NEWCASTLE WOMAN FACES JAIL FOR FAKE RAPE CLAIM AND DECEPTION
A WOMAN is facing jail after falsely obtaining £7,500 compensation for a rape that never happened.Natalie Nighting was 16 in 1996 when she claimed an elderly tramp attacked and raped her.
Three years later she received her pay-out from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board while police still searched for the alleged rapist.
She claimed the money for the stress and strain of the attack, which she said happened in Tyneside's Exhibition Park as she walked to the Metro from the Hoppings fair.
But she was exposed as a liar several months after the payout when police found that DNA samples taken at the time matched those of a man arrested on unrelated charges.
Police found that the DNA matched a young man who lived near Nighting.
She admitted that she had consented to sex with the man and said the story about the tramp was a figment of her imagination.
She was charged with wasting police time and obtaining money by deception.
Now aged 20, Nighting, of Walker, Newcastle, is waiting to be sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court.
The single mother-of-three admitted the charges at Newcastle Magistrates' Court in June and was sent to Crown Court for sentence.
Nighting will not say what she did with the money, but it is understood it has all been spent.
She refused to comment when she left Newcastle Crown Court.
A spokesman for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board said it will take action to recover the money.
