Man wrongly accused of masturbating on a bus wins £5,000 payout from police

A man wrongly accused of masturbating at a woman on a London bus says he has been victim of verbal and physical attacks ever since.

Brent Naylor was arrested by six police officers at his home in north London after being wrongly identified following a Metropolitan Police appeal for information.

The indecent exposure happened on a 393 bus towards Kentish Town in May 2021.

Officers published a CCTV image of the suspect, who was over six feet tall and described as ‘chubby’.

Not long after the Met asked the public for help, someone called and claimed Brent was the man in the appeal.

Despite looking nothing like the man in the CCTV image, officers arrested him at his home in Finsbury Park.

Police researched Mr Naylor, revealing he had short greying hair and was significantly shorter and thinner than the offender – but they listed him as a ‘viable suspect’ anyway.

It was only after he’d been in custody for more than seven hours that a more senior officer looked at him and realised he didn’t resemble the suspect at all.

Despite being released, the damage was done as neighbours saw him being arrested.

56-year-old Brent has slammed the ‘incompetent’ Met for arresting him despite not fitting the description of the bus masturbator.

‘They pinned it all on me without actually investigating at all. It was disgusting,’ he said.

‘The description of the guy was six foot. I’m 5’8. I’m the slimmest person alive and this guy was fat.

‘Now I don’t trust the police. They have put my life in danger. They are horrible people.

‘It took [the senior officer] two seconds to realise it wasn’t me. How could the others think it was me?’

Brent, who is disabled, has been assaulted, evicted from his home and even banned from his favourite pub since being arrested.

Just before Christmas, he was hospitalised after being hit over the head by what’s believed to have been a bottle.

‘It’s not nice, getting called a nonce, it’s embarrassing,’ Brent said.

‘I know everyone around here. There are still people after me. I was assaulted just before Christmas.’

Following his arrest, his landlord served him with an eviction notice, and he was also later threatened by a gang of men who ‘frog-marched’ him out of his favourite pub.

After that, he said, he was barred from the boozer – not because staff thought he was guilty, but because they said they ‘couldn’t guarantee my safety’.

‘Why should I leave?’ Brent asked. ‘If they cause trouble, they should be barred. Why me?

‘I’ve been stalked. People followed me home, calling me a nonce – and I had done nothing wrong.’

Brent later took legal action against the Met Police, hiring lawyers from MK Law to fight his case.

His caseworker, Duncan Burtwell, said: ‘Brent is an absolutely lovely guy and, at the time this all happened, was clearly also a vulnerable person.

‘There was a clear and obvious way of distinguishing him from the suspect, such that he shouldn’t have been arrested if the police had conducted their task with due diligence.’

Police officers had failed to secure blood and semen samples left on the bus by the actual offender, lawyers discovered, which will make it harder to catch him going forward.

The Met recently settled Mr Naylor’s case out of court, paying him £5,000 in damages as well as his legal costs.

But he says it was ‘never about the money’, adding: ‘It was more of a cause.. In my opinion, it’s abuse. The police abused me.

‘I still get nightmares and panic attacks. I hear police sirens go by and I think they’re coming for me.’

The real offender is still at large, with a police spokesperson unaware of any other arrests in relation to the indecent exposure, and Mr Naylor worries his offending could escalate as a result of him getting away with the 2021 incident.

He fears the flasher will graduate to rape or murder, all because the police ‘didn’t do their jobs properly’.

The Met said it had paid damages ‘without admission of liability’.

‘There was no evidence of any officer wrongdoing or misconduct,’ a spokesperson said.

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