Rape liar Rhiannon Brooker was given
a three and a half year sentence for
grotesque allegations of false rape
and domestic abuse against her former lover.
Rhiannon Brooker is an intelligent, highly educated young woman, a law graduate, and has no excuse for her behaviour, which could have resulted in her victim spending many years behind bars. If though you consult the Women Against Rape website, you would think that she rather than he was the victim.
Here is what they say: “You may have seen the revolting media coverage. It is no surprise – we have seen this kind of bias in every other false allegation prosecution.”
The media coverage by the BBC was very fair. When an accused is convicted, can a report of that conviction really be called biased simply because it agrees with the verdict?
Women (or perhaps that should be Wimmin) Against Rape continue: “If rapists were investigated and prosecuted in the way Rhiannon was over two years, the conviction rate for rape would not be 6.5%. ”
Rapists are not investigated and prosecuted. Alleged rapists are. Only when a man is convicted is he entitled to be branded a rapist, and if the conviction rate for rape is only 6.5% then clearly the authorities are prosecuting far too many weak cases.
“It is clear from police records of a conversation with the CPS that some officers believed Rhiannon, and that their superiors ordered them to get a confession so they could secure a conviction and save their ‘reputation’.”
Hopefully all the officers believed her, which is why Mr Fensome was charged. As for officers being bullied into obtaining a confession from her in order to save their reputation, it would have been easier for the police to bury the exculpatory evidence. That is what happened in 1999 when Matthew Hilliard was accused of raping another teenager, a girl who claimed he dragged her from a night club when in reality they had left holding hands.
“Rhiannon was the more vulnerable party so they went for her.”
And “Rhiannon should never have been prosecuted. Serious charges such as perverting the course of justice should not be used on vulnerable women. We believe Rhiannon is innocent and that she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice – that’s what we shouted in court when her sentence was passed. At least the Guardian report acknowledged our protest. She should not be in prison and her baby should not have to suffer this cruel separation from her mother.”
Video: Internet activist Mundane Matt on the case of Rhiannon Brooker.
Would you Adam and Eve it? They harp on:
“We are continuing to campaign on this and all the other miscarriages of justice against rape survivors. We can no longer encourage victims of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence to report when they risk such malicious prosecutions and years in jail.”
Clearly somebody has a rather skewed perception of this case, let us see what the Crown Prosecution Service said. The first thing to notice is that initially, Brooker’s claims were believed more or less uncritically by the police, and with good reason:
“Officers were called to the Royal United Hospital in Bath in May 2011 after Brooker attended the hospital with injuries and claimed to have been attacked outside her home in South Gloucestershire.”
Normally when anyone attends a hospital for treatment to injuries and the police are called, they will treat that individual as a victim, which is what happened here.
“She was taken to a police station in Bath and subsequently made a series of allegations of domestic and sexual assault against her partner Paul Fensome.”
This was not a she said/he said allegation, she had evidence to support it. And... “Her allegations were supported by friends and fellow students in whom she had confided, injuries she had sustained and other medical evidence, resulting in Mr Fensome being arrested and charged in August 2011.”
The victim – ie Mr Fensome – wasn’t simply arrested and charged, he was remanded in custody, and, branded a sex offender – a nonce – he would not have been given an easy ride by other inmates, in spite of this rape culture in which the rad-fems would have us believe we live.
The police had their man, and could have let it rest there, but...“Further independent evidence subsequently came to light which disproved and undermined her allegations, resulting in the charges being dropped against Mr Fensome in January 2012.”
Aha!
“A new investigation team was appointed, led by Detective Chief Inspector Carolyn Belafonte” – a female officer and a very senior one at that. No charges of sexism here.
“...as a result of a complex and detailed investigation, including mobile phone, background checks and specialist forensic evidence, Brooker was arrested in November 2012 and later charged with offences of perverting the course of justice.”
In other words there was damning forensic evidence against her, not the kind of nonsense we heard at Southwark Crown Court recently: Rolf Harris groped my leg over forty years ago and I haven’t had a wink of sleep since; when can I claim my criminal injuries compensation? But real, hard, irrefutable evidence.
So much for “innocent” Rhiannon. As an even more senior female officer said: “Rhiannon Brooker has proved herself to be a very calculating and manipulative woman whose allegations resulted in an innocent man being charged with serious offences and remanded in custody awaiting trial.”
