Police drop ‘terrifying’ hate crime investigation into Maya Forstater

Her experience led her to contact Pearson after reading about her case. Pearson was told by Essex Police on Remembrance Sunday that she was being investigated for inciting racial hatred in a tweet a year ago.

“When I read the article describing her experience as Kafkaesque, that is exactly what my experience was,” Ms Forstater said. “From the start the officer said there was a victim and I was told I had committed a crime but was not told what the tweet was.

“The whole process was Kafkaesque. It was very stressful and intimidating. It felt like I was being interrogated by a political body, and not by the police who were supposed to treat people without fear or favor. So it was terrifying.”

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My first thought was relief, but the possibility of criminal charges was stressful

By Maya Forstater

“In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi,” Judge Julian Knowles wrote in 2020 in his conclusion in the case of Harry Miller v Humberside Police.

The Supreme Court ruled that the freedom of speech of Mr. Miller, a former police officer, was disproportionately affected when an officer visited his workplace to comment on some candidly worded tweets about transgender issues.

The verdict is peppered with quotes from Orwell and warnings against excessive police action. But the Metropolitan Police officer who contacted me last year seemed to view Nineteen Eighty-Four as an operational guideline.

I was threatened with arrest for malicious communication via a tweet. Like Telegraph journalist 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 reported to Charing Cross police station, the investigating officer handed my lawyer a single sheet of paper with half the text of a single message on it.

It was about Kamilla Kamaruddin, a male GP with a practice in London’s East End, who at the age of 53 decided to live ‘as a woman’ and had written articles about his ‘cute’ female patients’ consent to ‘more intimate examinations’ to be carried out’. that they wouldn’t let me do that when I was a male GP.”

I had written a blog post expressing my concerns about this. In it, I pointed out that Kamaruddin described the possibility that patients would still recognize him as a man as “biased and ignorant.”

My tweet said that Kamaruddin “takes pleasure in intimately examining female patients without their consent.” Following these words, I was investigated for over a year, on suspicion of committing a crime defined as sending an “indecent or grossly offensive” message with the intention of “causing fear or anxiety to the recipient ”.

It carries a maximum prison sentence of two years. And then, rather than drop the whole farce, the police referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to make a decision.

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

Apparently she made this decision in early September. The Met had not bothered to inform me.

My first thought was relief. I never thought there was a chance that a court would conclude that my tweet was “highly offensive.” But the possibility of criminal charges hanging over my head was stressful.

The court in the Harry Miller case said: “The effect of the police showing up at his workplace because of his political views should not be underestimated.” It was terrifying that the police threatened me with arrest, questioned me, launched an ‘investigation’ and then referred the case to the CPS.

I am far from the only one who has suffered this kind of harassment. Kellie-Jay Keen, the gender-critical activist, has been questioned by police three times. Caroline Farrow, the journalist, was questioned in 2019 after posting that Susie Green, then the CEO of the trans activist charity Mermaids, had her son “neutered and sterilized while he was a child”, which is factually accurate. I know of other cases, some of which are not in the public domain.

If you forget the distortions of trans activists and instead look at the material facts of my story, and those of Keen and Farrow, you can see that it’s not our words that are offensive: it’s the actions we describe in the hope that they bring them to an end.

It is deeply offensive that gender-challenged children, who might otherwise become homosexual or simply wayward if supported sensibly and sensitively, are instead told that they would benefit from having their breasts and genitals removed.

It is deeply insulting that the NHS and the Care Quality Commission look the other way while female patients are misled, coerced or pressured into accepting intimate examinations from a man presenting as a woman.

It is deeply offensive that police allow male officers who identify as women to search female detainees. These outrages can only be defended by twisting words, forbidding the truth, and harassing and bullying those who refuse to go along with it.

After the initial relief my feelings are of anger and determination. I am now considering what further action I can take to make it less likely that anyone else will be treated in this horrific way.