Woman ‘told man get his pants off’ – then accused him of rape

A woman accused of inventing a series of bogus sexual assaults told one of her ‘attackers’ to drop his pants before sending him to jail for seven years by crying rape, a court heard.

Jemma Beale, 25, told two separate juries that Mahad Cassim raped her after offering to drive her home from a friend’s house in November 2010.

Beale insisted she was a lesbian with ‘no desire’ for sex with men and Mr Cassim was jailed for seven years following a retrial at Isleworth Crown Court in January 2012.

She made her complaint on the morning of 26 November 2010, when she told police she had been raped by him the previous night.

Police were told she had been out with a friend named Rebecca, the woman’s boyfriend, variously referred to as Zac or Soloman, and his pal, Mr Cassim, before all four made their way back to the other man’s flat.

The couple soon retreated to another room before Beale requested a lift home from Mr Cassim, who was then alleged to have raped her after stopping off in an alleyway by some garages.

He was charged over the apparent attack in August 2011 and stood trial at Isleworth Crown Court the following December when jurors failed to agree on their verdict.

A retrial then took place in January 2012 in front of a fresh jury and Cassim was wrongly convicted, it is claimed.

Jurors heard the 37-year-old Somalian came to the UK in 2002, aged 23, after a short stint living in Sweden where he also served in the military as part of the peace-keeping corps.

He told the court how he had been working in Manchester on the day of the alleged attack before deciding to stop off on his way home to see his friend Zac.

Beale was at the flat and they sat next to eachother on a sofa.

‘She asked me if I had a girlfriend,’ he said.

‘I told her I didn’t.

‘I asked her if she was in a relationship. She said no.

‘Then she was trying to put her hand or her arm over my shoulder and I kind of just brushed it off.’

He then left the flat to make a phone call down in his car where it was a little quieter.

‘Did anyone else come out of the building after you had left, whilst you were using your phone in the car?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘The lady, Jemma,’ Mr Cassim said.

‘She said basically she needed a lift back home.’

‘We drove for about ten minutes and while we were in the car we were talking and then she came and gave me a rub on my knuckles, my hand,’ Mr Cassim said.

‘After a while we stopped the car.

‘She was asking me kind of questions, whilst rubbing my knuckles, asking, obviously about sex.’

Mr Cassim said they got out the car and Beale made it clear she wanted sex.

‘I said ‘Are you sure?’ and she said yes – I asked three times ‘Are you sure?’ – and said OK.

‘Then all of a sudden, after about three yards she told me to pull off my underwear.’

Prosecutor John Price asked: ‘So, as far as you were concerned, what did you think was going to happen when you stopped the car?’

He replied: ‘Obviously sex might happen.’

Mr Cassim then told jurors how the pair had sex on the ground with Beale sitting astride him for around 10-15 minutes before they made their way back to his car.

‘Was anything said between you about what happened?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘I asked her if she was OK and she said she was fine,’ Mr Cassim told the court.

‘I told her I didn’t use a condom and she said don’t worry to me because she was on the pill.’

Jurors heard the last Mr Cassim saw of Beale was her waving at him as she walked into one of the flats where she parked her car earlier that day.

A week later his friend got in touch to say the police had been by looking for him and he was arrested the following August.

Mr Cassim told the court he did not initially admit having sex with Beale during the first interview until he was made aware that officers had recovered his DNA.

‘They didn’t ask me if I had sex with anyone,’ he explained.

‘The question was more like if I had forced someone to have sex with me.’

Jurors in the current trial had earlier heard audio recordings of Beale’s evidence during cross-examination at the first of those trials which took place in December 2011.

She was asked by Mr Cassim’s barrister on that occasion: ‘So since you have been sexually active have you been exclusively homosexual, do you know what I mean?’

Her response was inaudible, but she confirmed being prescribed the contraceptive pill in June 2007.

However, she denied telling the doctor at the time that she was in a relationship with a boy.

‘No, I didn’t tell her it was a boy,’ she said.

‘I just said I was in a relationship with a 17-year-old, and the contraceptive was to regulate my periods because they were really bad.’

‘There would have been no need for the doctor to make a note of the fact that you were in a stable relationship with a 17-year-old boy, would there?’ she was asked.

Beale replied: ‘No, I told her I was in a relationship with a 17-year-old.

‘I didn’t tell her it was a girl, because I didn’t tell my doctor I was gay until a couple of years after.’

The barrister then challenged Beale over a March 2009 pregnancy test which he suggested came up positive.

‘Well, I would suggest that the reason you took a pregnancy test in March 2009 is because you thought you were pregnant?’ he asked.

‘I only have intercourse with my partner, which is a female,’ Beale answered.

‘I’ve never been unfaithful, or anything, for me to have a pregnancy test done.’

He continued: ‘Well, I would suggest that you had a pregnancy test because you had obviously had sex with a man in 2009.

‘That is what happened, that is why you took a pregnancy test, did you not?’

Beale repeated her claim that she had not, suggesting the doctor made a mistake.

She was then asked about the alleged attack in November 2010.

Beale told jurors she left her girlfriend at home and met up with another pal, drinking four vodkas together throughout the day.

‘So on that day you had not had much to drink, by your big drinking standards, had you?’ asked the barrister.

‘But I am going to suggest it was enough to make you flirty.

‘And it was enough to make you feel that you wanted to have sex?’

Beale replied: ‘No, not with a man, for definite.’

She was then challenged with trying to kiss Mr Cassim as the four of them sat on a couch at the flat listening to music played on a laptop computer before moving to put her arm around him.

‘And he brushed you away, he sort of moved away from you, did he not?’ she was asked.

‘No,’ said Beale.

Describing the incident later that night, she confirmed getting in the car with Mr Cassim before asking him to stop off by some garages so she could find a place to urinate.

The barrister later asked if whether the ‘truth is you wanted to get out of the car because you wanted to get out of the car because you wanted to have sex with Mahad Cassim’.

‘And it was easier to have sex outside the car than inside it, was it not?’ he followed up, which she denied.

He then challenged her with ‘making up’ the suggestion that Soloman had warned Mr Cassim she was gay.

‘So in the car what I am suggesting to you is that Mahad Cassim has no reason to suspect that you are homosexual, does he, as far as you are aware?’ she was asked.

Jurors at the trial then heard Beale questioned about whether she asked Mr Cassim if he had a girlfriend because she was ‘getting flirty’ and spotted ‘an opportunity for sex’.

‘I’ve got a fiancée at home I could have sex with if I wanted to have sex with,’ she said.

‘I’m not going to go to a man I don’t know and ask him for sex.’

She added: ‘I ain’t bi-sexual at all,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t touch a man.’

Beale told police in July 2012 she had been groped by stranger Noam Shazad in a pub before the same man then took part in a gang rape attack later that night involving ‘sexual violence of a most serious kind’.

Mr Shazad skipped bail and fled the country after he was charged with sexual assault.

Beale then made two bogus complaints against six other men in 2013, jurors heard.

She claimed two strangers sexually assaulted her close to her home in Ashford, Middlesex, before she was put through another gang rape attack by four other men two months later.

Two of those identified by Beale as being involved in the last attack were arrested and interviewed in connection with the assault but never charged, the court was told.

Beale, of (42) West View, Bedfont, Middlesex, denies four counts of perjury and four counts of perverting the course of justice.

Tattooed Beale denies four counts of perjury and four of perverting the course of justice.

The charges relate to accounts she gave at Mr Cassim’s trials along with the four complaints she made to police about the other attacks between 2010 and 2013.

The trial continues.

ends