HS Turku | The woman claimed gang members raped her, got a sentence for false reporting

Police made a massive attack on the vest gang Cannonball’s club premises in Turku in March 2020. There were dozens of police officers there, some of whom were exceptionally heavily equipped. The Southwestern Finland Police Department did not provide more details about the operation, as it would have jeopardized the preliminary investigation, according to the police.

It has now turned out that the police carried out an operation, because a woman who was in the club premises called the emergency center the same morning and said that three people had violently raped her. According to the woman, another woman had also been abused.

To the club space in connection with the operation, the police arrested three men. They were suspected of serious sexual crimes. The men were subjected to sexual crime investigations, where samples were taken from their intimate areas.

All three men had previous convictions for, among other things, drug offences.

One of the men was later convicted of a serious drug crime, in which the man’s participation in the activities of an organized criminal group, the vest gang Cannonball, was used as a basis for increasing the punishment.

The same man was convicted of three murders in the early 2000s.

Päijät-Hämeen the district court ordered the motorcycle gang Cannonball MC and its sub-association Squad 32 to be dissolved in June of last year. According to the court, Cannonball acted in violation of the freedom of association stipulated in Finnish law, and the public interest required its termination.

The liquidation order became legally binding at the beginning of the year, while the Supreme Court did not granted leave to appeal in the case.

Police continued the sex crime investigation for more than four months. The police closed the investigation at the end of July 2020, as no violent rape or violence had actually occurred. In the investigations, not a single piece of information supporting the allegation of rape emerged.

Three men and two women had spent the evening in the club room. The men and the other woman said in unison that the woman who reported the rape had spent the evening with them and left the place first.

An investigation was started against the woman who reported the rape for filing a false report.

The woman who made the report first claimed that three men participated in her rape. He later said that maybe only one person was involved in the act. In later questioning, he considered it possible that he himself fell and panicked.

Real Finland the district court dealt with the charge brought against the woman for false reporting at the beginning of September and handed down the verdict on Friday of last week.

The woman accused of filing a false report admitted that she had acted as described in the indictment, but she denied the intention. According to him, he did not name anyone as the perpetrator of the rape and did not give any signs of the perpetrator.

According to the court, false reporting does not require that a specific person be named as the perpetrator of the crime. The woman had to understand that the men who were in the club premises were suspected of the act.

According to the court, there were no indications of, for example, panic resulting from a traumatic experience or a genuine mistake in the woman’s hearing or questioning. Thus, according to the court, the woman acted intentionally.

The false report was so serious that, according to the court, the woman had to be sentenced to prison. It was the woman’s first conviction, so the court imposed a suspended sentence.

The woman received an eight-month suspended prison sentence for filing a false report. In addition, the woman was ordered to pay each of the three men 7,000 euros as compensation for suffering.

The judgment is not binding.