DARLINGTON TEEN THREATENED TO KILL EX'S BROTHER AFTER FALSE RAPE CLAIM
An obsessive teenager made unfounded claims that his ex-partner had been raped by her own brother and badgered her into wrongly admitting his claim.Durham Crown Court heard the young woman, aged only 17 at the time, felt under pressure by Lee Jay Stafford and, just to "get him off her back", agreed to his false assertion.
Charlie Thompson, prosecuting, said Stafford followed that up by sending her a voice message implying he would kill her brother within a month, a threat backed up by him posting an image of a gun.
Mr Thompson said the girl’s brother was so fearful of the threat that he left the area, while she said, “she did not want to be here anymore”.
Stafford was arrested and made no comment in his police interview, and, following inquiries, no firearm was ever found, while the defendant has since claimed it was a photograph of a toy gun.
The defendant, of Harrowgate Hill, Darlington, was aged 18 at the time, and has since turned 19.
He admitted a single charge of making a threat to kill.
A Probation Service report said the defendant has been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum and has schizophrenic traits.
Mark Styles, in mitigation, said he had a very troubled background and also has learning disabilities.
Mr Styles said the defendant has spent several months in custody which he has found difficult, but he has accessed drug and alcohol rehabilitation services and education programmes available to inmates.
"He wants to co-operate and get support." Recorder Peter Makepeace KC said the case posed the court, “a classic dilemma”.
He said he needed to consider the defendant’s psychiatric difficulties, which were largely not of his own making, and weigh it up with the level of danger he poses.
But after much consideration he said he had decided to suspend the 24-month prison sentence for two years.
During that time, the defendant must complete 150-hours’ unpaid work and take part in 20 rehabilitation activity days overseen by the Probation Service.
He will be subject to a six-month 9pm to 6am curfew with an electronically-monitored exclusion order to stay out of the part of the North East where his ex-partner and her family live.
