A Brief View On Nick Freeman's Reporting Of Cardinal O'Brien To The Police

As a founder member of The Nick Freeman Appreciation Society, it was with some surprise that I learned that he has made a formal complaint about Cardinal O'Brien to Lothian and Borders Police. 

Allegations of sexual offences committed in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh are some way off Mr. Freeman's usual beat of contraventions of the Road Traffic Acts committed in the Greater Manchester Police area, and although having run a red light in Oldham does not thus far seem to have been included in the corpus of the cardinal's misdeeds one supposes that given what's been revealed already we should prepare ourselves for anything. As his name usually appears in the papers when he's defending celebrities, in reporting a celebrity to the police Mr. Freeman might, in this instance, in some sense be acting as poacher turned gamekeeper, an example of even-handedness which every solicitor ever unfairly accused of partisanship should pray in aid. 

While this is the first time that mention of police action against the cardinal has been made, one is perfectly sure that Mr. Freeman has not undertaken this action for the sole purpose of getting either his name or that of his firm into the newspapers; nor that although his brave step in instigating a criminal complaint, in a part of the country in which he doesn't usually feature situated within a jurisdiction in which his firm doesn't usually practice (indeed, for all I know one in which he himself might not be qualified to practice), would of necessity expose him to the risk of being sued for malicious prosecution should his complaint prove to be unfounded, he has not factored in that the object of his complaint is, like everyone else, compelled to turn the other cheek when subjected to an injustice - and would therefore be unlikely to sue.

Let us hope, therefore, that the law is allowed to take its course; and that all parties receive both the justice and the mercy they deserve.