I gave homeless stranger place in my home and he repaid me with blackmail and false allegations

A kind-hearted man who offered to let a homeless stranger stay with him has ‘lost trust in people’ after being blackmailed over a fictional rape attack.

Stephen Challis had become angry when the man would not let his girlfriend also stay at his St Helens home and began threatening him. The 24-year-old demanded £500, claiming he would otherwise tell police the man was a rapist and eventually his frightened victim parted with £250 after being tricked into thinking a police officer told him to do so. When he told someone else they immediately informed the real police which led to Challis’s arrest.

Jailing Challis, of Adcote Road, Dovecot, for two years on Tuesday (April 30), a judge said the offence was ‘a mean one’.

Addressing Challis, who pleaded guilty to blackmail, Judge David Swinnerton said: “The man you sought to blackmail had originally offered to help you and offered you somewhere to stay… you decided to repay his kindness by trying to blackmail him.”

He added that although £500 was a relatively modest amount and he received an even smaller sum, “you persisted in this blackmail over a couple of days and you were acting with someone else.”

Frank Dillon, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that the two men met by chance at a St Helens charity hub on 7 December 2022 and as they got on well the victim gave him his phone number and said Challis could stay at his address if he were ever homeless.

The very next day, Challis rang asking if he could stay and the man agreed but when he turned up with his girlfriend the man said only Challis could stay. Challis repeatedly rang the man to express his unhappiness at this and eventually said he had put his girlfriend on a train and threatened he would get the man ‘done for rape’.

He repeated the threats and demanded £500 and a woman rang purporting to be a Humberside police officer and said Challis claimed the man had raped him and touched a 13-year-old girl. She said Challis had been arrested and told him to leave £250 under a bush and said four officers were watching and would arrest whoever went to collect it. Believing she was a genuine officer he agreed and did so.

On December 10, she asked to meet him at a St Helens town centre cafe but he could not find it and when he returned the cash had gone, said Mr Dillon. The real police became involved and arrested Challis as he told a member of staff at the charity hub about the threats.

In an impact statement, the victim said his mental health issues had worsened because of the incident and he ‘has lost trust in people’. Julian Nutter, defending, conceded that, ‘It is a pretty shabby affair’ and only a custodial sentence could be justified. He pointed out that it happened 17 months ago and Challis had been heavily addicted to cannabis since the age of 16 and a few weeks before the incident learnt that his mum had terminal bowel cancer. He has since been seeking help to reduce his cannabis usage.

Mr Nutter described the offence as ‘effectively an aberration’.