Crown Prosecution Service not trusted due to Stonewall link

May 26, 2020 by

by Carys Moseley, Christian Concern:

A teenage girl is threatening legal action against the Crown Prosecution Service for being biased over transgender issues due to its membership of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme. She is being represented by Safe Schools Alliance and Fair Cop. In the past week she had previously succeeded in getting the CPS to withdraw its guidance for schools on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, on the grounds that it did not take her single-sex based rights seriously.

CPS promised review not trusted

In response to the first legal threat the CPS had said that it would conduct an internal review of the anti-bullying guidance. However, lawyers acting on her behalf say that the CPS’ position is based on misrepresenting the Equality Act 2010 and that this in turn is due to it taking its cue from Stonewall.

The girl told The Times that she does not trust the Crown Prosecution Service:

“I do not believe the CPS can be fair as they are listening to Stonewall, who are misrepresenting what the law says about my rights to female-only spaces. I do not trust them to focus on the safety, privacy and dignity of girls, or to balance the rights of all young people in schools.”

CPS intrusion into school policy and discipline

The CPS guidance says that if ‘incidents’ could be shown to be motivated by ‘hatred’, e.g. hostility to a person’s transgender identity, they should be treated more seriously. It also says that if this motivation could be proven, then a judge or magistrate should take it into account when sentencing. Lawyers acting for the teenage girl say that this goes far beyond the Equality Act 2010.

It is important to realise here that the CPS guidance means that criminal law has been allowed to encroach on schools’ anti-bullying policies. Not all bullying constitutes a criminal offence. In addition the fact that the CPS – which is very close to the police – has been allowed to draw up anti-bullying guidelines in the first place raises serious questions as it draws the police more and more into schools to regulate speech.

Read here

 

Related Posts

Tags

Share This