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A woman may face jail after she sparked a police investigation when she falsely claimed she had been raped on a train.

Karen Farmer, 35, told officers that a man had sexually assaulted her while travelling from Glasgow to Blantyre.

She had in fact consented to having sex with the man having been on a date with him in the hours leading up to the journey, but he ran off and left her once they got off the train.

Farmer, from Paisley, later alleged the 23-year-old she had been intimate with was “aggressive and controlling” which led to him being detained at his work and quizzed by police.

(Image: Nigel Thompson)

She pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to falsely claiming she was raped and causing police to devote their time and services in an investigation she knew was false.

The court heard that on August 14, 2012, Farmer and the man went on a date in Glasgow city centre.

They were seen drinking and being “openly physically affectionate” by kissing one another.

Procurator fiscal depute Collette Fallon said that Farmer was under the impression that she would be staying the night with the man.

(Image: Spindrift)

The pair later boarded a train at Central Station that was going to Blantyre, where her date lived.

While on the train, they were captured on CCTV “engaging in consensual sex”.

Miss Fallon said that when they got off of the train at Blantyre, the man told Farmer he needed the toilet but ran away from the station.

Farmer, visibly upset, looked for him and eventually asked to borrow someone’s phone to text her date.

In the message, she said: “Thanks for the night that I paid for you to leave me in Blantyre.”

The message also said: “For you to use me like that has made me feel so low.

(Image: PA)

“Trying to find my way back home, I don’t know how to get there.”

Miss Fallon said; “The accused boarded the train back to Glasgow, during the course of the journey, she knocked on the driver’s cab door and the driver of the train opened the door and saw the accused was upset and crying.

“She told him she had been assaulted but did not specify further.”

When she got to Central Station, she told police she had been sexually assaulted on the train and taken to a police station.

Farmer told the police about her date with the man and claimed she was in some pain, so was taken to hospital by ambulance.

Miss Fallon added: “The chair the accused was sitting in was seized as a production.”

Swabs were taken from her as well as her underwear and later her clothes, and she met with an officer who specialises in sexual assault.

The man was detained at work by police and questioned although later released.

Police viewed the CCTV from train which did not show any rape taking place.

In October that year, Farmer was detained and later charged for wasting police time.

Defence counsel Louise Arrol said: “She has very little recollection of events that evening.

“There was reference to her being intoxicated. When she viewed the CCTV, she realised her recollection was not what she thought it was.”

Describing the actions of the man who left her at the train station, she told the sheriff: “It certainly wasn’t chivalrous.”

Sheriff Kenneth Mitchell deferred sentence until next month and continued bail.