R v Chloe Maria May

This application for leave to appeal against sentence has been referred to the Full Court by the Registrar.

On 8 December 2025 (so less than 2 weeks ago) in the Crown Court at Leicester, the applicant, now 24 years of age, was sentenced by His Honour Judge Harbage KC to a term of 18 months' imprisonment for an offence of committing an act with intent to pervert the course of justice. She had pleaded guilty to that offence at the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing on 27 October 2025 and was entitled to 25% credit. Her sentence before credit for plea would have been 2 years' imprisonment. A Restraining Order was made in appropriate terms.

The sole ground of appeal is that the sentence of imprisonment should have been suspended, crucially because of the impact of immediate custody upon the applicant as the young mother of a child aged 18 months, and the implications of the sentence for her family support network.

We are grateful to Mr Newcombe for his written and oral submissions on behalf of the applicant.

This was a particularly serious case of its kind. The applicant made a false allegation of rape against three people and persisted in that false account throughout lengthy witness interviews with the police and even when subsequently interviewed as a suspect. The impact of the false allegation on the three people she falsely accused has been devastating.

At the time of the offence, the applicant, who was then 21 years old, was in a relationship with a much older man, aged 42 or thereabouts. She was to tell the probation officer that it was an abusive relationship that had lasted for 11 months.

In July 2023 she and her partner had been staying at a hotel in Loughborough for some time, having been placed there by the local authority after a period of homelessness. Mr Newcombe told us in his submissions this morning that in fact she had been in a psychiatric hospital for a week before she was placed by the local authority in that hotel.

On the evening of 25 July 2023, she and her partner were evicted from the hotel. Later the next day the applicant was seen by police officers in Swadlincote. The officers were aware that she had left a suicide note in the hotel and they were concerned for her wellbeing. On seeing the police she ran away at first, but she was persuaded to attend the police station with them when she started to say that she had been raped.

At the police station she initially gave an account of a sexual assault by another person altogether in early July, indicating that she had acquiesced on that occasion so it could be seen as consensual. That was not part of the present offence but it provides some background to her state of mind.

The allegation she made to the police, quite falsely, was that she had been raped at the hotel the previous day, Monday 24 July. In her first account she named the three people she said were responsible. We shall refer to them as C1 (a female) and two males (C2 and C3).

The following day she gave an achieving best evidence (ABE) video-recorded interview. It lasted 143 minutes. The very detailed account she gave was that she and her partner were staying at the hotel. C1 (the female) was the manageress of the hotel. She had arranged for the applicant to do some cleaning work at the hotel on a cash-in-hand basis.

The applicant alleged to the police that on 24 July, mid-morning, she was forcibly pulled into one of the bedrooms at the hotel by these three people and the door was locked. When she asked them what was happening, she was told it did not matter. C1 (the manageress) put a cloth in the applicant's mouth, pushed her onto the bed face down and pushed her face into the pillow. The applicant was crying. She was held down physically and struggled to breathe.

The applicant alleged that C2 then raped her anally. It hurt and seemed to go on for ever. The applicant alleged that C1 said she had been told to do this by people called Cheryl and Ricko from Newhall and that she (C1) was to be rewarded with a trip to Turkey and a facelift operation. The applicant said that they claimed that what they were doing was nothing personal but was to get back at the applicant's partner because he and this person Cheryl had a history. The other male C3 was also in the room. All three of them were laughing at her, she alleged, whilst she was crying.

The applicant alleged that the rape had caused her to bleed for days. When she was medically examined in due course there was a small amount of blood on a swab. She also had a number of bruises which she said were not related to the attack.

The applicant told the police in her ABE interview that the ordeal eventually stopped and they released her. Things carried on as normal the next day when she saw C3 (the male) and C1 (the manageress). C1 wanted the applicant to do some cleaning.

The applicant told the police that she did not tell her partner what had happened as she had heard that there was a £30,000 "contract" on him organised by Cheryl. She also said that she was told that her partner might go mad and end up in prison. She told the police that she had withdrawn sexually from her partner as a result and that when they tried to have sexual intercourse, including anal intercourse, it made her feel sick.

The account she gave to the police in her ABE interview was, as we have said, very detailed. In the course of it she claimed that C2 (the man who had raped her) had not used a condom and had ejaculated inside her.

The whole of the applicant's account to the police was a lie.

