False accuser who sent innocent young man to prison for four years pleads guilty to perjury

A follow-up to a story we've followed closely. Elizabeth Coast pleaded guilty yesterday to making a false sexual assault report that led to the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent man. Johnathon Montgomery spent four years in prison for a sexual assault that never happened.

Coast falsely claimed that Mr. Montgomery molested her in 2000 when he was just 14-years-old and she was 10. Mr. Montgomery denied the allegations, but in 2008 a judge convicted him of aggravated sexual battery and other charges based solely on his accuser's story. He was sentenced to 7½ years in prison.  Coast finally recanted her story last year and was charged with perjury.

Coast told investigators that her parents caught her looking at pornographic websites in 2007 when she was 17, so she concocted a story of prior sexual abuse to explain her behavior. In 2000, Montgomery lived across the street from Coast's grandmother in Hampton.

A newspaper account this morning noted that when Coast devised the assault story, she supposedly didn't think anything would happen to Montgomery because he had moved with his father and stepmother to North Carolina in 2004.

Coast's excuse scarcely mitigates her heinous wrongdoing. Once unleashed a rape lie takes on a life of its own. In this case, Coast could have spared Mr. Montgomery the horrors she put him through at any time but chose not to. When Coast saw that Mr. Montgomery had been targeted by law enforcement authorities, she allowed him to be charged, and then tried, convicted, and imprisoned for four years. Finally, she spoke up. (To put this in perspective, if a young man failed to withdraw for several seconds after his sex partner tells him to "stop," he is considered a rapist and will face years in prison. In contrast, Elizabeth Coast allowed Johnathon Montgomery to spend four years in an unspeakable false rape hell.) It would be difficult to fathom a more despicable act.

A Circuit Court judge exonerated Mr. Montgomery last November and ordered him freed. He was released after Gov. Bob McDonnell issued a conditional pardon. The governor stated: "Tonight I called Johnathon to personally offer, on behalf of the citizens of the Commonwealth, our heartfelt apologies for all that he has been put through due to this miscarriage of justice. I am thankful that the witness in this case finally stepped forward to recent her testimony. Justice, while tragically delayed, has been served."

The governor's sentiments no doubt were sincere, but this was anything but "justice."  And despite the pardon, Montgomery will not be fully exonerated unless the Virginia Court of Appeals grants his petition for a writ of actual innocence. The court agreed last December to let Montgomery's petition move ahead, but Montgomery's lawyers and the Virginia Attorney General's office asked the court to delay considering the petition until after the perjury charge against Coast was settled.

SOURCES:
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/05/guilty-plea-false-sex-assault-report-hampton

http://www.nbc12.com/story/22308717/va-woman-pleads-guilty-to-false-sex-assault-report

http://www.cotwa.info/2012/11/young-man-falsely-accused-of-rape-is.html

A bill to create an exoneration commission that would study false convictions at a standstill in Texas Legislature

As reported here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/20/4871136/a-fort-worth-man-keeps-fighting.html

FORT WORTH — Cory Session isn’t giving up.

A bill to create an exoneration commission that would study false convictions — named for his brother, Tim Cole, a Fort Worth man found innocent of a rape conviction years after he died in prison — appears to be at a standstill in the Texas Legislature.

Less than a week after he exchanged heated words with a state senator who opposes the bill, Session said he hopes to shake the measure loose today when he and his mother, Ruby Cole Session, visit the Texas Capitol.

“I have not given up,” said Session, who works with the Innocence Project of Texas. “I have not given up since 1986, when he was convicted. I won’t give up now. I’m very hopeful ... that we will be able to prevail.

“If it’s not this session, then I’ll be back.”

Debate over this bill grew heated last week during a committee hearing, when state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said she felt the exoneration commission isn’t needed.

“I strongly oppose creating yet another commission to second-guess, once again, what has been done,” said Huffman, a former judge. “I think that Texas has done a really good job to try to do what we can to compensate the exonerees for the injustice that has been done to them.”

Session, upset by Huffman’s point of view, has tirelessly fought for years to have his brother — who died of an asthma attack in prison in 1999 — exonerated.

“The attitude you have is deplorable,” he said to Huffman during last week’s committee meeting. “I am sickened.

“That’s your job to figure out what went wrong in this state,” he shouted at her. “It’s your job. You don’t like it? Go find another one.”

Huffman has said that Session’s reaction was unprofessional; the bill — HB 166 — has remained stalled in the committee since then.

