I Am 'John': My Ten-Year Journey Through False Allegations and Wrongful Conviction

'John' - Sean Bw Parker

In early 2026, Dr Michael Naughton of the Empowering The Innocent (ETI) organisation and the University of Bristol published an academic article scrutinising how the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have been charging allegations of rape and sexual assault in cases of ‘voluntary inebriation’. Dr Naughton’s key study was the case of 'John', who was given an eight and a half year prison sentence in 2018 under precisely these circumstances. This will come as no surprise to many in the false allegations world, but I am John.

Shortly after my release from Leyhill open prison in 2022 I started communicating with others in the false allegations movement, including the FACT (Falsely Accused in the Context of Trust) organisation, and one of their members Jonathan King. Jonathan is a well-known figure in pop culture, and when I happily reported to my probation officer that we were in contact regarding fighting wrongful convictions, she promptly added a condition to my licence that I was not to be in contact with any ‘known sex offender’.

Leaving aside the fact that ‘sex offender’ is an inaccurate pejorative (people convicted of sex offences, or PCOSOs, is more accurate). How I was supposed to know this detail about everyone with whom I came into contact was never explained? At the same time, following some interviews I gave about my case, she added another condition not to speak about my case in the media. But now the licence period is up, and ‘John’ can speak freely (without the Sword of Damocles of recall to prison that most former prisoners have hanging over them).

The CCRC (Criminal Cases Review Commission) was set up in the 1990s, as a response to the outcry following the cases of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four miscarriages of justice, as an independent watchdog to make sure similar didn’t happen again. More than a quarter of a century later the CCRC’s rejection rate is around 98%, and stories abound of its refusing blatant miscarriages of justice due to its ‘real possibility test’ (of being overturned at the CoA). The suspicion was that they weren’t independent at all, and had become a prop for the court system rather than the watchdog as intended.

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, I was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for (category two) rape and sexual assault, following allegations made at an arts venue I was running in 2016, by a jury of nine women and three men. I maintained innocence from the moment of my arrest, just before Christmas of that year, but was turned down in my application to appeal due to, in their view, not presenting any new evidence not presented at trial.

The facts agreed in court were that my complainant, a friend, and I had been drinking together for ten hours, were equally inebriated, and that she had willingly drunk all her own drinks, before arranging to stay the night. The next day her boyfriend, whom I barely knew, ‘pushed and pushed her to comply’ with his reporting this to the police. The prosecution’s case was that she merely ‘submitted to sex’, despite the fact we were both in the same state of voluntary intoxication.

‘Happy sounds’ were reported as being heard by a housemate when asked the morning after, who mysteriously changed his story to ‘can’t be sure’ during the 14 month wait on bail while the case was being investigated. The prosecution relied heavily on ‘bad character’ evidence, this being that there had been a similar false allegation - a ‘kiss’, reported by another boyfriend, which the complainant was shown on CCTV to have started - now also being tried having been sat on file for six months. The bundling together of these two false allegations, reported by angry boyfriends, was part of then-Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders’ crusade to increase convictions for RASSO allegations, but it was for disclosure failings in the Liam Allan case that she received her marching orders (straight into a job in Conflict Resolution at Linklaters legal firm).

As advised by the CCRC’s big yellow posters at Dartmoor Prison, I applied to the body following the appeal refusal in 2019. While it is maddeningly difficult to apply for anything official from confined circumstances, they did reply in reasonably good time in my case, to the envy of a handful of my fellow PMIs (Prisoners Maintaining Innocence). Both my first appeal and application to the CCRC were in handwriting, based on my memory of trial - not being able to afford £15,000 for the court transcripts - and the common sense of natural justice.

The CCRC application was also refused, due to my apparently failing to provide anything they considered to be ‘new’, even though I then didn’t have access to the new information I suspected might be in my legal notes at home. I officially complained about my legal services, turned down; I complained to the Independent Office of Police Complaints, not upheld; but made sure not to become too much of a ‘vexatious complainant’, giving any authority body an excuse to entirely slam the door.

I had started corresponding with Margaret Gardener of the Falsely Accused Support Organisation (FASO) after picking up the organisation’s leaflet from a prison reception, and she sent me a copy of Michael Naughton’s book Claims Of Innocence, which became something of a sacred text in terms of clarity, frankness, and possible ways forward.

When I was finally released in 2022, I got in touch with Dr Naughton, and realised my letters to him and his co-author Gabe Tan hadn’t got through the prison post room. I also got in touch with FASO Chair JM, who immediately started preparing a professionally time-lined appeal for my case. We soon presented this to the CCRC as my second application, with new evidence including that of a witness dropping out due to potentially being ‘leaned on’, an investigation biased in favour of the complainant, and police malpractice regarding investigation and a mishandled timeline.

