The Criminal Court of Walloon Brabant on Monday sentenced a 23-year-old resident of Tubize to 100 hours’ work, or ten months’ imprisonment in the event of non-compliance, and a suspended fine of €1,600 for forgery.
The documents forged were a rape complaint and several statements to the police in September 2022.
The defendant claimed that she had been raped by one of her colleagues, even though their relationship had been consensual, but that she did not want to admit the situation to her partner.
The woman arrived at the police station in the middle of the night on 26 September 2022, appearing disoriented. She claimed that she had been raped, gave the identity of the perpetrator and described the acts allegedly committed. She agreed to undergo a specialised examination to identify certain traces that might be useful to the investigation.
However, various elements of the investigation did not match her version of events, and the victim subsequently changed her story several times.
At the hearing, the public prosecutor’s office described the complaint as misleading and noted that it had to do with a priority area for the police and the public prosecutor’s office.
Investigators devoted 15 reports and almost 100 hours of work to the case, which turned out to be a fictitious one. The prosecutor's office emphasised how damaging this type of lie was to the real victims of acts of indecency, and announced that this kind of behaviour would be systematically prosecuted in correctional courts.
In addition to the 100-hour work sentence imposed on Monday, the court ordered the defendant to repay more than €3,500 to the police zone that investigated the fake rape.