Since last week’s argument, state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, has been killing Huffman bills that have shown up on the local and consent calendar in the House.

“If God gives me the strength to walk back here on every one of those bills that belongs to that senator, I will do what I have to do,” McClendon, author of the exoneration commission bill, has told the media.

One week left

Session said he’s optimistic he can get this bill back on track in the waning days of the session that wraps up Memorial Day.

This measure would create a nine-member Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission to determine the causes of wrongful convictions, promote adoption of needed reforms to improve the accuracy of criminal investigations and the reliability of criminal prosecutions and protect innocent people.

It has drawn bipartisan support and was mentioned during the State of the State address by Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, is trying to carry the bill through the Senate since it already passed the Senate. But he has said he doesn’t have the votes to get it out of committee right now.

Session said he hasn’t spoken to Huffman since last week’s committee haring.

“I’m sorry for the outburst,” he said. “She is a very smart attorney, but sometimes we can be so smart we can’t see the forest for the trees. I want her to see the forest.

“We haven’t done enough,” he said. “We will never do enough.”

Continuing work

Session and his family spent years trying to get Tim Cole a posthumous pardon.

Cole, who died in prison in 1999 while serving a 25-year sentence, was exonerated by a Travis County judge in 2009 after DNA testing cleared him of the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech student. Another man, Jerry Wayne Johnson, had sent a letter to Cole's mother confessing to the crime.

In 2010, Gov. Rick Perry formally presented the family with a posthumous pardon.

The next year, state lawmakers came close to establishing an innocence commission. They did approve bills to overhaul eyewitness practices by law enforcers, ensure DNA testing can prove a person’s innocence and create uniform standards for collection of biological evidence.

The family wants to do more to protect against wrongful convictions.

Today, Session and his mother will be in the Senate where Ruby Cole Session is expected to be recognized for her achievements.

“We will see what we can do about this this to a vote,” Session said. “My mom will try to talk to some people to try to get it moving again.”

Innocent man arrested on false rape claim

Strood woman, 26, pleads guilty to false rape claim: http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/strood_woman_26_pleads_guilty_to_false_rape_claim_1_2202688

A woman who wasted 100 hours of police time falsely claiming to have been raped as she walked home from a Chatham nightclub has pleaded guilty.

Stacey Wallace, 26, of Humber Crescent, Strood, told police that in the early hours of October 20 last year four men had followed her over Rochester Bridge and that one of the men had raped her by a grass area near the bridge.

A man was arrested following an investigation by the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate and despite Wallace being kept updated, she made no further comment on the incident

During his police interview the man said that the sex was consensual and that he even gave Wallace his business card. The card was later found in Wallace’s pocket.

Officers seized CCTV which showed Wallace and the man walking with their arms around each other. Mobile phone communication records and evidence led officers to put it to Wallace that her allegation was false.

She was charged with wasting police time on November 1 last year.

Detective Constable Catherine Holmes said: “Wallace’s lies have led to the arrest of an innocent man who had to undergo extensive questioning and after which intimate forensic samples were taken from him.

“Her claims resulted in over 100 hours of police time being wasted, resources which could have been used helping victims of crime.”

Wallace will be sentenced on June 10.

College student leader: Requiring substantial evidence of a sex offense before a student may be expelled 'automatically assum[es] the information from the victim is false'

Ted Barnhill, a finance professor at GW University, recently took issue with the school's sexual assault policy that, among other things, allows students to be punished based on a mere "preponderance of evidence" standard. Professor Barnhill wants the school to commit itself to requiring substantial evidence of wrongdoing prior to the termination of faculty or staff, or expulsion or suspension of students, for an alleged sex offense. See here.

Professor Barnhill explained: "In sexual harassment and violence cases there may be little or no evidence. False, emotional or confused claims do occur. Our proposal . . .  is focused on insuring that career and education ending decisions are based on substantial evidence."  He cautioned: "Given the Federal Government’s aggressive behavior including the Dear Colleague letter it would not be surprising to see a significant, and perhaps justified, increase in complaints. Some of these complaints may have limited or no evidence of wrong doing. Given the threatened financial penalties and potential law suits the University could be pressured to terminate faculty or staff or expel students in the absence of substantial evidence of wrong doing. . . . ." And: "Have we forgotten the many sham trial abuses where defendants were convicted in the absence of evidence (Salem,Georgia, Moscow, Afghanistan, etc. etc.)? Are we prepared to have our students, our colleagues, and ourselves face career and education ending sanctions in the absence of substantial evidence of wrong doing? I am not so inclined."

