See also the Update to this as of September, 2026
Spreading awareness
Most people who are reading this will know that neither the everyday reality and frequency of false allegations, nor the devastating effects they have on the victims are anywhere near being fully appreciated by the criminal justice system, politicians or the general public.
If we are to make any progress in changing that, we have to think of as many ways as possible of bringing that awareness to others. In one such discussion, having recently seen a tapestry on display in a cathedral telling a particular story, my wife suggested that we create one showing the timeline of a false accusation and its effects. If we can display it somewhere where the general public can see it, we believe that people are more likely to stop to look at an interesting work of art than to listen to a general rant about false accusations or miscarriages of justice.
Misnomer
You may know that the Bayeux Tapestry is not actually a tapestry at all, but an embroidery. We are also talking about an embroidery, but have used the word tapestry as that is what most people associate with this kind of project.
Designs
I came up with an initial set of scenarios – arrest, police interview, trial etc. and some explanatory text. Then (with the help of AI) I came up with some designs and re-created the image to look like a tapestry; I then changed the wording in a photo-editing application. The one above showing a trial was created with ChatGPT, but others were done with Google Gemini.
Interested in helping?
What we need now are people who enjoy/are good at embroidery, who can convert ideas or designs into the real thing. The subjects and designs do not have to be the ones I have come up with – if someone is interested but would rather do their own design based on some aspect of false allegations, that’s fine, as long as it is not already covered by someone else – we can discuss that further. We can supply the fabric.
You do not need to fill in all the spaces with thread. We can colour in with a light wash of colour when you return it to us afterwards to save time and threads!
We would like to finish tay soon as possible, so we cannot delay.
Do please let us know if you are interested in helping by filling in the form below (and check your spam box for replies in case our messages are filtered out!)
More details will be sent to those who respond, but if you have any questions, please include them in the message box.
Thank you!
