A WOMAN who made up a rape allegation and invented fake injuries was told her lies had undermined real victims as she was jailed yesterday.

Kirsty Debanks, from Coltsfoot Square, Greater Leys, Oxford, was jailed for eight months after admitting attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The 20-year-old made a false allegation that her former boyfriend Chris Newitt had raped her in her home on July 18 last year.

Debanks contacted police to make the complaint on the following day and repeated it during a two-hour interview on July 20.

But Jonathan Stone, prosecuting, said she made up the allegation with friends Danny Brackett and Tracey, whose surname was not given in court.

He said they inflicted fake injuries on her, including scratches on her back and bruises on her wrists, and called an ambulance after drinking heavily and taking crack cocaine.

The barrister told the court that Mr Newitt was arrested, interviewed and held in custody for about six hours.

Officers quickly confirmed his alibi, that he had been begging in George Street in Oxford on the evening of the supposed crime, by checking CCTV footage.

Debanks’ mother also contacted detectives to say she didn’t believe her daughter’s story and eventually Debanks herself called police to confess.

She was arrested on July 31 and was described as “smirking” during the interview with police where she admitted her crime.

Mr Stone said Mr Newitt had been in a relationship with the defendant and they had two children together.

He added that Debanks told officers she wanted her ex partner “to pay for everything he had done to her family”.

Yesterday at Oxford Crown Court Judge Ian Pringle told Debanks she had told “an utter lie” which made it harder for real victims of rape.

When the prison sentence was passed she started shaking and sobbing in the dock.

There were also tears from family members sitting in the public gallery.

Lucy Ffrench, defending, said her client suffered from a personality disorder and had lost her father to cancer in May 2012.

She said: “She is now willing to receive help from the appropriate places that can provide it rather than seeking attention in the wrong places as she has in this case.”

Judge Pringle said her crime was too serious for him to give her anything but an immediate prison sentence.

He told her: “Those who have suffered from genuine offences of rape are undermined by people like you.

“It gives the chance for defendants and their representatives to make out that it is known that quite often women make up these allegations.

“And you undermine the whole system of justice by making such a false allegation.”