The rape lies that ruined our lives: Taxi driver and his wife reveal the devastating cost of a drunk teenager who cried rape



There was never a moment when Sue Bishop believed her husband Clive was capable of rape.



Not when five police officers turned up on her doorstep in the middle of the night, hammering on the door and then arresting part-time taxi driver Clive on suspicion of rape.



Not even when they carted him off to Yeovil Police Station in Somerset and put him in a cell.

When she collected him the following day, Sue simply threw her arms around his neck and sobbed.



Falsely accused: Sue and Clive Bishop are still struggling to get on with their lives following allegations of rape

'I didn't doubt him for a minute,' she says. 'I just knew it wasn't in his nature. It wasn't possible that it was true.'

This week, more than two years after their nightmare began when her husband was falsely accused of rape by a drunken teenage passenger, Clive made legal history when he won the right to apply for compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

The 50-year-old, who works for Somerset County Council caring for vulnerable adults, had previously been turned down on the grounds that he had not suffered physical injuries as a result of the false claim.

Kirsty Palmer, the mother-of-two who made up the rape allegation, was given a ten-month prison sentence as a result of her crime.

But as Clive and Sue's account of the past two years makes clear, the emotional and mental legacy of what happened to him in the hours and days after his wrongful arrest runs as deep as any physical scar.

'It's taken over our lives,' says 48-year-old Sue, who works as a carer. Both she and Clive also foster young adults and help them make the transition from the care system to self-sufficiency.

The girl who cried rape: Kirsty Palmer accused Clive of assaulting her as he dropped her home in his taxi

She adds: 'We have lived with this for so long now. I've seen Clive go from a laid-back person to being constantly anxious about everything.'

In effect, says Clive, who lost his taxi business as a result of the rape allegation, Palmer's actions amounted to an act of violence against him.

'I am physically and mentally drained. It has taken everything out of me,' he says. 'It's not about money. It's about moral justice, and recognising that when women lie like this, men suffer horrendously.

'I feel as if I've been raped of my dignity and my self-confidence. That night, my choices in life were taken away from me and I've been struggling ever since. I've had to fight for everything.

'I wish I could turn back the clock and have my life back as it was before. But that can never happen. This has caused so much distress and hurt and pain. Things can never be the same.'

Looking back on the events of the past two years, the couple from Walton in Somerset, both of whom have been married previously, still find it hard to believe how their lives were so suddenly turned upside down.

It happened, quite literally, overnight. Sue still recalls the terror of being woken up at 4.30am on February 25, 2007, by the sound of someone banging on the door of their three-bedroom semi-detached home.

'I was in a deep sleep,' she says. 'It was very frightening. I looked out of the window and there were two police cars and a riot van, and five policemen.

'I thought something terrible had happened to one of Clive's children, but I couldn't understand why so many policemen had come.'

When she first heard the word 'rape', Sue's first reaction was a split-second moment of relief that nothing terrible had happened to anyone in the family.

'Then,' she says, 'I thought "What did he say?" I couldn't take it in. My mind was spinning. I felt as if I couldn't breathe.'



Clive, who went downstairs to open the door, adds: 'I thought it was bad news and that something had happened to one of the young adults we'd been looking after, or to my son or daughter.

'Then I noticed one of the policemen was wearing blue surgical gloves. When he said he was arresting me on suspicion of rape, I said: "That's absolute rubbish." I was totally shocked and stunned.

'In the car on the way to the police station, I kept saying: "I haven't done anything wrong" and the police kept telling me to "Shut up". I thought you were meant to be innocent until proven guilty, but that's not how I was treated.'

'At no point did I touch her. She did not even pay me because her friend had already done it, so we'd never even come into contact'

Placed in a police cell for several hours, Clive was photographed and fingerprinted before undergoing a series of humiliating medical examinations.

In the early morning, a female doctor swabbed his mouth, his penis and the backs and palms of his hands.



He was asked to provide a 20ml sample of spit, and scrapings and clippings from each fingernail, as well as hair samples from his head and groin.

'It was degrading and humiliating,' recalls Clive. 'I felt numb. I still didn't even know who it was or what she was claiming.'

Later that afternoon, the police finally began questioning him and it quickly became clear that there was no case against him.

The rape allegation had been made by 17-year-old Kirsty Palmer, a passenger he had picked up in his taxi the previous night.

'I asked them what she had actually accused me of,' he recalls.

She'd said she'd been taken to a remote lane and raped by a man who was black, Asian or possibly heavily tanned - which, as a white man without a tan, clearly wasn't me.

'The duty solicitor nearly fell off his chair. He couldn't comprehend why I was there.'

But Clive remembered Kirsty Palmer clearly. He'd begun work at 7pm on Saturday, February 24. He collected Palmer and a friend at 9.45pm and took them to a nightclub.

At 1am, he received a call from Palmer's friend asking him to pick Palmer up and take her home.

Humiliated: Clive Bishop speaks to the media after receiving a compensation payout for being wrongly accused of rape

At first he refused because he had another booking. But after the friend begged him, he agreed on condition that he took her home immediately so he would have time to get back for the other booking.

'When I arrived, Palmer was very drunk and had already been sick,' says Clive. He insisted that her friend paid him before the start of the journey, then Palmer sat in the front with a carrier bag.

'I told her that if she was going to be sick, to be sick in the bag,' says Clive.

'At no point did I touch her. She did not even pay me because her friend had already done it, so we'd never even come into contact.'

