CHRISTOPHER JEFFERIES was a retired English teacher in Bristol in December 2010, when the tenant of one of the flats he owned disappeared.

Joanna Yeates was a pretty young woman; not much else was happening at the time; so the tabloid press very soon decided that he must have murdered her. Whether this idea first came from the police is not clear and hardly matters; for the suspicions of the police and the press coalesced within a few days. Jefferies was weird, you see. He did not own a television and bought newspapers only when there was something to read, and then only The Guardian, the Financial Times, or, sometimes, The Independent.

Joanna Yeates’s body was found on Christmas Day; Jefferies was bewildered to be arrested five days later. He was questioned for three days before being released on police bail, and, by that time, most of the papers had convinced their readers that he must be guilty. His solicitor urged him not to read the papers; so he did not. He had to leave Bristol (the police arranged a dummy car to leave the police station in which he had been held, so that he could not be followed) and cut and dye his hair so that he could not be recognised in the street. Even so, he was recognised walking down the street in Yorkshire, where relatives had taken him in, and, for a couple of days, the street was patrolled by reporters looking for the house that sheltered him. He could go out only after dark, walking the family dog.

After the real murderer was found and convicted, Jefferies gave only one interview, to Brian Cathcart, writing for the Financial Times; and only when he read Cathcart’s piece did he understand how his character had been assassinated and his life trashed for the entertainment of strangers. With admirable self-restraint, he had refused to read anything written about him. Now he was confronted with Cathcart’s selection.

To take one example, from The Sun, the day after his address: “Page four . . . was dominated by four words, each accompanied by an explanatory phrase, thus: ‘WEIRD “Strange talk, strange walk”; POSH “Loved culture, poetry”; LEWD “Made sexual remarks”; CREEPY “Loner with blue rinse hair’’,” Cathcart wrote. “The report began: ‘Joanna Yeates murder suspect Chris Jefferies was last night branded a creepy oddball by ex-pupils, a teaching colleague and neighbours.’ It went on to assert that he had a ferocious temper and threw things in the classroom, and that he invited pupils to his home and habitually made sexual remarks. He was also unkempt and dirty, a loner, domineering and generally believed to be a homosexual.”

Jefferies sued eight newspapers for libel and won damages estimated at £500,000. His testimony to the Leveson Inquiry of 2012 is still worth reading. The story came up because the current issue of the London Review of Books has a long appreciation of Jefferies’s character by Patrick McGuinness, a former pupil of his. “To me, and to others who had been taught by him, events seemed to be happening in a sort of binocular vision: on the one hand, there was material we recognised, narratives composed, in part at least, of familiar facts; on the other, there were lies, travesties, inventions,” he writes.

“Much of what was great about Chris Jefferies was used to attack him and destroy his reputation when the media, unimpeded by the police and maybe even aided by them, decided he must be Joanna Yeates’s murderer. The things that made him such an interesting teacher, such a thoughtful and articulate lover of literature, music, art and film, and such a completely individual character, were used to turn him into a monster.

“We think the truth is enough, that it doesn’t need defending — it is the defence. We think that once known, the truth will win. But the monstering of Jefferies showed me that truth and untruth were not regarded as opposites but notches on a continuum. The years since 2011 have only proved that to be more urgently and more damagingly true.”

Any resemblance to the way in which the secular press treats bishops, archbishops, and other clergy now is coincidental.

MEANWHILE, over on BlueSky, there is a clip circulating of Gavin Ashenden and two podcast co-hosts appearing to do a mock Hitler salute in solidarity with Calvin Robinson, who appeared to make such a gesture at a pro-life summit in Washington, DC, last month. They giggle like schoolchildren at their own bravery.

Some people get their lives destroyed by the attentions of the press. Others would rather destroy themselves than pass unnoticed.