Waking up with a start, Wayne Maddox was shocked to see his mum standing above him, whispering urgently in the dark.
She had shaken him out of his sleep, pleading: “Get up – the police want to speak to you.”
Startled, Wayne looked at the clock. It was 5.15am. Seconds later, a policeman strode into his room and arrested him on suspicion on rape.
This moment marked the beginning of 18 months of anguish for Wayne, who didn’t know if he would suffer the stigma of being thought a rapist for the rest of his life.
“I guessed straight away that my ex-girlfriend Kelly Atkins was the one responsible,” says Wayne, 20.
“I hadn’t been near her or even seen her for weeks, but she’d been harassing me non-stop with texts and phone calls, wanting us to get back together.”
Wayne, from Margate, Kent, had first set eyes on Kelly, then 18, a year earlier when he met up with her brother, a friend of his, and she tagged along.
“I thought, ‘Wow! She’s fantastic!’” he recalls. “She was bubbly and friendly and drop-dead gorgeous.
"She went off to meet a girlfriend but somehow she got my number and texted, asking to see me later. We went for a drive.
“We were the same age and she was interested in cars, like me. We were going to the same college – she was doing hairdressing and I was studying auto engineering.
“After that we were seeing each other all the time. Most evenings and weekends we were round each other’s houses and we’d meet in our spare time at college.”
As the months went by, the couple had the odd row. “Usually, a silly argument would flare up and Kelly would walk off in a huff,” says Wayne. “Then I’d go after her and calm her down.
“One afternoon Kelly was looking for an outfit in a dress shop when we had a disagreement and she snapped at me.
"Normally, I’d have ignored it but this was once too often. I said, ‘Don’t talk to me like something you trod in’, and she stormed off.
“We’d been going out for about 10 months, and this time, I didn’t chase after her. I just asked her if she wanted a lift home and she said no.
“A couple of days later she texted me and said she was sorry and could we get back together. I replied, ‘No, enough’s enough’. But she kept ringing, asking to meet so I turned my phone off.
“I needed time to get my head together and I arranged to go on holiday with my dad, who I work for in the family marine engineering business.
“I rang Kelly and promised to meet her after I got back,” he says.
When they did meet up, Wayne thought Kelly was being extraordinarily nice. They played darts and pool and Wayne said he’d like to remain friends. He reminded her that she’d ended it by storming off, and insisted their relationship was over.
“She said, ‘OK, but will you sleep with me one more time?’” recalls Wayne. “I said no, but she wouldn’t let it go.
"She said, ‘It wouldn’t mean anything. I know we won’t be getting back together but, please, one more time’.
“Stupidly, I gave in. We had sex in my car. Afterwards she said, ‘Now can we get back together?’ I told her nothing had changed and our relationship was finished for good.
“She was furious but she accepted a lift to a pub near her home. As she got out she said, ‘What’s to stop me telling my dad you pushed me over and assaulted me?’
“‘The fact that it’s a lie’, I said. But her parting words for me were, ‘I’m going to tell him you attacked me and he’ll come and rip your face off’.”
After that Kelly started ringing Wayne so relentlessly he changed his number.
Nearly three weeks after his final meeting with Kelly he spent an evening with friends, watching a DVD.
He then went home to bed. It was early the next morning the police came for him.
Wayne recalls: “I asked the policeman to leave my bedroom while I got dressed, but he said he had to stay.
"When we went downstairs, my mum, dad and two older sisters were in the conservatory. We were all in shock and my dad was getting annoyed with the police.
“I tried to reassure my family and keep calm. I told them the police would find out I was innocent and I’d soon be back home.
“But really I was terrified. Would my DNA still be in her body from the time she’d begged me to have sex?
"Then it would be her word against mine. I was thinking how this could ruin the rest of my life.
“At the police station, the detective who interviewed me said Kelly Atkins was claiming that the night before she’d been raped by me, my friend Ricky and a third unnamed man, we had also stolen her handbag. Ricky had been arrested, too.
“The officer was tough with me but I just stuck to the truth. Then a female nurse took intimate swabs from me, scrapings from under my nails and hair samples. I felt completely humiliated.
“It was degrading, the worst experience of my life. After that I was locked in a cell with an officer watching me.
"I was wondering if this was the end of my life as I knew it. Trying to keep calm, I kept telling myself that I could put my faith in the justice system.”
After more than 12 hours at the police station Wayne was taken from his cell to be released on bail.
"As an officer was filling in the forms another policeman came in and said he should be taken back to the cell.
“My heart was pounding,” says Wayne. “I was thinking maybe I was to be kept in custody until my trial. I asked the policeman guarding me, he said he didn’t know.
“Half an hour went by. Then another officer came down. He told me I was being released without charge because new evidence had come to light. As it sank in the relief swept over me.
“I went home to hugs from my family. That evening an officer called me to explain what had happened.
"Police had learned that the night before Kelly had left her handbag in a pub and it had been handed in to a member of staff. It was the bag she said I’d stolen.
“Apparently, she’d reported being mugged for her handbag before she’d added that she’d also been raped.
"That was why the police were fairly sure she was lying. Days later I was told she’d been charged with perverting the course of justice, which she denied.”
Kelly’s trial was set for six months later. Wayne knew he would still have suspicion hanging over him until she was convicted.
And if she was acquitted, he would be a suspected rapist for the rest of his life, even if he wasn’t charged for it.
“All my friends stood by me, but there was a lot of gossip going on around town,” he says.
“I was aware of people pointing and whispering. It was difficult because your name is just out there and you can’t stop people talking. I shut myself away as much as I could and I wouldn’t go out on my own.
“Luckily, because I was released without charge so quickly, I wasn’t named officially in court or in newspapers accused of rape, but that does happen to some innocent men, which is terrible.
"I think, because it’s such a shocking thing to be accused of, men’s names should be kept secret until they’re found guilty.”
Kelly’s trial was postponed until January last year – to begin on Wayne’s birthday. “It was dreadful news,” says Wayne. “I spent that Christmas wondering what the future held for me, if I was going to be a suspected rapist for ever.”
At Kelly’s trial, both Ricky and Wayne faced a tough cross-examination by her defence counsel. “He kept asking me the same questions in different ways, hoping he would trip me up and give different answers,” he says.
“But he couldn’t because I was sticking to the true facts.”
After two weeks the trial collapsed when the jury couldn’t reach a majority verdict and the judge ordered a retrial.
Kelly faced Canterbury crown court again in December 2011, 18 months after she’d first made her accusation.
Once again, the hearing lasted two weeks before the jury retired. Wayne says: “I was at work when my mum phoned.
"She said Kelly had been found guilty and jailed for two years. As it sank in, it felt like a great weight had been lifted off me. I had the best Christmas of my life.
“Part of me feels sorry for Kelly, but she put me and my family and others through a dreadful time.
"I’ve had this hanging over me for so long. Now I’m in a steady relationship with a lovely girl and I’m just so thankful that things have turned out OK in the end.”
