A commuter has spoken about the total nightmare he’s been put through this last year after a total stranger accused him of sexual assault despite there being no evidence to back up her claim.
Featured Image VIA
51-year-old Matt Pearson was walking through London’s Waterloo station — the busiest station in the UK — at rush hour and bumped into the unnamed actress in December 2014.
She contacted police accusing Matt of “penetrating” her (with his fingers) for “two or three seconds” after he barged into her left shoulder.
Image VIA
Here are three CCTV stills that have been released covering the three seconds it took these two to walk past each other (thus already rendering her accusation questionable at the very least):
(Matt under the red triangle, the woman under the blue one)
Despite those telling images, Matt was put on trial for three days before his name was cleared. He described the whole ordeal as a “Kafkaesque nightmare”.
Matt says:
I would have had to crouch down, put my hand up the woman’s skirt… penetrate her, take my hand out again… all while holding the newspaper and walking along the concourse… It’s preposterous… It is against everything I believe in as a human being. I did nothing.
On top of that, the actress failed to pick him out in an ID parade, plus there were no witnesses and no forensic evidence.
Image VIA
The jury cleared Matt after just 90 minutes, but for him, being cleared isn’t good enough:
For me, half a second turned into a year of hell. I feel I have undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state.
The Crown Prosecution Service defended its decision to take the case to court:
There was sufficient evidence for this case to proceed to court and progress to trial. We respect the decision of the jury.
Obviously any time a person claims they’ve been sexually assaulted it should be taken seriously, but isn’t all the evidence you need right there in those images? It took one second for them to walk past each other and he had both hands full. Was this girl really so upset about being barged into that she was cool with ruining this guy’s life over it? What an absolute terror.
For a NSFL look at what happened at the man who was caught sexually assaulting a child by the child’s dad – click HERE.