THIS ISLAND LIFEI FIRST encountered Trevor Allen almost 50 years ago. I was playing centre-half for Swanmore County Primary School and he was centre-forward for Nettlestone County Primary School.
I’d like to say we met but that would invest the occasion with a dignity it does not deserve. He kept surging past me with embarrassing ease and scored about eight goals in their 10-0 win.
Our paths crossed on a slightly less traumatic basis a couple of years later when I fetched up at Sandown Grammar, where Trevor had already been installed for a year.
He was the boy the rest of us wanted to be. A consummate footballer, a fine cricketer and accomplished at virtually every other sport to which he turned his attention.
A career as a professional footballer seemed inevitable and it wasn’t long before he attracted the attention of Southampton FC, where he was a contemporary of England star Mick Channon.
Trevor’s promising professional career was curtailed by injury, so he played at a decent non-league level for a few years before spending most of his working life in local government on the mainland.
He returned to the Island where he eventually became a police community support officer but, by that time, we had long since slipped off each other’s radar.
Then came the fateful day almost a year ago when I read he had been charged with sexually molesting a young girl.
My immediate reaction — like that of everyone who knew him — was: "Absolutely no way can that be true!"
And so it proved. Last week he was acquitted on all charges. But that does not alter the fact the reputation of a thoroughly decent man had been repeatedly dragged through the mud for more than ten months.
With charges of this kind, there is always going to be an element of guilt by association, no matter what the court’s verdict turns out to be. For this reason alone it is incumbent upon society to handle such allegations with the utmost sensitivity.
When an accusation of this kind has been made, the authorities have no alternative but to pursue the matter and charges are almost inevitable.
That is when the torment begins for the accused (who is still deemed innocent at this stage, remember), because their name and details are made public and repeated at every hearing, while those of the accusers remain shrouded in anonymity.
I must emphasise I have no objection to alleged victims remaining unidentified.
Such measures are crucial to ensure those who endure genuine abuse are never intimidated into remaining silent about their suffering.
But surely it makes sense for the name of the accused in such cases to remain secret also, until such times as they are found guilty?
It is at this point they should be identified. They will then deserve all the disgust and opprobrium society feels inclined to heap upon them.
But as things stand, entirely innocent men like Trevor Allen endure months of private torment and public suspicion.
One can hardly conceive of the personal anguish he went through — and all because his name was tainted by association with a crime he did not commit.
That flies in the face of natural justice — and it is high time something was done about it.
Accent on the way we speak
WHAT on earth made Sue Pratley object to a couple of women speaking Welsh in her Shanklin gift shop?
Admittedly it is a rather guttural language and perhaps she thought they were summoning mucus for the purpose of expelling it on the floor of her premises.
There can be no other justification for her actions. If the Spanish adopted a similar attitude, English tourists would be booted out of every fish and chip shop on Ibiza.
While on the subject of Shanklin shops, I had a reminder last week we should never under-estimate the power of the good old Isle of Woight accent.
Tim Marshall got in touch to say he has a friend who runs a shop in the town and the other day a young mum was in there with her little boy.
When the woman had finished paying for her purchases, the lad put some spare change in a charity box on the counter as they were leaving.
"Good boy," said Tim’s friend.
"Say 'goodboy’ to the nice lady," said mum.
Happy landings for aircraft mystery
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| The mystery aircraft. |
THE Island’s mystery aircraft may have returned. Geoff Elliott, from Sandown, took this photograph last month as it performed the same figure-of-eight manoeuvres in the morning and afternoon.
He said: "I took some shots of it from my garden with my camera which, regrettably, only has a standard zoom lens. However, the close crops of each side of the aircraft does not reveal numbers or other markings.
"Also, it has upturned wingtips, which indicate it is a fairly modern type of twin-engine propeller aircraft.
"I have tried to identify the make of aircraft and feel it might be an Islander BN2T CC Mk2 belonging to the RAF and used for photo-mapping.
"The RAF’s official photo at RAF Northolt shows it with faded roundels, which would not be picked up on my photos. If so, we can sleep tight knowing Her Majesty’s forces rather than terrorists are in control of our skies!"