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Katie Price ‘rape’: police ask questions
Is the reality TV star’s allegation genuine - or a PR stunt that’s gone too far?
Was Katie Price, the former topless model and reality TV star who used to go by the name Jordan, really raped several years ago "by a famous celebrity"? Or has a PR ruse by one of the country's most adroit self-publicists got out of hand?
Police say they will question Price over allegations she has made that she was raped by an unnamed man with whom she went on a few dates some time before she became married.
Price, 31, has said she will "absolutely never" name the man and had no intention of reporting the matter officially. But after it emerged that she let slip the alleged attacker's name off-air during filming of her ITV2 reality show, What Katie Did Next, Surrey police felt bound to look into it.
A police spokesman said: "We are trying to establish whether any offence has occurred. We need to see her because very serious allegations have surfaced in the media."
Price made the sex attack accusation after newspapers raised questions about her new boyfriend Alex Reid allegedly filming a rape scene for an upcoming movie.
What many observers are asking is why, if it is true, she never reported it to police at the time. And if she was raped, why is significant that he is "a famous celebrity"? Would she have reported him if he had not been a celebrity?
The situation is reminiscent of the 2003 Ulrika Jonsson case. Another eager self-publicist, she claimed in her autobiography that she had been raped by an anonymous man. She never revealed his identity, but the name of TV presenter John Leslie was bandied about media circles and eventually leaked by Matthew Wright, host of Channel 5's The Wright Stuff, as the alleged culprit. Leslie denied the accusation and was never charged, but his career and reputation have suffered as a result.
ITV staffers who heard Price let slip her alleged attacker's name are under strict instructions not to repeat it. But media watchers feel certain it will be posted or blurted out soon. The question is whether Price will be found to have harboured a genuine and painful secret - or will be vilified for wasting police time and doing genuine rape victims no favours. ·
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I hope you are not suggesting Ms Easton, that women who deliberately make false accusations against men of this nature shoudl be spared prosecution and jail. Men have every bit as much right as women to be protected. You suggest that the conviction rate is 5%. It is not. The conviction rate for rape if a case comes to court is actually far higher than that but it has come down in recent years as jurors recognise the increasing number of false accusations being made and the hysteria that feminists have created around a subject that some people deal with emotionally rather than objectively. The 5% figure is concocted out of estimates of the number of women who go to the police claiming they have been raped, then the number of these allegations that are first taken seriously, then sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, then if the merits are still considered worthwhile, taken to court and then a guilty or not guitly verdict returned. You are possibly misinformed by the feminist media. I have as much of a right to be protected from false allegations, as you have a right to be protected against rape. Only the feminist movement, which is increasingly exposed as largely fraudulent, even driving many of its original exponents away with its radical and undeniable hatred of men, are suggesting that women who fail to see a guilty verdict returned against a man they accused will be then automatically hauled before a court. Only cases where it was thought a guilty verdict could be obtained against a woman who has been caught blatantly lying to destroy an innocent man's life and see him sent to prison would be prosecuted. As for the women who would be telling the truth for whom this would be a nightmare. It would be no more or less a nightmare than that which innocent men suffer from. It will never be a perfect system but the scales of justice have been imbalanced on this particular crime for a long time now.
I agree with you Mr Peter but the unfortunate thing is that, just as it is incredibly hard to prove rape which is why most raped women do not even report the crime and the conviction rate is something around 5% I understand, so would it be just as hard to prove that false allegations have been made, unless, of course, if her case failed in court, the woman was automatically charged with false accusation - that way we could get the reporting rate down to nil! In my experience most women who have lived anything but the most sheltered lives have been coerced into having sex by a combination of physical, situational, emotional or chemical means, in the grey area between refusal and reluctant consent (in the sort of situations that Helen Mirren described a few months ago, such as being locked in a room or car until complying), they dont report it, they learn to protect themselves better in future, they get over it and they move on but they dont forget it. It could well be that this is the kind of situation Jordan is in, she probably wishes she had kept her mouth shut now. Knowing as they do the vanishingly small likelihood of proving a rape case at all, especially at this distance in time, the police would appear to be publicity-seeking too as they are usually only too happy to have rapees refrain from making an official complaint.
I have no idea whether Ms Price is a rape victim. If she is then my heart goes out to her. It's universally recognised that rapists should receive harsh treatment from the courts. This case though, or possible lack of one, does bring up an issue that no Member of Parliament is prepared to run with, which is false accusations. It would be foolish to try comparing which was worse, being raped, or being jailed for months on end with fellow inmates wanting to kill you, your job taken and your marriage ruined after being falsely accused of rape. However, in a fair minded society, surely victims of false accusations and the rest of us deserve to be protected from people who can be shown to have deliberately made false and ruinous accusations of this sort against innocent people. Proper jail sentences should be brought in to punish people this wicked.