Sex beast shocker

This is absolutely not the way to handle claims that someone has not only committed date rape but is a serial sex attacker

Tall man who appears on telly is accused of raping woman with blond hair: it's just as well I never aspired to a career writing tabloid headlines. Until last week, I hadn't heard of the TV presenter who has been identified by tabloid newspapers as the anonymous assailant mentioned in Ulrika Jonsson's autobiography. But even I now know that he faces accusations of sexual assault from more than a dozen women, who have come forward as a result of the furore over Jonsson's allegation.

All of this must come as a relief to the England football coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, whose recent affair with Jonsson has been eclipsed by the rape claim. On Friday alone, eight more women branded the shamed television presenter a sex beast – I am picking up the jargon, you see – and a 27-year-old identified only as Carol claimed in the Daily Mail that she had recently been thrown around a bed "like a leg of lamb" by the man.

Before anyone takes offence, I should point out that I do not take sexual violence lightly. I have been warning for ages that the shockingly low conviction rate in rape cases – 7.5 per cent of those reported to the authorities – is a huge deterrent to victims who might otherwise report their ordeal to the police. What I do profoundly distrust is trial by media, and the gleeful rehearsing of claims about what appear to be serious criminal offences in exactly the same tone as the latest titbit of celebrity gossip.

If the consequences were not so serious, the combination of coyness, prurience and celebrity-worship in last week's reports would be quite hilarious.

All three were perfectly displayed in the Sun's allegation that a brunette called Natasha got into a limo with the presenter and was shocked when he "got his manhood out and whacked it into my hand". His what? And all the while he was dating Catherine Zeta Jones, the ungrateful brute! Zeta Jones was only 19 at the time and a long way off catching Michael Douglas's eye, but a Hollywood connection, however tenuous, is irresistible to the tabloids. The presenter was also thrown out of a bar, the paper reported, for groping "a busty barmaid's boobs".

I have no idea whether the allegations against the TV man are true, but I am clear about one thing: this is absolutely not the right way to handle claims that someone has not only committed date rape but is a serial sex attacker. The odds were not so heavily stacked against complainants 14 years ago, when Jonsson says the rape took place; she also says she was so badly injured in the attack that she had to spend five days in hospital, which suggests there was medical evidence to support her claim.

If she had reported it and been ignored, I could just about understand her decision to risk starting a tabloid feeding frenzy. But she did not, and she now has to face the possibility that the man went on to commit offences against other women for more than a decade. She is not responsible for his behaviour but it is hard to understand why she looked so insouciant at her book launch on Thursday evening.

Date rape is not, in my view, any less serious than an assault by a total stranger. Recent trials have shown how hard it is to get a conviction when the defendant is known to the victim; but if a number of women independently make similar allegations about the same man, a pattern emerges and the job of prosecutors becomes easier. The worst of all outcomes is when the allegation comes years after the alleged assault from someone with a vested interest – a bruised ego, a flagging TV career and a book to sell – and future legal proceedings are jeopardised by sensational journalism.

Attitudes towards date rape must change, the Sun asserted last week, demonstrating its new maturity in sexual matters with a feature on the "pulling power of Britain's bustiest bar beauties" – none of them, I assume, the woman Jonsson's alleged attacker is said to have groped. She may feel empowered and his career is in ruins, but the wider implications of this distasteful episode are negligible. Unless, that is, the Government finally realises that women feel so unprotected by the criminal justice system that a privileged few have begun to take the law into their own hands.