They could also have reported the case at the time of Jay’s funeral or when the coroner’s verdict was released but again refused.Įxactly a year on from Jay’s suicide, his mother Karin then took her own life, after being left distraught by Jays’ death. Once the story broke nationally, various opinion columns then later appeared in the weekend’s press featuring wider examinations of the issues raised by Jay’s death, again the BBC didn’t bother to do anything similar on any of its platforms. They then failed to reported the inquest in October 2015, not only omitting it from the UK section of their website but even ignoring it at the local level.
Firstly there was Jay’s suicide itself, which while not notable on a national scale could have been reported by the BBC’s local South news division. The number of missed opportunities for the BBC to report the story is quite frankly astounding. In the eyes of the BBC, adult female perpetrators of false rape allegations are simply of greater value than even child victims of the very same crimes. The BBC had seemingly endless sympathy for this criminal featuring the story on their main news page again and again, with headlines that didn’t reflect the truth in the slightest and that we at HEqual forced them to retract. De Freitas was of course not a victim of false rape allegation like Jay, but a false rape accuser, whose victim had to fight long and hard and spend vast sums of money to bring to justice. Its sexist bias became all the more extraordinary when the case was contrasted with the BBC’s wall to wall reporting of the suicide of Eleanor De Freias, an event that occurred at almost exactly the same time. The story was reported by every national paper bar the Guardian and it was quite astonishing that the BBC took the same stance as that paper and pretended the case didn’t exist.
Jay’s death was first reported in July 2015 in the local press and the case hit the national headlines in October 2015 once the full facts of the case emerged. His accuser withdrew the allegation after two weeks, but the damage had already been done and Jay sadly took his own life. Jay was a 17 year old boy from Southampton who was falsely accused of rape. Well, it took over a year, but we’re extremely pleased to announce that the BBC has finally backed down and reported on the case of Jay Cheshire, a story we’ve been demanding they report since October 2015.