'Wicked' woman who ruined a marriage by crying rape jailed for four months

A woman whose false rape allegation led to the collapse of her victim’s marriage has been jailed for four months after a judge branded her ‘wicked’.

Tracey Winfield, 21, claimed she had been held down in a park by her former boyfriend Richard Peacock while his friend Dean Frasier raped her.

As a result of her allegations – delivered in a detailed, seven-page statement – the men were arrested and held in police cells for 17 and a half hours.

The pair, both innocent, were forced to undergo medical examinations and give intimate samples before being released on bail.

Their ordeals ended only when Winfield walked into a police station in Grantham, Lincolnshire five days later and confessed the incident never took place.

Mr Frasier was so distraught over her claims he contemplated suicide, Lincoln Crown Court heard.

Jailing her yesterday, Recorder Christopher Donnellan said Winfield’s lies had damaged the chances of securing convictions in genuine rape cases.

Simon Rowe, prosecuting, said Winfield initially phoned officers to say she had been attacked in Wymondham Park, close to the centre of Grantham.

The men were arrested in the early hours of the morning and interviewed twice before eventually being released.

Mr Rowe said both suffered as a result of the lie, adding that for Mr Frasier: ‘It was the last straw in his relationship with his wife.’

He said: ‘Such was his concern that he spent money on taking a polygraph test to try to prove his innocence.

‘He says Miss Winfield has ruined his life.’

Mr Rowe said Winfield and Mr Peacock had a troubled three-year relationship, and she had made 14 allegations to police about him.

Most of these were not taken further - although Mr Peacock was twice convicted of public order offences in 2006 as a result of them.

Winfield, from Grantham, admitted a charge of carrying out an act intending to pervert the course of justice in April this year.

Gordon Aspden, defending, told the court she had been drinking when she made the allegation and now realised it was a ‘monumental error of judgment’.

Winfield sobbed in the dock as Mr Donnellan told her: ‘What you did was wicked. It was not a spur-of-the-moment action that you did not go through with.

‘Mr Frasier had his life ruined. Whatever relationship he had with his wife may have been able to be saved, but what you did made sure it was not,’ he added.

The case came weeks after the Association of Chief Police Officers called for the introduction of specialist squads to investigate rapes in every UK force in a bid to drive up conviction rates.

Less than 6 per cent of reported rapes result in a conviction in England and Wales – and just 15 per cent of victims are said to report incidents in the first place, according to the British Crime Survey.

Mr Donnellan suggested false allegations such as Winfield’s served only to spread even more doubt among jurors.

Earlier this month, a Royal Navy Wren was also convicted of making a false rape claim against a former lover.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard that communications officer Erin Casson, 27, met Petty Officer Brian Eaton for sex three months after they broke up, but then told another man she had been raped.

A jury took less than an hour to find Casson, of Porchester, Hampshire, guilty of perverting the course of justice.

She faces jail when she is sentenced next month.