False Accusers / Wrongly Accused

Fran Keller was sentenced to 48 years in prison for allegedly sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl, Christy Chaviers, who in 1991 was an infrequent drop-in at the home-based daycare Fran and her husband Dan Keller ran out of their Oak Hill home. (Dan was also convicted and sentenced to 48 years. The current appeal has been filed on Fran's behalf, but will impact Dan's conviction as well.) After a day in care at the Kellers' home that summer Chrsity told her mother, Suzanne Stratton, that Dan Keller spanked her. That allegation quickly morphed into an allegation of sexual abuse - and then again, into wilder allegations of abuse perpetrated by the middle-aged couple on Chaviers and two other children who were also drop-in clients and whose parents were friendly with Stratton. By the fall, the allegations turned fantastical: The Kellers had taken the kids on plane rides to Mexico, subjected them to satanic bone-replacing rituals, killed animals and babies - allegations that led Christy's therapist, then Donna David Campbell, to conclude Christy had been a victim of "ritual abuse."

BANGALORE: A 'gang-rape' complaint turned out to be false when medical tests proved that the 21-year-old 'victim' had not been raped and a police probe revealed that the woman and her boyfriend had been involved in previous cases of immoral trafficking. The complainant Rani had alleged that she was raped by three friends of her boyfriend Ravi Kiran Biswas (25), a cab driver, at a house in Nanjappa Layout near Adugodi on Sunday night. Later, the complaint was withdrawn. Rani, who lodged a complaint with Adugodi police, stated that Biswas and the three men partied at the house till the wee hours of Monday. When Biswas went into a drunken stupor, the other three allegedly gang-raped her, the complaint stated.

A teenager who spent months behind bars wrongly accused of rape after a DNA blunder has spoken of his 'relief, anger and disgust' after the charge was dropped. Adam Scott, 19, was due to stand trial next month in connection with a sex attack on a woman at Plant Hill Park in Blackley. The M.E.N. revealed yesterday how his DNA - taken in connection with a separate matter - had contaminated a sample from the victim while being processed at a laboratory run by LGC Forensics. Mr Scott, from Truro in Cornwall, is now considering taking legal action - and his lawyers are calling for a public inquiry into the blunder, which could lead to other rape and murder cases being reopened.

North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation and its insurers have agreed to pay $12.475 million to two innocent men who spent a total of 31 years behind bars. The state agreed to pay $7.85 million to settle the state lawsuit filed by Floyd Brown, a mentally disabled man locked up for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital based on what his lawyers said was a false confession created out of whole cloth by an SBI agent. Brown has also reached a separate settlement with Anson County, whose sheriff's deputies helped investigate the case. A federal judge has sealed the Anson County settlement; North Carolina law requires that all such court settlements be public records.

Original Article08/01/2013 By Jeff ChiricoCOBB COUNTY (CBS ATLANTA) - [name withheld], of Cobb County, filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Cobb County District Attorney's Office and other agencies for wrongful prosecution, stemming from his arr...

NEW ORLEANS -- Some questions seem particularly prone to set John Thompson off. Here's one he gets a lot: Have the prosecutors who sent him to death row ever apologized? "Sorry? For what?" says Thompson. The 49-year-old is lean, almost skinny. He wears jeans, a T-shirt and running shoes and sports a thin mustache and soul patch, both stippled with gray. "You tell me that. Tell me what the hell would they be sorry for. They tried to kill me. To apologize would mean they're admitting the system is broken." His voice has been gradually increasing in volume. He's nearly yelling now. "That everyone around them is broken. It's the same motherfucking system that's protecting them."

A teenager has been given a caution for wasting police time by falsely claiming she was raped in an attack in Surrey. The 18-year-old, from London, made the allegation in Ewell on 30 June. She was found in the Cox Lane area and police said they spent much of the day interviewing people. Specialist officers also offered her support. But later that evening, the woman told officers the allegation was false. Det Insp Antony Archibald said such reports were "deeply frustrating". Surrey Police said said a "lot of staff" had been involved in investigating the complaint. Mr Archibald said vital resources had been taken away from other people who may have needed them. He added: "We have carefully considered what action could be taken against the woman and it was decided that a caution would be the most suitable form of punishment." He urged genuine victims of sexual assault to continue to contact the force.

Phillipa Alice Costello Original Article06/25/2013Phillipa Alice Costello, aged 28-years, from Ivy House in Dishforth near Thirsk, has been sentenced by Teeside Crown Court to 8-months imprisonment for perverting the course of justice. On 12 Ap...

A judge has dismissed a felony charge against a woman accused of falsely reporting that she was raped by a former boyfriend. Judge G. Todd Baugh has granted a defense motion to dismiss a charge of fabricating evidence filed against Christina Nadine Nelson. The judge said in an order issued Tuesday that evidence clearly showed Nelson lied when she reported the rape to police and hospital staff, but the prosecution's reliance on a report from a sexual assault examination is misplaced.

A 20-year-old woman who faked being raped by a stranger at the University of California Santa Cruz pleaded "no contest" Thursday to filing a false police report. UC Santa Barbara student Morgan Triplett did not appear in Santa Cruz County Court as her lawyer changed her plea from "not guilty" to "no contest." As part of the plea deal, Triplett must write a letter of apology to UC Santa Cruz, serve 60 days in a jail work release program, volunteer 200 hours of community service, and undergo 60 days of mental health therapy, and serve three years probation.

