Girl breaks down in court as she admits using Fifty Shades of Grey as basis for false incest claims against her own dad
A GIRL wept in court after admitting she used pages from erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey to falsely accuse her dad of rape.
The schoolgirl confessed she "made the whole thing up" just to teach her dad a "lesson".
Barrister Cathy McCulloch got the girl, who is aged under 18, to admit the rape lie after just seven minutes of questioning.
She had noticed "striking similarities" between the daughter's statement to cops and passages from E.L James' bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey.
Writing on her blog after the trial, the barrister said: "His daughter had given a compelling interview to the police and my client had absolutely no real defence other than ‘I did not do it’."
The girl also used "certain words, phrases and descriptions which seemed beyond her years" to describe not only what her dad had allegedly done but also how her body felt.
related stories
She revealed that the discovery came after her client asked if his daughter had a favourite book on the day of his trial and he told her she liked one "about a young woman who meets a millionaire, who takes her under his wing to teach her about art".
Mrs McCulloch said: "He had no idea what Fifty Shades of Grey was about. Neither I nor my instructing solicitor’s representative had read the book (honest!).”
She obtained a copy of the book, which has shifted more than 125 million copies worldwide and been turned into a film starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, and found the similarities could not just be a coincidence.
The former police officer persuaded the judge to adjourn the case so she could read the book ahead of her cross-examination.
Within seven minutes, the girl burst into tears in the witness box and admitted she made the whole thing up to teach her strict father a lesson.
Mrs McCulloch wrote: "I started gently to put the complainant at ease. She agreed her father was strict, and that she was really annoyed with him for 'ruining her life'.
"I then went straight to my final question – that she was so angry with her father that she had made this all up. She wavered.
“I raised the striking similarities between her interview and the book. She suddenly broke and said I was absolutely right. She had made the whole thing up because she was angry with her father and wanted to teach him a lesson.
“I asked her whether she had got all the ideas from Fifty Shades of Grey. She confirmed this book, and others – which she named. After seven minutes we were finished.
“The Judge directed the jury to acquit, stating that this case is “unique” in the whole of his career at the Bar and Judiciary.”
The dad was acquitted of eight counts of incestuous rape.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368