False Accusers / Wrongly Accused

Two women are now facing felony charges after filing a false rape report this weekend in Fort Smith. Police arrested 19-year-old Heather Smith and her 21-year-old roommate Jeni Melton, after they claimed two unidentified men came into their apartment and raped Smith. Police were called to Roosters Bar on Garrison Avenue around 4:41 a.m. Saturday. Officers spoke with Smith and Melton about the alleged incident. The women told police they had left Roosters around 3 a.m. and shortly after they arrived at their residents on Birnie Avenue, two men came into their home uninvited. According to the report, one suspect pinned Melton to the floor, while the second raped Smith in a back bedroom.

The man who was accused of raping a woman Sunday in Abbeville has been released after police say the woman admitted her accusation was false. Police say a witness came forward yesterday, telling them the alleged victim's history with Clinton Chewing and other sexual activities. When detectives questioned the false accuser, Joell Thiel, they say she broke down and admitted she was at the apartment with Chewning trying to buy drugs from him. Detectives say she then admitted to having sex with Chewning willingly but was upset because he never actually gave her the drugs. Thiell is in the Vermilion Parish Correctional Facility on a $15,000 bond.

Two Watauga County 17-year-olds are facing charges after police said they filed a false police report claiming they'd been injured trying to intervene in stopping a sexual assault. Police said Brandon Hicks and Isaiah Romero claimed they'd been injured while trying to stop an attack on a woman near King Street. Both later admitted that there had been no assault and the injuries were suffered while the two were horsing around. They were released after posting $1,000 bail each.

Police said a woman lied when she told them she was forced into a van and raped by two men in Cumberland County over the weekend. Silver Spring Township police said Thursday that the woman filed a false report and no assault or rape occurred. The investigation is ongoing and criminal charges will likely be pursued against the woman, police said. The woman had told officers that she was walking in the 6600 block of Carlisle Pike when two men quickly approached her and forced her into the back of a van Sunday afternoon. She said the men then drove to an alley and raped her, according to police.

Two friends who falsely claimed they were raped were jailed yesterday because the suspect had photos of them all having a threesome. Jennifer France, 24, and Kelly Weston, a 27-year-old mother, posed for saucy snaps on Enes Gozalan's bed after meeting him in a pub. A court heard they later made the false allegations because both had long-term boyfriends and were ashamed of what they had done.

A girl of seven at the centre of a custody battle was coached by her mum to make fake claims that her father was a paedophile. Former jockey Victoria Haigh, 41, also launched a public campaign against her wholly innocent ex-partner [name withheld], a senior High Court judge said yesterday. After a series of private hearings, Sir Nicholas Wall decided to make his judgment public yesterday because "scandalous allegations" were put in the public domain "via email and the internet".

BARTOW - An inmate is accused of making a false rape allegation against a Polk County deputy in July, leading to a seldom-levied felony charge. Just as unusual as the charge is how the inmate, Sanchez Preston, 26, claimed the deputy performed the act: through the food slot of his isolation cell door. Preston recanted the story when a detective began investigating his allegation, according to an arrest report. The report said Preston told the detective he made the accusation because he was angry the taste of jail food and because he was being held in isolation.

QUEBEC CITY - QUEBEC CITY - A New Brunswick woman whom police say falsely claimed that two black men raped her at knifepoint, triggering a major police investigation, was found fit to stand trial Tuesday. Vanessa Roussel, 21, was charged with criminal mischief after undergoing a psychiatric evaluation. She was freed on $7,000 bail. Roussel is accused of contacting authorities to say she had been raped in a wooded area in Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse, near Quebec City, last month. Police uncovered inconsistencies in her story and turned their investigation towards Roussel last week. If convicted, Roussel faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Her lawyer says she is bipolar, has been seeing a psychiatrist for some time and had talked about suicide.

A former high school football who was wrongfully accused of rape and sentenced to six years in prison now wants the State of California to pay him for every day he had spent behind bars. Attorneys representing 26-year-old Brian Banks said their client is entitled to $100 a day for every day of his incarceration under state law. Banks was exonerated this week after his accuser, Wanetta Gibson, admitted she had made up the whole story of sexual assault ten years ago and had been reluctant to come forward because of a large settlement she received from the school district.

Just one more of the growing reasons why the online registry should be taken offline! Even if the kid did what is claimed, he doesn't deserve to be assaulted by anybody!11/29/2012By GAIL CAMERON A battered paperboy told last nigh...

A 23-year-old Philadelphia man has been sentenced to 6-12 years in prison for a vicious and sadistic vigilante-justice attack - in retaliation for a crime that did not...

Original Article01/08/2013Five killers carried out the 'extraordinarily callous, violent and brutal' murder of a teenager after the sister of one wrongly claimed he had raped her, a court heard today.[victim name withheld], 18, was punched and kic...

False confessions play a major role in two recent documentaries about wrongful convictions. West of Memphis examines the case of three young Arkansas men who were locked up for the horrific 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys. Perhaps the most powerful piece of the prosecution's case was a confession by Jessie Misskelley describing in graphic detail how he and his two co-defendants beat, raped and mutilated the boys. The documentary, however, showed how the police could - after hours of intense interrogation, heavy with leading questions - manipulate and extract a false story from Misskelley, an unsophisticated young man with a low IQ.

Police say a city couple spent weeks carrying out an elaborate plot to frame a man for crimes he didn't commit - until they were undone by their ringing cellphones. Michael Dale Timmons, 39, and Teresa Sandra Knapp, 46, of Henrietta Street, reported to police the man had raped Knapp and broken into their home, among other crimes, city police Detective William Olson said.

Two Mississippi men spent a combined 30 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. They were separately charged with sexually assaulting and murdering two 3-year-old girls - in two separate crimes - two years apart. The pathologist who conducted both autopsies said he suspected the girls had been bitten. They were innocent.

Courts and police in the nation's capital will change how they conduct lineups of suspects, when they notify defendants about informants and how long they retain criminal trial records, all in response to errors that have put innocent people in prison.

CLEVELAND - A Cleveland woman who police say falsely accused two Cleveland police officers of sexual assault appeared in a Cuyahoga County courtroom on Friday for a probation violation hearing. During an open container citation on March 7, 23-year-old Danielle Eggleton was arrested on a warrant by two Third District police officers for assault on a police officer, attempted harassment of an inmate and resisting arrest.

A man who may be awarded millions after being wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years is still waiting for a payout, living in a basement suite on old age security and a $49 per month pension cheque. Ivan Henry's civil case has been plagued with delays and is now slated to be heard in September 2014, some five years after Henry, now 66, was let out of jail. "They told us 2012, they told us 2013, and now we're going to 2014," said Tanya Olivares, one of Ivan Henry's daughters. "What's to say that it's not going to be 2017?"

This week's feature tells the story of John Kinsel, a man who will spend the rest of his life locked up at Angola Prison for a crime his accuser has since said he didn't commit. Alyssa Medlin testified as a nine-year-old that Kinsel -- her mother's boyfriend -- had raped her for years. The girl's family didn't believe Medlin, a child with a history of lying. One of her friends had compelling evidence that Medlin had made it all up. But this story wasn't told during the shoddy investigation, and Kinsel was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A 10-year-old girl asked a jury to believe her claim that she had been raped by a man during a 2011 sleepover even though, the child frankly admitted, she had lied repeatedly in the past about claims that he threatened her life in the assault.