She is a victim in both cases of dark-skinned young men: Germaine Lindsay who allegedly blew up the carriage she was on, came from Barbados and was 19 years old at the time; while the Jamaican who allegedly raped her in 2002 was 17 years old at the time. One happened on July 17, the other on July 7th. Her book ‘out of the Tunnel’[1] compares these two experiences. I suggest the rape story is largely fictitious.

After her alleged rape, RN was hypnotically regressed by a police psychologist to help her remember:

"When I couldn’t remember, I gave permission for a Professor of forensic Psychology to work with the police using new techniques on me in interview to unlock the suppressed memories locked down by masssive trauma-amnesia.’

Hmm, that does seem a good basis for putting a 17-year old Jamaican immigrant into jail for 15 years.

She got home late from a Stockwell pub, to her ground-floor flat in Wood Green, quite drunk on vodka (‘I realised I was drunk’) at around 12.30 at night (page 13, Out of the Tunnel). She took a painkiller to lessen her headache, went to bed and fell asleep.

She is woken up at around one am by a knock on the communally-shared door. Her partner had stayed out late and she is alone in the flat. She sees his silhouette, and guesses he is a Jamaican young man (in reality, I eould say, she has just invited a young Jamaican home with her, from Stockwell). Would a single woman – drunk, woken up from sleep, with a headache – really open two doors, her own flat and the main front door, to a Jamaican stranger in the early hours of the morning?

Or, would a single man not ring a doorbell, but instead bang on a main front door, a building with three floors of detached flats in it – after midnight – hoping to rape someone? We are here at an extreme limit of absurdity. What would he have said if someone from another flat had answered? Or, if Rachel’s partner had answered the door?

Apparently, he wants to enter a home and start raping the person who opened the door – on the landing! He would surely have had to expect that some guy would be at her home also. Rapes are usually done by people who know the victim closely, or at least by a man who has been tailing the woman for a while, to have a chance to get aroused.

After opening the main front door to the young Jamaican, if indeed he had begun to assault her, RN would have started shrieking her head off – she is quite a big lady, not easily shut up. That would have woken up other house occupants. The idea that her ‘rapist’ can pull here through the communal passageway, in silence, then into her flat, and then start assaulting her on her hall-landing – do you want to believe that?

Then, having been thoroughly raped and all her clothes stripped off and her hands tied behind her back – did he bring some rope with him? - RN finds he is trying to kill her – again for no reason. Does that seem likely behaviour for a young immigrant, newly arrived in England? So she feigns dead, and thereby survives. Then she has an out-of-the-body experience. (This, maybe, is being recalled under hypnosis by a police psychologist). Time goes by, and we are to assume the rapist has gone, as suddenly as he came (‘The man muttered “Shit!” and then left.’ (3)) – no motive is given for this act in RN’s story, though it destroys his whole life.

RN regains consciousness ‘perhaps two hours later’ (p.23) so let’s surmise it’s around three o’clock in the morning. Bloody and naked, she goes out of her flat and upstairs, where she starts banging hard on the door of the upstairs flat. Perhaps it’s fortunate the occupants did not open the door, they would have had a shock. Eventually despairing – with her man still not having returned – she goes out of the front door still naked and ‘flings’ herself down the steps (The Times[3]) then ‘flings’ herself across the bonnet of a police car (Daily Mail[4]) which – get this – just happens to have drawn up as she emerged – and utters a blood-curdling scream. Would a woman who has just received forty separate injuries from a rapist/killer really throw herself naked across a car bonnet? Would the car draw up at the exact synchronous moment?

We’re here meant to believe that the upstairs residents, while declining to open the door on which she was banging, yet called the police.

Some have surmised that maybe she did maybe ‘fling’ herself down the steps, after all her man would have to see some bruises when he returned, to believe the story. From the young man’s pleas in the courtroom, as narrated in RN’s several accounts, we could gather that RN after getting drunk[5] at her local, found herself wondering what it would be like to get laid by a young black man, and invited him home. He averred in his trial that he was not guilty and that the event had been ‘consensual’.[6] RN:

‘He had no explanation for the injuries on my body, and there were over forty, nor could he explain why I was found tied up and covered in blood with a wire noose around my neck.’