The police investigated this serious allegation of rape very thoroughly. They searched the room where the rape was said to have taken place, which was C2's room at the hotel. The police seized a number of exhibits for forensic testing. They identified C2 and C3 as residents of the hotel, and C1 as the manager. All three were arrested.

C1 was arrested at her home in the middle of the night in front of her child. C1 remained in police custody for 18 hours 46 minutes.

C2, the alleged rapist, remained in police custody for 11 hours 9 minutes and was required to give intimate samples.

C3 was in police custody for 6 hours 13 minutes.

Fortunately, C2 had an alibi. He had not been at the hotel until 5.30 p.m. on the day in question, and this was confirmed by his partner and by examination of CCTV footage. He told the police he did not know the applicant or her partner very well. He had only ever had one conversation with the other male, C3. He told the police that the applicant's partner had approached him in an intimidating manner on the night of Monday 24 July (i.e. after the rape was supposed to have happened) and again the next morning, suggesting that C2 had something to tell him. The applicant's partner had pushed C2 in the throat and threatened to stamp on his head, making a comment about people who steal other people's girlfriends. C2 had no idea what the man was talking about.

C3, the other male, told the police he was not present on 24 July; he was at his mother's house. He gave the police bus tickets to show that he had caught a bus at 7.47 a.m. His mother was able to provide an alibi for him. He had limited mobility at the time anyway following an accident and was on crutches.

C1, the manageress, told the police that she had been working on the day in question and had met the applicant that day and had given her access to the rooms so that she could clean them. One of the rooms was the room where the rape was supposed to have taken place. C1 explained that she had previously tried to help the applicant's partner to get work and had offered the applicant this cleaning work as a way of helping her. On the day of the supposed rape C1 had met a potential new member of staff and given her a tour of the hotel between 10 and 10.30 a.m., which was confirmed. At 10.50 a.m. she had left the premises and had spent the rest of the day away from the hotel, returning in the evening. She had then asked the applicant to do a room turnover the following day.

Next day the applicant had told C1 she was too ill to work. C1 said she hoped the applicant would get better later. C1 must have been working from home. She was contacted about the incident which had taken place between C2 and the applicant's partner, and had travelled to the hotel to find the police were there. She discovered that the applicant and her partner had damaged the room where they had been staying and there was blood on the bed in that room.

C1 had decided that the applicant and her partner would have to leave the hotel, and arrangements were made for them to be rehoused by the local authority in another hotel. The next day she received a call from the applicant's partner saying that he was going to "get her". C1 blocked him and alerted staff at the hotel.

As the police investigation continued it became ever clearer that the applicant's account of being raped did not ring true. CCTV footage supported some of the movements described by the three suspects. Alibis were provided. DNA testing of the pillowcases in the bedroom where the rape was supposed to have taken place showed only a profile that matched C2 whose room it was. No DNA of the applicant was found on the pillowcases.

The suspects were released on bail subject to conditions until 16 September 2023 when the police brought the investigation to an end, recording it as "no crime".

The applicant was arrested on 2 November 2023, just over three months after the false allegation had been made. She was interviewed with a solicitor present. She insisted that the allegation of rape was true and stood by her account. She claimed that it had all been planned between the three suspects. She suggested that C1 (the manageress) had access to the CCTV and that because there was no CCTV at the back of the hotel they must have used that access. She said she was no longer in a relationship with her partner but he had supported her. She denied that he had forced her to make the allegation of rape. She denied that she had made the allegation because her partner and C2 had had an altercation. She denied that she was getting back at C1 for having her evicted.

In the course of her police interview C1's witness statement describing the impact on her family of the false allegation was read to the applicant. The applicant's response was: "She should have thought about her children before she did what she did."

Regrettably there was a long delay in charging the applicant. She was not charged with the offence of perverting the course of justice until 15 August 2025. Her first appearance at the magistrates' court was on 12 September 2025 when she was sent for trial at the Crown Court. At the PTPH hearing on 27 October she pleaded guilty.

The applicant had no previous convictions although she had been cautioned for an offence of arson committed in 2017 when she would have been 15 years old.

There were impact statements from two of the three victims of the offence, C1 and C2.

