July 3, 1988: Teenager Sarah Jane Louise Goodwin attends a police station in Lincoln and claims to have been raped earlier that day. On July 6, she puts a name to her assailant, her former boyfriend Thomas Glencross. In spite of a degree of skepticism, Mr Glencross is arrested the following day and held until July 21. Eventually the truth comes out, she had spent the night in question with a man named Robert; they’d had consensual but rough sex, and when the resulting stigmata came to the attention of her mother, she fabricated the rape story, even claiming at one point she had been raped by Robert.
On December 2, 1988, she appeared at Lincoln Crown Court where on pleading guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice she was given a three year sentence in a young offender institution.
According to the report in the London Times by Craig Seton the following day, she claimed to have been raped in a public house car park at Stamford, while of her 25 page statement, the prosecution said: “It was a vivid and detailed account of rape. Her statement painted a picture of Glencross as a man who over previous weeks has continually pestered and threatened her because he supposedly could not accept their relationship was over. It amounted to a convincing account”.
On April 24, 1989, her sentence was reduced to 18 months on appeal.
Back To False Rape Timeline