A YOUNG Dublin woman has been given a suspended sentence after falsely claiming a taxi driver raped her yards from her home.
A Garda investigation took place after Cara Leonard (20) reported the alleged rape in September 2010, but no man was ever arrested or questioned.
She claimed the man had raped her in the vehicle on her way home from a night out. She had said her boyfriend and another man had been in the taxi but were dropped off before her.
Leonard, Briarfield Road, Kilbarrack, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to making a false statement at Raheny Garda station on September 1st, 2010.
Garda Karen McCoy told Cathleen Noctor, prosecuting, that she had carried out extensive searches for the vehicle Leonard alleged the rape took place in, had spoken to several taxi drivers on a particular rank and had analysed CCTV footage of the route Leonard said the taxi had taken.
Leonard had been taken to the sexual assault unit in the Rotunda Hospital for examination.
Leonard had not withdrawn the statement until gardaí contacted her over two months later to clear up some “ambiguities” in her initial complaint.
She had recounted the incident again but gave a different story, eventually admitting to gardaí: “He did not rape me”.
Leonard had still maintained the taxi driver had tried to kiss her and said she had made up the allegation because she had not wanted him to kiss her.
In December 2010, she made another statement to gardaí in which she admitted making a false allegation. She said she had little recollection of the night due to the amount of alcohol she had taken.
She told gardaí: “It was just in my head when I woke up.” When asked why she had not withdrawn the allegation, she replied: “I did not know how to approach it. I did not know what to do.”
When asked by Judge Martin Nolan what Leonard was like, Garda McCoy replied: “I would not by any means say she has no understanding of what is going on.
“She was a bit younger at the time, your average teenage girl, a bit airy-fairy.”
Judge Nolan sentenced her to three years in prison, which he suspended in full.
He said the offence was “profoundly immoral”, and acknowledged the “great inconvenience to gardaí” which it caused.
“The only redeeming feature in the case, which has nothing to do with her, was that no one was nominated as a suspect,” the judge said.
He accepted she had “underlying difficulties” and “an amount of alcohol taken”, but said he was satisfied she knew the difference between right and wrong.
Garda McCoy told Ms Noctor that Leonard had given a detailed description of a taxi driver and the vehicle he was driving.
She had claimed he had asked her about her night out and about her boyfriend and had commented that she was pretty before grabbing her and kissing her neck, face and lips.
She had claimed the driver then “hopped” into the back seat of the car, undid his belt and put his hands into her shorts and underwear before raping her.
Leonard had told gardaí she screamed and shouted and eventually got out of the taxi. She said she had not called gardaí straight away because she needed some sleep.
Garda McCoy agreed with Gerardine Small, defending, that everyone gardaí had spoken to who had been in contact with Leonard that night had maintained she was highly intoxicated.
They had not been able to make sense of what she was saying.
When asked by counsel to accept that her client’s apology to gardaí had been genuine, Garda McCoy replied: “I suppose so.”
She accepted, having since read a psychiatric report, that Leonard “is a girl with her own problems”.
Ms Small said Leonard had a history of self-harm and alcohol abuse.