MIKE McCARTNEY TELLS THE GLOBE: My days of darkness are coming to an end
By Justin Dunn
IT IS perhaps one of the most simple of tasks: Popping to the local supermarket to stock up on groceries, pick up a couple of bottles of wine or buy a newspaper or a magazine.
Yet for almost 18 months, a trip to his local store in Heswall has been an ordeal too far for Mike McCartney. He couldn't bear the stares, couldn't abide the whispers, couldn't avoid the nodding heads.
That is the reality of what Mike describes as "my darkness" - the long, dark path he's been travelling on ever since he was accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old pub waitress in 2004.
Last week, however, a judge at Chester Crown Court dismissed the case against him with barely disguised contempt for the way in which it had been brought about.
Quite unusually, Judge Elgan Edwards also insisted the Crown Prosecution Service pay the entire cost of the case - somewhere in the region of Ј200,000 of taxpayers' money.
The judge went on to describe how the entire case against Mike was flimsily built on a "misunderstanding" that should have never have been allowed to go to court in the first place.
But it was a misunder-standing that plunged Mike and his family into a very real waking nightmare from which even now they are still only beginning to emerge.
"The reality is that it should never have got to court, and the judge was the first proper adult involved in the legal system other than those representing me to actually recognise that," said Mike, relaxing on a couch at his home in Lower Heswall with his wife, Rowena.
"And now that the case has been thrown out, I could probably just walk away, but I won't, because I want to try to ensure that no-one else ever has to go through what my family and I have gone through for the last 18 months."
Mike, younger brother of Beatles legend Sir Paul, was accused of touching the waitress's bottom when he was at a south Wirral pub having a meal with family and friends.
She claimed he assaulted her when he approached her from behind to ask if there were any more tempura prawns. Mike's wife, her sister, her mother and her aunt were sitting nearby.
"I honestly thought it was a joke at first, but when I realised it wasn't I was absolutely furious. Anybody would be. It is the most horrible thing to be accused of, the worst thing. It went to the very depths of my soul," he said.
"Anyone who knows me knows how abhorrent that would be to me. I would never touch a girl or lady's bottom. I just wouldn't. When my first marriage broke up I was awarded custody of my three girls, and that was in the 70s - that was how stable a father and man I have been judged to be."
Mike believes the girl who complained - and another waitress who claimed to have witnessed the assault - was hoping to make money out of the McCartney name.
"When you've got the likes of Coronation Street showing Les Battersby and his wife trying to get compensation money out of Status Quo - a band they're supposed to like - you wonder just what kind of message we're sending out to the world at large. It seems to be, make a lot of money very quickly but don't worry about making it legally, or morally.
"Because of our kid [Sir Paul], the details of this case went right around the world in seconds. My accountant told me he'd entered my name in Google, and instead of the usual few for photographer, or for Scaffold [his 1960s band] or being cultural ambassador for Wirral, it came up with about four million entries.
"That's the reality of what those allegations have done to my family and I. And I know there will still be some people, somewhere, who won't hear that the case has been thrown out and assume I'm guilty as charged."
Mike has spent the last week touring TV studios and being interviewed by press from all corners of the globe about the one subject now understandably close to his heart. "In the same way sex case victims are allowed to remain anonymous, I believe the same should apply to the people being accused of it," he said.
"Because a false allegation is a terrible thing to have hanging over your life. And yet it's happening to people all over the country every single day."
He praised the Globe for not "jumping on the bandwagon and putting me all over the front-page when the allegations weren't proved", and added: "Along with the support from family and friends, it was little chinks of light like that in my darkness that helped me get through of all this."
But some things have at least begun to change for Mike, who also has three sons including Sonny, who along with Rowena was at Mike's side in court all last week.
"I've finally ventured down to Tesco," he said with a smile. "Maybe people will still talk about me a bit, I don't know. But I never stopped walking with my head held high anyway."
http://www.thisiswirral.co.uk/wirral/birkenhead/news/BIRKENHEAD_NEWS1.html
