"I was treated as guilty until proven innocent"

Tuesday 04 September 2018

An ex-honorary police officer, who had a conviction for assaulting a builder with a tile overturned on appeal, has hit out at the way she was treated.

Speaking for the first time since the Royal Court quashed her conviction, Lucille Anastasia Monks (52) said she was “treated as guilty until proven innocent” by Police and the Magistrate's Court, who she felt were against her from the start.

The mother of four, and grandmother of three, told Express that she was still living with the consequences of her conviction – both traumatic and financial – six months after having it overturned.

Mrs Monks maintained her innocence from the very start of the case, which centred on an argument between Mrs Monks and a builder, who had fallen behind schedule on works on her house in September 2016. He alleged that Mrs Monks punched him several times, before hitting him across the neck with a tile and throwing a stone at him – claims that she strongly denied.

Pictured: Mrs Monks was originally convicted in the Magistrate's Court in September last year.

The Magistrate nonetheless found against her and she was handed 12 months’ probation and 120 hours’ community service the following year, and forced to live for around six months as a ‘guilty’ woman before the Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, eventually quashed the conviction.

In her 30-year law career, Advocate Jane Martin, who represented Mrs Monks, said that she had never seen a case like it. “So many things have gone wrong and the consequences are so diverse. It was quite exceptional from the outset,” she commented.

One of those apparent injustices involved evidence suggesting that a Police officer was ‘out to get’ Mrs Monks even before the full facts of the case had emerged.

On CCTV footage, the officer can be heard saying words resembling “I’ll f*** her” under his breath. He was cross-examined about his words in court, but wouldn’t accept that he had said it – only that it sounded that way.

“I don’t think there is any other interpretation, he didn’t come up and say ‘I know exactly what I was saying.’ For us that crystallised the attitude towards Lucille that was definitely a guilty until proven innocent attitude. He had that attitude whereas the criminal justice system is based on people are innocent until proven guilty,” Advocate Martin explained.

Pictured: Mrs Monks and her advocate say that the attitude in her case was definitely that of 'guilty until proven innocent.'

“I had to prove myself innocent,” added Mrs Monks. “I thought this only happened in America.” She says she was then shocked to be handcuffed and bundled into a police van. “It didn’t have to be done this way. There was no need. I had never done anything wrong in my life and I was not being aggressive.”

Advocate Martin also pointed to failings in the investigation, with some witnesses contacted many months after the incident or not at all. “There was a general sort of air of sloppiness,” she said.

Above all, the experienced advocate said she could not understand how Relief Magistrate David Le Cornu reached his conclusion that Mrs Monks was guilty – especially as she argued that the complainant “had been proven to be a liar in court”, having denied information that was clear on CCTV footage.

On hearing the appeal, the Bailiff also took issue with the fact that the builder had “no visible injury” for either of the assaults, despite both the tile and “rough-hewn” rock said to be involved in the assaults both being described as “heavy.”

 “We do not think the assault could possibly have taken place as the complainant described,” he said.

Pictured: Advocate Jane Martin described Mrs Monks' case as "quite exceptional."

Mrs Monks said she was surprised and upset that the Magistrate did not come to the same view. “It’s not possible for this (the assault) to have happened, why was I then convicted? These words will always stay with me, “beyond reasonable doubt”… He found me guilty without any evidence.”

And the “shortcomings” go even further into the criminal justice system, according to Advocate Martin.

Despite being told to pay up the prosecution’s legal costs “immediately” when she was convicted, Mrs Monks is still waiting to get her money back after it was overturned in March.

“It is just the basic point that when you are found guilty, you have to pay straight away, but when the tables are reversed and you are actually owed money, it takes months and months, and that doesn’t seem very fair,” the Advocate said.

From her arrest to her eventual conviction, Mrs Monks said she felt burdened with the notion that the case against her could be ‘personal’. “It didn’t make sense. When I went in front of the Centenier, he didn’t know what to charge me with, and then said he had been told to send me to court.”

Pictured: The Bailiff, who heard Mrs Monks' appeal with Jurats Jane Ronge and Paul Nicolle, said the assault couldn't have happened the way the alleged victim described.

Although it was a great relief for her when the Royal Court eventually set her conviction aside, Mrs Monks says “irreparable damage has been done” and that she is still suffering today.

Following the initial complaint, Mrs Monks resigned from the Honorary Police, where she had been a Vingtenier for eight years. She also shut down her guest house business. “I thought there was every chance of a custodial sentence or that I would be remanded in custody, because I was accused of a grave and criminal assault,” she explained.

Mrs Monks says: “I was in prison in my head from 14 September 2016. I am still in prison because nobody is doing anything about the fact that these lies are out there.

“There must be a system. Somebody has to be held accountable for what happened to me so that nobody else goes through this. I am suffering health-wise and I still don’t have a house to live in.

“I am still being punished. Why? I am the victim.”