This was again refused, due to our new evidence being deemed not to be sufficient in potentially persuading any of the appeal judges of something having gone wrong at trial. With Dr Naughton, we complained about this, and the complaints manager acknowledged there might indeed be ‘something to see’ here, and we requested a meeting with my new Case Review Manager.

This CRM assured us he would do everything he could to make sure we got to the bottom of what had gone wrong, but we soon after heard back from his overseer that they wouldn’t be investigating, let alone referring, after all. We complained about this too, to be told by the same complaints manager that the CCRC had followed all their procedures, so they would be doing nothing more.

It became increasingly clear with each obstacle that process was more important than justice in the British criminal justice system. Neither my local (Labour) MP Beccy Cooper nor the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PHSO) were interested in holding the CCRC to account over their evidenced negligence.

Having attended the presentation of Dr Lucy Welsh’s report on users’ experiences of the CCRC at the House of Commons, and briefly meeting interim Chair Dame Vera Baird, I decided to directly bring the process to her desk, as below.

'Dear Dame Vera

You might remember me from the House of Commons presentation of Lucy Welsh's report, I said hello afterwards and said I was there to observe for Empowering the Innocent. Dr Michael Naughton, with whom I work at ETI, is cc'd in. Apologies for contacting you on this email address, but your CCRC email wasn't listed on the website.

We recently received a refusal to uphold our complaint at my second application to the CCRC from ______. This refusal, attached, was based on the fact that we had been through the appropriate processes, so there was nothing more to do. This is despite the fact that ______ had upheld our complaint on the same facts some months before.

Michael Naughton, as a leading expert in his field, wouldn't be supporting me if he didn't think my case was a miscarriage of justice. ______ wouldn't have upheld our earlier complaint if she didn't acknowledge there was a problem, and ______ [the CRM] wouldn't have led us to believe he would do all he could to investigate what had gone wrong. The Law Commission recommends that there be a 'potential miscarriage of justice test' be applied rather than the Real Possibility Test.

Many CCRC-watchers we know were hoping for some more dynamism from your tenure after the problematic CCRC headlines of the recent past. The simple question as to why my main witness pulled out of testifying, which the CCRC could use its powers to investigate, hasn't been answered. Therefore we obviously think justice has not been done in my case.

Thank you for your time and attention, I look forward to your response.'

But response came there none.

In 2026 Dr Stuart Waiton of Abertay University was reporting on the Justice for Innocent Men Scotland (JIMS) campaign, drawing attention to biased alleged rape trials in Scotland. For Waiton’s trouble, he was harassed on campus and had his office daubed with graffiti. Concurrently, however, the UK Supreme Court agreed with Waiton and JIMS on judicial bias in these kinds of cases (’getting the numbers up’). It’s high time the Supreme Court looks at the similar situation in England and Wales.

Victim Impact Statement:

The recent paper by Dr Michael Naughton of Empowering the Innocent (ETI) has shown how my being charged for rape in 2017 was unlawful under the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act 2010. My having a 'high baseline cheerfulness' does not detract from the catastrophic effects both the false allegations and wrongful convictions have had on my subsequent life. I spent four and a half years in prison, and the next four and a half under licence in the community.

I have a 25-plus page Probation Journal listing the problems in detail, but briefly I have been excluded from an editor's job by probation forcing disclosure of my conviction that wasn’t asked for; had numerous art organisations, magazines and musical partners not call back or discontinue arrangements after they've googled me; been subject to more false allegations by non-investigation by probation of complaints against me; had unnecessary and disproportionate probation conditions added to my licence as a result of these false allegations, including a requirement to take a polygraph test (which in fact only measure emotional responses to fallacious scenarios).

The intimidating tactics of those in the public gallery at my trial showed I had been ‘ganged up on’ by certain parties, coordinated by my former co-director at the Seafish venue. I have had my family cut in two into those 'on my side' and those not; am required to constantly double-check every social media post, new friendship, job or opportunity application for association, 'offence to victims', or anything else I have to predict probation wouldn't approve of; and the knowledge that even if I were to have my convictions overturned roughly half of people who research my public profile will have 'rapist' as a headline identifier.

So, yes, the effects are calamitous, and similar would and has ended the lives of others. I will never let the grief over this be the 'main thing' in my life, as I am not am not a rapist and know there is much more to life, but anyone claiming I'm 'doing fine' because of any public presentation should think how they would react to going through a similar experience.

Having said that, visit any Wetherspoons in the country and every other table will likely have a ‘John’ sitting at it.

By Sean Bw Parker

The article by Dr Naughton is:

Naughton, M. (2025) 'Misanthropic Feminism: How and Why the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Sexually Discriminates Against Men in Uncorroborated Rape Cases where the Complainant Claims that they were Voluntarily Intoxicated.' Critical Perspectives: Journal of the Institute for Critical Social Theory. 1(2): 75-100.

It starts at page 75 at the following link:

https://criticalsocialtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/cp-vol-1-no.-2-1.pdf