by Alana MacAskill

A RAPE victim wrongfully arrested for making up the crime will receive £20,000 compensation from the police.

The woman, identified only as Laura, reported the crime to Hampshire Constabulary in 2012 when she was 17, only for the force to arrest her on suspicion of perverting the cause of justice when forensic tests on her clothes didn’t return any results.

The Crown Prosecution Service ordered retests of her clothes which resulted in the imprisonment of her rapist for five years in 2013.

Laura’s mother was “horrified” by the treatment of her daughter, blaming the experience for the decline in the young woman’s mental health as she “started self harming-again. She attempted twice on her life because she couldn’t cope.”

Laura had to wait six months after being arrested to finally find out that she was in the clear.

Hampshire police reached an out-of-court settlement with Laura and have apologised to her after she began legal proceedings against the force under the Human Rights Act.

Her lawyer Debaleena Dasgupta insisted that “the only way victims of crime can seek justice for these sorts of issues is using the Human Rights Act, which imposes a duty on the police to properly investigate very serious offences.”

Victim Support director Karen Froggatt said: “No young person should be met with disbelief when reporting a rape or any other serious sexual offence.”

Hampshire Constabulary chief superintendant David Powell admitted that the handling of the case had been “poor and we are not proud of our initial response.”