I was simply after examples of what the effect is on persons involved to demonstrate what happens and to educate myself.

Ahh ok :)

Hi Gary, I can't answer your questions directly, but here are some thoughts. The concern about suicide between arrest and sentencing is very real and at times overwhelming. Mostly I worry that the sense of guilt about the burden on the family will lead to suicide, but the things you brought up in your recent posts are also very important. With arrest comes the potential for the information going public, and that threatens the suspect's job and social connections. At the most stressful and traumatic time in the person's life, they face risk of losing their source of income while legal expenses are quickly racking up. Even if they are guilty, holding on to their job as long as possible is critical, but it is threatened when police and media publicize the charges. Also when friends and neighbors find out about the charges, there is a very strong chance that the suspect will abruptly become completely socially isolated. The police in my town just posted the arrest of a suspected child molester (with his photo) on our town's online community bulletin, which is read by most of the town. They were hoping to gather more accusations against him, apparently, in their zest to "get the bad guy," but in that one short post they may well have lost his job and caused everyone in town to see him as a pariah. He is "innocent until proven guilty", but they might as well give him the rope to hang himself. Also, as you said, people arrested of sex charges are in desperate need of psychological support, and probably were even before they were arrested. Yet because of the nature of their crimes, they can't get professional help that could have prevented the crime, and it's very difficult to get professional help during the phase between arrest and sentencing. The arrest is traumatic. These are people who often have no prior experience with LE and the arrest process. Because the net for "sex crimes" is so encompassing, they might not even know that they committed a felony, and now they're being treated aggressively by police and being told that they face a long prison sentence. The trauma from all of this is beyond comprehension. They desperately need psychological support, but can't risk it, even if they can afford it. I don't know how things are in the UK, but I suspect that what people here are responding to is that LE are perpetrators in dehumanizing, stigmatizing, and traumatizing suspects. Aside from training police to get support for suspects, if you want to prevent suicide (which seems would be the bare minimum of people who are expected to "serve and protect") they also need to be trained to recognize the humanity in suspects regardless of the charges, to be above stigmatizing suspects and minimize the trauma caused by their own harsh treatment of suspects. I think what people here are telling you is that we have lost trust in LE because of our experiences, so your starting point might be training police to not destroy trust in the first place. I appreciate what you're doing and I hope you can have an impact on how sex offense suspects are treated.

I think the situation in the USA is very different to the UK, my husband was arrested and admitted his guilt immediately. The police did come to my home and take his computer, but they were in plain clothes and took things away very discretely. The police officer that interviewed me and took my statement which basically consisted of me saying "are you sure you haven't made a mistake?" was actually very kind. In hindsight I'm sure that they were just digging for more information and yet could have made the very worst day of my life even harder but they didn't. They were calm and professional at every turn. They left me with the details of the "Stop it now" organization which appears to be about the only resources available in the UK. When my husband was taken to court and his details including his address ended up in the press, the police arranged for a panic alarm to be fitted that went straight to the police station and for the fire brigade to install fire alarms/smoke detectors. Life was truly horrible, still is, people spat at me in the street, but I did at least feel that I could still call the police if I needed to.
I know this is a really old thread but I wanted to post the link for "Stop it now":
http://www.stopitnow.org.uk/