Recently, the BBC apologized for interviewing me. They were wrong for doing so.
Following the Ghislaine Maxwell conviction, Britain’s BBC reached out to me for an interview, as other media did.
During that televised interview and others, I explicitly disclosed that Virginia Giuffre had falsely accused me and many others of having sex with her.
I did not present myself as a neutral legal expert, but rather as victim of a false accusation, challenging the credibility of my accuser.
I commented that the Maxwell prosecutors were smart not to have called Giuffre as a witness because she lacked credibility.
The Maxwell prosecutors are aware of the evidence of Giuffre’s lack of credibility because I provided it to them.
The media, including BBC, had previously failed to report on why the Maxwell prosecutors had decided not to call Maxwell’s most prominent public accuser as a witness against her.
This was an important point, especially to British viewers who are obviously interested in Giuffre’s accusations and lawsuit about Prince Andrew.
If prosecutors have doubts about the credibility of Prince Andrew’s accuser, the British public should be made aware of the basis for those doubts.
They should also know that I, too, have been accused — along with many other high-profile people, including Sen. George Mitchell, Amb. Bill Richardson, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and billionaire Leslie Wexner — by Giuffre. So, I told the BBC viewers the truth about why prosecutors decided not to vouch for Giuffre’s credibility.
No one was misled about my interest in discrediting my false accuser.
So why did the BBC apologize for interviewing me?
Obviously because of the pushback they received.
One such politician, Labor MP Nadia Whittome, demanded that “BBC should not give a platform to people accused of child sexual abuse,” because “we have a responsibility to believe people when they disclose sexual abuse …”
In other words, even those who have been falsely accused should be silenced and only their accusers — even if there is evidence of their mendacity — should be heard and believed.
In this case and many others we are witnessing a new form of McCarthyism, similar to the 1950s when people were falsely accused of a communist affiliation and saw their whole lives destroyed.
Today, I believe that all sides of the important issues we are discussing should be heard.
Alleged victims should not be silenced, but neither should those who credibly dispute their allegations.
There should be no presumption of guilt as Ms. Whittome proposes.
Indeed, what she proposes is more than a mere presumption. It is a certainty assured by censorship of any opposing or dissenting views.
I welcome a full and complete investigation by the BBC of their interview with me, as I have called for a full investigation by the FBI of Giuffre’s accusations.
I certainly did nothing wrong by accepting the BBC invitation to be interviewed. I will continue to speak out about the false accusations against me whether on BBC or other media, especially if the media persists in its refusal to investigate the credibility of those who have made serious and credibility disputed allegations.
The public has the right to know the whole truth. A free society requires it.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and and the author most recently of "The Case for Color Blind Equality in the Age of Identity Politics," and "The Case for Vaccine Mandates," Hot Books (2021). Read more of Alan Dershowitz''s reports — Here.
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