The shocking story of how a church group girl cried rape and what it tells us about Britain



Two 14-year-olds play on a computer only feet away as a boy and girl from same youth club have sex... a week later she claims she's been raped

Provocative: An internet picture of Lucy

For the past few years, she has been an ­enthusiastic member of a church youth group. The club meets at her local ­chapel every Sunday where they say prayers and light candles before taking part in ­social activities and ­discussions on topical moral or religious issues.

So it was on the Sunday evening before the August Bank Holiday last year when this deeply disturbing but still unfolding story begins. The girl we shall call Lucy was 15 then; she is 16 now. Her true ­identity is protected by the law, for reasons that will become apparent.

At the weekends, her social life, like that of many of the teenagers in this Gloucestershire village, revolved around the youth group where ‘respect others’ is the most ­important rule. The words are printed on ­laminated cards which are given to youngsters when they join.

Lucy — pretty, bright and articulate — epitomised these ideals. Or so it seemed to those in charge; back in the summer she even attended a Christian summer camp.

How bitterly ironic these details seem with hindsight.

One of Lucy’s friends at the club was David, 15 (again, for legal ­reasons, not his real name). He went to the same school as Lucy, but was in the year below her. David lived in a detached house at the ‘posh’ end of the village, about half a mile from Lucy.

The two regularly exchanged text messages. Some time on the night of August 29 last year, Lucy received one inviting her to come round to David’s home the following morning.

By the time she arrived, David’s mother had left for work and his elder sister had gone out. David and Lucy were joined by two of their peer group; a boy and girl both aged 14. All four went upstairs to David’s bedroom.

They started to play a game of ‘dare’ with each other; a sexual version of the game. ‘I dare you to lift up your tops and show me your bra,’ was the gist of the first challenge.

The ‘game’ culminated with Lucy and David disappearing under the duvet on the bed. They remained there for ten minutes. During that time they had full sex while their friends sat at a ­PlayStation in the corner.

Could there be a more graphic ­example of the sexualisation — and promiscuity — of too many children today?

Yet this is not the end of the story. The repercussions of what happened that morning five months ago in a ­village in the heart of so-called Middle England have been devastating, and are enough to shock any parent of a teenage child.

One week on from the game of ‘dare’, Lucy was at the club as usual. ­Sitting next to her in church was the same girl who had been with her in David’s room. Lucy began tapping a message into her mobile phone before passing the phone to her friend.

Her friend read the ­message. It said: ‘I think I might be pregnant.’

That bombshell was followed by an astonishing accusation. David, she told her friend, had raped her that morning under the duvet. Lucy repeated the claim to her mother, who took her to the police station. David was arrested. In the ­harrowing days that followed, David was called a ­‘rapist’ — among other things — in the street by other youngsters who ­presumed he must be guilty.

He wasn’t.

Sad fact of life: The average teenager in Britain today has has slept with at least three people by the age of 16 (Posed by models)

Lucy, it transpired, was lying. She was charged with making a false rape claim. And last week, she was ­convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice when she appeared before a youth court in Cheltenham; one of the youngest people in the country, it is believed, ever to be successfully ­prosecuted for such an offence. She will be sentenced later this month.

Why were detectives so sure Lucy was not telling the truth? Well, for one thing, it was not the first time she had falsely accused a boy of rape, of which more later. There were also two other ­youngsters in the ­bedroom, remember, when Lucy and David had sex. Neither of them ­corroborated her account.

One of those teenagers, a slip of a lad, is now sitting in his lounge next to his mother and stepfather ­recalling what really happened on that Bank Holiday morning.

Some families had stopped their own children from associating with Lucy and say she has been sexually active since the age of at least 13.

Did he know what rape was? ‘Yes,’ he replied. Was Lucy raped? ‘No.’ What did he think they were doing? Answer: ‘I thought they were just doing it.’

When they were ‘finished’, he said, David told him what he and Lucy had done under the duvet; it is ­inappropriate to quote that ­conversation in a family newspaper.

Nevertheless, no boy should have to go through what David has gone through. Or be forced to give ­evidence in rape proceedings as the boy now speaking to me did; a video of his ­testimony, which was played to the court, helped clear David, but ­condemned Lucy. David’s friend had just come home from school for his tea when we met this week. In his room, which he shares with his younger brother, are DVDs of Harry Potter and The Karate Kid along with a Meccano set.

They are reminders that this boy, just 14 at the time, and all the ­others involved in this harrowing case are still ­children; something which is all too easy to ­forget, given the culture of underage sex that seems as ­intrinsic to the ­everyday lives of many ­teenagers as PlayStations and pop music.

