How former NSW Police Officer Ben Smith was betrayed by the force he once trusted

All due to police fear of feminists

It began with a troubled, young girl infatuated with a slightly older, rising teenage football star, who was popular, good looking and not short of female attention.

The sports star, Benjamin (Ben) Gregory Smith, viewed the girl as a sort of little sister figure. Nothing more.

He had no idea of her secret obsession with him until nearly 20 years later, when it manifested in claims he had sexually assaulted her.

Smith, now 43, had been a NSW police officer for almost 10 years and had joined the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission (ACIC) as a covert intelligence officer when the by then, grown woman, walked into his former workplace, and made her claims.

The fallout blew apart his life and career as a law enforcement officer and up until then, his steadfast belief in the justice system.

“I no longer trust the police, even though I was one of them,” said Smith.

“The complaint made was complete and utter rubbish. I thought naturally they (the police) would put the jigsaw puzzle together and I honestly believed that the matter would be withdrawn,” Smith said.

But it wasn’t. From that awful moment it took more than three years and two trials, which cost the better part of his family home to finance, for Smith to finally be acquitted of all 14 charges.

The first trial in ended with a hung jury. The second in came in with a unanimous jury verdict of not guilty. While being found innocent brought Smith great relief, the father of three says it did not bring him closure.

That, he says, would only come if action were taken against the detectives involved in the failed prosecution.

“Until people like this are held accountable and made an example of, things like my case will continue to poison and clog our justice system,” he said.

The torturous road to being found innocent laid bare what Smith and his criminal lawyer Danny Eid argue were conflicts of interest and misleading evidence.

The two trials revealed, Smith and Eid argue, the investigating detectives had not disclosed exculpatory evidence that negated the woman’s allegations, had not undertaken a proper investigation and had lied about evidence from material witnesses.

“I still to this day believe that they jumped the gun way too early and or were forced to lock me up by a senior police officer,” Smith said.

Mr Eid is adamant if police had done their job properly in the first place, Smith would never have been charged.

But Smith’s ordeal is not over. His attempts to raise complaints with the police watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), about the conduct of the detectives have become nothing more than a Catch 22 situation.

His complaint in March 2021 was referred back to the same police command he was complaining about - to investigate themselves. The police declined to investigate a number of complaints and found the others were not substantiated.

The failure of police complaint processes has been the subject of widespread criticism recently.

Samantha Lee, the head of Redfern Legal Centre’s police accountability practice has said the complaints system is failing to provide just outcomes and is perpetuating “an insidious culture of impunity among police.”

Gregor Husper, the principal lawyer for the Inner Melbourne Community Legal Police Accountability Project said the lessons for police investigating colleagues are universal.

“The Police Accountability Project has long advocated about the failings of police investigating themselves, and the resultant lack of accountability and risks of police impunity,” said Mr Husper.

“Misconduct needs to be independently investigated by a body like a Police Ombudsman, otherwise rogue behaviour by police will never be addressed.”

THE COMPLAINT

It is hard to imagine that police could get it so wrong, but right from the get go there were glaring problems with the allegations of sexual assault against Smith.

Senior law enforcement officials openly comment there is a current culture of prosecuting all sex assault allegations and letting the accused beat it - for fear of being criticised publicly for not doing enough.

Barrister Greg Barns SC, the National Justice Spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, agrees and said the case is an illustration of a trend which has gone from one extreme to the other.

“The police have gone from too readily disbelieving female complainants, to the other extreme where cases are often put up with inadequate forensic investigation, and that is not helpful to anyone, said Mr Barnes.

It is a culture and attitude that might explain what happened to Smith. But in his case NSW police took this to a new level.

The detectives charged Smith in December 2016 without conducting prudent cursory investigative background checks of the woan’s allegations, according to Mr Eid.

The detectives did not interview Smith before he was charged. They also failed to take a statement from the only “eye witness” nominated by the complainant before charging Smith.

If they had, the police would have discovered the eyewitness instead of corroborating her allegations - actually negated the woman’s claims, Mr Eid believes.

The detective on the case also failed to interview a second witness who could have given important information about the woman at the time she alleged she was sexually assaulted.

If the police had bothered to check the dates the woman said he assaulted her, they would have found Smith was not even the same postcode at the time.

At least seven of the 14 offences she accused him of were at a time he was suffering from a broken leg and Medicare records proved he was hundreds of miles away.

At this point, Smith said they should have been critically assessing the complaint.

“Our job as police is not to run cases with no evidence, Smith said.

“It was sickening to think that the police and the local area command that I worked at could attempt to create a narrative, rather than a search for the truth and the facts, to try and have me convicted of something I did not do.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/behindthescenes/how-former-nsw-police-officer-ben-smith-was-betrayed-by-the-force-he-once-trusted/news-story/9951436fb94e0c6ec0ce01f5b30e4c92

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