Chapter 115: What a Record Is
I had believed, for eleven months, that an acquittal would give me back a version of myself.
I want to set out precisely what it gave me, because I had it wrong and other people have it wrong.
An acquittal ends the case. That is all an acquittal does. It is a complete answer to that charge and to nothing else on earth.
Ruth took me through it on the Monday, in her office, with a sheet of paper.
One. The arrest is recorded.
I was arrested on the twenty-fifth of December and that arrest sits on a police database.
Two. The charge is recorded.
So is the acquittal, next to it, which people assume cancels it and which does not.
Three. Neither is deleted at the end of the case.
There is an application process for deletion in certain categories.
I did not fall into any of them, and Ruth told me so in one sentence rather than letting me hope for a month.
Four. On a basic criminal record check, none of it appears.
Acquittals do not show. Neither, now, does a conviction from twelve years ago on that level of check.
Five. On an enhanced check, all of it can appear.
An enhanced check is the one required for work with children, or with adults at risk.
The conviction, because a conviction of that kind never falls off an enhanced check.
The arrest and the acquittal, at the discretion of a chief officer of police, if he considers the information relevant to the post.
“So it's a judgement call by somebody I'll never meet,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Every time. For the rest of my life.”
“For the rest of your working life, yes. And they will mostly get it right, and once in a while somebody won't.”
I asked what would have happened if the jury had gone the other way.
Ruth is a good solicitor and she answered it properly instead of telling me not to think about it.
A conviction on that charge, with my record, would probably have been custody.
Achterberg had said thirty-six weeks at the starting point.
Custody means half of it inside.
Eighteen weeks in a women's prison forty miles away, then a licence, then a probation officer.
It also means a second conviction for violence.
That is the one that changes everything, because one is a story and two is a pattern.
“And a discharge?” I said. “There was a version where I pleaded and got a discharge.”
“A conditional discharge is a conviction. People think it isn't. It is.”
“So the only outcome that leaves the record where it was is the one I got.”
“Yes. And it cost you a room, a job you liked, seven months of bail, and about thirty thousand pounds.”
I wrote all five points down and I still have the sheet.
The thing nobody tells you is that the old conviction is untouched.
Twelve years ago, at twenty-two, I pleaded guilty on advice.
On a Tuesday, in eleven minutes, in a magistrates' court, with a duty solicitor I met that morning.
That conviction is the same size today as it was then.
The trial did not shrink it. Priya's evidence did not shrink it.
Her account is now in a Crown Court transcript, which is more than it was, and which does not amend a single character of the record itself.
There is a mechanism for challenging a conviction of that age.
It is called an appeal out of time, and it requires leave.
Ruth explained the odds without softening them.
Then she explained the cost, and the cost was the part that ended the conversation.
I have not made that application. I may never make it.
What I did instead was write nine pages in my own words.
It is headed “Circumstances of my conviction of the fourteenth of June”, and Priya's statement is attached to it.
I keep four copies. Every employer since has been handed one at the start rather than at the end.
That is the practical answer, and it is not a triumphant one.
The other thing an acquittal does not do is give you back a house, a marriage, a car, a name, or a Wednesday afternoon.
Fenchurch Row completed on the eighth of November. Somebody else is standing on the new floor.
I did not want it back. That is not a brave sentence.
I had wanted it back very badly in February, and by November I did not, and I cannot tell you the day it changed.
Willow Bank was boarded in the March following. I have not been past it.
What I got was this. No new entry. Nothing added.
The record I walked in with is the record I walked out with.
For a woman with my record, that is what winning looks like, and it took eleven months and cost everything I had.