Prof. Barnhill's advocacy for the presumptively innocent was too much for Student Association Executive Vice President Kostas Skordalos. Skordalos ran for student government on a platform of enhancing sexual assault awareness, and he suggested that Barnhill's concern was "troubling." Why? According to Skordalos: "You're automatically assuming the information from the victim is false."

Read that quote again. The implication is chilling. Somehow, having a policy that helps insure innocent students aren't punished for something they didn't do is "assuming the information from the victim is false."

Skordalos' comment, itself, is premised a very troubling assumption: that an accuser, by necessity, is a "victim." It follows, then, that the accused must be guilty on the basis of the accusation.

Is it even necessary to explain the grotesque error here? The hanging trees of the Old South were witness to such odious assumptions.

Skordalos's blithe dismissal of the interests of the presumptively innocent evinces an absence of schooling on matters fundamental to our culture's collective sense of fairness, most robustly articulated in the steady expansion of due process rights for the accused since before our nation was founded. Blackstone's formulation has always been one of the pillars of our jurisprudence. See here. Based on Skordalos's comment, I would be surprised to learn that he is familiar with it.

In the current campus climate, Skordalos's views are the bow wow of the mob, neither brave nor controversial, and certainly not well thought out. Even GW's Deputy Title IX Coordinator Tara Pereira recently admitted: "It's much more popular to make sure you're being fair to the complainant right now . . . ."

In contrast, Blake Neff, writing for the Dartmouth Review last week, understands that Blackstone's formulation retains its relevance, even on college campuses: "The argument has been made that the preponderance standard is necessary because the use of a stricter standard implies that the accuser’s word is not equal to the word of the accused. Relying on preponderance, so it goes, puts the two sides on equal footing. This may be the case, but what it ignores is that the consequences of a [disciplinary] hearing are far from equal for the two sides." He added: ". . . expulsion from college is a severe, life-altering event with effects comparable to a brief prison stint."

Prof. Cynthia Bowman of Cornell echoed that in her school's debate over adoption of the "preponderance of the evidence" standard: “The consequences for someone expelled for sexual assault are enormous and will follow him throughout his life, leading to rejection by other schools, inability to qualify for the bar and a great deal of stigma.” She added: "To impose those consequences on someone requires a rigorous standard of proof and many due process protections to ensure fairness.” She said that procedures proposed at her school in response to the Department of Education's mandate were "Orwellian.” Prof. Kevin Clermont said that “not all would characterize the procedure as Orwellian; some have used instead the term Kafkaesque.” (Alas, their voices have not been heeded at Cornell: Prof. Clermont recently told me: ". . . battle and maybe war lost.")

GW's student newspaper endorsed Kostas Skordalos in the school's recent student election. It said he "demonstrated his interest in relevant student issues, one of which is heightening awareness of sexual assault. As a founder and co-president of GW’s Men of Strength chapter and an active member of Students Against Sexual Assault, it is clear that this is an issue that he is both passionate and knowledgeable about."

It is troubling that someone with so much concern for victims of sexual assault has so little for the wrongly accused.  Every civilized society must strive to eradicate heinous criminality by punishing offenders, but it also must insure that the innocent aren't punished with them. It is perpetually mystifying to us why more of us don't have concern for both victims of sexual assault and the wrongly accused.

SOURCES:
http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/05/12/justin-peligri-words-matter-in-sexual-assault-policy/

http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/03/20/hatchet-endorsement-kostas-skordalos-for-student-association-executive-vice-president/

http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/05/19/sexual-assault/

http://dartreview.com/dartlog/2013/5/14/does-dartmouth-have-a-problem.html

'Plainly wicked' false rape claim denounced

Editorial posted here.

THE fake rape allegation of Kirsty Debanks made in her twisted scheme for “revenge” against her ex-lover [COTWA reported on that story here] is all the more disgraceful given the conclusion this week of the Operation Bullfinch trial.

However horrific it was at the time for Chris Newitt to be arrested, there were secondary victims to Debanks: every current and future victim of rape.

This week, six women abused by the Bullfinch gang finally achieved some justice after years of their collective plight being ignored by the authorities.

It took great courage for each of them to give their evidence, in part because they would face accusations from the defence they were lying and because the conviction rape for sex crimes is so low.

Often rape cases come down to he said/she said, and many juries find it hard to return a guilty verdict.

