Two weeks ago, a distressed young woman told police she had been attacked by a group of men and raped near a Methodist church in Epsom, Surrey. The offence took place, she said, after leaving a nightclub and was reported in the early hours of a Saturday morning.

Police – responding to claims about an horrific crime in the heart of leafy suburbia – launched an appeal for witnesses, carried out forensic tests, checked surveillance cameras and conducted house-to-house inquiries. But now the case has been closed since they have concluded that there was no sexual offence. “A woman in her 20s during a night out in Epsom, sustained an accidental head injury prior to making a confused report,” said Sarah Grahame, an assistant chief constable for the Surrey force.

It seems the police responded in exemplary style. Officers rapidly solved a rather tragic case before releasing the results of investigations with consent of the “victim”, stressing how they take all reports of sexual offences seriously to reassure the alarmed public. Yet they found themselves trapped in a disturbing maelstrom of disinformation, xenophobia and violence that was stirred up in the febrile swamp of social media. It was fanned by scummy far-right agitators – but also inflamed by shameless fellow travellers in supposedly respectable political parties. And it shows the difficulties for today’s police, operating in a fast-changing digital landscape as the toxic tide of populism rises higher amid such widespread distrust in institutions.

These events in Epsom – a town famous for its prestigious horse race and close to........

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