Paul Morgan suffered the indignity of being arrested by his own colleagues after being accused of rape by a woman he met on Plenty of Fish

When seven plain-clothes officers arrived at PC Paul Morgan’s bungalow at midnight and woke him up, he didn’t know what on earth was going on.

‘I knew it was serious because they were here at midnight, but I didn’t have a clue why,’ he says. ‘I remember sitting on the sofa in my dressing gown, thinking: “Have I done something wrong at work?”

‘Then one said: “We’re arresting you on suspicion of rape.” I just remember that word “rape” and thinking, “Oh Jesus”.’

Paul, 52, from Llangennech, South Wales, was beside himself. A man who rightly values his reputation, he played rugby for his country as a teenager, earned a bravery award for putting his life on the line to rescue a woman from a river, and was a hugely respected officer whose dedication to duty was unwavering.

He was a local hero until, three years ago, he met 44-year-old Samantha Murray-Evans on the dating website Plenty of Fish and had a now much-regretted one-night stand.

This month, Swansea Crown Court heard how Murray-Evans falsely cried rape, even though she’d bombarded him with sordid text messages and pictures of her breasts after that first and only date. Indeed, she’d even turned up on his doorstep uninvited, and proceeded to grab him in an intimate place.

There could be little doubt she wanted to continue the fling, yet when Paul spurned her, she accused him of rape.

Samantha Murray-Evans was jailed for 27 months after accusing the brave police officer of raping her

‘Rape is the lowest of the low,’ he says. ‘It’s worse than murder in my view. And here was someone tarring me with one of the worst things you can tar someone with.’

Paul can’t bring himself to refer to Murray-Evans by name. His fiancée Debbie Powell, whom he fell in love with a year later, calls her ‘the low-life’. Says Paul: ‘That’s what her name is in this house. She is not a nice person.’

Judge Paul Thomas QC was more direct when he sentenced Murray-Evans to 27 months in jail for carrying out acts intending to pervert the course of justice.

‘It is difficult to think of a much more wicked lie than to accuse someone of rape,’ he said, before outlining how her ‘planned, persistent and callous’ lies had ruined PC Paul Morgan’s career.

Paul Morgan, pictured with fiancee Debbie Powell at home in Llangennech, Wales, was falsely accused of rape by a Swansea mother he met on a dating site

Today, he remains deeply affected by three years of ‘sheer hell’. He relies on anti-depressants, has contemplated suicide and will never be able to return to frontline policing. He’s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and is still on sick leave.

‘When she [Murray-Evans] was here, she asked what that was,’ he says, gesturing to the framed bravery award on his windowsill. ‘I told her how I got it. It was bonfire night. Cold. Minus nine. A female had been seen in the river.

The river was in full flood and I could see her face-down, floating, about 100 yards away. I managed to get into the water and made my way up to her. It was chest deep and exceptionally cold.

‘[At those temperatures] your body starts to shut down. Your breath goes as if you’re sprinting. You’re hyperventilating — but I managed to get her out. The detective constable who came to help me was the chap who came to arrest me for rape a year later.

‘When your character’s being questioned like that, you’re thinking, “Hell, that [he nods again at the certificate] is the sort of stuff I do. That’s who I am. What’s happening to me now is unbelievable.”’

The word ‘unbelievable’ crops up time and again throughout this interview, as well it might. For, despite Paul’s irreproachable character, despite the barrage of explicit texts Murray-Evans had sent pleading for another sexual encounter, Paul was arrested, put in a cell, subjected to a humiliating medical examination and suspended from duty while on bail.

‘They take your warrant card off you,’ says Paul. ‘They took my pocket notebook as well. You can’t get any worse.

‘Three days into it, the Police Federation representative left me a message saying, “Paul, there’s going to be a press release in the papers but they’re not naming you.”

‘I was desperately trying to get hold of him. I had the evidence this had never happened. What the hell was going on? The only thing I could think to do was kill myself.

‘In the garage, I had a blue rope I’d used to cut down a tree. I was going to hang myself. I brought the rope into the sitting room and sat there.’ He points to the sofa beside the log-burning stove.

‘From the window I could see my parents’ house up on the hill with the lights on. I thought: “Hold on, I’ve got my parents alive. If I do this, it will destroy them.”

‘I stayed up all night with that rope on the floor. In the morning it was front-page news but it didn’t name me. It just said “Carmarthenshire police officer”.

Paul Morgan, pictured here with his fiancee Debbie Powell, says he was devastated by false accusations of rape

‘I went to visit my parents. Despite everything, they thought I was still at work. I’d been putting on my uniform under my coat, going up there for a cup of tea then, saying it was a night shift, telling them: “Right, I’m off to work now”.

‘Mum asked me: “Who’s this chap who’s been charged with sexual assault?” I told her I didn’t know.’

Such was Paul’s humiliation, that it took him two years to confide in his parents. Indeed, for months he didn’t tell a soul he’d been arrested for rape. Coming from a family of policemen — his father was a superintendent and his brother a chief inspector — the disgrace was too dreadful.

When Paul joined the dating website, he was 49, single and desperately lonely. As a young man he’d played rugby for Wales and Swansea before playing for Wollongong University, near Sydney, Australia. Aged 30, he returned to Wales to join the police force.

‘I never wanted to commit,’ he says now. ‘Then you reach an age where you suddenly realise you’re on your own.

‘I worked shifts so only had one weekend off in about five. I was very lonely on my days off. My highlight was going to the local shop and having a chat with someone.’