C1 described being arrested at home at 2 o’clock in the morning in the presence of her 16-year-old child. As a result of the false allegation her mental health had been badly affected. She had nightmares. She was always on edge. She was scared to leave the house. She was unable to return to work and eventually lost her job. Her marriage broke down. She had to leave the area and attempt to make a new life for herself. She has panic attacks. Only days before the sentencing hearing there had been an occasion when her 6-year-old daughter, on seeing a police car turning into the estate where they lived, became hysterical, saying the police were here and her mother was getting arrested. C1 said the whole ordeal is still raw. She lives it every day.

C2 described how he was already struggling with his mental health when all this occurred. When he was waiting to be interviewed by the police as a suspect his anxiety was "hitting the roof". He was worried about his daughter and whether he would be able to see her. During the two-month investigation he had struggled to cope. He was unable to work and unable to leave the house for fear of being looked upon with shame. Those months felt like hell, he said. He struggled to sleep and his mental health deteriorated further. He had been struggling with alcohol abuse before the incident but had been working at the problem. Following this false allegation he started to drink even more and to take drugs as a coping mechanism. He was prescribed medication for severe anxiety. He felt he did not want to be alive. Because he was unable to work he struggled financially.

There was a pre-sentence report in which the applicant's account of the background to the offence was set out very fully. She described a long-standing abusive relationship with her ex-partner. They had been placed at the hotel by the local authority. Her partner, she said, was frequently causing trouble and being abusive to staff and residents and vandalising the room they were occupying. As a result, they were asked to leave the hotel, but he refused. Eventually they did leave following the arrival of the police. The applicant said that her partner was angry about being made to leave the hotel and pressured her to make the false allegation of rape against a member of staff and two residents as revenge. She said he threatened to kill her if she did not comply. Feeling trapped and distressed she smashed up the hotel room and wrote a suicide note believing this was the only way to escape the situation. She said that on seeing the police she ran away still unwilling to make the false allegation, but her partner forced her to. She said that when eventually interviewed by the police as a suspect she denied that her partner had forced her to make the allegation because she was afraid she would be sent to prison and was fearful of what her ex-partner might do if she admitted the allegation was false.

In the interview with the author of the pre-sentence report the applicant displayed remorse, accepting responsibility for her actions now that she had left the abusive relationship. Her ex-partner is the father of the child, a little girl now aged 18 months. The applicant would have been pregnant by the time of the offence.

For a while after the offence, she and her partner were living in dire conditions in Skegness. The applicant phoned her mother in desperation. Her mother drove from Leicestershire to Skegness to collect her. In that way the applicant was able to end the relationship. She had not contacted her ex-partner since, although he has posted messages on Facebook which included wishing harm on their daughter.

It was plain from the pre-sentence report that the applicant is a good mother now, living in Leicestershire close by her parents and family. She had been using cocaine throughout the abusive relationship but had not used it since.

The pre-sentence report proposed that if immediate custody could be avoided, a community disposal would be appropriate, with a rehabilitation activity requirement drawing on specialist support, an unpaid work requirement, and a mental health treatment requirement if she was assessed as suitable.

There was a psychiatric report expressing the opinion that the applicant had suffered from a mixed depressive and anxiety disorder for many years since her schooldays, including at the time of the offence. This would have been exacerbated by her use of cocaine at that time and by fear of her partner.

There were a total of nine character references from members of the applicant's family and friends, in particular from her parents and two sisters. Her parents described how her partner had manipulated and controlled her so that she was never allowed to speak to them without having her phone on loudspeaker. Her mother had been at work when she received a call from the applicant asking her to fetch her from Skegness. The applicant and her partner were living there in an abandoned house, her mother explained in her letter, with no running water. Her mother managed to get her daughter out of the house before the partner returned and brought her back to her safe, secure family home. With the help of Social Services her parents got her back on the straight and narrow. She was living in the family home for about a year and was living there when the baby was born. Now she has a home of her own where she is very settled and looking after her daughter well.

At the outset of his sentencing the judge said this:

The judge described the very detailed account the applicant had given to the police in her lengthy witness interview as a "truly awful lie". The judge said that when she was arrested in November 2023, instead of acknowledging it was all a lie she maintained her story, saying it was true. She had shown no remorse and no empathy with her victims for what she had put them through.

The judge described the impact on the victims whose statements had been read out in court. The false allegations had had a massive effect on C1, on her mental health, on her family and three children, and financially. Because of the change in her personality caused by the allegation, her marriage had failed; she was now divorced; she had left the family home; she had to leave the area. The judge said the applicant had made C2's life hell. He felt violated. He talked about anxiety and medication, struggling with alcohol and drugs, still angry and upset.

