Mother falsely accused husband of rape because 'she wanted him out of her life'

[RFLH]

A mother-of-two who falsely accused her estranged husband of rape because she wanted him out of her life was jailed for four months today.

Judge Rodger Hayward Smith said Michaela Lodge's behaviour was 'calculated' and said that she had done a great disservice to genuine rape victims.


Lodge, 45, wrote her husband Martin a letter in February - three months after he was arrested and held in a police cell for 12 hours - confessing that she had lied.


Essex Police had spent 62 hours investigating her allegation that he had raped her in the house they continued to share, when in fact she had instigated sex, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

Lodge pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and Judge Rodger Hayward Smith QC told her it was 'a wicked allegation that was pre-planned to hasten his departure from your life'.


He added: 'Every false allegation of rape increases the plight of women who have been genuine victims of rape in that it makes a genuine allegation harder to prove because juries know that false allegations are made from time to time.'


Prosecutor Andrew Jackson said Lodge, of Black Notley, Braintree, went to a police station on November 26 last year and said her husband had raped her.

Mr Lodge was arrested at midday and held in custody for almost 13 hours before being released on bail.


He told officers they had gone to bed together and at her invitation had sex.


More...

• 'Cry rape woman tied her self up and stuffed tights in her mouth to fake attack'

On January 21, Lodge made a witness statement in which she said she didn't want him prosecuted but still maintained he had raped her.

The Crown said Mr Lodge had to stay away from the family home for three months as a condition of his bail. He was never charged with rape.
But on February 19, she gave her son Daniel a letter to pass on to her husband 'with a kiss underneath' and his name on the envelope.

In it she said: 'I am so sorry about what I have done to you. My head was and still is all over the place.


'I cannot deal with this anymore, I need to put it right. When we went to bed we both wanted to make love and the fact I lied to police about you raping me.

'My head was a mess with you pulling me one way and Pete the other. I just didn't know what to do. I will say goodbye and hope one day you will be able to forgive me. I am so sorry.'


Mr Jackson said: 'It seemed there had been another man involved with this defendant.'


When arrested for making the false allegation, Lodge admitted she had lied.


Marc Brown, defending, said Lodge had not acted out of malice or revenge.


'It was born more out of a confused desire to remove him from the picture,' she said.


'She accepts it was an outright lie. The following morning she began to have regrets about what had gone on and she wanted to make her situation easier by removing Mr Lodge from the picture.


'She did what she did without thinking of the consequences to him, or her children or herself.

'It was an irrational reaction to a difficult emotional position she found herself in.'


The judge read a letter from Mr Lodge, which he described as 'a magnanimous appeal for mercy', not to send her immediately to prison.

Mr Lodge was in court with her children to see his wife led from the dock.

Lodge's son Daniel burst into tears as sentence was passed and was held back from giving his mother a hug by the dock officer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nted-life.html

[Rights Fighter]

Here's the other one that has been mentioned relating to the liar who stuffed tights into her own mouth..............

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197118/Mother-falsely-accused-husband-rape-wanted-life.html


'Cry rape woman stuffed tights in her mouth and tied herself up to fake attack'

A woman had consensual sex with a trainee teacher and then faked her own rape by stuffing tights in her mouth and tying herself up, a court has heard.


Kirsty Woods, who has a history of mental health problems, was discovered crying out for help by a passerby in a city centre doorway.
The 23-year-old had been out drinking with friends when she approached a man at a bar.


The pair are then thought to have gone outside together and had sex at the back of the venue shorty afterwards.

The court heard how Miss Woods then walked to the nearby Portsmouth Guildhall building where she bound and gagged herself and began screaming for help.


Prosecutor Stephen Parish told how she sat down in the doorway and stuffed the tights in her mouth before tying her hands behind her back.
‘A group of young men saw a female lying in the doorway of the Guildhall. She was gagged and her arms were tied behind her back and she was yelling, “help, help, help.''


Detectives were promptly called to the scene and Miss Woods told officers that she had been raped.
Police launched a hunt for her alleged attacker and made an appeal in a local newspaper for information about the incident, which happened on November 29 last year.


The unnamed man who had sex with Miss Woods recognised himself in the appeal and handed himself in to police.


He was arrested on suspicion of rape and held in custody for nearly five hours but was released on bail while police made further investigations.
Subsequent enquiries and checks of CCTV in Guildhall Walk, the street where the alleged incident took place, backed up the man's story and Miss Woods was charged with perverting the course of justice.


However the victim of the bogus rape claim was forced to wait nearly three months before he was told no further action would be taken against him.


Mr Parish added: ‘A WPC conducted an experiment and tied herself up in the same way that Woods had been found.


‘She came to the conclusion that it was perfectly possible.’


Miss Woods was given a hospital order after admitting perverting the course of justice at Portsmouth Crown Court.


The order means she will receive treatment at a mental health unit in Fareham, where she has previously been an in-patient.


Judge Roger Hetherington said: ‘You must understand, and other people should too, that someone who is convicted of an offence like this will normally receive a significant prison sentence.


’It's quite obvious from the reports that you have a long history of mental ill health.’



Speaking after the sentencing, Detective Constable Daisy Sharma said: ‘This fake rape claim has devastated this young man's life.


‘He pulled out of teacher training because he was terrified that the authorities would find out he had been arrested.


‘He withdrew from friends and family and would not go out because he was worried what might happen.


‘Police take false allegations of rape very seriously, not only because of the devastating effect it can have on the accused, but also because it detracts from genuine victims.


‘Investigating incidents like this impacts on our effectiveness in investigating genuine crimes.’

[littlemoo]

RFLH, you beat me to it. I spotted a smaller, less detailed version of this in the metro and was going to post it.
it is presuably good, getting false accusers in jail, and getting it mentioned in the news too.
Jo