KEY POINTS:
The lawyer defending a woman accused of laying a bogus rape complaint wants a national register kept of anyone who repeatedly makes false allegations to police.
Colin Amery yesterday told the Papakura District Court his client, Nicola Alison May, had made four previous false complaints to police before
her latest fake rape claim in April.
May, 41, was ordered to pay police $10,000 reparation - payable at $20 a week - serve 200 hours' community work and 12 months' supervision after earlier admitting she had lied to police about being attacked and raped in her Papakura home on April 11.
The three-day police investigation cost the taxpayer more than $60,000 and chewed up 670 man hours.
Prosecutors yesterday urged Judge Charles Blackie to impose a sentence near the maximum of three months' jail.
But Mr Amery said the whole investigation could have been avoided had police known May had a history of such offending - three times while a pharmacy student in Dunedin and once in Auckland.
"If some record had existed, this might have alerted Papakura police ... but no such record existed."
Mr Amery, quoting from a pre-sentence probation report, said "police and other services" needed to be alerted to May's "propensity for this kind of offending".
He told the court May had a borderline personality and "went over the edge" when she faked the April complaint.
There was a fine line between fantasy and reality, "and unfortunately that's where she strayed to in the situation she was in. Fantasy took over from reality."
Judge Blackie told May she had concocted an elaborate plan that was meticulously worked out.
"This was a plan which required a considerable amount of preparation and thought.
"You set about creating a scene within your property which would convince the police ... that a very serious offence had been carried out."
May's plan had included smashing up her Papakura flat, cutting telephone lines to the property andinflicting injuries on herself - many of them of a sexual nature.
Speaking after yesterday's sentencing, Mr Amery said it had taken the work of "a very good psychologist" to dredge up details of May's previous false complainants.
"If there was a register that was carefully kept, nationally, they could just bring a name up."
But Council for Civil Liberties president Tony Ellis rejected the register idea as unnecessary and "not very rights-friendly".
"It does sort of conjure up apartheid-type thoughts."
Mr Ellis said the idea sounded like a "nice line to throw in" if one was a lawyer arguing on behalf of a client, but he was concerned that such a register might result in anyone who had previously made a false complaint not being treated equally.
There was no need for a register, as anyone who made a false complaint was usually convicted, with that conviction going on to the criminal record.
Women's Refuge chief executive Heather Henare said that given that only about 4 per cent of rape allegations were false, it would be likely to be "a pretty small register".
Such a register would be acceptable if a register of convicted sex offenders and abusers of women was created first.
In 2004, 290 people were charged with making a false complaint, wasting almost 3000 hours of police time and costing more than $230,000.
Police spokesman Jon Neilson said a register could lead to a "prejudgement" of complainants, and it was vital that investigators were open-minded.
