It's time we stopped treating all men as sex pests

“The law is a ass – a idiot,” declared Mr Bumble in Charles Dicken's classic novel Oliver Twist, which was released 178 years ago to the month.

Bumble would have no doubt have added some choice expletives to his observation if he’d been in Blackfriars Crown Court in London last week, to witness the unjust case brought against Mark Pearson.

Mark Pearson said he had endured a year-long "Kafkaesque nightmare" as a result of the complaint.

Pearson, a 51-year-old artist, was tried for a sex crime simply because he brushed past a female film star during rush hour at Waterloo Tube station without even breaking his stride.

His accuser (who shall remain anonymous for life) claimed Pearson penetrated her with three fingers for “two or three seconds”.

CCTV of the footage irrefutably backs Pearson’s account; it took a jury of nine women and three men just 90 minutes to unanimously reject the accuser’s version of events and find Pearson innocent.

After the case, Mr Pearson, who still suffers anxiety attacks, said, “This could have happened to anyone. For me, half a second turned into a year of hell. I feel I have undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state. Why couldn’t the CPS have used common sense?”

Which begs the bigger question: why, despite having seen the CCTV evidence (there were also no witnesses nor forensic evidence), did the Crown Prosecution Service still see fit to push for prosecution?