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Of all the glaring examples of the Metropolitan Police's decline, few are bettered by the catalogue of ill-considered actions that constitute its handling of absurd sex assault allegations brought against Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine, during the summer of 2001, by a woman named Nadine Milroy-Sloan, a 28-year old trainee college lecturer from Grimsby.
    The affair began reportedly with a visit that Milroy-Sloan had made to her uncle on Tuesday, 1 May 2001, during which she said she wanted to sell a story to the Press about sexually explicit e-mails which she claimed she had received from the Hamiltons, plus other sundry allegations.  The next day, her uncle accompanied her on a visit to see London's top publicist (i.e. story-broker to the British Press) Max Clifford, who doubles as Mohamed Al Fayed's retained PR adviser.  Milroy-Sloan asked £100,000 for her story.  Clifford told her that he would need "something more substantial" to stand up her claims.

And so, four days later on Sunday, 6 May, Milroy-Sloan contacted Max Clifford again and claimed that the previous evening she had visited the East London apartment of man called Barry Lehaney, whom she claimed she had met in an Internet 'chat room'.  She went on to imply that during the evening Lehaney -- a 60 year-old asthmatic arthritic -- spiked her drink, whereupon, supposedly, Neil & Christine Hamilton then entered the room.  Lehaney then supposedly raped her while Neil masturbated over her and his wife squatted on her face.
    Clifford told her to report her claims to the police, which she did the next day, Sunday.  The following day of 7 May the police arrested Lehaney and, after interviewing him, released him on police bail.  Meanwhile, Max Clifford contacted the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror to inform them of the ongoing police inquiries.  As with all of Mohamed Al Fayed's vendettas involving the Metropolitan Police, the fact that the Met was undertaking inquiries into the allegations facilitated the Press campaign that was being conjured up.

Accordingly on Saturday, 12 May, a Sunday Mirror reporter visited the Hamiltons' London apartment for a response to allegations "that they had attended a sex party".  This was the first time that Neil had heard of such things and, speaking through the intercom, dismissed the story as the work of a crank.  Neither the Mirror nor the News of the World reported the story.
    On Monday 14 May, the Metropolitan Police interviewed Max Clifford.  Then, over the following nine weeks, the Met conducted "detailed inquiries" (the Met's own description) into the allegations.  But despite Max Clifford's notorious reputation, both as a peddler of false stories and as Mohamed Al Fayed's retained PR guru, the Metropolitan Police did not undertake any forensic tests.  Nor did they research Milroy-Sloan herself, which would have revealed that she had already been condemned as a fantasist by her former husband and her local Lincolnshire Constabulary, after making false allegations previously. 
   On 17 July, the police contacted the Hamiltons' lawyer, Michael Coleman, to inform him that they intended to arrest his clients on rape charges.

Coleman offered to produce evidence of his clients' innocence, such as telephone records and receipts for goods purchased at the time of the alleged attack.  The police ignored the offer.  Instead, by prior arrangement, at around 3.00 pm on Friday 10 August, the Hamiltons visited Barkingside Police Station, East London, whereupon the police arrested them officially on suspicion of rape.  Britain's carnivorous media was tipped off.  Within minutes reporters, photographers, and camera crews besieged the police station. 
    Meanwhile, 180 miles away, Detective Sergeant Sandlin plus four other officers from Barkingside police station, plus a computer expert, arrived at the Hamiltons' Cheshire home to search for evidence, after journeying up from London in a minibus with a badly fractured (i.e. illegal) exhaust system.  When Christine was informed she hastily telephoned a friend and asked him to oversee the invasion of their home.  Clothes, books and letters were scrutinised.  Computers and private correspondence were removed.  Simultaneously, another team of officers searched the Hamiltons' London flat with no one present.

Back in London, after completing five hours of interrogation, the police offered the Hamiltons the use of a side door through which they could slink away, unseen by the Press outside.  Suspicious that this was a ploy to facilitate prejudicial photographs that would create an impression of guilt, and mindful of the sensationalist stories that would result from the drip-drip leaking of the allegations, the Hamiltons spurned the offer and instead left the station through the front door, heads held high, whereupon they gave an impromptu press conference to the massed media camped outside.
    Michael Coleman read out the allegations against his clients in full.  He left no sordid detail unaired.  In one fell swoop, the media's lust for information had been largely quenched.
    The police came under immediate pressure to justify taking Milroy-Sloan's allegations seriously. However, after finding nothing, and in the face of evidence proving the Hamiltons' innocence -- which they could have obtained at any time had they bothered to ask -- on 28 August the police dropped all charges.

    The Hamiltons' decision to confront the media head-on, coupled to the fulsome publicity that the Daily Mail and its sister paper the Mail on Sunday gave to Milroy-Sloan's history of making false allegations, no doubt helped the Metropolitan Police finally concede that they had been led a merry dance. 
    That its officers pursued such baseless allegations at all, least of all in the cack-handed high-profile way that they did, once again leaves the Metropolitan Police open to the charge that they had only acted with such enthusiasm against the Hamiltons because Mohamed Al Fayed's publicist, Max Clifford, had sided with their accuser.

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