UK- Wife falsely accused ex-husband of rape 'to get rid of him'

7-17-2009 United Kingdom:

A "calculating" wife falsely accused her estranged husband of rape because she wanted him out of her life, a court heard.

Michaela Lodge, 45, accused her husband Martin of raping her in November last year because she was involved with another man when, in fact, she had initiated sexual intercourse, the court was told.

Mr Lodge was arrested and questioned before eventually, three months later, she wrote a letter to him admitting she had lied to the police.

Yesterday, Lodge, who has two children, was jailed for four months after she admitted perverting the course of justice at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Judge Rodger Hayward Smith QC said it was "a wicked allegation that was pre-planned to hasten his departure from your life".

He added: "Every false allegation of rape increases the plight of women who have been genuine victims of rape in that it makes a genuine allegation harder to prove because juries know that false allegations are made from time to time."

Andrew Jackson, prosecuting, said Lodge went to a police station on 26 November last year and said her husband had raped her. Mr Lodge was arrested, held in custody and released on bail.

On 21 January Lodge made a witness statement in which she said she didn't want him prosecuted but she still maintained he had raped her.

But on 19 February she gave her son Daniel a letter to pass on to her husband which read: "I am so sorry about what I have done to you. My head was and still is all over the place. I cannot deal with this anymore, I need to put it right. When we went to bed we both wanted to make love and the fact I lied to police about you raping me.

"My head was a mess with you pulling me one way and Pete the other. I just didn't know what to do. I will say goodbye and hope one day you will be able to forgive me. I am so sorry."

Marc Brown, mitigating, said Lodge had not acted out of malice or revenge. "It was born more out of a confused desire to remove him from the picture.

"She accepts it was an outright lie. The following morning she began to have regrets about what had gone on and she wanted to make her situation easier by removing Mr Lodge from the picture. She did what she did without thinking of the consequences to him, on her children or herself. It was an irrational reaction to a difficult emotional position she found herself in."

The judge read a letter from Mr Lodge, who was in court with their children, which he described as "a magnanimous appeal for mercy", not to send her immediately to prison but jailed her for four months. ..Source.. by Telegraph.co.uk