DISQUS

Good Lord, does this REALLY have to be explained to you?

The reason that the word "allegedly" turns up is that nothing has been proven in a court of law. The same standard is applied to any other form of crime. If he'd been found sitting in a room with a four year old's head caved in and was coated in blood there would still have to be a trial over the matter assuming that he pleaded innocent.

The reason for this is that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and if you are declared a thief, a rapist, a murderer or an anything in a newspaper and one of the people in your trial has picked up a newspaper, or spoken with someone who has talked about that topic, then it is going to be very difficult for you to receive a fair trial. In print, after all, you are already a thief, a rapist, a murdered, or an anything.

This is also why people's criminal records are kept quiet: the job of a court is to work out whether they've done the crime they're accused of, knowing their past record is an irrelevance to that.

And throwing around 80% is absurd. 20% is substantially more than you need to go "Beyond reasonable doubt".