Michaela Allen Wins £32,000 Payout After 30 Years of Police Failures Blocked Abuse Charges
Updated
Updated · BBC.com · May 24
Michaela Allen Wins £32,000 Payout After 30 Years of Police Failures Blocked Abuse Charges
1 articles · Updated · BBC.com · May 24
£32,000 was awarded to Michaela Allen after police failures over three decades meant the man she says abused her at age seven was never charged.
Vital video evidence was first treated as lost, then rediscovered during the digitisation of 8,605 tapes, before Gwent Police wrongly posted and emailed it to Allen—prompting the CPS in 2023 to rule the suspect could not get a fair trial.
Allen said the payment offers no closure because "a predator" remains free, and she criticised police for paying two other alleged victims only about £10,000 jointly without explaining the disparity.
South Wales Police and Gwent Police apologised and said lessons had been learned, but Allen said both forces resisted accountability until a data-breach complaint was upheld and clear CPS advice to charge in 1997 had long gone unacted on.
After a 30-year saga of police failure, is £32,000 the new price for justice?
When police errors make a fair trial impossible, who is the justice system truly protecting?