One of the biggest contributing factors to wrongful convictions is police tunnel vision. This occurs in a fairly high percentage of the cases that have been studied - post DNA exonerations.  It occurs when police narrow in on a suspect from the very beginning and then fail to consider other possibilities, suspects or scenarios. They ignore evidence that points away from their suspect and they proceed to shape or even manufacture evidence that supports their theory. There is no doubt in my mind that this happened in this case and one person - Jessica Adam shaped the investigation from the very beginning. Police never considered that what she was telling them may not be truthful, but we learned throughout the trial that she was untruthful about all of the state's key evidence.

The World Health Organisation is very fond of statistics and, in a report commissioned by the organisation and co-authored by two women, it is claimed that almost 38 per cent of all women murder victims were killed by intimate partners and 42 per cent of women who have been victims of physical or sexual violence by a partner suffer injuries as a result. The article exploits one high-profile gang rape in India and a celebrity cook's marital spat as somehow emblematic of this "wave of violence" against women. What the two authors forgot to mention is that 41 per cent of all forcible rape charges instituted by women are false and motivated by providing an alibi (serving the complainant's need to provide a plausible explanation for a consensual sexual encounter that might otherwise damage her reputation), for revenge (false rape reports having been used for centuries as a means of retaliation against rejecting males, Aristotle himself mentioning a few examples in his handbook on midwifery) and as an attention/sympathy-procuring device (this being the least harmful reason for which false rape charges are made in that no rape assailant is ever identified but which still plays into the hands of feminists and their shrill claims of rampant misogyny).

A British taxi driver has used a voice recording app on his phone to prove a female passenger lied about him raping her at knife-point in his cab. Astria Berwick was jailed for 16 months in Nottingham Crown Court yesterday after admitting to perverting the course of justice by wrongly accusing Mohammed Asif of rape on February 20, the Telegraph reports. The court heard the CCTV in Mr Asif's car was broken on the day of the alleged attack so he switched on the app as a makeshift replacement.

Pregnant north Taranaki woman has told a jury she lied to police when she accused her partner of raping and assaulting her. The man, in his 30s, cannot be named in order to protect his partner's identity. In the New Plymouth District Court yesterday the unemployed man denied raping the woman, indecently assaulting her and assaulting her with intent to injure her on the night of June 15 last year. Crown prosecutor Justin Marinovich said the case involved the woman being dominated physically, mentally and sexually by the accused. The woman told police her partner had raped her, strangled her, kicked and bitten her, and forced her to go with him to New Plymouth to buy cannabis.

One of the primary concerns in the orthodox Jewish community when discussing the issue of reporting sex abuse to the authorities is that inevitably there will be false accusations that will ruin the lives of innocent people. It is very scary to think that someone can be named as an abuser and before any evidence is presented the accused can be found guilty in the court of public opinion. In a community where the main currency is reputation and communal standing false accusations can have drastic consequences. This is a good reason not to judge people before the facts are known and also a good argument against placing too much stock in reputation. Changing our approach on these issues would go a long way to making our communities safer places.

A FALSE claim of rape by a Ramsgate teenager was "a cry for help" according to her mother. The 19-year-old made the allegation that she had been a victim of sexual assault in Boundary Park at 2am last Friday. Police cordoned off the park and had forensic officers on the scene following the claim and put out an appeal to find the "suspect," described as aged between 40 and 45, 6ft tall, of large build and with wrinkles on his face, particularly around the cheeks. But the following evening police said they were no longer appealing for information and revealed the woman who had made the allegation had been formally cautioned for wasting police time.

A South Africa man will leave jail on Wednesday after having spent 10 years behind bars because his daughter falsely accused him of rape. Cedric Shezi was arrested soon after his daughter, Pinky Dube, accused him of the horrible crime and he received a life sentence after being convicted of two counts of rape in 2005. Dube will be waiting to see him when he is released.

A WOMAN has been interviewed by police after admitting making a false allegation of rape. The 26-year-old claimed she was leaving the ground-floor level of the Wellington Square shopping centre car park in Stockton-on-Tees last week when a man approached her from behind and sexually assaulted her. Police launched a media appeal for information and arrested, and bailed, a 22-year-old man in connection with the incident. However, the woman then admitted she had made a false allegation. The man has now been released with no further action to be taken. Police have passed the file for the case on to the Crown Prosecution Service, who will decide whether to prosecute the woman.

A JEALOUS boyfriend told his girlfriend to make up a rape allegation against the man she had been unfaithful with, a court heard. The claim led to alleged victim Zabir Khan being arrested on suspicion of rape, interviewed and locked up in a police cell. He also had intimate swabs taken. The claim was made by 23-year-old Husen Patel's girlfriend, Jade Leech, after Patel punched her in the face when he found out she had been unfaithful with Mr Khan, her cousin's boyfriend, Bolton Crown Court heard.

Texas resident Steven Phillips has had a rough 30 years. In 2009, after 24 years in prison, Phillips was declared innocent of the sexual assault charges that landed him behind bars. DNA evidence showed that sexual offender Sydney Alvin Goodyear, not Phillips, had committed the offenses he was in prison for. His time in jail wrecked much of his life. Phillips spent almost three decades locked up, waiting to for the world to believe his claim of innocence. He and his wife divorced in 1992, 10 years after his sentence began. Phillips missed out on raising his child that was due the same year he was incarcerated.