Woman falsely accuses taxi driver of rape. Now she’s serving 3 years in prison.

A woman is serving a three-year prison sentence after wrongfully claiming that a taxi driver raped her.

What are the details?

Laura Hood, a 27-year-old British woman, said that a 29-year-old taxi driver raped her in the backseat of his cab during a 2017 incident after he purportedly took a detour during the ride.

After the alleged incident, Hood told her mother and police that taxi driver Haroon Yousaf sexually assaulted her. Police took the rape suspect into custody, and investigated Hood's claims. Yousaf willingly submitted a DNA sample to prove his innocence.

Officials found that Hood's story did not match up with the taxi cab's vehicle path data and that the driver took no detours while transporting Hood to her destination. Hood's description of the man's appearance also did not match.

Hood continued to insist that the driver raped her even after the case went to trial.

After Hood's claims were proven to be inaccurate, she wept and said she wished she could "explain why something so clear in my head ... can't be true." A court-appointed psychiatrist, however, said there was no viable reason why Hood would believe that she was raped.

A court found Hood guilty of perverting the course of justice in a June trial. She was sentenced on Aug. 1 to three years in prison.

Judge Julie Warburton said that Hood's patently false allegations "strikes at the very heart of justice," according to the BBC.

"It has a tendency to damage the public perception of justice and can impact on the administration of justice in rape cases generally," Warburton added.

What did the taxi driver say?

Yousaf said that he is still suffering from the effects of the false accusation.

"It still affects me in my day-to-day life," he admitted. "I don't know if I will ever come back fully from this. Before this incident, I was a strong person. However, I'm now negative and worry that things can go wrong. This is the most disgusting thing that anyone can be accused of. When I pick up single female passengers, I always worry that something could happen again."