The Police Complaints Authority (PCA) has recommended disciplinary action and a formal apology over "abuse of process" and "glaring inadequacies" in the investigation of a lawyer wrongly accused of indecent exposure.

Simon Farmer, 52, welcomed the news, telling The Royal Gazette: "Both would be welcome and necessary results for persevering with this complaint, and perhaps show the usefulness of having you in the press following up.

"As I have said from the start of this saga, the Bermuda public needs to know that the Police cannot be allowed to arrest you and then ignore your statement and the available evidence."

Mr. Farmer, who is British but spent 22 years working in Bermuda up until 2003, was arrested over an incident that November where a man was said to have peered in through a window at a residential complex in Paget while committing a lewd act.

He was charged, but pleaded not guilty to indecent exposure and prowling. A Magistrate subsequently acquitted him, ruling there was no case to answer.

Mr. Farmer later launched an action for malicious prosecution. In it, he claimed the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Police took him to court without reasonable cause and without properly investigating and assessing the facts.

Among his complaints were that they failed to take account of flaws in the eyewitness statement founding the prosecution and that a Police officer told him while he was in custody that he believed him to be guilty.

Mr. Farmer also claimed the Police failed to check his alibi statement and potential witnesses in support of it, and failed to inform him before trial that DNA analysis of a blood sample did not implicate him.

The malicious prosecution case was struck out by the Supreme Court in February 2007 and Mr. Farmer lost an appeal in June this year.

The Court of Appeal said that malice – something that goes beyond negligence in the eyes of the law – had not been proven.

Mr. Farmer described that outcome as disappointing, and told this newspaper he was still waiting for a decision on the complaint he lodged against the Police more than four years after filing it.

That accused the investigating officers of failing in their duty to investigate properly, which led to him enduring what he described as: "Six months of lurid headlines, five court appearances, legal fees and all the resulting personal anxiety."

The PCA suspended its investigation pending the other legal proceedings, but revisited it after returning from its summer break in September.

As a result, Mr. Farmer has received a copy of a letter sent by PCA chairman Michelle St. Jane to Inspector Na'imah Williams, the officer in charge of complaints and discipline at the Police, on October 6.

Ms St. Jane wrote that the PCA "resolved that it is in the public interest that it recommend discipline as this complaint rests on abuse of process and shows glaring inadequacies in the Police investigation. Furthermore, the Police Complaints Authority strongly recommends an immediate formal apology be made to the complainant for what he has endured."

She asked for information regarding the identification process used in the investigation, repeating her request and recommendations in a similar letter to Michael DeSilva, Deputy Commissioner of Police, on November 3.

Mr. Farmer said he has heard no more since, but welcomed the contents of the letters, saying: "Reading the language, I thought it sounds like a bit of progress here. An apology would be part of it, as long as it's public apology.

"I think on behalf of the general public it's important that there's some correct action taken... the general understanding is that if there's an offence committed, then the Police actually investigate rather than just leap to a conclusion."

A Police spokesman declined an invitation to comment.