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Recently Tommy Robinson's daughter was allegedly sexually assaulted by a man at a holiday resort somewhere in the United Kingdom.

Tommy has claimed that he legally prevented the accused from leaving after confronting the man. He allegedly punched the accused in the face several times. He called the police.

Upon arrival, the police interview Tommy's 8 year old daughter who told them what had happened. She stated that the accused "squeezed" her "bum".

My question is, what is a valid reason to not arrest the accused? Secondly, what are the minimum requirements for a man to get arrested for sexual assault in the context of this story, i.e where the "crime-scene" is still "fresh" and all parties involved are present?

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    There's no requirement that the police arrest anyone for any crime, and the police don't need to have a reason to not to. There's a minimum standard before they can arrest someone, but this doesn't place an obligation on the police. Obviously in practice there's certain circumstances where the police will always arrest someone, and circumstances where they never will, even if they can, but there's a pretty big fuzzy grey area in between. Without knowing all the details it's hard to speculate why the police didn't arrest the "accused" in this case, or to say what would've changed their minds.
    – Ross Ridge
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 19:35
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    @Rstew I’d suggest that to avoid downvotes you can remove all references to Tommy Robinson and instead make it a generic question about the events that occurred - “a man was accused of X by a young girl in a public place, was prevented from leaving and subsequently assaulted by a second party, who was the girls father. The police arrested the second party but not the first party. Why?” Leaves all political bias out of it.
    – user28517
    Commented Mar 7, 2020 at 21:06
  • While I could provide a U.S. law based answer, I don't think it would be helpful here and the U.K. analysis is (structurally at least, without regard to the actual answer on the merits reached) not terribly similar.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Dec 1, 2021 at 0:44
  • Note that arrested != charged. You may be arrested, but never charged. For that matter, you might be convicted without ever having been arrested - defendants may simply be informed they are required to show up to court (although a warrant for their arrest will likely be issued if they do not).
    – Clockwork-Muse
    Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 6:52

2 Answers 2

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Police make arrests when they (or a judge) decides to

Police have the legal power to make an arrest if:

  • they witness a crime being committed. Indeed, anyone can make an arrest in this circumstance.
  • they have reason to believe that a crime has been committed.
  • they have a warrant from a judge.

Some reasons why police can, but choose not to make an arrest are:

  • they don’t believe a crime has taken place. Accusations are easy; convictions are hard.
  • they are exercising the discretion they have under the law to not prosecute a crime where it would not be in the public interest. Factors at play include the seriousness of the crime, the availability and strength of the evidence, the police and court resources available, other matters they have before them etc.
  • they do not have sufficient evidence now but will pursue investigations to get more. Arresting someone starts all sorts of legal clocks ticking and if they can’t bring their case in time the defendant will walk.
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There is the matter of who the police would believe. A jailbird like Robinson, who has just assaulted a man and has to come up with an excuse to avoid going to jail again, and who had plenty of time to prep his young daughter? Probably not.

See for example http://tommyrobinsonfacts.com .

UK police will be very, very hesitant to arrest anyone because Tommy Robinson says so.

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    @Rstew I don’t know the people involved, nor have I seen the video but it is well known that children can be led (intentionally or otherwise) to say and even believe things happened that didn’t happen. Children’s testimony is a difficult matter for law enforcement and courts to deal with.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Mar 7, 2020 at 11:45
  • youtube.com/watch?v=Lan4NZt9Tbo&t=47s Watch this and tell me if you think this child has been "coached" or in any other way deeply influenced to make up what she said...
    – Rstew
    Commented Mar 7, 2020 at 14:19
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    Experts on child psychology get to perform interviews and obtain swaths of information about a child's life and even then can't get it right all the time. What makes you think that you, with a single video on YouTube, can justify an even better decision?
    – user4657
    Commented Mar 7, 2020 at 20:45

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