What Debanks has done with her preposterous plan is to potentially undermine the cases of genuine victims in the future.

Often with completely fictitious claims of rape, the complainant has mental health issues and so there has to be an element of sympathy.

But being in concert with two other people to create injuries to back up her case is plainly wicked and Judge Ian Pringle was right to reflect the community’s outrage in this case.

British Home Secretary: Suspects should have right to anonymity at arrest

We've written extensively about anonymity for persons charged with heinous sex offenses, most recently here. Now, a high ranking British official, Home Secretary Theresa May, has called for anonymity for persons after arrest until they are charged.

Here's a news report from the BBC:

People who have been arrested should not normally be named until they are charged, Home Secretary Theresa May has said in a letter to police.

Her call comes amid concerns different approaches are being taken by forces in England and Wales.

It also follows some newspapers' claims that not naming suspects until they are charged amounts to secret justice.

But Mrs May adds that "there will be circumstances" when naming a suspect will be in the public interest.

The home secretary also insists that "there should be no right to anonymity at charge apart from in extremely unusual circumstances".

In her letter, addressed to the College of Policing, she writes: "I believe that there should be a right to anonymity at arrest, but I know that there will be circumstances in which the public interest means that an arrested suspect should be named."

The letter comes as the Association of Police Officers (Acpo) finalises new guidance on how officers should engage with the media.

A draft of the guidance, due to be approved by the college next week, states that, "save in exceptional and clearly identified circumstances, the names or identifying details of those who are arrested or suspected of a crime should not be released by police forces to the press or the public".

The exceptional circumstances could include a threat to life, the prevention or detection of crime, or a matter of significant public interest and confidence, according to the guidance.

However, senior officers have asserted that all suspects should be named when they are charged with an offence.

'Freedom of expression'
Some journalists have expressed concern that preventing police officers from revealing the names of suspects they have arrested but not charged amounts to a sort of secret justice.

Former Metropolitan Police commissioner, Lord Blair, has also said that naming on arrest can encourage other victims to come forward.

But the author of the proposed new guidelines, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police Andy Trotter, says he has spoken to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) about the potential risks of such a policy.

"I asked the DPP how defence lawyers would react to police arresting and naming a person and then asking if anyone has got any information about this person that might lead to a charge," he said recently.

Keir Starmer QC - the DPP - is understood to be content with the new guidance on anonymity, which stresses how "police forces must balance an individual's rights to a private life, the right of publishers to freedom of expression, and the rights of defendants to a fair trial".

Meanwhile, the Society of Editors, representing newspapers, has put out a statement suggesting that the police's decision to name the former TV celebrity Stuart Hall when he was arrested for sex offences demonstrates why anonymity may not be in the public interest.

Executive director Bob Satchwell said: "If Stuart Hall had not been named when he was arrested he might never have been brought to court. None of his victims knew one another."

Mr Trotter has since responded by pointing out that Hall was arrested at 10:00 BST and charged at 19:00 on the same day - during which time only one victim came forward having heard his name.

After his charge a further 12 people contacted the police.

'Atrocious'
"How do you select whose name to release?" Mr Trotter asks. "What is our criteria? An MP's son? A VIP? How many of the 1.2m people we arrest each year should we name?"

His view is that naming everyone arrested risks tarnishing the reputations of innocent people.

"People can be arrested one minute and de-arrested the next. We had someone who was arrested for the theft of a mobile phone who we later proved had found it and was trying to hand it in to police."

Mr Trotter is highly critical, though, of police forces which do not name individuals who have been charged.

When Warwickshire Police recently refused to name a former officer charged with the theft of £113,000 from the force headquarters they were widely condemned.

"It is atrocious that forces are not naming on charge," Mr Trotter says.

In a reply to the home secretary, the chief executive of the College of Policing, Alex Marshall, writes: "It is clear that a balance must be struck between the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty and the understandable media expectation of openness."

Attention craving woman has boyfriend arrested on false rape claim, smirks when she finally recounts the lie to police

As reported here.

A woman has been jailed for eight months after falsely accusing her ex boyfriend of raping her.

Kirsty Debanks, 20, lied that Chris Newitt had attacked her the day after she suffered a miscarriage.

However, she finally admitted that she had made it all up when CCTV showed Mr Newitt was in Oxford city centre with his brother at the time.

Sentencing her, Judge Ian Pringles told Miss Debanks 'Those who suffer genuine rape are undermined by people like you. You undermine the whole system of justice.'