Turning to the Sentencing Council guideline for perverting the course of justice, the judge noted that there were a number of level A high culpability factors: first, the conduct had been over a sustained period of time; second, if it was right that this was her partner trying to get back at people, there was some planning; third, the underlying offence, rape, was very serious indeed. However, there were also level C lower culpability factors. The judge was satisfied that at the time the applicant was in an abusive relationship with her then partner who was considerably older; she had mental health difficulties. The judge accepted that she was put under pressure to make the false allegation. That did not excuse what she did, he said, but it reduced her culpability. Balancing the level A and level C culpability factors, the judge concluded that he should treat this as level B medium culpability.

The harm caused was very great. There had been very serious consequences for all three of the victims who were wholly innocent of any criminal activity, still less anything as horrific as rape. The judge said that the distress the applicant had caused them was impossible to overstate. It was category 1 harm.

As a category 1B offence, the guideline's starting point was 2 years' custody with a range up to 4 years. The judge noted the character references and accepted, as her parents said, that the applicant was now mortified. He said he had much more difficulty with her parents' suggestion that the applicant had not meant to hurt anyone, because at the time clearly she did. The judge referred to the psychiatric report, noting that there was no mental illness as such. He accepted the assessment in the pre-sentence report that the applicant was at low risk of reoffending. He referred to the applicant's 18-month old daughter and the promising way in which the applicant was raising her.

The judge said he had very much in mind that the offending was aggravated by the fact that there were three victims. The aggravating factors cancelled out the mitigating factors, which brought the sentence back to the starting point of 2 years. With 25% credit for her guilty plea, the sentence would be 18 months' imprisonment.

Finally, the judge considered carefully whether the sentence could be suspended, which had been the thrust of the mitigation advanced on her behalf by Mr Newcombe. The judge said he had considered that very anxiously indeed. He referred to the relevant Sentencing Council imposition guideline. He accepted that all bar one of the factors in the guideline were in her favour, including a realistic prospect of rehabilitation and an absence of risk. The factor against suspension was that the seriousness of the offence meant that appropriate punishment could only be achieved by immediate custody. The judge concluded:

On behalf of the applicant, Mr Newcombe submits that there were several factors which should have led the judge to suspend the sentence, namely (i) the separation of mother and child (ii) the prospective loss of her accommodation (iii) the vulnerability of the applicant in a custodial setting with her mental health frailties (iv) the high prospect of rehabilitation through courses on offer from the Probation Service.

In his oral submissions Mr Newcombe put his argument in terms of proportionality, submitting that a sentence of immediate custody was disproportionate overall when one takes account of all the factors that he drew to the judge's attention and has drawn to ours.

Mr Newcombe was able to provide us this morning with an update in relation to several matters.

First of all, it seems that the housing authority accommodation in which the applicant had been living will remain open to her until she is released (if she remains in custody) but on condition that the rent is paid. Mr Newcombe expressed concern as to whether the family will be able to produce the resources to pay the rent.

Secondly, he told us about the position of the grandparents who are currently looking after the child. We shall return to that shortly.

Mr Newcombe relied in his written submissions upon the additional factor of personal mitigation introduced into several of the offence-specific Sentencing Council guidelines in 2024 including the guideline for perverting the course of justice. That factor reads: "Pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care". The drop-down commentary on this factor is aimed very much at women who are about to give birth or who have very recently given birth. However, Mr Newcombe relies on the advice that for offenders on the cusp of custody, imprisonment should not be imposed where there would be an impact on dependants which would make a custodial sentence disproportionate to achieving the aims of sentencing. Where immediate custody is unavoidable, such factors may be relevant to the length of sentence.

Prior to the hearing we had been provided with some further information about the present arrangements for looking after the child. The applicant's mother and father (the grandparents of the little girl) are both in their 50s and still working full time. They are now the full-time carers for the child. This is causing significant difficulties for them both. They have both been unable to return to work. The child has been increasingly clingy with her grandmother. She works full time as a post office manager and is in her probationary period. She is worried that she will lose her job if she has to stay at home caring for the child, and has presently been signed off sick. The grandfather also works full time but does not feel able to return to work at present. Both will struggle financially, particularly with the additional cost of a small child.

