UK: President of Oxford Union tells the utterly horrific story of his year-long nightmare

Article here. Excerpt:

'It was the instant the police officer stretched out his hand and seized the belt from Ben Sullivan’s jeans, apologetically telling him he wasn’t allowed to wear it, that the reality of just what was unfolding began to register.

Moments before, groggy and disorientated, the 21-year-old Oxford student had been woken by a rap on his bedroom door. Expecting to find one of his flatmates on the threshold, he yelled for them to come in. Instead, filling the doorway were two uniformed officers and a plain-clothed detective from Thames Valley Police.

‘It was surreal, scary and a bit stunning,’ Ben says, reliving that moment on May 7. ‘I recall glimpsing the clock and noting the time – I don’t know why. It was 6.50am.'

Calmly, the officers told him he was being arrested. An allegation of rape and one of attempted rape had been made against him, and he was being taken to Oxford’s Abingdon Road station to be formally questioned.

It was as Ben, President of the Oxford Union, the university’s 191-year-old debating society, hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater that one officer told him he couldn’t wear the belt. ‘A suicide risk,’ Ben explains with a wry smile. ‘It seemed like something from a cop show, a television drama. But it was scary. It was happening. It was real.

‘I had a total sense of disbelief and that pit-of-the-stomach anxiety when you can’t believe what is going on.’
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‘Seeing my reputation trashed has been sobering and painful,’ he reveals. ‘My whole life has been rifled through and examined. It has been utterly draining.’

Yet Ben, serious-minded and with the clear potential to enter politics if he wished, is determined that something positive should come out of his situation. He is seeking a change in the law which would grant anonymity to those accused of crime before charges are laid. Forcefully, he says: ‘These were deeply poisonous allegations. When I was arrested the police had only spoken to the complainants.’

In the babble of publicity following Ben’s arrest, many students stood by him, while others sought to force his resignation as Union President.

A campaign, organised by Sarah Pine, President for Women at the Oxford University Student Union, and a cabal of outraged students also contacted at least 30 of the Oxford Union’s forthcoming speakers, urging them to boycott the debates unless Ben resigned. Intriguingly, they were urged to support the call for Ben to stand down in what they described as a ‘push for equality’.

Some did. Luminaries such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman, Interpol secretary-general Robert Nobel, David Mepham, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, and Julie Meyer, the American entrepreneur from the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, are all believed to have pulled out. Professor A.C. Grayling, however, refused to join the boycott, saying Ben had been subjected to a ‘kangaroo court of opinion’.
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Although Ben has had girlfriends since the incident more than a year ago, he is currently single. Painfully, still sees the women who accused him of rape in Oxford.

‘Yes, I have to see my accusers on campus. I just walk the other way. And no, I’m not currently dating. Right now I have a term off coming up and will return to Oxford next January. Then I will be concentrating on my finals and the future.’'