A mother who falsely accused ten men of rape has had her prison sentence increased by two-and-a-half years after it was deemed ‘excessively lenient’.
Stacey Sharples, 31, made false reports, resulting in men being held in police custody, losing jobs and partners and being separated from their children.
She met the men from Greater Manchester Facebook and dating apps Plenty of Fish and Badoo between 2013 and 2019, when she was between 18 and 24 years old.
Sharples admitted 10 counts of perverting the course of justice at Bolton Crown Court in March and was jailed for four and a half years.
The attorney general referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal and judges increased the sentence to seven years on Wednesday.
An estimated 264 hours of police time and around £50,000 were wasted during months of investigations, the court heard.
Sharples repeated her accusations in lengthy videotaped interviews, but police found many inconsistencies in her accounts.
One of Sharples’ victims Kaylum Davis, now 28, from Oldham, previously described her sentence as a ‘joke’.
Stacey Sharples, 31, made a false report, causing men to be held in police custody, lose jobs and partners and be separated from their children
Sharples accused Kaylum and nine other innocent men of raping her over a number of years before she finally appeared at Bolton Crown Court.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘She should get the same sentence as a man would get if convicted of rape: seven or eight years, or more.’
Kaylum was released on bail for 18 months, wondering if he would be charged or even jailed after Sharples claimed he raped her.
He recalled: ‘I was in shock. I was with my friends, so they all knew about it. I was taken to a cell and held for hours. My mother had to be present for the interview because I was only sixteen, and she was very upset.’
Sharples, from Farnworth in Bolton, appeared in court in London on Wednesday via video link from HMP Styal in Cheshire.
Lord Justice Popplewell, joined by Mr Justice Linden and Mrs Justice Hill, said: ‘The allegations were of extremely serious conduct, all involving rape, and in some cases multiple rapes involving serious violence and threats.
“If the victims had been convicted, their total sentences would have been very long.”
He said false accusations of rape undermine the real victims of rape and have a serious effect “on the minds of the public who may be called as jurors, which can create doubts in the mind where none should exist.”
The judge said Sharples “lured” one victim to a store so he could be arrested in public and told another “look what happens now” after rejecting her advances.
She told one victim: “They’re not pressing charges, I got away with it again.”
Kaylum Davis was 16 when he became the first victim of the now infamous fantasist Stacey Sharples
Julia Faure Walker, representing the attorney general, said the judge had not increased the sentence enough to reflect the number of victims.
She said: ‘This case clearly falls into the category of causing not just some distress or impact, but serious distress or impact.
“The vast majority were arrested, spent time in custody and were investigated for months.”
Hunter Gray, representing Sharples, said the original sentence was reduced due to Sharples’ mental health and lack of intellect – which the judge ruled constituted a learning disability.
He said Sharples “accepts responsibility” but “still struggles to understand why she did what she did.”
During the original sentencing, the judge had described Sharples as a “sexual predator” who sought “sexual encounters with men you have not had a real relationship with.”
The judge said she then ‘bombarded’ the men with ‘disproportionate’ expressions of love and when they did not respond, she reported rape.
Sharples had consensual sex with five of the men, one at the homeless hostel where she lived, before accusing them of rape.
The first offense, when she was 18, began when she told her father that a 16-year-old boy had threatened her with a knife and forced her to perform oral sex.
Sharples, who falsely claimed one victim was her boyfriend, told a psychiatrist she did not know why she stopped her offending but said it coincided with the Covid pandemic and her meeting her current partner in 2022.
Attorney General Ellie Reeves said: “Stacey Sharples repeatedly and deliberately lied, causing ten victims significant harm and wasting hundreds of hours of police time that should have been spent supporting genuine victims.
“Rare cases like this should not deter real victims from coming forward. Every report of rape is rightly taken seriously and treated with the care it deserves.
“Anyone who seeks to exploit or undermine real acts of violence against women and girls must be held accountable. I thank the police for their dedication in uncovering the truth, and my thoughts remain with the victims who were falsely accused.”
