Amanda Lang fully deserves the one-year jail term she was handed at Oxford Crown Court yesterday.

She also deserves Judge Julian Hall's description of her lies - "wicked".

Lang falsely claimed she had been raped and kept up the pretence for months, putting her alleged attacker, soldier Phillip Trowell, through agony.

Later, she admitted that she had consented to sex, and pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice.

It is not difficult to imagine the trauma L Cpl Trowell suffered while the allegation hung over him.

Lang has not only done a grave disservice to him, but to victims of rape in general.

The more women falsely cry rape, the more likely juries are to look at rape claims with suspicion.

And it could also mean that women who have been raped will be reluctant to report the crime, thinking that their story might not be believed.

We have come a long way from the days when there was a general assumption that women were lying in rape cases.

Now they are treated with much more sympathy and sensitivity at all levels.

We mustn't let despicable people like Lang destroy that progress.