By VennerRoad, 29th Jun 2016
A look at the lighter side of false rape allegations, on both side of the Atlantic.
The new look Neil Hamilton
Or is it? While rape is never a laughing matter, a false rape claim can have a devastating effect on a man. Aside from being locked up for days, months or years, there have been instances in which vigilantes have attacked the innocent, and even cases in which men have committed suicide. All these and more can be found on the International False Rape Timeline.
That being said, some false rape allegations are simply hilarious. The case of Laurie Martinez made a female news anchor laugh. Laurie appears to have wanted to move to a better neighbourhood, but her husband was happy where they were. Instead of using her feminine wiles to get her own way, she decided to shock him, so she staged a home invasion robbery and rape.
After recruiting her friend Nicole, the two women removed chattels including two laptop computers from her Sacramento home. Then Nicole donned boxing gloves and punched her in the face. To make it look authentic, Laurie even wet herself. This was where the anchor laughed!
Alas, the best laid plans of mice and women oft’ come to nothing, although it wasn’t quite nothing in this case, because although she received a non-custodial sentence for her act of madness, instead of losing her freedom, Laurie lost her husband. These are certainly valid if bizarre grounds for divorce, but that wasn’t all she lost. She might have got away with it if she hadn’t boasted about her bizarre plan at her place of work. Would you believe she was a senior psychologist at Folsom Prison? Needless to say she was sacked.
There must be something in the air in California, because two years later another woman pulled a similar stunt. While mother of two Martinez had no excuse, Morgan Triplett was barely out of her teens, so it is probably wise not to be too judgmental. She claimed to have been attacked on a campus path at the University of California Santa Barbara. After reporting the rape, she refused to submit to a medical examination, which is a classic hoax indicator. Perhaps even more suspiciously, she refused to hand over her clothing for forensic testing. The police spent eleven days investigating her bogus claim before the truth came out: she had hired a man she met through Craigslist to beat her up; she paid him not in cash but in sex. This was apparently not the first time she had pulled a stunt like this. She was given a complex sentence which included 60 days behind bars.
In the UK, an extremely bizarre false rape allegation was actually a blessing in disguise for Neil Hamilton, although he is hardly likely ever to admit it. In 1994, he was not only a Member of Parliament but a Government Minister. By December 1999, he was in total disgrace having been branded corrupt by and lost a libel action to a man who had publicly accused the Duke of Edinburgh of murdering Diana Princess of Wales.
In 2001, he and his wife were accused by fantasist Nadine Milroy-Sloan who sold her false story to a scurrilous Sunday scandal sheet through publicist Max Clifford, who, ironically, is currently himself serving a heavy sentence for extremely dubious allegations of historical sexual offences. Although the allegations Milroy-Sloan made against the Hamiltons were quickly and easily disproved, the other person she named, Barry Lehaney, was a far more credible suspect; had she accused him and him alone, an innocent man could have spent a long time behind bars.
Milroy-Sloan ended up with a four year sentence, but one washed up politician and his bubbly wife reinvented themselves as media personalities. Neil is currently flying high in politics again as a prominent member of the UK Independence Party. In September 2014, Milroy-Sloan was given another four year sentence after making false allegations against army veteran Chris Crabtree.
It is not only women who make false allegations of rape. One person on the receiving end of not only false rape but utterly grotesque allegations by another man was Harvey Proctor. Like Neil Hamilton, Proctor is a disgraced MP. A closet homosexual, in 1986 he was the victim of a sick entrapment operation by a Sunday newspaper. He pleaded guilty to relatively trivial offences which today are legal, but his career was ruined. In 2003, he became private secretary to a member of the landed gentry, and last year saw his career trashed for a second time, not because he was guilty of any offence but because the situation created by these bizarre allegations made it impossible for him to continue in his post.
Having already seen his name included on the bogus Elm Guest House List, it was probably to be expected that even though he had been out of politics for three decades he would be roped into the ludicrous VIP paedophile ring scandal.
Along with the late Edward Heath – who was no friend of his – he was accused of not only raping but torturing and murdering underage boys. Tired of what he called the drip, drip, drip of information (ie scurrilous nonsense) by the police to Grubb Street, in August last year he held a well attended press conference which can only be described as spectacular, and at which he lambasted the police for their perfidy and folly.
Although the VIP paedophile nonsense has now been played out and all the allegations made against Proctor and others shown to be baseless, it is curious that there has been no official confirmation that those making the allegations were either lying or fantasising if not both. Two of the main accusers – both men – remain anonymous, and there are still people making capital out of this madness.
Finally, we return to the other side of the Atlantic, and a false allegation that might be described as hair-raising. In 1979, New York City employee Jeffrey Gordon was accused of raping Andrea Cohen. The grand jury refused to indict him, but apparently feeling he needed to clear his name properly, he sued her for defamation. The case went before the New York Supreme Court the following year, and featured a curious courtroom cameo. Asked how she had resisted Mr Gordon’s attack, the defendant claimed she had pulled at his hair, at which point the plaintiff stood up and removed his toupée. Judge Angelo Roncallo had no hesitation in saying he did not believe the alleged rape had happened, and awarded the successful plaintiff $10,000.
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