He dropped Palmer outside her home and made sure she reached her front door, then he returned for his final booking and went home to bed.

It emerged that when Palmer got to her door, she found she was locked out. At that point, she made her way to a neighbour's house and, for whatever reason, claimed she had been raped. Hours later, Clive was arrested.

After 12 hours in police custody, he was released, but only after he'd been placed on police bail and told to return to the police station in six weeks' time.

During that time, there was no possibility of life returning to normal. Clive's red Nissan Primera was seized by the police, making it impossible for him to work.

'Even though I knew I was innocent, it felt as if the police didn't believe me. Sue and I agreed that we wouldn't tell anyone. We didn't want to upset our parents or our children, and we didn't want it to get out. We live in a small community and I was afraid of the backlash.'

Sue adds: 'Keeping it to ourselves meant that we had no one to talk to except each other. It was all we talked about. We went over and over it. My mum said I looked ill, but I didn't want to burden her with it, so I kept it hidden. It was terrible for both of us, but worse for Clive.'



Daily struggle: Clive and Sue say they will try and move on with their lives but it will never be the same again

Then, two days before he was due to report back to Yeovil police station, Clive received a phone call from his solicitor.



'He said not to bother turning up because no action was being taken against me,' recalls Clive.



'It was like being stabbed through the heart, to think that they could just leave it like that.'

He wrote a letter of complaint to the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police.

'I said that if they could send five officers to my house at 4.30am, why couldn't they send a single officer to tell me that they'd found what I was saying was true, and that no further action would be taken against me.

'In the end, they sent someone to my house to apologise, but I wanted it in writing as well. I wanted a letter exonerating me.'

But even when he got that, life for Clive did not return to normal.

'When I got my car back, I tried to go out taxiing again, but I was a nervous wreck. One of my passengers was another drunk girl. I just dropped her off and drove straight home. I told Sue: "I can't do this any more." I had to get rid of the car.'

Clive also feared - wrongly - that the accusation against him might affect the Enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check, a procedure he undergoes at regular periods because of the nature of his work fostering vulnerable adults.

In the end, after seeing his GP, he underwent counselling to help him cope with the stress he was suffering. He took up running to help work out his emotions and last year raised many hundreds of pounds for the cancer charity CLIC Sargent by completing the Glastonbury 10km race.

In April last year, mother-of-two Palmer pleaded guilty to the false rape allegation and was jailed for ten months at Bristol Crown Court.

Sue says: 'When I first saw her in court, I didn't know how to feel. Part of me wanted to slap her face. But I just tried to keep myself together and to stop myself crying.

'As time went on, I found my emotions were very mixed. I was glad that she was jailed at first, but then I thought about her two babies being left behind. I felt awful. As if we were responsible for causing that. But, of course, she was responsible. She'd put herself there, not us.'

Clive recalls how, during an earlier committal hearing, Palmer and her boyfriend and baby stepped into the lift that he and Sue were in.

'She didn't have a clue who I was, but I knew who she was. She was laughing and joking. It made me feel sick.'

Even seeing his accuser jailed did not compensate for what Clive had suffered.

'The mental scars run deep,' he says. 'I'm a very nervous person now. Very anxious and stressed.

'I don't like being alone with women I don't know, which makes my job very hard. I'm very conscious of what I say and how I act. I'm very aware of my surroundings all the time. I can't get what happened out of my head.'

'Women who make up stories like these should be put on the sex offenders' register. Lies like these ruin people's lives'

The publicity surrounding the court action against Palmer also forced the couple to tell their family and friends what had happened.

'It all came into the open,' says Clive. 'I had to drive round to my parents, who are in their 70s, and my children, and explain what this girl had done. They were heart-broken. But everyone has been incredibly supportive towards me.'

For both Clive and Sue then, the decision by a Taunton tribunal last week that he was eligible to apply for compensation is hugely symbolic. 'Finally, it makes clear all the distress I have suffered,' he says. 'It had to be acknowledged.

'I understand that rape is a horrendous crime for anyone to suffer, but there has to be balance. You can't have a one-sided system.

'And when it's clear that someone has been wrongly accused, someone-should say: "Sorry for what you have been through."

'Women who make up stories like these should be put on the sex offenders' register. Lies like these ruin people's lives.'

Clive still has no idea why Palmer made up her story - 'And I don't want to know,' he says.

His battle for justice is not yet over. While he has been given leave to apply for compensation, it may take up to five years for an amount to actually be granted.

In the meantime, he has also won damages from a County Court judgment against Palmer for 'malicious falsehood'.

When the teenager initially failed to pay the damages awarded to Clive, the case returned to court last month. He doesn't want to say how much he has been awarded, only that it barely scratches the surface of the earnings he has lost from his taxi business, and that Palmer, who is on benefits, has agreed to pay him a small amount each month.

He spoke to her for the first time on the steps outside the court.

'It was so strange,' he recalls. 'I was about a foot and a half from her. I said: "Do you know that you have never once apologised to me or my wife?"

'She said: "I'm so, so sorry. If I could turn back the clock, I would. I didn't realise all this was going to happen."'

In the end, it's hard to get away from the irony of it all: that Clive and Sue, who have spent the past eight years caring for disadvantaged teenagers like Kirsty Palmer, should have suffered like this.

Clive looks at it like this: 'She's done a very stupid thing. She has done a great disservice to women.

'But she's served her time. And now she's apologised. I just hope now that she can give a good life to her children and bring them up properly.

'She needs to get on with her life, and somehow I need to get on with mine.'