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Christine Keeler: In pursuit of truth

10 October 2025 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 8134 / Categories: Features , Human rights , Criminal
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Jon Robins reports on a petition to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler

Earlier this year, the son of the woman at the centre of the country’s most infamous sex scandal—the Profumo affair—handed in a petition to the Ministry of Justice, calling on the Lord Chancellor to recommend that the king exercise his royal prerogative of mercy.

Christine Keeler was jailed for nine months in 1963 for giving misleading information in court and obstructing the course of justice, in a case in which she was the victim of violence and her attacker (and her stalker) actually admitted the violence.

In May, Seymour Platt, Keeler’s son, together with her granddaughter and legal team, including the human rights barrister Felicity Gerry KC, handed in the petition together with a 300-page dossier.

Historic discrimination against women

According to Gerry, Keeler’s 1963 conviction for perjury was the ‘ultimate in slut-shaming’ and her posthumous exoneration would be an overdue opportunity to acknowledge historic discrimination against women in the justice system.

The writer Rebecca West captured

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In this week's NLJ, Dr Jon Robins, editor of The Justice Gap and lecturer at Brighton University, reports on a campaign to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler. 60 years after her perjury conviction, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt has petitioned the king to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, arguing she was a victim of violence and moral hypocrisy, not deceit. Supported by Felicity Gerry KC, the dossier brands the conviction 'the ultimate in slut-shaming'
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