Rape Claim Woman Given Six Months
By News England

An 18-year-old woman convicted of making a false claim of rape has been sentenced to six months in a young offenders’ institute. Katie Davis, of St Leonards, East Sussex, was sentenced at Lewes Crown Court on Monday after being convicted of perverting the course of justice.

{mosimage} Her claim that a stranger attacked her in an alleyway led to Frank Chisholm, 24, spending 10 weeks in a Sussex jail. The judge said her “wicked lies” still had a dramatic effect on his life.

Judge Richard Brown told her: “His family have also suffered considerably. You were responsible for him being in prison for several weeks. And when you pursued in those wicked lies you put him through the trauma of giving evidence in your trial.”

Davis, of Blackman Avenue, who was aged 16 at the time of her rape claim, had sex with Mr Chisholm at his house after meeting him in the street as he was walking home from a night out drinking on 6 March 2005.

Jurors heard she invented the false rape claim because she feared she could be pregnant after having unprotected sex with him.

She told police in an interview: “I was the victim in all of this and you have made me out to be the criminal in all of this.”

House-to-house inquiries were made after police were informed a teenage girl had been raped by a balaclava-clad man in an alleyway.

Former railway labourer Mr Chisholm was charged with rape after DNA evidence linked him to Davis.

But the 24-year-old denied raping her, saying they had consensual sex at his home in Battle Road.

Forensic evidence later emerged which led to the case against him being dropped.

Det Con Shoni Grant told the trial discrepancies and inconsistencies in Davis’s accounts led police to cast “serious doubt” on her allegation.

Mr Chisholm was not in court to see Davis sentenced.

But after last month’s guilty verdict, he said: “I used to be an outgoing, personable and sociable person.

“Now I can’t bear to go out and I’m very wary of girls and have lost my trust. This seems like a nightmare that will never end.”