A SENIOR police officer has dismissed claims that the investigation prompted by the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal has turned into a witch hunt.
The comments were made by former newspaper tycoon Eddy Shah, recently cleared of raping a schoolgirl in the 1990s.
Mr Shah also said the inquiry was mostly "based on emotion".
Yesterday, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe defended the investigation, Operation Yewtree, saying sex crime claims could not be ignored.
He said: "I don't think it's a witch hunt at all, we're just going where the evidence takes us and victims are making allegations.
"The alternative is to ignore them, and if you look at Yewtree the broad allegation is that they have been ignored for 20, 30 years and if we were to ignore them now that would just compound the issue."
On Monday an 80-year-old man became the 14th person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree, which was launched in the wake of abuse claims against the late TV presenter Savile.
Asked whether Operation Yewtree was turning into a witch hunt, Mr Shah said: "It's developing into that - it's easy policing and it's easy prosecutions.
"It's based on emotion, most of it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article