False Rape Victim Charged

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False Rape Victim Charged

November 15, 2007

By Paddy Clancy

AN Irish businessman who sparked a two-month search when he went missing in Paris was arrested and charged by French police in connection with reporting a false crime after he suddenly turned up last week claiming he had been abducted, drugged and gang-raped.

Travel agent John Kennelly, 47, from Listowel, Co. Kerry, was last seen leaving his Paris hotel, the Meridien Etoile, Porte Maillot, near the Champs-Elysees at 7 a.m. on Sunday, September 9, hours before he was due to fly home. He had told his wife Marie he was going for a walk and would be back in time for the flight.

For the next two months his distraught family joined French police in a massive search in Paris.

A number of family friends, including Fine Gael TD (member of Parliament) Jimmy Deenihan, traveled to Paris to help with the search.

Over 1,000 posters of Kennelly were distributed across Paris and on all Ryanair and Aer Lingus flights to the city during the Rugby World Cup. But French privacy laws prevented the family putting his picture in newspapers or showing it on French television.

Just as hopes of him being found safe were fading, Kennelly suddenly reappeared last week. He walked into a Paris police station and claimed he was abducted, drugged and raped.

He told police that he remembered, within a couple of hours of leaving his hotel, entering a Paris metro station where a number of men drugged him and took him to an apartment on the outskirts of the city.

Police said in a statement, “We can confirm that Mr. John Kennelly has complained of being sexually assaulted and then being held against his will. All of his claims are being investigated.”

However, by the weekend Kennelly was charged with making a false claim when police obtained CCTV footage showing he had been in Nice in southern France and in a small town in northern France.

He was formally arrested and later released and returned to Ireland. His family solicitor Louis McDonagh confirmed the police details.

“The family does confirm that’s their understanding of where he was for the period he was missing. He was charged with a misdemeanor of reporting a false crime,” McDonagh said.

Kennelly’s family said in a statement, “John has been under medical supervision since his return. Medical advice indicates that John suffers from a condition which has resulted in actions on John’s part which have been wholly uncharacteristic of him.”

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