Woman found guilty of false rape and sex assault claims against 15 men

A woman who accused 15 men of raping or sexually assaulting her has been found guilty of making false rape claims.

Lies by Jemma Beale, 25, have put one man behind bars and caused another to flee overseas.

Beale, of Bedfont, Hounslow, was yesterday (Thursday) found guilty of four counts of perjury and four counts of perverting the course of justice following a trial at Southwark Crown Court.

She claimed to have been seriously sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine during four different encounters over a three year period.

In 2010, a rape allegation made by Beale led to the jailing of one of the men – Mahad Cassim – for seven years.

She had told police that Cassim raped her after offering her a lift home – but he had argued that she instigated things, ordering him to remove his underwear.

Beale said in court that she was a lesbian with no interest in the opposite sex, adding: “I’m not going to go to a man I don’t know and ask him for sex. I ain’t bisexual at all.”

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She said in a victim impact statement at the time of Cassim’s trial: “I feel that any sentence he receives will never reflect the life sentence that he gave me.” She was then awarded £11,000 in compensation.

But when a former girlfriend of Beale’s told police that Cassim had been wrongly jailed following her false allegations, detectives from the Met’s Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse (SOECA) Command launched an investigation in December 2013.

At this time, officers were already investigating a separate claim by Beale that she had been gang raped by a group of men in Feltham that November.

When officers looked at Beale’s various claims between 2010 and 2013 they noted several similarities within the allegations – and many common discrepancies.

The emergence of these doubts about the validity of Beale’s statements led to Mahad Cassim’s conviction being quashed on appeal in July 2015.

A separate case saw another accused man, Noam Shazad, flee to Pakistan after allegations by Beale saw him charged with assault by penetration and sexual assault.

Beale had claimed that Shazad had groped her in a pub before he and a gang of three other men subjected her to a serious sexual attack with barbed wire in a nearby car park. All charges against Shazad have since been dropped.

Beale was arrested in June 2014, but denied all charges against her. The jury found her guilty of four counts of perjury (relating to false testimony provided during the trial and retrial against Cassim) and four counts of perverting the course of justice relating to three other incidents where she falsely claimed she had been sexually assaulted or raped.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith referred to Beale’s “attention-seeking” behaviour, remanding her in custody until her sentencing on August 24.

Detective Sergeant Kevin Lynott, who led the investigation into Beale’s false allegations, said: “Beale is responsible for fabricating a series of extremely serious allegations, which led to several extensive investigations being carried out and teams of detectives and specialist officers spending thousands of hours on the cases and providing support to her.”

He added: “Her manipulation of the criminal justice system has caused police to direct significant amounts of resource into investigating her bogus complaints as well as her own offending. She has also significantly impacted on the NHS as a result of her complaints and used up many other limited resources that are relied upon by genuine survivors. Not only that, but she then went on to give false testimony at court, which resulted in the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of a completely innocent man.

“Beale has been exposed as a serial liar and I can only think that she was motivated partly by financial reward, but mainly the attention and control over her partners and family at the time she made the allegations. The impact on those she falsely accused has been devastating, however hopefully the outcome now fully exonerates all the men she falsely accused of such heinous crimes.”