A 17-year-old former Perth Catholic schoolboy is free after nearly a year in prison awaiting trial on rape charges of which he was acquitted after it emerged that his accuser had lied about her sex life.Perth Now reports that Patrick Waring, then a 15-year-old Catholic college student, was dragged out of bed by police a year ago and refused bail on the say-so of his 17-year-old accuser.
However, just before the trial started, the girl admitted lying about her sex life the whole time, Perth Now says.
She had insisted she was a virgin.
DNA tests excluded Waring from her claims of rape.
Waring's accuser finally admitted she had had sex with a man at the back of a cinema the same afternoon, two hours before claiming Waring raped her at Joondalup's Central Park after following her from the railway station on 30 March last year.
She also admitted to having been in a sexual relationship with her boyfriend at the time.
The girl's new story included being raped by two different men in two hours.
She said the cinema sex with a 20-year-old, who she had met on the internet, was rape, but she didn't want him charged because it might affect her compensation claim.
The girl had previously lied to interviewing officers, the Sexual Assault Resource Centre doctor who examined her and to prosecutor Amanda Forrester.
Waring was originally denied bail when a police officer told the Children's Court that Waring had phoned the girl and threatened her - a fact the police later admitted was wrong.
Patrick's father, Terry Waring, said his family had been torn apart for a year. His and his wife's belief in the justice system had been shattered."Shoddy work, cruelty and seeming vindictiveness cost us our house, financial security and a lifetime of savings for a three-week trial," he said.
"The emotional cost to the family has been incalculable. Personally, I have not cried as much since my brother was killed in Vietnam.""It's the finish of school for Patrick," Mr Waring said.
"He's lost virtually all of Year 11 and the start of Year 12 and he's had to grow up very fast. He lost his youth in there."We didn't tell anyone at school what had happened to him. He just disappeared. And now we couldn't send him back there to face the ramifications of this."
Patrick's 24-year-old brother, Michael, also lost a year of study for his degree in computer science and information systems because of the ordeal.
His 25-year-old sister Danielle has changed her plans to study civil law and is studying criminal law at Notre Dame University.
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