He added: 'I would be failing in my duty today if I was not to pass an immediate prison sentence.'

The city's crown court heard that police were called by paramedics to help control Debanks who was claiming to be having a miscarriage.

Prosecutor Jonathan Stone said the next day Debanks told police that Mr Newitt had raped her when she got home from hospital.

Mr Stone told the court: 'She said he had pushed her friend Tracy out of the address.

'He had pushed her (Debanks) down on the sofa. He said: 'You're going to f*** me whether you like it or not'."

Mr Newitt was arrested and questioned in police custody for almost six hours and subjected to forensic testing.

Officers visited her to begin the formal investigation but she told them she did not want to make a complaint only 'wanted the defendant to pay for what he did'.

She also refused a medical appointment and would not sign the officer's notebook to confirm her account.

However, later on she called police to say that she did want to make the complaint. In interview she described the alleged attack to them, saying Mr Newitt's face was 'pure evil'.

Miss Debanks' mother then called police and said something did not ring true in her daughter's account.

Mr Newitt protested that he could not have carried out the attack as he was in Oxford city centre with his brother at the time. When officers viewed CCTV footage it confirmed his account.

Debanks then called police herself and confessed that she had lied.

In her statement she explained that in fact she had gone to the pub with her friend Tracy to drink double vodkas and beers, then gone back to her home to continue drinking and smoke crack cocaine.

Tracy then suggested making the false claim, she said. Debanks only told the truth when her mother warned her the case would go to trial.

'She appeared to show no remorse. In fact she smirked as she gave her account,' Mr Stone told Oxford Crown Court.

Lucy Ffrench, defending, said Debanks had suffered a difficult time, including the loss of her father to cancer and of her uncle in a freak accident, as well as other personal issues.

'She has been looking in the wrong places for the attention she craves,' said Ms Ffrench.

Most shocking federal policy yet: sexual harassment on campus is now defined by the accuser's subjective feelings, regardless of how irrational they might be

Citing a "hostile educational environment" at one university affecting "substantial numbers of female students," the Justice Department (DOJ) and the Education's Department's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) have written a joint letter intended to "serve as a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country to protect students from sexual harassment and assault."  The letter shockingly declares that conduct may constitute sexual harassment even if it is not "objectively offensive." Specifically: "Whether conduct is objectively offensive . . . is not the standard to determine whether conduct was 'unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature' and therefore constitutes 'sexual harassment.'"

That means that, on college campuses across America, sexual harassment is now defined on the basis of another student's "subjective" feelings. Attorney Wendy Kaminer, writing in the Atlantic, explains: "If a student feels harassed, she may be harassed, regardless of the reasonableness of her feelings, and school administrators may be legally required to discipline her 'harasser.'"

In case you are suspecting that Ms. Kaminer is engaging in hyperbole, in just the first few days after the letter was issued, a chorus of protests appeared in print that unanimously denounced it in the strongest possible terms. FIRE collected them here. We can't recall such universal condemnation for any policy remotely similar. And for good reason.

FIRE calls the letter's "breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment" a "shocking affront to the United States Constitution" and explains that the letter "establish[es] . . . speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent." It is nothing less than a sea change in the law:

This result directly contradicts previous Department of Education guidance on sexual harassment. In 2003, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stated that harassment "must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive." Further, the letter made clear that "OCR's standards require that the conduct be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable person in the alleged victim's position, considering all the circumstances, including the alleged victim's age."

http://thefire.org/article/15767.html

What does this mean in the real world?

Among the forms of expression now punishable on America's campuses by order of the federal government are:

•Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person. This leaves a wide range of expressive activity—a campus performance of "The Vagina Monologues," a presentation on safe sex practices, a debate about sexual morality, a discussion of gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita—subject to discipline.

•Any sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason.

•Any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.

http://thefire.org/article/15767.html

Wendy Kaminer, for one, doubts that the policy is "intended to be fairly enforced," and we think she's right. "I doubt federal officials want or expect it to be used against sex educators, advocates of reproductive choice, anti-porn feminists, or gay rights advocates, if their speech of a sexual nature is 'unwelcome' by religious conservatives," Ms. Kaminer writes.

The letter even misquotes a United States Supreme Court decision, leaving out a critical phrase that harassment must be "objectively offensive" to trigger a school's Title IX obligation. http://thefire.org/article/15765.html  This suggests that the letter's misinterpretation of settled law is purposeful.

