No Man Is Safe!

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 754, 10 June 1893, Page 2

No Man Is Safe!

The caße of the man Edward Latimer Clark, who was acquitted at the Supreme Court of Auckland on a charge of indecent assault upon a child of twelve years, is a very starting one. Action was taken against the man on no better ground than the contradictory statements of two young girls of doubtful character and loose behaviour ; he was committed for trial and hie character consequently blackened by the charges made against him, and then, when the case came on for trial, the prosecution broke doww absolutely. There was not a shadow of doubt on the mind of anyone that the girls were lying, and it was moreover as clear as daylight from their own admissions that they had been inspired concerning the evidence they were to give, before the case came to trial.

It is not often that a judge expresses his opinion of a case in a more emphatic and stinging way than Mr Justice Conolly did in discharging this man Clark from custody. Addressing the little girls Mary Martha Butler and Lucie Butler, he said : 'You have heard' what the gentlemen of the jury have said : that thoy don't believe a word of the evidence in this case. You are two very wicked, lying little girls. That is the opinion of the jury and me. Go away. 1 How very strongly the Judge must have felt before be uttered such scathing words of condemnation. And be it remembered, too, that he has not a veßtige of sympathy or compassion in his heart for men convicted of assaults upon women or girls.

It is not my intention to .express any opinion concerning the part Clark has played in this matter. But, having read the whole of the evidence adduced at the trial, and which was not reported in the daily papers because it was unfit for publication, I am suiprised that any man could have been arrested or committed for trial upon it Moreover, it is unaccountable to me that a grand jury whose conscience would not allow it to return a true bill in the prize-fight manslaughter ease should have swallowed such a mass of contradictions and improbabilities as they must have swallowed when they sent back a true bill against Edward Latimer Clark for indecent assault.

The very antecedents of the girl upon whom the assault was alleged to have been committed are shady. Then, again, her habits should have prompted police officers of ordinary shrewdness, unless indeed they were anxious to secure con^ victions at any cost, to discount her statements. Leaving out of question the many contradictions and irreconcilable statements in the testimony of the two girls, look at these facts. They say with all assurance and with no semblance of a blush of shame that they met this man, a stranger, near the Kauri Timber mill, and made an appointment with him for that night ; that this appointment was kept by them ; that they went to the dock er. closure, and that subsequently the accused gave them money — sixpence to the girl assaulted and two shillings to the other girl, as an inducement to hold her tongue; that they then went to Darkie Cox'p and had tea ; that they had often gone there for tea before ; that afterwards they went to the vicinity of the Opera House — and here there is a divergence in the statements. One girl says she proceeded straight home in the tram while the other — the girl who a-ccuses Clark — admitted in her evidence at the Police Court that she went to a section at the rear of the Opera House with some boyß, one of whom assaulted her in the way alleged against Clark. She denied this subsequently, but her very denial shows how unworthy of belief any of her statements are.

It mast be remembered that these girls are the children of poor parents. And yet they occasionally went to Darfeie Coxa and had their tea. At whose expense? And rode home in tram-cars. Of course, even this costs money. And made appointments to meet strange men after nightfall, and associated with boys in the neighbourhood of the Opera House. Nay, more, the sweet bit of innocence who puts herself forward as the victim of this assault naively confessed during her cross-examination at the Police Court that she had told the accused Clark, on another occasion, that through her instrumentality another man was forced to pay £5 for doing the same thing. She also admitted that her mother had ' hammered ' her and had told her to say it was Clark who had done this to her. And these were only two or three of several equally startling admissions.

And it was on the accusation of a girl of such low morals and such peculiar habits that the police were moved to deprive Edward Latimer Clark of his liberty and blacken his character by an infamous charge which they could not substantiate. This is a most serious matter. Very little enquiry should have convinced any police officer of ordinary intelligence and fair judgment that such a serious step, involving bo much injury to the position and prospects of the accused, was unwarrantable upon such slander and questionable grounds. But the fact that more caution was not exercised when such giave issues were at stake is in itßelf prvma facie evidence that indecent haste was shown in commencing such a momentous prosecution, and suggests the suspicion that the officer was, as police-officers frequently are, too anxious in his desire to distinguish himself by getting a conviction in another good case

The point that I wish to bring out and to emphasize with all the power of which my pen is capable is this : that what happened to Edward Latimer Clark (rightly or wrongly) may happen to any man, and that that man may be perfectly innocent all the time. Given a couple of • little lying girls '—babies, or almost babies, in years, bat past-mistresses in viee — and what man's liberty is safe? Should not the police be extremely guarded in taking aotion in these cases ? Ought not the testimony of vicious children, often the offspring of vicious and

criminal parents, to . be thoroughly sifted I and subj ected to the severest tests before an information is laid, and possibly a perfectly iunocent man is arrested and dragged into Court to clear his character as best he may ?

These charges— let me repeat that I express no opinion as to Clark's conduct or connection with this affair— are far easier made by ' lying girls ' or women, and the police, than they are disproved by the persons accused. In the caee of this man Clark, the original charge was a much more serious one than that which was finally preferred against him. The grand jury threw out the first count of the indictment, but found a true bill on the second count, the result being that the accused was charged with the minor offence of indecent assault. But let us suppose for a moment that the girls bad been oleverer than they were, and had woven a tale free from inconsistencies and improbabilities, and upon the various points of which both of them agreed. What would Clark's fate have "been under such circumstances? In all probability, he would now be a convicted felon, serving a long sentence for a shameful crime of which he was improperly accused— a victim of unprincipled ' blackmail. 1