Helping my 14 year deal with a false accusation of rape

[myhome]

I really hope that this meeting brings you and your son the closure that you need. Hopefully your son's confidence will gradually return......

[tiger mum]

Discussion with police after NFA for my son.

This will be my final post as I feel the saga of my son being falsely accused is closed and its time to move on. I will check on other posts and try and offer advice if I feel qualified to do so as its been a real help on this forum, not only for support but in understanding what the heck's going on!

I wanted some answers regarding my son's ordeal and what view the police had on the girl making accusations and then withdrawing them and the inconsistencies in her story and what she was telling people and behaving before and after the alleged rape.

This is what I learnt;

Police do believe the story the FA gives them despite witnesses giving them different accounts. Their view is teenage girls get confused, give out mixed messages and aren't always sure what they think/feel/explain to others. However if they decide on a version of events which says the following - "I initiated sex, but whilst in the act changed my mind and said I didn't want this to happen after all" then go on to explain this to the police, on this evidence alone they will charge a boy with rape. To the police they don't care what happened before or after, it is upon that specific insistence by the girl the boy can be labelled a sex offender. They do not differentiate between a violent stranger attack and a girl deciding she didn't want sex after all. A sex crime is a sex crime.

Although my son wasn't arrested, and therefore his details are not on the Police Data Base, there will be a record on the local computer saying he was a suspect in reported rape. Because of Soham, police now share this data with each other and there is national access to this information. He hasn't been arrested, charged or convicted - he will never have an opportunity to clear his name. If another girl/woman/man in the future decides to make an FA against him he should be very concerned as the police are more likely to think he's a rapist as it will be a second accusation. There is NOTHING that can be done to avoid this. That's a 14 year old putting a black mark on the name of another 14 year old for LIFE with no substance to the claim other than her word.

The police think the poor girl is confused and naïve and are not interested in considering she set my son up and was boasting before and after the event what she had been doing with him. They do not consider girls capable of making up lies for attention or to get out of a tricky situation with their parents by playing the poor little victim card. Although they were given evidence by independent witnesses that suggest this girl was lying through her teeth they said they found no evidence to suggest her claims were malicious and they are not interested in any pursuit of her for Wasting Police Time or Perverting the Course of Justice. My son does not want me to press them or give them the evidence I have as he wants it all over - if it were up to me I'd be pursuing it. I asked them if they had read Allison Levitt's report on FAs in cases of rape or domestic violence - they hadn't.

Apparently even if this girl hadn't realised how difficult it would be to keep up the pretence during a trial and hadn't requested for her allegation to be dropped, they would not have felt confident about prosecuting this case and would have asked the CPS for permission to NFA it. However they said the CPS had decided to charge the teenager in a similar case and the resulting trial found NOT GUILTY - so I don't think anyone reading this in a similar situation can take much comfort. In our case the DNA was neutral and no one backed up her story about what happened on the night. I was able to fill them in on some of the facts as I know them but there was little point as I knew I wasn't going to prove them to be true. That would be me making slanderous accusations - obviously they weren't going to take my word for it as I wasn't claiming rape!

I asked about a "no crime" category on the file rather than an NFA. They said there would have to be evidence that verified the rape report was fabricated for this to happen - i.e. if it were PROVED that my son wasn't there (i.e. CCTV) We can't prove he didn't rape her - but they can't prove that he did as there is no evidence. Although the police kept saying to me that her saying it happened IS evidence. How can that be? If he had remembered the events of that night and provided a different version would that have been conflicting evidence?

Anyway - thanks for reading and your support on here. Good luck with all your situations whether you are a falsely accused, a partner/sister/brother or mum - its horrible.

[Casehardened]

TM,

Thanks for taking the trouble to post up the results of your discussions with the police; this is an interesting (and unsettling!) insight into their thought processes when the 'victim' walks through the station door.

I have also long maintained that a 'stranger' rape should be in a different category to the 'consent withdrawn the next morning when sober' rape but I fear we are whistling in the wind here; you may remember the furore from the feminists when this was suggested by a government minister (Kenneth Clarke?) a couple of years ago and so of course the suggestion was quickly swept under the carpet.

[myhome]

Hi TM - thank you for posting this. It is indeed worrying that a false accuser's lies are truthful evidence and are believed, yet the Falsely accused's truths are not - just really underlines what we have assumed for a long time - and that is that plod have conviction targets to meet and couldn't give a stuff about whose lives they trample all over and ruin to get them...........

With regard to this being on your son's record.....I too have not been arrested. I had an enhanced DBS check done for work a couple of months after being interrogated and it didn't show up on that - it was completely clear.

Good luck with everything and give yourself time to heal as well as your son....

[is there justice?]

This depressingly confirms all I thought anyway. There is no consideration for what the falsely accused go through. Investigation is one sided. No-one dare speak up these days to address the injustice.

Tiger mum, wishing you and your family all the very best and a peaceful, trouble free and happy future xxx

[Dave]

Could you ask them to put all that in writing please, I think the press would be interested to hear their 'process'.

And people wonder why I hate them.

[scaredsister]

Congratulations Tiger Mum and son! So pleased to hear

I am so pleased to hear your NFA, you must be so relieved. I hope you and your son can put this all behind you and return to normality.
What you have detailed about the police's attitude re believing every word of the FA despite changing the story is absolutely terrifying, but we have realised that already.
We have just received the prosecution notes for my younger brother and the first paragraph of the summary states "the aggrieved's account is mixed up and contradictory but I will endeavour to explain..." All through the 155 page report you can read her mind whirring so that when she says something not credible she immediately back-tracks and changes it to sound more plausible i.e. very contradictory.
If it wasn't so serious and we weren't so devastated it would be laughable - it's a disgusting farce.
At least your news really gives hope to others still going through the torture. Good luck and thank goodness! xxx
BTW everyone, Sooty sounds a bit of a tit!!

[tiger mum]

Hi Scared sister - thanks for your kind words. It's a crazy system but the consequences of it are so devastating. When I read other posts I feel we have "escaped" by the skin of our teeth - when I read Heartowin's son's story I realise how much worse it could have been, getting mixed up with girls who fantasise or have mental health issues is so dangerous. It seems a 3 pronged travesty of justice

1) As soon as a rape/sexual assault is reported it is recorded as a crime. If there is a crime there has to be a full blown investigation and therefore quest for a conviction by the police.

2) The police are instructed to believe the "victim" and ensure they feel supported and do not question what they are telling them and any inconsistencies are attributed to trauma, confusion and fear.

3) Although they are meant to be looking impartially for evidence which would prove or disprove the assault happened, points 1 and 2 mean the police investigate in a biased way. As we have hear in the case of Babygal and Heretowin - even if there is proper evidence which contradicts or exposes the FA's lies it is ignored by the justice system. The only hope is a jury made up of people with common sense who sift through the rubbish and realise the truth.

I'm with Tiger Tiger - we've got an NFA but it feels hollow. I'm haunted by the anticipated horror of going to trial to defend ourselves. This obviously happens to so many innocent people, before last November I had no idea - I didn't really trust the police but I had no idea about the system being so biased. Keep thinking of Babygal's fella locked up with the stigma of his FA's lies with a newborn he hasn't seen - its so **** - feeling pretty hopeless and wondering what I can DO.

[anothermum]

I hope you and your son are able to put this behind you.

You have been an enormous help to me and others on this site too. I have a much idea of what is likely to happen now - not that I can take much comfort from it