The letter also makes it mandatory that "a university must take immediate steps to protect the complainant from further harassment prior to the completion of the . . .  investigation/resolution." These steps include "disciplinary action against the harasser." (It is mind-boggling how a school will be able to declare someone a "harasser" before an investigation into an allegation of harassment.)  According to the letter: "These steps should minimize the burden on the complainant . . . ."

Two years ago, the Department of Education issued a letter designed to make it easier to punish the accused, both the guilty and the innocent, when it comes to alleged sexual offenses. Now, the Department of Education has teamed up with the Department of Justice to declare that the offense is whatever the accuser wants it to be, and it doesn't matter if the accused has any basis to anticipate that he is in breach of it.

The due process infirmities here are stark and manifest. College sex policies should not be guessing games, or free-floating standards of purported wrongdoing that punish offenses “in the air.” Fundamental notions of fairness dictate that college rules of conduct be sufficiently definite to warn the accused in advance of any purported offense that he might be violating. This is a fundamental component of due process. “The test is whether the language conveys sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practices.” Jordan v. DeGeorge, 341 U.S. 223 (1951). A policy that does not meet that standard is unconstitutionally vague.

The joint letter scraps any semblance of fidelity to due process or the fair administration of justice. It establishes a policy akin to the rule of third world dictators: a punishable offense is whatever the dictator says it is. This should be unacceptable to all persons of good will.

Woman fabricates rape lie because she didn't want to pay for a taxi ride home and knew police would give her a free ride

An unnamed, unemployed, 25-year-old woman with personality disorders and an "attention seeking" problem fabricated a rape story after a dalliance with a male stripper because she didn't want to pay for a taxi ride home. She knew if she cried rape, police would give her a free ride. This week, she pled guilty, and has been convicted of providing police with a false statement.

It started last month when she met a stripper the Body Heat male strip show. He gave her his cellphone number and asked her to meet him at his nearby accommodation later that night. The woman was dropped off at the stripper's accommodation by a friend, but then decided to go home instead of meeting up with him.

The problem was, she had no way to get home other than to call a cab, but she didn't want to pay for one. So she dialed the emergency police number on her cellphone and told a police officer she had been raped by a man she met at the strip show. Shortly thereafter, a police officer was called out from his home to meet the woman and to start an investigation into the complaint. The officer took her to the police station where she met a second police officer and a rape crisis support worker.

After several hours speaking to police and the support worker, the woman got what she wanted: a free ride home.

The next day, a specialist police interviewer spent about three hours with the woman while she provided a formal statement. The woman again insisted she had been raped. An extensive and time-consuming police investigation failed to show any corroborative evidence to back up her claims.

Three days after her lengthy police interview, the woman went to the police station and provided a second statement that admitted she had made up the rape allegation. She admitted that what she wanted was a free ride home.

The woman will be sentenced next month. The woman's lawyer asked for continued name suppression, saying media coverage and the publication of her name would probably lead to a further deterioration of her mental health. The judge handling the case indicated he might consider a sentence of community detention.

Sources:
http://www.times-age.co.nz/news/masterton-woman-fabricates-rape-story/1868318/

http://www.cotwa.info/2013/04/woman-charged-with-lying-about-sexual.html

Co-founder of Anonymous UK, Occupy London activist, is falsely accused of rape (video put him elsewhere at time of the "attack") and wants anonymity for the presumptively innocent

As reported  here

A POLITICAL activist who says his life has been ‘shattered’ by false rape claims is returning to Weston to begin a fight for new laws to protect people from malicious allegations.

Malcolm Blackman made national headlines two weeks ago when he went on trial at the Old Bailey accused of raping a woman at the Occupy London demonstration at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Jurors have since cleared the 46-year-old of any wrong-doing – and now Mr Blackman says he wants to return home ‘with his head up high’ and campaign to save others from having their lives ‘ruined’ in the same way.

Formal ‘not guilty’ verdicts were recorded on both charges against Mr Blackman on May 3, and now he faces the task of piecing together a life which has been on hold for more than a year.

Mr Blackman – the co-founder of activist movement Anonymous UK – told the Mercury: “The whole situation has been horrendous.

“All year, people have been told I am a rapist. Life will never be the same again.

“There will always be that stigma attached to me. There will always be people who are wondering ‘I wonder if he just got away with it’.

“The worst thing was knowing that I would either be going to prison as an innocent man, or walking away with my life in ruins.

