THE girlfriend of a serial rapist has been jailed for setting up fake Facebook accounts to frame his victims in a bid to free him.
Jason Savage, 29, was sentenced to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of a string of horrendous sex crimes.
But following his conviction at Hull Crown Court, his girlfriend Ceri Shipman, 25, went to elaborate lengths over a period of months to set up Facebook accounts in the names of two of his victims.
She used the accounts to pretend the women had lied about the offences to get Savage locked up.
The victims were arrested and questioned by police for 13 hours.
Shipman's lies were exposed when the Facebook accounts were traced back to her computer.
One victim told the Mail: "I'm glad she got a prison sentence, she deserves it. I knew the truth would come out in the end."
Shipman has now been jailed for two-and-a-half years for perverting the course of justice.
Judge Mark Bury described it as a "persistent and sophisticated" crime.
He told her: "You couldn't believe Savage's sentence. You disagreed with it, you thought it was unfair and you thought the victims had lied.
"For your own selfish needs you tried to discredit genuine victims of horrendous offences by dishonest messages to get the release of a man who the court assessed as a clear danger to women.
"You must have realised the consequences of that behaviour would mean Savage's victims, who had already had to relive that experience in court, would be taken to the police station and investigated for perjury and, if convicted, given significant sentences and vilified as women who cried rape.
"The police acted upon these messages promptly because, if you were right, a serious miscarriage of justice would have been done."
The two victims were placed on police bail for four months as officers investigated Shipman's false claims, which were made six months after Savage was jailed.
She had accessed their real Facebook accounts and copied pictures and profiles from them to make the fake ones look genuine.
Shipman pretended they had sent her messages including: "Maybe I did make up the rape but he broke my heart", "Glad I met up with all them, we had a right good chat before court and look where it got him", "You should have met up with us, lied and got comp" and "Maybe we did lie but nothing you can do about it".
Shipman, of Eastfield Road, west Hull, replied to the fake messages, posting: "See what I mean, you lied and you just admitted it, how can you live with yourself?"
Savage, of Ferensway, city centre, was branded "cold, calculating and sadistic" after his conviction.
Hull Crown Court heard he repeatedly beat his girlfriends and raped three other victims over a nine-year period.
The control freak, who dated several women at once, stabbed one of his girlfriends and made her clean up her own blood, telling her he would kill her if she did not.
The former boxer was eventually found unanimously guilty of three counts of rape, three counts of causing grievous bodily harm to two of his victims, two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and indecent assault.
