In his first in-depth interview since being cleared of historic sex offences, Romford MP Andrew Rosindell tells Charles Thomson he has faced abuse in the street and wants the law changed to protect the falsely accused.
When Romford MP Andrew Rosindell was woken in the early hours of May 17, 2022, by somebody hammering on his door, the first image that flashed across his mind was his friend David Amess.
His Conservative colleague in Southend had been stabbed to death less than a year earlier by an Islamic State-inspired terrorist.
“When someone is ferociously banging on your door in the middle of the night, I was very afraid as to who this person or these people were, trying to come into my private property,” he says.
But when police entered and arrested him over alleged historic sex offences, he became “very calm”.
“I could see exactly what had happened,” he claims. “It was immediately clear that the whole thing was a stitch-up, was politically motivated and done purely to seek revenge on me.”
Mr Rosindell was accused of rape, sexual assault, indecent assault, abuse of a position of trust and misconduct in a public office.
He spent 21 months on police bail, during which the law banned English media from naming him – but his identity spread across social media as people in other legal jurisdictions posted it online.
In February 2024, the Metropolitan Police closed the case without seeking any charges and Mr Rosindell issued a statement identifying himself and saying he’d been “completely exonerated”.
“It wasn’t even sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, after 21 months of detailed investigations in which 20 years’ worth of emails and texts were examined and 40 to 50 people were interviewed,” he tells the Recorder in his first in-depth interview since being cleared.
He cannot go into much detail as it is illegal to identify his accuser. But, he says, the individual had remained in touch with him long after the period in which they later claimed the offences had occurred.
“At no stage did that person ever say to anyone about anything relating to this,” he claims.
After almost six weeks back in Parliament, he is on a mission to overhaul the law to protect those falsely accused of crimes.
“My aim is for this to never happen again to another MP,” he says. “We need to re-establish the principle of innocent until proven guilty… goodness knows what some people would have done, facing this kind of situation. It’s so horrible.
“I’m used to people telling lies about me – I’ve been in politics for over 40 years,” he adds.
But the invective from some after his arrest was new territory.
“What I’ve learned through this is how nasty some people can be; have no knowledge about anything, but they can’t wait to drag you down or accuse you of things based on completely false information,” he says.
“Do they realise the trauma that causes the person they’re writing about? Plus the people around that person? It’s absolutely wicked behaviour.”
Most of the attacks, he says, come “from people who hate my politics and therefore hate me” – typically via social media.
“People said some vile, wicked things,” he says. “Some of these people on social media think they’ve got a right to shred your entire character, embroider, exaggerate, expand on something – and they don’t even know the basics.”
Mr Rosindell says he is considering legal action against some of the culprits.
But the trolling has not been confined to the internet. He has also faced abuse in the street.
“I had one the other day, actually,” he recounts. “He came out screaming at me and accused me of this, that and the other.”
When Mr Rosindell asked him what his evidential basis was, the man shouted: “It’s all over the internet!”
“You can put anything on the internet,” says Mr Rosindell. “Doesn’t mean it’s correct… but some people are behind the times.”
Counterintuitively, he says, such attacks “have actually made me stronger".
“I looked them in the eye and said, ‘What right have you got to say that to me? On what basis are you saying it? What evidence have you got?’ And very quickly, they realise they’ve overstepped the mark.”
Catch up:
- Met Police accused of 'incompetence' in Andrew Rosindell rape case
- Andrew Rosindell rape case: Why the Recorder was banned from naming him
Most people who approach him, he claims, are supportive – including some who say they do not vote for him but are nonetheless sorry about his ordeal.
His greatest frustration, he says, was not being able to attend Parliament and vote.
“I was very unhappy about that,” he says. “And that was not by my choice.”
At the request of his party, he made a “gentleman’s agreement” to stay away from Parliament.
“I thought it’d be over in a month,” he explains. “I didn’t in my wildest dreams think it would drag on to 21 months.”
The delay, he says, was because police seized numerous old phones and computers for analysis. Much of the material on them had to be screened by an independent lawyer before police could examine it, to avoid breaching Parliamentary privilege.
“The other delay was the fact that there were just so many potential witnesses,” he says. “It just went on and on.”
The police were “very professional”, but over those 21 months he claims to have accrued substantial legal bills. Meanwhile "the person who accused me hasn’t had to spend a penny", he says.
He is now “in discussions” about changes he feels are needed, including a greater zeal to charge false accusers.
“How can this be allowed?” he asks. “How can we live in a democratic society when this kind of thing can happen? Why would you want to be an MP if you open yourself to this?”
Excluding MPs from Parliament over unproven allegations is “disastrous” for democracy, he says, effectively incentivising people to falsely accuse MPs they disagree with, to block them.
If an MP’s alleged offences require bail conditions barring them from Parliament, that is different, he adds.
"I could go around to constituents, go to schools and churches and walk around Romford Market – but I couldn’t come and see my staff in my own office. How ludicrous.”
What happened to him was “almost medieval, frankly,” he says.
“I can see how dangerous it is being in politics now and I worry about the future. I worry about my colleagues.
“My instinct is that it should be a criminal offence, in a situation like this, to accuse people of things publicly and to name people when there’s no charge.”
It is currently only a civil matter, rather than criminal. He has still not decided whether he will sue some English newspapers that defied the law and named him.
While some reputational damage in cases like his is unavoidable, he says, for the most part “it hasn’t stuck”. He has been reselected by his local association and will contest the next election.
This Thursday (April 11), he has been selected to unveil a statue of his murdered friend Mr Amess on Southend seafront.
The past two years have made him “more cautious” around strangers, he says – particularly those who are overly friendly.
But, he promises: “I’ve always been very open and friendly with everybody… I’m not going to throw that away and become an aloof MP that people never see.”
*More from our exclusive interview with Andrew Rosindell in next week’s paper.
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