“Completely vindicated as I was, it’s not going to change the fact that my life is shattered.”

Key video evidence and witness testimonies put Mr Blackman elsewhere at the time the woman – who cannot be named – claimed she was attacked.

And he now wants the law to do more to protect the identity of people accused of rape until their guilt is established.

Mr Blackman said: “We live in a make-believe world where people are innocent until proven guilty - but I had to prove my innocence.

“I expected British justice to do its thing. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) should have looked at this and seen it had no legs. They said they have to be sympathetic to the victim – but now I am the victim.

“I am 100 per cent behind anonymity for alleged victims of rape, as real victims must not be deterred from coming forward.

“But what I am going to be stamping my feet about and campaigning for is the need for anonymity for both parties.

“The law needs to be reviewed as a matter of urgency. The accused gets his life torn apart. It has cost me my career, my home.

“I had to go and see everyone in my life that matters to me. I told them ‘the first thing I need to say is I didn’t do it – the second is, you’d better sit down’.

“It’s a very difficult thing to try to explain something which is so alien to you.

“Even my sisters, like everyone else, just didn’t know. They were forced to question their faith in me.

“I’ve not slept, I’ve not eaten. I’ve lived with untold pressure. I have lost a lot of faith in humanity. I now have only a very few friends. And I have an absolute fear of women – I don’t intend to date ever again.”

The first step will be for Mr Blackman to return home to the town where he has lived for more than 20 years, and is well known for his work in the security industry and for his street act as a magician.

He said: “What I really want to do is get back to Weston and rebuild my life. I want to be able to walk around with my head up high. I want people to know the truth.

“I consider myself a decent citizen of Weston, and an asset to the town. I love it as home.

“I want to sit on the beach and watch the sun go down. Little things like that mean a lot now.

“But I will have to take it one day at a time because there have been no plans for me. How can you make plans when your life is in limbo?”

UCSB Student Heads to Trial for False Rape Report

An update to our report, as reported here:

The trial for a UCSB student charged with filing a false police report after orchestrating a violent and bizarre series of events in Santa Cruz this February is scheduled to begin May 23.

Morgan Triplett, 20, told authorities she was beaten and raped by a stranger as she looked for banana slugs along a path on the UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus. She had traveled there for a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender conference. Over the course of their investigation, detectives determined Triplett had actually hired a man through Craigslist to beat her in exchange for sex. While the motive remains unclear, authorities have speculated she organized the entire affair in an attempt to save a troubled relationship.

Efforts to reach Triplett have been unsuccessful, and messages left with her attorney — Santa Cruz public defender Jack Lamar — have not been returned. If convicted of the misdemeanor charge, she faces up to six months in jail. She pleaded not guilty during her March 29 arraignment.

In the criminal complaint, Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Johanna Schonfield claims that Triplett called 9-1-1 on February 17 to report she had been raped. Law enforcement arrived on the scene, interviewed Triplett, found no suspects, and sent her to a nearby hospital for a sexual assault exam. But, the complaint explains, Triplett refused to give the nurse her clothing despite being told it could contain evidence, and she asked that DNA samples not be sent to the Department of Justice, “which raised red flags in the minds of the investigators.”

Triplett helped a forensic artist sketch an image of the supposed suspect that was then disseminated to the public. As a result, several people were detained and questioned. Parents pulled their children out of school, Schonfield said, and “widespread fear” permeated the community.

Over the next few weeks, “police learned Ms. Triplett has a history of lying, particularly in efforts to save troubled relationships,” Schonfield wrote. The day before she filed the report, Triplett and her boyfriend at the time had broken up. “In response to the ending of this relationship, she claimed she was pregnant with her boyfriend’s child, which was not true,” the complaint reads. “She also previously had told this boyfriend her father had suffered from a heart attack, which he had not, that she had been lost in the desert with amnesia, and that she had ovarian cancer, none of which was true.”

That same day — February 16 — Triplett reportedly posted two ads on Craigslist. One sought a gun owner who would shoot her in the arm or shoulder “with the smallest caliber bullet possible.” She promised she wouldn’t press charges and offered undefined compensation. The other ad asked for someone to beat her up. “Punches, bruises, kicks,” she wrote.

