Detective is JAILED for bungling 13 rape investigations allowing alleged attackers to go back on the streets

Defence lawyer denied corruption or laziness and blamed ill health for crime

Alleged rapists escaped prosecution after Coleman-Farrow sabotaged cases

Former Scotland Yard officer jailed for 16 months today after pleading guilty

Only one of his bungled cases has been able to be fully investigated to point of trial after many victims were too upset to go through their ordeals again



Jailed: Ryan Coleman-Farrow, from East Sussex, sabotaged 13 sex crime investigations

A former Scotland Yard detective has been jailed for sabotaging 13 sex crime investigations and allowing alleged rapists to escape prosecution.

DC Ryan Coleman-Farrow, 30, lied to alleged victims, claiming their cases had been dropped, and then forged police files to cover up his negligence.



His defence lawyer claimed his offending was not the result of corruption or laziness - but the effects of ill health.

But Coleman-Farrow was jailed for 16 months today after the judge ruled his 'deliberate' and 'calculated' actions made the prosecution of alleged sex attackers impossible.



Judge Alistair McCreath said: 'In all 13 cases you failed to take steps that were appropriate and necessary for a full and proper investigation in each case.

'This was deliberate and calculated on your part and had the effect of not only delaying investigations but in reality made prosecution in respect of them impossible'.

The policeman, who worked in Scotland Yard’s specialist Sapphire sex crimes unit, failed to get CCTV of alleged attacks, did not submit evidence for forensic testing, and falsified paperwork to hide his incompetence.

He even fabricated interviews with suspects and key witnesses.

Mark Heywood QC, prosecuting, said: 'This case is not simply one of gross failure to carry out the duty of the office of Constable.

'But is rather that in each of the cases identified, having failed first properly to investigate those allegations of serious sexual assaults, the defendant went on to then create false or misleading records.'

After his lies unravelled police tried to reopen some of the cases, but many of the victims were too upset to go through their ordeals again.

Only one of his bungled cases has been able to be fully investigated to the point of trial.

His actions meant victims, suspects, families, witnesses and his colleagues were misled and in some cases 'the victim was kept waiting for many months without any results while being fed false information,' Mr Heywood said.

He told Southwark Crown Court: 'In total 32 cases required to be reopened and reanalysed and in some cases reinvestigated.



Coleman-Farrow was a Scotland Yard detective who was sacked after he admitted falsifying police records

'This included revisiting victims and witnesses which no doubt involved considerable distress not only to those individuals but to the teams responsible for doing that. A review of working practices resulted.'



The documents he faked 'related not only to his own conduct but also the conduct or statements of others whether they are complainants, suspects witnesses, or by implication fellow investigators, scientists, or on occasion reviewing lawyers from the CPS to whom it was said the case was referred', the court heard.

The former DC, who joined the police at 18, has pleaded guilty to 13 charges of misconduct in public office involving investigations he worked on between January 2007 and September 2010.

The charges relate to 13 investigations involving 11 suspects. Ten were investigations into rape whilst three involved sexual assault.

Mr Heywood said: 'It appears to have been his immediate purpose first to cover his own failings and lack of capacity and secondly, positively but falsely, to create the impression that he had done all he could to investigate the allegations but for one reason or another the allegation could not be progressed.

'He appears to have acted in his own interest for his own advantage. The consequence is that the interests of justice were deliberately frustrated.'



Mr Heywood said that some of the cases may have never made it to trial, but because of his actions the allegations were not fully investigated.

He added: 'It is now difficult to determine from this side of the court what the true outcome of these investigations might have been.'



The former detective was sentenced to 16 months in jail today at Southwark Crown Court

The cases he bungled included an allegation of rape made by an 18-year-old student which he investigated as a trainee DC in 2006.



Then he lied recording that the CPS had taken the decision to take no further action.

Another alleged 18-year-old rape victim he duped was so upset by the fake decision not to prosecute she had threatened to appeal, but did not take it to the top.

When investigating an allegation of the rape of a 49-year-old living in a care home by a carer he failed even to interview the suspect despite writing on the file the man denied the allegations.

Other investigations he sabotaged include allegations of sexual assault made by a 15-year-old schoolgirl against a waiter in an Indian restaurant, a vulnerable 25-year-old living in a specialist hospital caring for victims of abuse who claimed she was raped by a stranger, a 20-year-old who claimed she was impregnated by her rapist, the alleged rape of a 97-year-old woman by her son, and the sexual assault of a 14-year-old schoolboy by his classmate at a school for special needs.

When the lies of Coleman-Farrow, from St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, unravelled he was quizzed by the IPCC and admitted he had made up records and was sacked.

Dominatrix Jaime Perlman, 37, who committed suicide in September 2010 with 33-year-old fellow sex worker Riley Lison Taylor, also complained in her suicide note that officers - including Coleman-Farrow - had failed to investigate allegations she made. Her complaints were not upheld.

Defence counsel Robert Atchley said that within the space of six weeks in late 2005 and early 2006 Coleman-Farrow separated from his first wife and was diagnosed with cancer.

He claimed his offending was not the result of corruption or laziness, but the effects of ill health.

He said: 'The defendant in no way seeks to blame anybody other than himself for what has happened here.