Chief Superintendent Sarah Crew continued: “Like many other people who encountered her in a professional capacity, we too were initially taken in by her allegations.”
A police officer admitting she was wrong, or rather that she had been hoodwinked. That shows how serious this case was, but you should have sussed that by now for yourself. She goes on to make all the usual noises about rape and domestic violence, so neither Rhiannon Brooker nor Wimmin Against Rape have a leg to stand on.
As stated, her victim had already spent 36 days behind bars; if the police had not conducted such a thorough investigation, he would surely have been convicted and would have been looking at at least a 5 year sentence, if not considerably longer. Can any reasonable person claim in all honesty that a woman who stoops so low and goes to such lengths to frame an innocent man, including inflicting physical damage on herself, can any honest person claim she does not warrant a severe sentence?
Video: Interview with victim Paul Fensome.
Wimmin Against Rape may represent itself as an organisation that campaigns for justice, but on its website it boasts that it has succeeded in changing the law. Whether or not that is the case, the hysteria it and similar organisations have generated over rape have led to very serious consequences for any man accused of any sex crime. One is the blanket anonymity afforded rape and sexual assault accusers, something that is ludicrous. If a woman – or a man – is attacked viciously, beaten almost to death, that individual will be named routinely, and will testify in open court against the accused. Yet if a woman claims only that a man rubbed against her or put his hand up her skirt, that simple act is treated as though it were worse than murder.
Like most if not all such pressure groups, Wimmin Against Rape plays footloose and fancy free with statistics, making wild claims that have absolutely no basis in fact. Victims are either too
ashamed to report their rapes or are afraid they will not be believed. The reality is that a woman who is the victim of a bona fide rape will almost always be believed provided she reports it at the first practicable opportunity or reasonably promptly. It is difficult not to believe a woman who is visibly distressed, bruised externally and internally, and maybe even covered with semen.
Of course, a woman who reports an alleged raped 3 months later will not exhibit trauma, so in the absence of exceptional circumstances there is no reason she should be believed. Yeah, there is the old line about she froze, she was petrified, blah, blah, blah. But if a woman isn’t prepared to defend her honour by resisting an attacker, why should anyone believe she is prepared to fight for it in a courtroom? If that sounds unduly cynical, ask yourself what would be the reaction of the police to a complaint of assault, theft or indeed any other crime reported so long after it was committed? Their first question would be when did the crime happen, and their second would be when did you discover it? Without a reasonable answer to the second question, the complainant would be shown the door.
One of the greatest myths about rape is that false allegations are extremely rare; the truth is they are anything but. One reason the conviction rate is so “low” is because when
juries hear the evidence, they refuse to convict.
In October 2003, an American tourist in Dunedin, New Zealand claimed to have been abducted and raped. Later she admitted she had made it up. That was
the 7th false rape case that year, in a city with a population of well under 150,000. That may have been exceptional, but it was not that exceptional. On July 15, a young woman named Emily Pike was given an 18 month sentence for perverting the course of justice. She hooked up with a man on-line and agreed to have sex with him at a Premier Inn. They had consensual sex, but her liaison regretted it, made his excuses and left. He may have acted like a cad, but that did not make him a rapist. And guess where R v Emily Pike was heard...Bristol Crown Court, the very same court where Rhiannon Brooker was convicted!
In November 2006, serial rape liar Sally Henderson was given a 12 month sentence at the same court for perverting the course of justice. There are around 90 Crown Courts in England and Wales, so with an average of say 3 cases per court every ten years, that would be 270 false rape allegations. That is only an estimated average, and does not include unreported cases, nor cases dealt with by magistrates, nor those which don’t get anywhere near a courtroom.
If Wimmin Against Rape and similar pressure groups want to combat rape, then a prerequisite is honesty. Rhiannon Brooker is far from the first false accuser they have lobbied for, and she is likewise far from the most despicable case. Justice for genuine rape victims cannot be secured by a blanket dismissal of false accusers, because innocent men deserve justice too.
[The above article was published originally July 25, 2014 with a linked video. Here I have added another video – the interview with Paul Fensome – and the police mugshot of Rhiannon Brooker. The first video has been archived.]
To A timeline of recent false rape cases
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