An unnamed individual responded to the second ad and began texting with Triplett. “The two reached an agreement that in exchange for the physical assault Ms. Triplett would have sexual intercourse with him,” Schonfield said. They met February 17 on UCSC’s campus. “Ms. Triplett directed him to hit her repeatedly in the body and face. They had sex and afterwards she used his cell phone screen reflection as a mirror to see if the injuries were bad enough and then directed him to hit her some more.” They parted ways, and Triplett called 9-1-1.

“During the course of the investigation it became very clear that Ms. Triplett is a very troubled young woman who was engaged in self-injurious behavior and been suicidal at points,” the complaint concludes.

Outside a Santa Cruz courtroom after her arraignment in March, Triplett’s father, Richard Triplett, told the Register-Pajaronian that his daughter did arrange to be beaten, but was then forcibly raped. “Morgan asked for some trouble, but she did not ask to be sexually assaulted,” he said. “There are two sides to every story.”

Richard Triplett went on to say Morgan is remorseful for the entire incident. “She is sorry for any problems or chaos that she has caused,” he told the Register-Pajaronian. “What we’re dealing with is a very scared, very upset, very confused 20-year-old girl who has made some poor choices. This is the culmination of those choices.”

For her part, Morgan simply stated, “Right now, I just want this to settle down. I’m trying to move on with my life.”

The military's hidden epidemic: false or baseless claims of sexual abuse

The Department of Defense's Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military for fiscal year 2012  released by the Pentagon last week has been widely discussed in the mainstream news media -- or, at least, one portion of it has been widely discussed. Almost all of the attention has been on the unacceptable prevalence of sexual misconduct.

Hardly discussed at all is that the report shows an unacceptably high percentage of wrongful rape claims in the military, and that reports of false or baseless complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a much faster pace than reports of sexual assault.

At the outset, it is important to note that the report calls false or baseless claims "unfounded." The word "unfounded," is ambiguous when used without definition, but in this report, it is carefully defined. The Pentagon's report specifically defines "unfounded" claims as "false or baseless" (page 13).  More specifically: "When an MCIO makes a determination that available evidence indicates the individual accused of sexual assault did not commit the offense, or the offense was improperly reported or recorded as a sexual assault, the allegations against the subject are considered to be unfounded. As a result, no action is taken against the accused." (Pages 66-67.) Further, when the "evidence discovered by the investigation demonstrates that the accused person did not commit the offense," the report says "the allegations are determined to be unfounded, meaning false or baseless." (Page 79.)

A brief summary of the numbers is revealing.  In FY 2009, the Pentagon said there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault. See here. According to the FY12 report released last week, there were 3,374 reports of sexual assault. (Page 3 of the report.) That is a 4.5 percent increase.

But during that same period, the percentage of unfounded claims (meaning false or baseless) has jumped much more dramatically. Specifically, in FY09, 331 of the 2,584 subjects in reported dispositions made unfounded allegations. In FY12, 444 of the 2,661 subjects in reported dispositions made unfounded allegations. (Page 80 of the report.)

This means that for fiscal year 2012, the percentage of unfounded claims was a whopping 17 percent of all claims. (That does not mean that the remaining 83 percent were actual sexual assaults: the 17 percent represents only the claims that could be determined to be unfounded. As for the rest, many sexual assault reports fall into a gray area where it is impossible to say whether a sexual assault occurred but it is also not possible to say the claim were false or baseless.)

Perhaps even more startling, between 2009 and 2012, the number of claims that were false or baseless jumped a staggering 34 percent.

Not only has the mainstream news media practically ignored the unacceptably high percentage of unfounded sexual assault claims, the report itself seems unconcerned about it.

Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness, said the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office (SAPRO) is ignoring the problem of false reports.  

“Unsubstantiated accusations remain a significant problem, but the SAPRO is doing nothing about it,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “I went through both volumes and found no evidence of concern about the significant 17 percent of ‘unfounded accusations.’ Something should be done to reduce the numbers of false accusations, the first step being an admission that the problem exists.” (See here.)

Any discussion of the problem of wrongful rape claims need not, and should not, detract from the discussion about sexual assault. But willfully ignoring a serious problem that is well-known among servicemen undermines confidence in efforts to reduce sexual assault and engenders a belief that there is a concerted witch hunt against male recruits when it comes to sexual offenses while false accusers are excused.

Justice requires that every allegation of sexual misconduct be treated seriously but that false claims should not be tolerated. Concern about one problem should not mean that there is an absence of concern about the other. In short, it should not be a zero sum game.

Women do not join the military to be raped; men do not join the military to have their reputations destroyed or their liberty taken away from them by false rape claims.