Mr Newcombe told us - and this must be on instructions we understand- that if the appeal is dismissed and the applicant remains in custody, the grandmother will simply not return to work and will, if necessary, resign from her job in order to continue looking after the child for as long as necessary. Mr Newcombe suggests that that is a further piece of information which should induce this Court to come to a different conclusion from that reached by the judge. We note that it was these acute problems of childcare which, in part at least, led to this application for leave being referred to the Full Court as an urgent case.

On the positive side (to an extent at least), when we enquired of Mr Newcombe he told us that the child has visited the applicant in prison last weekend, being taken by her grandparents, although, as one can imagine, the parting on that occasion was particularly distressing for all concerned.

Like the judge, we are all too aware of the consequences of immediate custody for the applicant's child and the additional burden falling on her parents and other family members involved in her care. However the Court cannot lose sight of the extreme seriousness of this determined, prolonged and cruel course of conduct in deliberately setting out to pervert the course of justice.

This Court has recently reviewed the case law on sentencing for offences of perverting the course of justice in the light of the Sentencing Council guideline which came into effect on 1 October 2023: see R v Feve [2024] EWCA Crim 286; [2024] 1 WLR 3450. The Court cited the following passage from Abdulwahad [2018] 2 Cr App R (S) 46, at [14]:

In Feve the Court said that these two cases reflected long-established principles; there would be few cases in which the normal consequences of immediate custody can properly be avoided and very compelling reasons would be needed if immediate custody is to be avoided.

In relation to the question of whether a custodial sentence can be suspended, the Court said, importantly, at [23]:

Feve was an Attorney-General's Reference where the offender had told the police falsely that his stepson was at home at a particular time, knowing that to be untrue, when the police were investigating a murder in which the stepson was the suspect and ultimately was convicted of murder. This Court said that the sentence of imprisonment for perverting the course of justice should not have been suspended. We observe that in that case the offender had told only one lie in the course of being questioned by the police. By contrast, in the present case the applicant maintained her elaborate lies throughout her very lengthy ABE interview, a great deal of valuable police time was wasted and, above all, the impact on the victims was incalculable.

There were multiple factors of level A high culpability: conduct over a sustained period; the planned nature of the conduct; the underlying offence was very serious. Had the judge found this to be a category 1A offence, the starting point would have been 4 years' custody with a range up to 7 years. However, as we have indicated, he acknowledged that there were also the two lower culpability factors: involvement through coercion, intimidation or exploitation or as a result of domestic abuse; and, to an extent, responsibility reduced by mental disorder. It was for this reason that the judge placed culpability at level B, with a starting point of 2 years and a range up to 4 years.

The judge did make a substantial reduction for the applicant's personal mitigation, although the most important element of this - coercion in the context of domestic abuse - had already been factored in by reducing culpability to level B. There is, and can be, no complaint about the length of the custodial term, 2 years before credit for plea.

We return to the sole issue in the appeal: whether the sentence should have been suspended. The judge was fully alert to the practical consequences of an immediate custodial sentence. They had been spelt out in the pre-sentence report, in the character references, and no doubt in Mr Newcombe's powerful plea in mitigation. However, the judge was quite sure, having weighed the factors for and against suspension as the guideline required him to do, that the overwhelming factor against suspension which had to prevail was that appropriate punishment could only be achieved by immediate custody. That was a decision for the judge alone. We can see no error in his approach or his conclusion. This sentence could not be suspended.

It is to be hoped that the applicant's parents will be able to continue looking after the child with the support of the rest of the family, several of whom, it seems, live close by and one of whom (a sister) actually lives in the home with them, and if necessary also with the assistance of Social Services.

Although we were not referred to it by Mr Newcombe, we have also considered the well-known case of R v Petherick [2012] EWCA Crim 2214, in which this Court made important general observations on the relevance of the effect of a custodial sentence on an offender's children, particularly by reference to Article 8 ECHR. In particular we note the fifth proposition: that the legitimate aims of sentencing which have to be balanced against the effect of a sentence on family life include the need of society to punish serious crime, the interest of victims that punishment should constitute just deserts, the needs of society for appropriate deterrenc,e and the requirement that there ought not to be unjustified disparity between different defendants convicted of similar crimes. The court said, at [21]:

For all these reasons, we are satisfied that the applicant's sentence was neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive, and the application for leave is refused.