WHEN Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, suggested yesterday that Parliament might ponder anonymity for rape defendants, he was expressing a somewhat pious hope. In the world of showbusiness, anonymity has a distinctly leaky quality.
Ulrika Jonsson is a woman widely famous for being herself and not very much else, apart from having her name linked romantically with her fellow Swede Sven-Göran Eriksson. This did not deter her last autumn from publishing her autobiography, Honest.
In it, she claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a fellow television presenter. The incident had happened many years before, when she was a teenager presenting the weather for TV-am.
She did not report the matter to the police. She did not name her alleged assailant, and still refuses to do so.
Whatever good reasons women may have for not spilling the beans on a sexual assault, a publishing industry exists on the back of the sex lives of B-list celebrities.
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Within the foetid atmosphere of television, a name was soon being bandied about. Ms Jonsson, with a book to sell, was challenged by Jonathan Ross on his chat show that the name of the mystery rapist was known. She stonewalled.
Things changed a few days later when Matthew Wright, host of a mildly obscure programme on Five, let slip — although a dose of scepticism should be applied to any such alleged “accidents” — that the mystery man was John Leslie, co-presenter of Granada’s breakfast show, This Morning.
The tabloids suddenly uncovered a profusion of women prepared to tell how they had been victims of, or had narrowly escaped, the various sexual predations of Leslie. Oddly, the first destination of almost all the women was the press and not the police. Even of those who did eventually make formal complaints to the police, most were unwilling to give evidence.
By last December three women had eventually gone to the police. Leslie himself went to the police voluntarily and was questioned for six hours over allegations that he indecently assaulted a woman in 1997, raped another in 1998 and indecently assaulted a third in 2001. The latter two allegations were not pursued.
But the former piano tuner and one-time presenter of Blue Peter was powerless to prevent his life crumbling. He lost his £250,000-a-year job with Granada because, he claimed, police had told him not to discuss the case with his employers.
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The fame and recognition that he had enjoyed suddenly turned round and bit him on the backside; he had to become a virtual recluse, hiding at the houses of friends and wearing a pulled-down baseball cap to hide his face.
Leslie can now consider his options. Honour might be better served if Ms Jonsson were now to consider hers.