Student wrongly accused of rape cleared by messages police failed to disclose

A British student is planning to sue the cops for bungling evidence that led to his false rape charge. Liam Allan, 22, spent two years going through “mental torture” because police did not hand over more than 40,000 messages proving his innocence.

The 22-year-old criminology student was facing up to 12 years in jail for six counts of rape and six counts of sexual assault against a fellow student for 14 months. He would have been included in the sex offenders’ list if he was found guilty. He had spent nearly two years on bail when the trial at Croydon Crown Court was stopped in a dramatic fashion last week. It emerged that the police did not release the text messages from the accuser.

The accuser claimed he raped her six times. Allan claimed they had a consensual relationship and that the alleged victim was acting maliciously because he refused to see her after returning to Greenwich University.

The court, however, heard that the case officer failed to review a computer disc with 40,000 messages that the accuser sent to Allan and other friends. The messages showed that she continually messaged Allan for “casual sex” and had bragged to her friends about her fantasies of having violent sex.

As the BBC reports, it was understood that police had looked at thousands of phone messages for the case but failed to disclose to both prosecution and defence teams the messages between the accuser and her friends. The defence team had also repeatedly asked for the phone messages to be disclosed before the trial, but the police told them there was nothing to disclose. The messages ultimately proved Allan’s innocence.

It was when new prosecutor Jerry Hayes took over the case a day before trial began and discovered the police’s oversight. He ordered police to hand over the records, which included a computer disk containing the messages.

“There was a terrible failure in disclosure which was inexcusable,” he said. “There could have been a serious miscarriage of justice, which could have led to a very significant period of imprisonment and life on the sex offenders register. It appears the officer in the case has not reviewed the disk, which is quite appalling.”

Allan said he was under “mental torture” during the two years he had been on bail for the case. He told the Times that he felt betrayed by the system. He is now considering suing the Met police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The detective in charge of his case is now under investigation. The Met and the CPS will conduct a management review to determine how the case was handled.