A woman who claimed she’d been raped was proven to be lying when CCTV footage showed she was shopping in a supermarket at the time of the alleged attack.
Abbie Will, 20, told police she was hit over the head by a man as she walked down the street just before Christmas in 2016. She then said he sexually assaulted her.
However, her lies started to unravel and her story was proven to be false after police reviewed CCTV footage of her actions that day to back up her claims.
The 20-year-old told police she was walking next to Peterhead Academy in Aberdeenshire in the days leading up to Christmas 2016 when she was attacked.
Abbie’s claims sparked a week-long investigation whereby police officers attempted to piece together her movements before the alleged attack. However, it soon became apparent everything wasn’t as it seemed.
When looking through CCTV footage, police officers saw the 20-year-old shopping in the town’s local Morrison’s store at the time she was supposedly attacked, contradicting her timeline of events.
Yesterday (April 1), Abbie appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, admitting to wasting police time and causing their publicly-funded resources to be diverted unnecessarily.
The court was told Abbie had entered a police station on Christmas Eve and told officers she’d been raped two days before on December 22, 2016 between 6:30pm and 7:30pm on a grassy area next to Peterhead Academy.
In an attempt to corroborate her claims, police officers began their investigation by checking her whereabouts at the time of the alleged attack and found security footage of her walking in the direction of the school.
However, investigators noticed Abbie was wearing the same clothes on her return home after her alleged assault – which hadn’t been handed in to police to check for evidence or DNA.
Adding further suspicion was the fact officers reported she appeared to look ‘normal and not dishevelled,’ fiscale depute Sally Macauley said.
As police investigated further, they checked security cameras from Peterhead Academy to see if Abbie was in the nearby area – but she was nowhere to be seen.
Investigators then looked at other CCTV footage from local shops in the area, including her local Morrison’s. It was there police found the final piece of the puzzle, Ms Macauley explained;
The accused had entered there at around 6.29pm and left at 7.02pm.
This meant the man ‘would not have had the opportunity’ to rape Abbie as she had claimed, and officers concluded their investigation six days after it was opened on December 30.
Ms Macauley said ‘police found the allegation to be false’, hence why the 20-year-old appeared in court yesterday for wasting police time. Sheriff Morag McLaughlin released Abbie on bail to allow for the preparation of a social work report.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).