REDBRIDGE: Woman who lied about rape jailed

8:17am Wednesday 20th August 2008

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AN attention seeker who caused an innocent man to be locked up when she cried rape has been jailed for 12 months.

Kerry Saunders, 26, of Goodmayes Lane, Ilford, was drunk when she was ordered to get out of a car on the A13 near Purfleet, Thurrock, after having an argument with a family member.

In a childish attempt to get her family's sympathy Saunders telephoned them and claimed she had been raped.

Barry Hargreaves, prosecution counsel, said the conversation was overheard by an off duty police community support officer who spotted Saunders, standing by the road in the early hours of December 2 last year.

After speaking with the distressed defendant, she told him her attacker was a black man driving a blue car.

Mr Hargreaves said unfortunately a stranger who matched the vague description was arrested later that day and taken to Grays police station where he had to endure an intimate examination, had his DNA and photographs taken before being held in custody for 22 hours.

And it wasn't until the day after making the allegation that Saunders contacted police, who wasted £4,500 investigating the incident and even underwent a medical examination, and admitted lying.

Judge Brooke QC said: "I can understand that the police would naturally investigate these matters quite vigorously.

"She brought this on herself. She was not a baby. She could have said at any time that it wasn't true, that she was being hysterical."

Saunders pleased guilty to perverting the course of justice at an earlier hearing.