August 8, 2013: Cathy Richardson is given a 12 month sentence at Basildon Crown Court for false rape allegations in November 2012 and February 2013. Her lies had led to the arrest of an innocent man.
September 30, 2022: Cathy Richardson is given a 61 month sentence at Salisbury Crown Court.
When I found the second of the above stories I thought to myself, I know that name. The first report is bad enough but the second one reveals she made no fewer than 60 (sixty) false allegations of rape from January 2021 until her arrest on May 28 the same year. These phantom rapes were said to have been committed by two men, real men.
She appears to have aged well, indeed her later photograph is more impressive than the earlier one. Alluring poison!
I found the second story on the Essex Live website and immediately consulted the website of Essex Police. The news report is based entirely on the latter with large chunks copied verbatim.
I contacted the Essex Police press office, or media relations as they call it nowadays, to ask if they were aware of the previous false allegations. The bloke who replied referred me to the report on their website, (which I had already seen) and told me they were indeed aware of the previous false allegations. Apart from that he made it clear they would be offering no further comments. I found this more than a little annoying the following November when a photograph of the investigating officer appeared in the local press; it included a photograph of Detective Inspector James Holmes receiving a commendation certificate from Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington.
The reader will note that much of the second report here is devoted to the usual flim-flam about the supposed real victims of such crimes, some hypothetical women who will not be believed when they cry rape.
One other point to note, this woman certainly got about. She was living in Essex yet her case was heard at Salisbury, well over a hundred miles away.
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