We are delighted to confirm that Capita TV Licensing has abandoned its sickening attempt to prosecute a vulnerable Polish mother for an offence she did not commit.
Mrs Tekla, remember, lives on the outskirts of Newport, Gwent with her husband and grown up disabled son. She speaks very little English, but that didn't deter TV Licensing from interrogating her on the doorstep about a TV licence she doesn't legally need. In the finest traditions of TV Licensing, her confused, broken English words were somehow translated into a confession of TV licence evasion.
When we first heard this story we were absolutely furious at TV Licensing's gutter attempts to prosecute on the basis of poorly gathered, unreliable evidence. Even if the evidence was legitimate there was no way, given the circumstances, this prosecution was ever going to be in the public interest. We made that opinion abundantly clear to the BBC and TV Licensing.
A few days after our initial article Mrs Tekla received a letter from TV Licensing saying that it had requested an adjournment of the case. Skip forward another week and TV Licensing has now announced its intention to withdraw the charges against her. The reason, spookily enough, is that it has conducted a review of the case and concluded, just as we had, that it would not be in the public interest to proceed.
In the days between the adjournment and withdrawal notifications we assisted Mrs Tekla in making a submission to the court challenging the admissibility of TV Licensing's evidence. At that point there was still a chance the trial could go ahead, so we had to inform the court of our concerns about the manner in which TV Licensing had interviewed Mrs Tekla. We shall write more about this in a future article.
TV Licensing will be reeling from its decision to withdraw the charges against Mrs Tekla. It must have surely considered her the ideal victim. She has been warned, in no uncertain terms, to give TV Licensing the widest possible berth in future.
If you know of anyone in a similar predicament please get in touch.
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