FORMER GLASGOW SNP COUNCILLOR ACCUSED OF FALSE SEXUAL ASSAULT CLAIM
A former SNP councillor made a false sexual assault allegation towards a woman he met online.Michael Cullen, 44, made the accusation to police officers at his home in Glasgow's Knightswood in 2017.
Cullen claimed he was drugged by the now 42-year-old childcare worker and abused.
Cullen - who represented the Garscadden and Scotstounhill ward - knew the allegation was false.
He claimed he was unable to remember events and only knew the woman by her face.
This led to the woman being charged by the police.
However, the recovery of an old phone down the side of her sofa which was believed to have been lost was vital to clear her name.
The phone was found to contain evidence of the pair's casual and consensual sexual relationship.
Cullen was due to stand trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court accused of making the false allegation.
However, he was deemed unfit to stand trial as a result of a mental condition and an examination of facts - evidence not before a jury - was held in its place with Cullen excused from the dock.
The hearing was told by the 42-year-old woman about how she and Cullen met on dating site Plenty of Fish in 2014.
The pair went on to have a "casual" sexual relationship together at her home.
Prosecutor Darren Harty took the court through a string of intimate text messages sent between them in 2014.
Also referred to was the woman's apparent concern for a kidney issue which Cullen suffers from.
The woman denied, when asked by the fiscal depute, if they drank alcohol or did drugs.
Mr Harty asked the woman if she invited him over on a number of occasions and she replied: "Yes - it breaks my heart how it has turned out and what he has done to me since." The woman told that she came to be arrested and charged with a sexual offence on Cullen who had spoken to the police.
However, some time later, the woman came to sell her couch and found her old mobile down the side of it which she thought she lost.
Mr Harty stated to her: "This was analysed and found to contain text messages between you and Mr Cullen arranging to meet, arranging to have casual sex." The case against the woman was dropped by the procurator fiscal due to insufficient admissible evidence.
When asked how the ordeal made her feel, the woman replied: "It was a nightmare." Cullen's mother Audrey Cullen, 62, told the hearing in her evidence that she contacted police after the woman allegedly harassed her son on Facebook while he was standing to be a councillor.
However, Mr Harty put to her that she had initially reported to police that her son "believes he was spiked and raped" by the woman.
Despite this, Audrey Cullen claimed that she did not want the woman charged.
She claimed that her son was unable to recall much of the incident and knew the woman by another name.
The hearing was told that after the procurator fiscal depute told Cullen and his mother that there would not be a prosecution, Audrey Cullen took it upon herself to pursue a review of the decision.
She claimed that Cullen "knew nothing about" her actions as he had left the room at the time.
Audrey Cullen added that she continued to communicate with the authorities by email.
Cullen faced another charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He was said to have claimed that he was impacted mentally and financially by the alleged sexual assault in a review application.
The charge went on to say that this was an attempt to have the Crown reconsider the allegation after a decision was made not to prosecute.
Sheriff Paul Reid did not find the attempt to pervert allegation's facts to be proved.
The matter will call again at court at the end of the month pending new doctors reports and the current status of Cullen whose bail was continued meantime.
Cullen resigned from the SNP in 2020 after the legal action against him came to light.
