A woman who lied about being sexually assaulted - leading to an innocent man’s arrest - has been shown mercy by the courts.
Tracy Kent was spared prison after a judge learned how she was a “damaged and vulnerable woman” with a catalogue of woes behind her.
Kent, 36, admitted she falsely told police she’d been sexually assaulted to get sympathy from her husband after a row.
She ripped her own clothes to make her story more believable, Teesside Crown Court heard today.
Her lies led to an innocent man being arrested, detained by police for three hours and bailed for six days.
Kent called 999 claiming she’d been attacked by a stranger who’d tried to rape her on June 7 last year.
She said she was approached from behind and punched to the ground by a man who tried to undo her belt in the Wellington Square car park area of central Stockton.
She told officers she swung a punch at her assailant and he grabbed and tore her T-shirt, said prosecutor Rachel Masters today.
Her report went to Cleveland Police’s major crime team and a man who had been in the area at the time was arrested and interviewed.
Inconsistencies surfaced in Kent’s account, but she stuck by her story when she was challenged and visited by investigators seven times.
The false report led to a press release and a police warning to the public over the potential dangers of walking home alone late at night.
After a week, and extensive examination of CCTV, she confessed she’d made up the allegations after an argument with her husband.
She said she called her husband from a payphone, concocted the story and ripped her T-shirt and jeans to back it up.
She admitted she did it all to get sympathy from her husband, was too afraid to tell the truth but finally realised she had to do so.
The bogus report wasted 64 hours of police time at a cost of almost £4,000.
The arrested man spoke in a statement of his shock and the effect of the false allegation against him.
Kent, of Varo Terrace, Stockton, admitted doing an act intended to pervert the course of justice, her first conviction.
Graham Brown, defending, said: “She is damaged and vulnerable.
“It wasn’t targeted. The fact that somebody was arrested was a piece of very bad luck.
“The fact that there was an arrest was very regrettable.
“He was the only person seen in the area. Regrettably they decided that he had to be potential suspect.
“It wasn’t something she rationalised or thought about.”
He told how Kent experienced “a perfect storm of toxicity”.
Surgery left her unable to have children at the age of 17 - a “ticking time bomb” which badly affected her self-esteem and confidence and led to depression.
She had medical procedures and plastic surgery to tackle obesity.
The wounds caused by the death of her father - for whom she was the principal carer - in November 2012 were also “very raw” at the time of her crime.
That day she and her husband had an argument.
“The marriage was important to her, therefore she fabricated to her husband the allegations that she made,” added Mr Brown.
“It had the opposite effect when it came to light because the husband left.
“They are trying to achieve a reconciliation.”
He said an unexplained eight-month delay in charging her had also taken its toll.
The chances of her coming back to court were “negligible”, added Mr Brown, and a prison term would be “purely destructive”.
The judge, Recorder David Dobbin, told Kent: “False allegations of this nature are treated very seriously.
“To mislead the police and the authorities is treated very seriously.
“In particularly with rape allegations, it goes to undermine the system of an offence that is perhaps not reported as fully as it should be.
“I accept however on your behalf that this was not a case of a malicious allegation. You did not have anybody in mind. You weren’t targeting anybody.
“This is not the worst case in the sense that you did not maintain your allegations for periods of months.
“You’ve had the matter hanging over you for a long time. You’ve kept out of trouble.
“Given all that I know about you, I’m sure you will not be in trouble in the future.”
He said a custodial sentence was appropriate but, in light of the circumstances and pre-sentence and psychiatric reports, it needn’t be immediate.
Kent received a one-year prison sentence suspended for a year with supervision and a three-month tagged curfew between 9pm and 8am.
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