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A woman on trial for making 15 false sex attack allegations in three years has stormed out of court. Jemma Beale, 25, left the court during cross examination when it was put to her that sex in a garage was consensual. A man she accused of rape, Mahan Cassim, ended up serving seven years in prison as a result of the allegations. She told the court that she is lesbian and had never had consensual sex with a man. She also said that she was groped by stranger, Noam Shazad, in a pub in July 2012 and he took part in a gang rape. He fled the country when presented with the allegations that had been made against him. Mr Shazad skipped bail and fled the country after being charged with sexual assault. Beale then made 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. Two of the men identified by Beale – Luke Williams and Steven McCormack – were arrested and interviewed but never charged with any offence. The court heard that Beale had spent the evening with Mr Williams and others at a house party, and that she had left willingly with him to go and get alcohol and cigarettes.
She claims he took her to a garage where he arranged for a Mr McCormack and others to attack her, and that he was armed with a machete. But in the days before the alleged assault, Mr McCormack said Beal had threatened to get him into trouble with the police. In a garbled message whispered to a friend before she left the party with Williams, she allegedly said: ‘He’s good with his hands. He just tried to rape me upstairs but I’d rather it happened to me than to you.’
She also said: ‘It’s okay, I can knock him out and I have that emergency thing [a 999 app] on my phone.’
Prosecutor John Price QC told Beale: ‘You were already planning out what you were about to do – accuse him of attacking you.’
‘It was the opportunity to do what you had been threatening to do which was to get Steven McCormack in trouble with the police. Luke Williams was an unlucky stooge.’
Mr Price continued: ‘You sent a message to a friend saying “he’s got a weapon” referring to the machete. You must have believed that he still had it with him.
‘He never asked you to turn your phone off.’
Beale replied: ‘No, but he kept asking me what I was doing on it.’
‘So he knew you had it but he didn’t try and take it off you?’ said the prosecutor.
Beale replied:’He wouldn’t have tried to take it off me while I was alone with him.’
‘What? While he was taking you to a garage to attack you and to arrange for others to attack you?’ said Mr Price.
‘Why didn’t you use the emergency 999 app if he had threatened you with a knife – someone you thought was going to harm you?’
‘You knew you were in no danger from Luke Williams. You took him to a garage and had sex with him. Exactly as you had done with Mr Cassim.’
Beale stormed out of court when Mr Price put his last point, forcing the judge to rise for 15 minutes while she calmed down.
The prosecution say that Beale had consensual sex with Williams on the night of the alleged attack, but say that no-one else was there.
Beale made her first rape complaint on the morning of 26 November 2010, when she told police she had been attacked 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 convicted on a retrial at Isleworth Crown Court in January 2012. She then claimed she was groped inside the Windsor Castle pub in Hounslow in July 2012, then attacked in an alleyway close to the car-park of a nearby medical centre. The man said to have grabbed her crotch in the pub, was later identified as Noam Shazad by police and arrested on 17 August 2012, the court heard. Injuries allegedly sustained during the gang rape were ‘self-inflicted’, jurors were told.
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