Leslie Weeps — Ulrika Erupts, shouted the front page headline in the Daily Mirror yesterday. The story was accompanied by two photographs which contrasted the television celebrities’ fortunes more eloquently than any words.
One depicted a near-to-collapse John Leslie, tears dripping off his nose, as he sobbed at being cleared of indecent assault while admitting his life had been ruined.
The other was of Ulrika Jonsson, the bride-to-be whose casual rape claim prompted Leslie’s nine-month police investigation, grinning as she drove away from her luxury home. “This is getting on my f*****g tits now”, she apparently said. “I never accused anybody of anything.”
The thing is, Ulrika, you did. In unflinching detail, as it happens, in an autobiography that you rushed out to cash in on your affair with Sven-Göran Eriksson. The alleged rapist was not named, granted, but you told us — for £15 in hardback — that he was a fellow television presenter who pulled off your clothes and raped you so violently that, according to the newspaper which paid handsomely to serialise the book, you felt like you had been “riding a horse all night or taking part in a major porno movie” and you required hospital treatment.
If that happened, and no one is suggesting it did not, then it was a despicable crime. Most women understand why, like Jonsson, the vast majority of rape victims do not complain to the police. Rape cases too often boil down to one person’s word against another. The prospect of giving intimate evidence in court months in the future when all you want to do is forget heaps insult on injury.
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It is not Jonsson’s fault that Matthew Wright blurted out Leslie’s name on live television. Nor is it her problem that the “revelation” prompted other women to come forward and complain that they, too, had been molested by Leslie, sparking a media frenzy which resulted in his being dismissed.
But why, as she watched the witch-hunt unfold, did she keep so resolutely silent, refusing to confirm or deny whether Leslie was her alleged rapist? Surely, if he was, she would want to help other victims in getting him banged to rights? If he was not, why not speak up and stop him being thrown to the dogs? By saying nothing but continuing to play up her ladette image (as Leslie lurched into depression, Jonsson appeared on Comic Relief girlishly shrieking: “Can we have alcohol and sex? I’m a maneater!”) Jonsson has seemed to treat her ordeal as a showbiz game, a giant version of Wicked Whispers, the gossip columns which appear in tabloid newspapers and throw up tantalising morsels of scandal without fully identifying the celebrity involved.
It is understandable that Jonsson kept quiet about a hideous experience for 14 years, but what message does it give to then say: “You can now read all about it if you buy my book”? It smacks of Carry On, feeding the dangerous notion that women are not really very traumatised by “date rape”. It buoys up misogynists who believe that the only “real” type of rape is when a masked stranger leaps out of a dark alley with a knife.
Leslie’s career is tarnished, but at least he recouped some of his losses by selling his story to the Daily Express. Women — or rather, rape victims of the future — are the real losers in this sorry saga. Scotland Yard’s refusal to disclose the mysterious “new information” from its chief witness, which made it “impossible for the case to continue”, is deeply damaging.
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“Is she a nutter?” “Did she make it all up?” was the feverish speculation as the case collapsed. And will that not play into the hands of the prejudiced minority who think, deep down, that women routinely cry rape? It is difficult enough to get women to report sex attacks — only an estimated 7 per cent find the courage to do so. Allegations of rape are increasing, convictions are decreasing. The sex offender holds the advantage.
By all accounts Leslie is no angel. Jonsson, conversely, is no devil. But by making the allegation, perhaps to make her book more saleable, she caused a domino effect, a Bonfire of the Vanities which had disastrous repercussions on other people’s lives.
She should have taken responsibility for that and told everyone the whole story.