How an innocent man was falsely accused of rape

The next thing Mr. Ullah knew was that he was being arrested at his home for rape. He was subject to intrusive examinations and kept in a police cell for 30 hours and, of course, as is often the case, such action led to malicious gossip about him in his neighbourhood, 

It is unlikely that Mr. Ullah had seen the FACT website, so it shows that it is a sad sign of the times but, unfortunately for Ms Jones, this Good Samaritan was also a wise one and recorded the encounter on his phone. Faced with such evidence, she retracted the allegations, admitting that she had made them up.

The Judge’s observations

Ms. Jones was prosecuted (for once!) for perverting the course of justice, and was given two years prison sentence. (This is how it was reported in the press and it is unclear whether the sentence was two years (of which she would serve one year, or four years, of which she would serve two years). There should, of course, be a separate, named crime of making false allegations – the victim is not the justice system, it was the person who was falsely accused – the embarrassment and trauma of the arrest, the local gossip and the stress on both him and his 6-months-pregnant wife cannot be overestimated.

The judge rightly pointed out that had Mr. Ullah not had the foresight to record the event, 

“it does not bear thinking about the consequences had he not done so…I have no doubt he would have been prosecuted for rape and you would have carried on your merry way”.

Had that happened, it is likely that yet another innocent man would have gone to prison and would have added to the statistics about the ubiquity of rape and the successful prosecutions of rapists. It shows that the statistics cannot be trusted and we don’t know how many innocent people are suffering through similar false allegations.

The Judge also illustrated the fact that Ms Jones’ actions will only lead other men reading about it to avoid doing similar good deeds in future. 

‘Sadly the reason why many other people would not have gone to the aid of a lone woman distressed in the middle of the road without shoes, is due to what happened to him as a result of his act of charity. There will be many people who will say: “I am not doing that just in case a serious allegation is made.”

So she has not only harmed her victim, she has potentially harmed other women. This is exactly why women’s groups and others who defend false accusers and say they should not be prosecuted need to realise that false accusers are the enemies, not only of genuine victims, but of all vulnerable people.

The police’s treatment of the falsely accused

Detective Superintendent Helena Banusic, of Cheshire Police, said:

‘There is only one person in this case who needs to apologise, and that is Rachael. I hope the case does not impact on genuine victims of rape or sexual assault who may be fearful of coming forward. We treat all reports of this nature extremely seriously.”

But the police are not as blameless as they would have us believe and they too should apologise to Mr. Ullah. They did not need to arrest him and keep him locked up for 30 hours. They said they carried out a ‘detailed investigation, that quite frankly wasted police time and resources.” So, although  he was released after 30 hours, he remained under suspicion for four days, the malicious rumour-mongers spreading their evil gossip. So when did they view Mr. Ullah’s recordings? 

That Det. Supt. Banusic’s sorrow is more concerned with not preventing potential genuine victims coming forward, rather than the very real and immediate trauma caused to Mr. Ullah and his wife,speaks volumes about the police’s lack of concern for the falsely accused.

The fact is, when they heard the allegations, they could have brought him in for questioning, without arresting him, to get his side of the story. That is what a truly neutral investigation would have done. They should have then looked at the footage exonerating him completely of any wrongdoing as soon as they knew of it (and I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t have been one of the the first things he mentioned) and ended his ordeal far quicker than they did. The waste of police time and resources was partly their own fault and pales into insignificance compared to the suffering of the Good Samaritan. 

It is this over-willingness to ‘believe the victim’ which causes such unnecessary trauma to entirely innocent people. It was the falsely accused, in this case, not the complainant, who was the victim. In fact, at the time of the allegation, Cheshire Police described it as a “horrendous attack”, before issuing an update two days later saying no crime had taken place. Isn’t this remniscent of the “credible but true” statement made by the police in the Carl Beech case?

In spite of Sir Richard Henriques warning of exactly this type of thing in his report into that fiasco, the police continue to make the same mistake over and over again, without learning the lesson, and it sounds as if this experience will not change that policy as far as Detective Superintendent Banusic is concerned either.

Motive for false accusations

But what has still not been explained satisfactorily is why she did it. False-allegation deniers are always saying that it is so stressful going to the police and going through the whole process, “why would anyone subject themselves to that?” So why would anyone make such a heinous allegation against someone who had done them such a good turn? It makes no sense.

She put it down to being drunk, but is that really enough?
The reasons people usually make false allegations are:

1. To harm the victim, out of spite or malice; to get revenge etc.;
2. To cover for behaviour they don’t want others to know about, or are ashamed of;
3. For personal gain – custody of children, compensation, attention-seeking, etc.

Was it the rebuffed hug? Was Rachel Jones so upset that he didn’t reciprocate but instead offered a high five that she would wreck his life despite his good deed?
Was it racism? She didn’t have to accept his kindness. If she was racist, why did she try to hug him?

Of course, it could have been the thought of compensation. But if it was, that would have been unlikely to have come out in court because the authorities don’t like it being mentioned.

If being drunk is, on its own, enough for someone to make false allegations against a person who has only been kind to them, then why on earth would anyone assume that false allegations are rare?
God help us from people who DO have some kind of motive.

The Sentence – false accusers vs SO Register

Is the sentence she was given harsh enough? I’ll leave that for you to decide, but bear in mind he following – what sentence would her victim have got if he had been convicted of rape?

When she has served her term, will she spend the rest of her life on a ‘False Accusers Register’, the existence of which prevents, or at least makes it extemely difficult for her to find employment, obtain insurance, open a bank account, travel to certain countries and more?  Will she have to tell the police every time she gets a new credit card or spends more than 7 days in a year in a particular place? Will she need permission from the C of E to go to into a church?
No, because unlike those (wrongly) convicted of sex offences, there is no such register and no such blight on the rest of her life.

Unfortunately, the general public know next to nothing about the difficulties faced by people convicted of sexual offences and most do not care, because their naivety extends to assuming that they’re all guilty… until it happens to someone they know, when their eyes are opened.

She might be genuinely sorry for what she did to that poor man and his wife and regret her actions, but the point is that, because people don’t take it seriously enough as the heinous crime that it really is, people like Rachel Jones will make false accusations when they haven’t got a metaphorical cat to kick. And the Justice system will give them a relative slap on the wrist. 

Conclusion – What CAN we learn?

For any member of the public reading this
Be wary. If you ever find yourself in a situation which could conceivably be misunderstood, press RECORD on your smartphone. Think of it like your dash-cam; a precaution, hopefully unnecessary, against the bad behaviour of others. 

For the Police
False accusers exist – and apparently, if this case is any measure, it doesn’t take much. No real motive, just a few drinks too many.

• Treat complainants with respect but don’t blindly believe what they tell you without further and full investigation, without fear or favour.
• Treat the accused with respect too. They haven’t been found guilty of anything yet and they might equally be the completely innocent victim
  • Do you really need to arrest someone before you have any substantiated evidence?

For the Criminal Justice System
False accusations should be taken far more seriously than they are. There should be a named offence of ‘Falsely Accusing an Innocent Person’. The falsely accused is the victim of this crime, not the police, nor the Justice system, and the impact of being falsely accused is every bit as devastating as rape itself.

But until the Justice System realises the truth of this, more innocent people will be falsely accused, treated as the culprit from the instant of the accusation by the police, and if they weren’t as wise or as fortunate as Mr. Ullah in having exculpatory evidence, they may well end up in prison and spend the rest of their days on the sex-offender register.