False Accusers / Wrongly Accused

A man was arrested after a 78-year-old Limpopo pensioner reported that she had allegedly been raped. After identifying a suspect 26 years younger than the complainant, the police pounced. But hours later, police released the 52-year-old man from custody and dropped the rape case. Police have now charged the septuagenarian from Nkowankowa township outside Tzaneen with perjury. Limpopo police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said she had lied about the rape. Police investigations seemed to indicate that the pensioner had fabricated the rape allegation after the man spurned her advances.

An 18-year-old Venetia woman is facing perjury charges after investigators said she lied about being raped in the parking lot of the South Park wave pool last year. According to the criminal complaint, Katelyn Webster told authorities she raped by Matthew Folino while sitting in the pool's parking lot in June 2012. Webster told police that Folino put his hands around her neck to hold her down. There were marks on her neck to validate her story.

The 9,389 days Anthony Caravella wrongfully spent in prison still haunt him, but he was relieved Tuesday that two former police officers who put him away are finally being held accountable. Jurors decided that William Mantesta and George Pierson framed Caravella, then a mentally challenged 15 year old, for the 1983 rape and murder of a Miramar woman and should pay him $7 million for the close to 26 years he spent in prison.

A 20-year-old North Dakota State University student appeared in court Thursday after police say she made a false sexual assault report late Sunday night. Mary Gullickson pleaded guilty to her misdemeanor charges of providing false information to law enforcement and received a one-year suspended sentence along with a year of supervised probation. Police say Gullickson was involved in a rape fantasy she set up with another man on Craigslist, and that her boyfriend forced to her to make the bogus claim after he found out. Cass County prosecutors say Gullickson will also have to cover the costs of the rape investigation.

A Pittsburgh-area man who was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by gun-wielding police based on accusations of sexual assault by a woman who later turned out to have invented the story says that the incident was "scary." Likely most people who have been in similar situations would agree. The story shows how sexual assault arrests are frequently based mostly, if not entirely, on the word of the alleged victim. The arrested man briefly dated the alleged victim before breaking up with her last summer. Several weeks later, he was asleep at his home when police banged on his door around 2 a.m. As he recalled, there were several officers loudly calling his name with their guns drawn. The arrest was based on the ex-girlfriend's claims that the man had followed her and her friends to a wave pool. He lured her into his vehicle, drove her to a parking lot before choking and raping her, the woman said. Her friends supposedly discovered them and scared off the man, who pushed the woman out of the car and drove away, she told police. Following the arrest, police spoke to the ex-girlfriend's friends. They contradicted her story, explaining that they had not been at the wave pool where the alleged sexual assault occurred. They said the ex-girlfriend had started dating a new man who had given her bruises on her neck and she did not want her parents to find out so she made up the assault. After confirming this account, police released the man and arrested the ex-girlfriend on suspicion of making false statement and perjury.

Police say a man who claimed he was sexually assaulted by two male attackers had "made the story up". Officers have now cancelled an investigation launched after the 20-year-old said he had been subjected to an attack in Carlisle during the early hours of the morning. The force confirmed the man who made the allegation admitted last night that it did not actually happen. The inquiry had been launched on Sunday night after police were told a man was assaulted as he walked home alone "in the vicinity of" the Lower Viaduct area on Saturday morning. Investigations had focussed on allegations he was pushed into a car park by two male attackers and "subjected to a serious sexual assault".

Kelsey Long was already in fairly significant trouble. After a report of someone throwing eggs at cars and houses in Martinez early Easter morning, the 23-year-old Evans woman was reportedly stopped while driving a car on a suspended license, and with no insurance or valid vehicle registration. Allegedly with drugs in the vehicle. Then she had to be physically restrained after trying to flee. But spreading Easter cheer through vandalism and resisting arrest wasn't enough. She had to make things even worse. Much worse. Long is now charged with falsely claiming that the arresting Columbia County deputy raped her. In the 30 to 45 seconds it took to restrain her in a Martinez yard. As another officer stood by. Not even her own passenger saw anything resembling such a thing.

Kirk Bloodsworth, Advocacy Director of Witness to Innocence and a death row exoneree, will speak on wrongful convictions and the death penalty at an event open to the public at Fort Hays State University on April 17th at 7:00pm. Bloodsworth was accused and convicted of a horrific crime: murdering and raping a nine year-old girl. The evidence used to convict him was the testimony of five eyewitnesses. He spent eight years in prison before DNA evidence proved his innocence. Bloodsworth is one of 142 individuals in the US to be sentenced to death and later found innocent.

