A Waikato woman has been jailed for making false complaints that she was raped by a policeman and sexually assaulted by his colleague.

Sally Marie Inglis, 44, was sentenced to five months jail at the Tauranga District Court yesterday after being found guilty of two charges of making a false complaint to police.

Judge Robert Spear said the offending was “at the very highest end of the scale” and a prison sentence was required.

“You need to spend some time in prison to contemplate why you are back there.”

Judge Spear said the sentence, two-and-a-half months’ imprisonment for each charge, was influenced by the woman’s continued insistence that the claims were true despite clear evidence to the contrary and by the devastating effect they had had on the victims.

On April 14 last year, the woman told police she was sexually assaulted by a female non-sworn police employee when arrested on December 9, 2003, and that she was raped several times by the arresting officer two months later.

The female victim, spoken to after the sentence, said it had been the most traumatic experience of her life, and while prison was appropriate, it would not “give us back what she has taken from us”.