Lucy and many of her peer group, after all, were members of a church youth group. She describes herself on social networking sites as a ­Christian. Yet the well-behaved, ­crucifix-­wearing Lucy has a very ­different side, it seems.

This is the heavily made-up, ­cigarette-smoking Lucy who was often to be seen around the village in sometimes thigh-skimming dresses with a variety of different boys in tow.

Within days of crying rape, in fact, Lucy had acquired a new boyfriend; there is a photograph on her ­Facebook page — possibly taken at Lucy’s home — of the two of them wrapped around each other, kissing. Other pictures of Lucy and her ­boyfriend circulating on the internet are more distasteful, including one in which they can be seen provocatively licking each other.

Some families had stopped their own children from associating with Lucy and say she has been sexually active since the age of at least 13.

False rape claim aside, Lucy’s ­behaviour is far from unusual, ­according to survey after survey, poll after poll, which almost always come up with the same depressing statistic: the average teenager in Britain today has slept with at least three people by the age of 16; ‘at least three’.

The village where Lucy lives with her mother, father and two brothers is in the Forest of Dean, an idyllic slice of Gloucestershire countryside made familiar to millions in Dennis Potter’s TV play Blue ­Remembered Hills. Yet like many rural communities, its ­fabric has been torn apart by ­unemployment, daytime drinking and broken homes.

Casual sex among young teenagers would seem to be endemic. Take this recent conversation on Facebook between two of Lucy’s friends; a boy and a girl aged 15. The boy begins by asking her what­ ­‘sexual stuff’ she will do for him. Her replies are too graphic to repeat here.

She then asks the boy if he wants sex with her. ‘Wen,’ [when] he inquires. ‘Whenever you want,’ she tells him. ‘So is that a yak [yes],’ he asks, adding that the following ­Friday could be a possible date for their encounter. ‘Yeah,’ is her emphatic answer.

Or this admission from another female friend. ‘Had a great weekend with . . . except for herpes, that s*** stays with you.’

The girl ‘with herpes’ is 15. Her father, according to one woman who knows the family, would be ­‘horrified if he knew’. The girl is also a member of the youth club.

A third friend of Lucy’s refers to ‘using’ a sex toy. The girl is 16 and goes to the same school as Lucy. ­Herpes. Intercourse. Sex toys. Even if some of what you have read is just teenage bravado, the sexually explicit language is ­shocking enough in itself.And bravado or not, Britain has the worst sexual health in Europe. Two-thirds of sexually transmitted ­diseases — more than 300,000 — were in females aged 15 to 24, according to the latest research.

This, then, is the wider context to Lucy’s arrest and conviction. Lucy’s parents say that despite the ­conviction, they believe Lucy’s account of the rape.

‘It’s affected her school grades,’ said her mother. ‘This sort of ­experience would put people off going to report anything. She went to the police as a victim and ­suddenly she was turned into the accused.’

Anti-rape campaigners and some legal experts agreed. They criticised the decision to prosecute Lucy and said such cases discouraged women from reporting rape.

David’s mother, who is separated from his father, does not see it that way; nor will many other parents.After all, she was there when the police arrived on her doorstep one afternoon last summer and informed her son that ‘he didn’t have to say anything, but anything he did say could be taken down and used against him in evidence . . .’

David was then taken away; his mother followed behind in her car; his father joined them at the police ­station, where David was ­interviewed for five hours.

It would be a further three weeks before the truth emerged. ‘It was ­horrible,’ his mother said last night. ‘Some people called him names like “rapist” or asked him sarcastically: “How’s Lucy?” David didn’t want to go out. He just wants to move on now and get on with his life.’

For her part, Lucy is still sticking to her version of events; a version of events she barely wavered from throughout three police interviews.

‘This is a serious allegation,’ a female detective told Lucy after she brought the rape complaint. ‘It’s a huge ­allegation to make against someone.’ ‘I’m fully aware of that,’ replied Lucy.

Female detective: ‘You know if it goes to court he [David] will face the stigma of being a rapist. No question in your mind he forced you to do it.’

Lucy: ‘No.’

Later, the officer put the following allegation to Lucy. ‘You apparently made a claim like this before. But nothing came of it. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy replied.

When we contacted the police this week, they declined to give ­further details about Lucy’s ­previous rape claim.

Why did Lucy behave like she did? Even the judge who heard her case said he could not answer that ­question. The judge who heard all the evidence was certain of one thing, though: Lucy had agreed to have sex with David that morning five months ago with two 14-year-old friends playing a computer game only feet away.

Isn’t that the real story here? A story that tells us so much about the kind of society we now live in.

Additional reporting: Peter Hayward.