The rape case against Rhiannon Brooker’s ex-partner had fallen apart.

Rhiannon had accused him of assaulting her numerous times over a two-year period, but detectives had found discrepancies in her story shortly after they arrested him, so prosecutors dropped the charges.

Elsewhere around the world, that would have likely been the end of it. Not in Britain.

Instead, one afternoon in January 2012, police in Bristol, a city in southwest England, called the 28-year-old back to the station for another interview. Rhiannon thought the purpose of the meeting was to bolster the case against her ex. Police were indeed trying to make a case – against her.

What Rhiannon did not know as she answered the detectives’ questions was that she was now suspected of perverting the course of justice by fabricating her allegations. The crime carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

British authorities are supposed to exercise extreme caution when deciding whether to prosecute someone for lying about rape, especially if the person is vulnerable or if it’s unclear whether the accusation was made maliciously.

Rhiannon ticked many of those boxes. She told police that she had an abusive childhood. Police later said in court that Rhiannon had been extremely reluctant to move forward with the case against her ex in the first place. In fact, detectives blindsided Rhiannon when they arrested him without her knowledge or consent.

As investigators considered charging Rhiannon, one voiced a concern that had nothing to do with the evidence against her, documents seen by BuzzFeed News show. There was a “reputational risk” to the police if her ex “made a complaint or went to the media”.

When the recording light went on in the interview room, detectives told Rhiannon that prosecutors just wanted to “clarify some material”. They told her it was all completely standard – hopefully, they said, she wouldn’t have to come back again.

Rhiannon told BuzzFeed News that the questions they asked were, by now, familiar:

Why didn’t she report her ex-partner earlier?

“I didn’t want him to be arrested,” Rhiannon told them.

Was she sure she had stated the dates and times of each allegation correctly?

No, Rhiannon told them, they were just “guesstimates”.

“It’s not like I sat there looking at my watch timing everything,” Rhiannon recalled saying.

Rhiannon left the police station completely unaware the authorities were hoping to arrest her as soon as possible. By 2014, Rhiannon was on trial. She pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice but was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison, separating her from her 9-month-old baby. The judge declared that she had lied in a “completely wicked” way.

Rhiannon is now a convicted criminal, virtually unemployable and forever tarred as a liar.

“They listened, they noted, they took it all down, then they just cast it aside and turned it against me,” she said.