ROWENA JONES — yet another student head case

January 26, 1999: Student Rowena Jones is found in the grounds of Exeter University, distressed, having apparently been bound, and, she said, raped. She had already graduated – in a real subject rather than gender studies – and was studying for an MA. She made a 27 page statement and wasted 900 hours of police time before the truth came out. Exeter magistrates decided she needed a quiet place to continue her studies, so after her guilty plea they gave her a 2 month sentence. In mitigation, her solicitor said Jones had been raped two years before her false claim, but didn’t report it. So she can report a false rape but not a genuine one? Give me a break.

The severity of her sentence may have been due to the police being distracted from a double murder hunt. The 14 year old Kate Bushell was murdered in Exeter on November 15, 1997 and the 41 year old Linda Bryant in Cornwall on October 28, 1998. As of the last day of 2024, both murders remain unsolved in spite of a DNA profile being extracted re the Bryant case in 2018.

(The Rowena Jones case was moved to a dedicated page on December 31, 2024. At that time, I noticed the ages of Kate Bushell and Mrs Bryant had been mixed up).

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