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More serious crimes? Of course there are more serious crimes, but indecent assault is quite serious, which is why it is triable by a jury. This man, like so many, was able to go on committing crimes because the law then protected him. It is certain that he knew that, otherwise he would not have risked it.
The law protected him, not because he was famous or because complainants would never be believed, but because it required every sexual offence to be corroborated. The law on corroboration became so complicated that Lord Diplock, a judge in the highest court in the land, said, in 1973, that any trial judge's direction to the jury on it "bordered on unintelligible to the ordinary person" It was rooted in the old belief that a woman would allege rape or sexual assault to protect her reputation or for no reason at all. It required the jury to be told that they should not convict unless they found that there was independent evidence (such as injuries ) which tended to prove the crime.
The rule was abolished in 1994. The thinking behind it, however, persisted for some years in the minds of police officers and even prosecutors.