Police drop ‘appalling’ hate crime investigation into Maya Forstater

Her experience led her to contact Pearson after reading about his case. Pearson was told on Sunday that he was under investigation by Essex police for allegedly inciting racial hatred in a tweet he posted a year ago.

“When I read the article describing her experience in a Kafkaesque way, that was exactly my experience,” Ms. Forstater said. “From the beginning the police were saying there was a victim and I was told I had committed a crime but I wasn’t told what the tweet was.

“The whole process was Kafkaesque. It was very stressful and scary. I felt as if I was being interrogated by a political institution, not by the police, who are supposed to treat people without fear or favor. That’s why it was so scary.”

My first thought was to relax, but the possibility of a criminal complaint was stressful

By Maya Forstater

“There has never been a Cheka, Gestapo or Stasi in this country,” Mr Justice Julian Knowles wrote in his conclusion to the 2020 case of Harry Miller v Humberside Police.

The High Court ruled that the freedom of expression of Mr Miller, a former police officer, was disproportionately interfered with when a police officer visited his workplace to speak out about some tweets explicitly about transgender issues.

The resolution includes quotes from Orwell and warnings against excessive police intervention. But the Metropolitan Police officer who contacted me last year seemed to view Nineteen Eighty-Four as an operational guide.

I was threatened with arrest for malicious communication over a tweet. Like Telegraph reporter Allison Pearson, I was told that the police could not reveal the reason for the investigation because the “victim” would be “open to further comment”.

When I finally went to Charing Cross police station, the investigating officer handed my solicitor a single piece of paper with half the text of a single post on it.

It was about Kamilla Kamaruddin, who had a practice in London’s East End and decided to live “as a woman” at the age of 53 and wrote articles about her “cute” female patients being allowed “more intimate examinations”. “When I became a male practitioner, they did not allow me.”

I wrote a blog post expressing my concerns about this. In it, I noted that Kamaruddin described the possibility that patients might still recognize him as male as “prejudiced and ignorant.”

My tweet said that Kamaruddin “liked to closely examine female patients without their consent.” Because of these remarks, I was investigated for over a year on suspicion of committing an offense defined as sending an “indecent or grossly offensive” message intended to “cause distress or alarm to the recipient”.

It is punishable by imprisonment for up to two years. Then, instead of putting the whole nonsense aside, the police referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a decision.

This week, 15 months after I first heard from them, the Metropolitan Police finally called me to tell me that the CPS had decided to take no further action.

He apparently made this decision in early September. The Met didn’t bother to inform me.

My first thought was to relax. I never considered there was a possibility that a court would conclude that my tweet was “extremely offensive”. However, the possibility of a criminal complaint against me was stressful.

The court in the Harry Miller case said: “The impact of police arriving at a workplace because of their political views should not be underestimated.” It was appalling that the police threatened to arrest me, questioned me, launched an “investigation” for over a year, and then referred the case to the CPS.

I am not the only person who has experienced this type of harassment. Gender critical activist Kellie-Jay Keen was questioned three times by police. Journalist Caroline Farrow was questioned in 2019 after writing that Susie Green, CEO of trans activist charity Mermaids, had spayed and neutered her son “while he was still a child”, which was actually true. I know of other cases, some of which are not public.

When you forget the distortions of trans activists and look instead at the material facts of my stories and those of Keen and Farrow, you can see that it is not our words that are offensive: it is the actions we describe in the hope of mobilizing them that are offensive. to end them.

It is deeply offensive to tell gender-distressed children, who might otherwise grow up gay or who might just be interesting if supported logically and sensitively, that they would benefit from having their breasts and genitals removed instead.

It is deeply offensive that the NHS and the Care Quality Commission accept intimate examinations by a man presenting as a woman while female patients are being deceived, coerced or coerced.

It is extremely offensive for police forces to allow male police officers who identify as women to strip-search female detainees. These insults can only be defended by twisting words, forbidding the truth, and harassing and bullying those who refuse to comply.

After initial relief, my emotions turned to anger and determination. I am now considering what steps I should take to reduce the likelihood of others being treated in this disgusting way.