Hang on, Rachel: if you were ‘found’ tied up and covered in blood, then how come you ‘flung’ yourself across the police car bonnet? And, maybe the bewildered young man had no explanation for the injuries on your body, because he left before you had flung yourself down your own steps in order to get those injuries? Did he bring some rope with him to tie you up, with your hands behind your back, as your book describes?

Doubt has been expressed over this rape story, eg:

“How exhausted do you have to be to sprint out of the house naked and throw yourself over the front of a police car? I would think it was the sight of their lives.”
“What are the odds against running out of your door, at any random moment and a Police Car coming down the street??”
“Why she ever flung herself about the road in the nude is a big question since we learn that her accused “rapist” was already gone half an hour before the police arrived”
“Techniques in interview to unlock surpressed memories about a rape? If you get raped you recall it, surely.”
“Looks like: she let him in, had a good romp which she later denied, then paints her accused attacker to be a maniac on the loose.”
“There is no bias here or anything personal. We think the brain injury aspect is very relevant in respect of Rachel’s confabulations.” [7]
I suggest that the young man should now be released from jail, for several reasons, and given some reparations for having had his life ruined. I suspect he is innocent of the charge. RN was by her own admission inebriated at the time, then she needed the aid of a police psychologist to access her ‘memories’ of the event. The story she has woven is devoid of credibilty.

The young man is in jail because he is black, poor and could not afford proper legal counsel.

Our evaluation of this rape story may impact upon narratives of the 7/7 event. For example, RN started blogging about 7/7 on the evening of the 7th, then a few day later found that, after watching the BBC news, she was starting to get ‘flashbacks,’ which enabled her original, not-very-plausible story to be coloured in or enriched:

“It was like a dream you can’t remember, a puzzle you can’t solve. But then I saw a television documentary about the bombings. Immediately I began to have flashbacks.”

That is an extremely strange remark, about ‘memory.’ It is I suggest very comparable to her having to be hypnotically regressed to ‘remember’ her rape. This is the person who has functioned as the main spokesperson of the government’s view about the London Bombings.
Contextual Postscript
Anyone who has followed this unedifying story will be aware that a Ms Felicity Jane Lowde expressed doubt over whether RN had in fact been raped, and ended up being put in jail for three months for the crime of ‘stalking’ RN – in July 2007. I would not wish to doubt what various persons have testified to on the web, that correpondence with FJL can be a distressing experience: however, that is not a crime. It is untrue that she ‘stalked’ RN – that term (a) normally implies someone of the opposite sex, and (b) implies that the stalker is attempting to make contact. Neither of those applied, and anyone tormented by unpleasant emails can simply block them. I here wish to argue, that RN has had two people put in jail, both on false pretences.
Memory-recall: on July 7th 2005, RN starts blogging that very evening, averring she was on the front carriage – then a couple of days later, maybe realising that her story does not seem very convincing (eg, ‘we walked out via the front, and people laughed at the idea of reporting late for work’ – well I don’t reckon anyone was laughing)- she then starts getting ‘flashbacks’ Uh-huh. These flashbacks enable her to gave a more graphic account, of course. Listen carefully:
“It was like a dream you can’t remember, a puzzle you can’t solve. But then I saw a television documentary about the bombings. Immediately I began to have flashbacks.”

Does that remind you at all, of her being regressed after her rape, to remember it?
People have commented on the nearly-complete absence of scars on her face or any where else, and the two pictures in Marie Claire show a quite scarless face – though not showing her forehead. When I met her, when she barged into the 911-truth meeting at the Counting-House pub where David Shayler was speaking winter 2005/6, no-one noticed any scars. despite her gruesome accounts of both the bombing and the rape. BUT there is indeed one scar, which some have felt may be relevant: two one-inch scar-lines forming a cross, on her forehead.
Where did they come from?
She told me she was a theology student, when I met her six months after the 7/7 event (her father’s a vicar), and started warbling on about religious beliefs of young Brititsh Muslims; then she gave me her email (not quite sure why but she did) as rachelupthepole@ etc, and next thing I’m reading in The Times about her giving a pole-dance class, women getting in touch with their sexuality etc: a rape victim? We are not allowed to allude to her real name bacause she is a rape victim? I sensed a rather blurred self-identity.
This is the woman who has always functioned as the main government spokesperson for their 7/7 story.