A woman is facing a life sentence for leading a vigilante gang who tortured and brutally killed a teenager wrongly accused of rape.

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women's rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act. But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged-by an ex-girlfriend-with alleged acts of "nonconsensual sex" that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier. What followed was a nightmare-a fall through Alice's looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment. It began with a text of desperation. "CALL ME. URGENT. NOW."

A 15-year-old girl is being charged with making a false police report after claiming she was raped at a Revere High School basketball game in December. The girl told police she was assaulted by a white male teen during a boys basketball game Dec. 7. But Police Chief Michael McNeely said in a press release that "the allegation was determined to be false after a lengthy and thorough investigation by Bath police."

In 1984, when I was just 21, I was convicted of a rape I did not commit. DNA evidence would subsequently prove my innocence, but not before I spent a decade behind bars. Nothing is more horrifying than prison life when you know you shouldn't be there. You lose more than just your freedom; you lose your very identity. The experience of being wrongfully convicted is truly unusual. Only others who have spent time in prison for a crime they didn't commit can fully appreciate the nightmare.

A Canfield couple has sued the city of Canfield and some of its police officers and brass and an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor for at least $5 million in federal court, saying their 11-year daughter was maliciously prosecuted and falsely imprisoned on rape charges, of which she was later acquitted. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court by Michael and Renee Rubesich, of Willow Bend Drive, against Anissa Modarelli, an assistant county prosecutor assigned to juvenile court; Canfield Police Chief Chuck Colucci, Detective Brian McGivern, Sgt. Scott Weamer and officers Timothy Lamping and Lea Byers; the city of Canfield; and 20 John Doe defendants who the suit says are police officers, detectives, supervisors, in-charge officers or commanders.

A Nova Scotia man now living near Edmonton says all he wants is authorities to admit a mistake was made when he was wrongly convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl more than four decades ago. Gerry Gaston Barton was 19 years old and living in Digby County, N.S., in 1970 when a teenaged neighbour accused him of raping her and fathering her child.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- A married Camp Pendleton Marine was sentenced in military court Thursday to a loss of $3,000 in pay and a letter of reprimand for attempted adultery and obstructing justice after claiming she had been raped by a fellow Marine. The woman, a staff sergeant whose name was being withheld, was facing a year in the brig and dishonorable discharge. The case began when the woman's husband, who is also a Marine, filed an adultery complaint with her commanders after she and another staff sergeant checked into a hotel following an afternoon of heavy drinking last year.

A Winnipeg mother has permanently lost custody of her three children after admitting she falsely accused her ex-husband of sexually abusing them. The woman appeared before the Manitoba Court of Appeal last month begging for a second chance, apologizing for the bogus claims and saying she was "at most, guilty of caring too much." But the high court slammed the door shut in a decision released this week, upholding a family court judge's decision to award sole custody to her estranged spouse. The woman will continue to be allowed supervised access.

Original Article04/30/2013 A man was held in prison for three months while wrongly accused of child rape because police refused to carry out a DNA test after reportedly saying it was a waste of public money.[name withheld] is planning to sue pol...

A city woman was arrested Thursday for falsely reporting a rape after her husband discovered evidence of an extramarital affair, and her lover was arrested for roughing her up, police said. Greybi Vasquez, 38, of 115 Ely Ave., was charged with making a false statement. She posted $1,000 bond. Gerardo Aguilar-Aparicio, 23, also of 115 Ely Ave., was charged with unlawful restraint and third-degree assault. He posted $10,000 bond.

A Michigan woman who appealed for money to fight her cancer was charged Monday with fraud, just a few days after she was accused in another case of falsely reporting a rape and using makeup to show injuries. Besides two criminal cases filed against Sara Ylen in less than a week, she also was involved in the prosecution of James Grissom, who was released from prison last fall after nearly 10 years. Despite no physical evidence, Grissom was found guilty of raping Ylen in 2001 in a parking lot. A judge threw out the conviction after authorities learned she had made up sexual-assault allegations in California, information that wasn't available to the defense at trial.

A Comstock Park woman faces criminal charges after police say she admitted to creating false Facebook accounts with her ex-boyfriend's personal information to make it appear that his new girlfriend was threatening her. Cheryl Nelson, 52, is charged with false report of a felony and unlawful posting of a message. Nelson, over the course of a year between November 2011 and last October, made at least eight criminal complaints to the Kent County Sheriff's Department, saying she had been the victim of stalking, harassment, assault and home invasion.