fake "rape me invitation" leads to colleague's rape

A woman tried to get a female colleague raped at home by men she tricked in online sex chatrooms, a court heard yesterday.

Joanne Berry, 30, is alleged to have posed on websites including ‘Cougar Shag’ as a woman who liked “role play” sex and wanted “to create some sort of rape scenario”.

The office administrator from Grove Park, south east London, allegedly then invited the men to go to her home and carry out a fantasy rape.

However, she gave the name, telephone number and address of a colleague who she had fallen out with and who cannot be named for legal reasons, the jury was told.

The court heard that on one occasion a man, Dean Hicks, knocked at the front door of the alleged intended victim then burst in to “rape” her as instructed by Berry.

Prosecutor Andrew Espley told Maidstone Crown Court in Kent: “Joanne Berry arranged for men to go round to [the colleague’s] house and rape her.

“How did she do it? She went on various sex chat websites.

“She pretended she was [the colleague], she gave [the colleague’s] address, she used her name, she gave the registration of her car which was going to be parked outside, pretended to be her.

“She then told the men to come round and engage in a fantasy rape game with her, basically to rape her.”

The court heard that the incidents came after Berry and her colleague fell out in March 2012 over the accused’s own claims that she had been raped by two men.

The prosecution described the claim as ‘made up’.

The court heard that Berry's colleague tried to support Berry but later asked her not to contact her anymore and accused her of being an ‘attention seeker’ when she refused to co-operate with the police.

Mr Espley said Berry's colleague later received a series of texts from Berry saying that “she had thought she could trust her and now she had lost her job and lost her as a friend”.

The court head that a few days later the colleague's sister, who lived with the colleague, was at home alone when she heard banging on a door, but did not answer, believing it was next door.

The following day, on April 28, 2012, the sister answered the door after hearing another loud knock to a man who asked if her name was [the victim’s name].