A MUM has been jailed after lying about being raped – putting an innocent man through months of torment.

Lisa-Jayne Samuels, 29, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was imprisoned for 20 months.

The wrongly-accused man, Terry Brown, endured months of uncertainty during which time he was beaten by a gang of thugs and his pregnant partner lost her baby after Samuels, of Prince Avenue, Southend, lied to police.

Basildon Crown Court heard Samuels called 999 at 1am on October 10, 2012, claiming to have been raped at the cliffs in Western Esplanade, Southend, and identified her attacker to the police.

When interviewed, she gave a detailed description of her attacker, claiming she had been drinking with friends at the Last Post, in Weston Road, where she met a man she knew from a night shelter who spiked her drink and attacked her.

An e-fit was drawn up and Mr Brown, of Basildon, was arrested the following year, but later released without charge after police uncovered inconsistencies in Samuels’s story.

CCTV from the Last Post and a nearby off-licence showed no sign of Samuels at the time she claimed to be there, and the friends she said she was with were found not to exist.

During a voluntary interview with Samuels on December 6, 2013, she eventually admitted to making up the whole story. She said she had lied to try and reconcile with her mother.

Sentencing Samuels, Recorder Anthony Abell said: “Rape is one of the most serious and repulsive crimes there is.

“A false allegation of rape can have dreadful consequences on the innocent person who has committed no crime whatsoever.

“It seems your initial call to the police was an impulsive act but you persisted in it, you made an e-fit and identified your supposed attacker in a line up – that was not impulsive. I have a duty to the public, meaning your sentence must be immediate and must be of some length.”

Samuels has had four children, all of whom have been taken into care, and has struggled with addiction to alcohol and problems with drugs, including crack cocaine.

Her defence solicitor, Paul Vickers, tried to argue her sentence should be suspended, but he was unsuccessful.

He said: “She accepts what she has done was loathsome and describes her actions as stupid.

“You are dealing with a lady who was homeless, intoxicated and in the grip of an addiction, who botched a scheme to enable her to get the support of her mother, to try to get her to feel sorry for her and to take her back and to rebuild her relationship with her.”

Samuels will serve up to half her sentence in prison before being released on licence.

False claim had a ‘catastrophic effect’

THE wrongful arrest of Terry Brown has had a “catastrophic” effect on his life, the court heard.

Mr Brown was arrested following Lisa-Jayne Samuels’s false allegation of rape and, as a result, he was beaten by a gang of masked thugs, had graffiti sprayed on his house and eventually had little choice but to move away from his home in Basildon.

Recorder Anthony Abell read from Mr Brown’s victim statement in court.

He said: “I cannot put into words my feelings towards Lisa- Jayne Samuels. I have been through so much pain and anguish because of her actions.”

Mr Brown’s partner was pregnant when he was arrested and the court heard he blames the stress he brought upon his partner for them losing the baby in the early stages of her pregnancy.

Recorder Abell said: “The consequences for Mr Brown have been catastrophic.

“He has had ‘dirty, scummy, racist’ graffiti’d on his home, been attacked by a gang of thugs with a large piece of wood so that he could not speak for a couple of days, and he blames himself for the loss of a child. He was prevented from seeing his two elder children and got so scared he sought help to move away from the area.

“He now misses his family and friends, but he feels he cannot visit the Basildon area any more.”