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A woman's false claims she had been sexually assaulted by up to 15 attackers in three years led to one man being jailed for seven years, a court heard.

Jemma Beale, 25, twice told juries Mahan Cassim raped her after giving her a lift home in November 2010.

Beale said she was a lesbian with 'no desire' to have sex with men and Mr Cassim was jailed for seven years following a retrial at Isleworth Crown Court in January 2012.

Beale then told police she was groped by stranger Noam Shazad in a pub in July 2011 and he then took part in a gang rape attack involving 'sexual violence of a most serious kind'.

Mr Shazad skipped bail and fled the country after being charged with sexual assault.

Beale then made two bogus complaints against six other men in 2013, Southwark Crown Court heard.

She claimed two strangers sexually assaulted her close to her home in Ashford, Middlesex, before she was put through another gang rape attack by four other men two months later.

(Image: Central News/Gustavo Valiente)

Two of those identified by Beale as being involved in the last attack were arrested and interviewed in connection with the assault but never charged, jurors heard.

Beale denies four counts of perjury and four of perverting the course of justice.

The charges relate to accounts she gave at Mr Cassim's trials along with the four complaints she made to police about the other attacks between 2010 and 2013.

John Price, QC, prosecuting, said: "Ms Beale maintains that in a period of around three years, on four different and wholly unconnected occasions, one of which involved two attacks and two of which - a year apart - involved the same unknown man, she has been seriously sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine - all bar one of whom on the day of the alleged incident were strangers to her.

"The prosecution ask rhetorically, is this in itself not inherently improbable?"

Beale made her first complaint on November 26 2010, when she told police she had been raped by Mr Cassim the previous night.

She said she had been out with a friend when she accepted a lift home from Mr Cassim, who then raped her.

Mr Cassim was eventually charged with raping Beale in August 2011 and went on trial at Isleworth Crown Court the following December when jurors failed to agree on their verdict.

A retrial then took place in January 2012 in front of a fresh jury and he was given seven years.

(Image: Central News/Gustavo Valiente)

Mr Price said: "The prosecution submits in this trial that was a wrongful conviction. Mahan Cassim was innocent.

"The person responsible for the grave injustice we submit he suffered was Jemma Beale.

"It was brought about by her false allegations and her perjured evidence at his trial and this was a sustained course of conduct."

Beale then complained to police she was the victim of two sexual assaults in July 2013.

Mr Price said: "One of them, as you will hear, was an allegation involving sexual violence of a most serious kind."

Beale claimed she was groped inside The Windsor Castle pub in Hounslow, then attacked in an alleyway close to the carpark of a nearby medical centre.

Mr Price said: "In that case she told the police she had been sexually assaulted by four men and she had recognised one of the four of them as being the same man who had assaulted her in the public house.

"That man was later identified by police and just over a year later, on 17 August 2012, he was arrested. His name is Noam Shazad."

Mr Price, adding that the injuries she claimed to have suffered at their hands were 'self-inflicted', said: "The group of men did not exist.

"On Monday 2 September 2013, Ms Beale reported yet another serious sexual assault, this time by two men.

"She told the police that it had happened five days earlier, on Thursday 29 August, and she said it had happened outside of her home. Neither of those two men has ever been identified."

But she claimed one of the pair was also involved the previous attack in July.

The prosecution again said this did not happen.

Jurors heard that two months later, on November 17, Beale reported another attack in Feltham, west London.

(Image: central news)

Mr Price said: "She described a gang rape at night in a street of the most appalling kind,' said Mr Price.

"She alleged that she had been raped one after the other by four of a group of eight men, and she identified two of them as Luke Williams and Steven McCormack.

"Both of those men were arrested by police later that same day."

The prosecutor accepted that consensual sex took place between Beale and Mr Williams at the time and place she indicated, but 'no one else was present at or involved in what happened between them'.

Mr Price added: "It was as we submit - a grotesque invention. Each of those reports made by Jemma Beale to the police is alleged by the prosecution in this case as being entirely false.

"She had not been raped. Nor had she been sexually assaulted on any of these occasions. Because of what she did, four men have subsequently suffered serious injustice - one of them of the gravest kind."

Jurors heard that each of the men were questioned by police 'suspected of amongst the most serious of criminal offences' garnering 'public revulsion and notoriety'.

Mr Williams and Mr McCormack were never charged in connection with the complaint made in November 2013.

Mr Price said: "Indeed, it was following the making of that complaint that Ms Beale herself fell under suspicion. Noam Shazad, however, was not so fortunate.

"He was charged with offences of sexual assault arising from this lady's complaint that happened on 24 September 2013 and not long after that, Mr Shazad jumped his bail and fled the country."

Mr Price said it was agreed that Mr Cassim did have sexual intercourse with Beale.

(Image: central news)

'However, when she stated in her evidence at the trial that incident had happened without her consent, the prosecution submit that she lied because it happened with her consent.'

Mr Price explained that the other perjury allegations related to Beale's claim she had never previously engaged in sexual activity with a man before the trial.

He added: "She sought to support the truth of her evidence that she did not consent to intercourse with Mahad Cassim by telling the jury in all of these trials that since becoming sexually active she had only ever been a lesbian."

She claimed to have 'no desire nor inclination' to have sex with men, jurors heard.

The prosecutor described that 'an intrusive investigation into aspects of her private life and sexual history' ensued as suspicions over the honesty of her account arose.

'But being undertaken, that investigation revealed, it is submitted, that she had lied about her private life and her sexual history and had lied about them to a very substantial degree,' he said.

Mr Price conceded that there was 'no issue as to the truth' of Beale's statement at both trials 'about her sexual orientation generally' but lied about never engaging in sexual activity with a male.

Beale told police in June 2014 that she had twice had consensual sex with a male acquaintance 'a long time before' the two trials.

A friend of Beale told the court she was with Beale and another man on the night she claimed she was raped by Mr Cassim.

The group sat in the car drinking from a bottle of vodka and smoked a few joints in the car-park of a Yate's pub in Hounslow.

They eventually went to her friend's flat nearby by the pair left Beale and Mr Cassim and made their way to another room.

She told jurors she could not recall how Beale and Mr Cassim 'seemed to be getting on' and confirmed that Beale never made any mention of leaving alone with the man.

"When did you first discover she had left?" asked Mr Price.

"When I got back into the room", said the woman.

"Did [the man you were with] tell you they were leaving?" the barrister asked.

"No,' she replied, adding that she stayed for a 'little while' longer before going home.

"So, Jemma having gone, you called for a taxi to take you home, did you?' asked Mr Price.

"Did you make any attempt to call her after discovering she had left?"

The woman confirmed she did not and conceded she first discovered that her friend had made a complaint when police came to see her early the next morning.

She said Beale was 'very upset.'

She added: "She was very upset, frightened, we'd get drunk and she'd talk about it and cry. She also mentioned to me that she wouldn't have gone to the police if her parents hadn't have forced her.'

Beale, of Bedfont, Middlesex, denies four counts of perjury and four counts of perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.