident: the police are dubious to if she was physically assaulted but they most definitely tried imitating the consequences of the reported attack by assaulting her mentally. Even if the report was false, the benefits of an arrest could not outweigh the damage done by this police action. In a roundabout way, the police are the shepherd in this case- they falsely accused an innocent victim, jeopardising her integrity. The tale highlights how one should not tell lies but the story of this police action exemplifies how equally, we should not flippantly label a liar.

The moral at the end of the Boy who Cried Wolf illustrates the ironic punishment of liars: even if they do tell the truth no one will believe them. The arrest of Natasha Doherty is an attempt to enforce this logic yet in this case the police have put the ethics of the tale in reverse. They did not believe the initial cries of help but hereafter will they? The shepherd boy’s repeated false cries muted his authentic voice-maybe in this case it will take more people to report such crime, as Natasha Doherty did, before the PSNI come running to their rescue.