Probation for rape claim woman
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Your support makes all the difference.A WOMAN who falsely accused a colleague of rape after a night of 'animal lust' with a stranger was put on probation for two years at the Old Bailey yesterday.
But Susan Gooch, 27, was warned by Judge John Rogers that she would be brought back before him if she failed to comply with the conditions of the order he imposed, which included a year of medical treatment.
He told her she had 'displayed an almost animal type of lust' and when she realised what she had done, took 'the coward's way out'. If there had not been 'very moving' medical reports on her condition, he would have jailed her for at least 18 months.
Gooch, of Pinner, north-west London, had admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice. The court heard she had sex with a building-site manager, Simon Johnson - then falsely accused her colleague David Dunn, a clerk at Wagon Finance of Harrow, north-west London, of rape.
Michael Cousens, for the prosecution, said Gooch encountered Mr Johnson in September last year when she and a girlfriend went to a restaurant in Covent Garden, central London.
Gooch and Mr Johnson kissed and fondled each other. They left the restaurant, Gooch's girlfriend took a taxi home, and Gooch and Mr Johnson had sex in a shop doorway. Later they had sex again, on a Tube train - witnessed by the train driver.
But as she left the station Gooch made hysterical complaints to a cab driver and later to police that she had been raped by Mr Dunn, who was arrested and suffered a 13-hour ordeal at a police station before his innocence was proved. He was also sacked, although his employers later reinstated him.
Gooch could not explain why she denounced Mr Dunn, described by colleagues as 'one of the nicest people you could wish to meet'.
The judge said he was allowing Gooch to go free after reading 'extremely disturbing' medical reports. He did not specify her medical condition but said a doctor felt it was treatable.
He ordered Gooch to pay pounds 1,000 prosecution costs from pounds 15,000 compensation she is expecting from a car accident that happened several years ago.
(Photograph omitted)
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