For two years, Liam Allan endured "mental torture" as a result of rape charges brought against him. His accuser said she was raped repeatedly over a period of months and told Allan that she did not enjoy sex with him.

But it turns out, that police had exculpatory evidence in their possession all that time. They had 40,000 text messages from the woman that shows she continuously asked for "casual sex" and how much she enjoyed it. Her claims of being raped were the result of Allan rejecting her once he went back to school.

While the incident occurred in England, it could just as easily happen here as prosecutors and police are under enormous pressure to take a woman at her word when she cries rape.

New York Post:

“I can’t explain the mental torture of the past two years. … I feel betrayed by the system which I had believed would do the right thing, the system I want to work in.”

The life-changing discovery was made at the 11th hour when a new prosecutor, Jerry Hayes, took over the case one day before the trial began and ordered police to hand over records — including a computer disk that contained 40,000 messages.

Mr Allan’s lawyers had already sought access to the accusers’s telephone records and messages but their requests were denied on the basis there was nothing of interest in them.

Upon discovering the messages, Mr Hayes said he would offer no evidence in court and would like to “apologise” to Mr Allan.

“There was a terrible failure in disclosure which was inexcusable,” he said. “There could have been a serious miscarriage of justice, which could have led to a very significant period of imprisonment and life on the sex offenders register. It appears the officer in the case has not reviewed the disk, which is quite appalling.”

Speaking later, he said detectives had previously told him the sexual messages were “too personal” to share.

“The defence quickly saw the information blew the prosecution out of the water. If they had not been seen this boy faced 12 years in prison and on the sex offenders’ register for life with little chance of appeal. This was a massive miscarriage of justice, which thank heavens was avoided,” he told the BBC.

Judge Peter Gower said Mr Allan was not guilty on all charges.

“There is something that has gone wrong and it is a matter that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in my judgment should be considering at the very highest level,” he said.

“Mr Allan leaves the courtroom an innocent man without a stain on his character.”

Mr Allan’s defence lawyer Julia Smart said she also received details about the text messages the night before she was due to cross examine the accuser, and when she told the court of her findings the trial was scrapped.

Mr Allan’s mum, Lorraine Allan, 46, said the “current climate” means that many people are treated as “guilty until you can prove you’re innocent.”

We want our prosecutors  to be bulldogs because oftentimes, persistence is the only way to bring the guilty to justice. But this is a case where the original prosecutor wanted to win so badly that he deliberately withheld evidence that would have exonerated Mr. Allan almost immediately. Perhaps he even felt that a high profile rape case successfully prosecuted would benefit his career.

Meanwhile, Mr. Allan suffered not only from the vindictiveness of a spurned woman, but a system that's rigged in favor of the accuser in rape cases. Certainly, there was a time when the opposite was true. How a woman dressed, her previous sexual history, and the most personal details of her relationships were fair game for defense attorneys. In "He said, she said" situations, it was easier to believe a man's story about the woman's willingness to have sex.

Now the pendulum has swung and the rights of the accused are being slighted in favor of the politically correct notion that women never make false rape charges and should always be believed. I appreciate the wrenching nature of sexual assault and what it does to a woman physically and psychologically. But we shouldn't abandon our cherished rights - including suspects in rape cases being innocent until found guilty - because the crime committed is so horrible.

Women are capable of lying in order to send someone who hurt them emotionally to jail. Mr. Allan's story is a cautionary tale that a more balanced approach to rape cases must be taken even if that means some discomfort and angst for the victim. Sending someone to jail should never be easy regardless of the crime and treating rape victims differently skews the process and damages the legal rights of the accused.