Paul had been on the website for six months when Samantha Murray-Evans contacted him and they began texting. After six weeks, she suggested meeting.

‘The texts were full of innuendo. She said she wanted to come here because of what she wanted to do to me. I should never have invited her into the house and we should never have had a sexual relationship but …’ He clears his throat.

Murray-Evans arrived at 3pm on October 13.

‘She started on me sexually as soon as she came through the door. She was quite vigorous in that way. I suppose it was thrilling. You have to remember, I thought she was a nice person.

‘Afterwards we watched some TV, chatted and she left at 6pm. I think I’d said I wanted to do a bit of training.’

Paul barely had time to change into his sports gear before the first message from Murray-Evans arrived. Most of it is unprintable in a family newspaper. Suffice to say, the sexual encounter made her ‘toes curl’, was ‘awesome’ and she had ‘the biggest smirk’ on her face.

Paul Morgan was given a bravery award after he saved a woman from drowning, but was held in a cell for 24 hours and suspended for five weeks when he faced rape accusations

She messaged again at 6.26pm asking if they could meet the following afternoon. Four sexually explicit texts followed, including a photograph of her breasts. At 2.29am, she asked if he was awake. By 8am she was spelling out her sexual fantasies.

‘I hadn’t seen the messages. Then, at 9.30am she turned up at the door. I thought, “Oh God, what’s going on here?”

She said she’d left her ring in the bathroom, so I told her she’d better come in. Then she grabbed me between my legs and said: “This is what I came her for.”

‘I said: “That’s a little bit intrusive” and I asked her to leave. I was trying to be as nice as I could, but I was scared.’

Worse was to come. At 2.16pm she texted: ‘I would like to see you again. I thought we clicked. Coffee only, mine, 3pm.’ Paul didn’t reply.

Within three hours, Murray-Evans had bombarded him with six vile messages accusing him, amongst other things, of being a ‘sexual predator’.

But by 5.46pm, her mood had changed: ‘I say things in anger I don’t mean when I’m hurt.’ And, at 5.48pm: ‘I have bipolar, it gets the better of me at times.’

Failing to move him, she again began to hurl abuse.

‘God did I make the right decision, you are one charming person,’ he texted back.

‘There we are then bye,’ she responded.

‘Yup bye,’ he messaged back, hoping it was the last he’d hear of her.

The next night, at 11.40pm, seven officers from Dyfed Powys Professional Standards Department, which investigates public complaints about police personnel, arrived to arrest him.

‘I told them I hadn’t raped her. I showed them the texts on my phone. But whatever I said was immaterial. This is a rural area. There isn’t much police corruption. Suddenly they had an officer accused of rape and they had to take me in.

‘It’s not anger [I felt], but fear — and humiliation. I knew most of the officers. I’d been on a CID course with the female custody sergeant 15 years before but the only person who was sympathetic was the doctor who examined me.

‘They take swabs from your privates, hair cuttings from your privates, hair cuttings from your head. They take bits of your fingernails, they …’ He falls silent.

‘They kept me in the cell until they interviewed me at 8pm the following night. You fall asleep for 20 minutes and wake up and think: “Is this my bedroom? Christ it’s not. I’m in a police cell.”

‘You try to pull yourself together. You’ve got to go over the facts in an interview, but I don’t trust these people.

‘I’ve shown them the evidence and they’ve arrested me. Are they going to erase the texts? I thought: “You know I haven’t done this. Why are we going down this route?”’ However, Paul now knows — as do a growing number of innocent men — that it is the issue of consent which is difficult.

‘I didn’t realise until the solicitor advising me said you’ve got almost to have a contract written out and signed for it to be watertight that the woman consented.

‘But I felt I had even better than that, because I had her texts the following day saying she had. I couldn’t understand why the case wasn’t being thrown out.

‘Once I got home, I’d be watching TV and for a split second would get into the programme and start enjoying myself. But then you think, “What are you doing? You’re on bail for rape”. There’s never a moment that it goes away.’

Paul was an emotional wreck when, five weeks after his arrest, he was finally told there would be no further action.

‘I went down to the local pub and kept sticking on Billy Joel’s I’m An Innocent Man [on the jukebox], but the damage had been done. Twice I’ve been walking around when somebody’s shouted out “Rapist!”. The gossip must have spread. I just carry on walking.

‘But it affects you. You can’t sleep. You can’t think straight. At night, I started grinding my teeth so badly that I sheared a tooth in half.’ When Paul eventually confided in his parents last year, they were unwavering in their support.

‘Dad’s taken up painting in his retirement, so I went to his art studio at the house. He couldn’t believe what I’d been put through. Ever since then, he’s offered his support every step of the way. They’ve both been awesome.’

Paul was in court this month to see Murray-Evans, a mother-of-two from Swansea, weep as she was sentenced to jail. Paul himself gave a victim impact statement saying how the ordeal ‘will stay with me for the rest of my life’.

Shockingly, despite the overwhelming evidence against Murray-Evans, the investigating officers did not bring a case against her for falsely crying rape until Paul insisted upon it.

In 2015, she voluntarily attended a police interview but an astonishing two years elapsed before they took any further action against her. In August this year, she was required to attend the magistrates’ court, where the case was referred to the Crown Court.

‘The police just wanted the whole thing to go away,’ Paul says. ‘But hell if I was going to let that happen. I didn’t care about her sentence. I cared that finally someone was telling her she’d been deceitful and callous and I hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘I don’t want people to stop being convicted of rape but someone has got to send out a message that these women can’t just go round accusing people.

‘This isn’t over for me. It’s changed my life for ever.’