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From The Times
January 8, 2008

Teenager is jailed over taxi rape lie

Andrew Norfolk

HULL A teenager who falsely accused a taxi driver of rape has been jailed after the man proved his innocence by producing a recorded conversation of her repeatedly asking him for sex.

Seonad Campbell, who has three A levels and hoped to go to university, ordered a taxi after becoming drunk at a party three weeks after her 18th birthday. When she arrived at 4am at her family home in East Cowick, near Goole, East Yorkshire, she told her father that she had been raped. He immediately contacted the police.

The driver was able to establish his innocence when it emerged that he had used his mobile phone to make a video recording of Campbell during their journey from Pontefract, West Yorkshire. The footage showed the teenager repeatedly asking the driver to have sex with her. He said that he had agreed to her request and the couple had consensual sex in a lane near her home.

In court she pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was jailed for eight months by Judge Roger Thorn, QC, who told Campbell that her lies might have had devastating consequences.

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