A teenage single mother who lied about being raped was yesterday sentenced to six months' detention.

Carli Purvis' lies led to 23-year-old nurse Toby Cullen being questioned by police over the sex attack.

The 18-year-old lied to her boyfriend to cover up the fact she had spent the night with Mr Cullen but detectives soon exposed her story.

Purvis had met him in the Stevie Y's nightclub in Washington, near Sunderland, after rowing with her boyfriend - the father of her one-year-old daughter.

She went with Mr Cullen to his mother's house where they had got into bed together but nothing happened and Mr Cullen asked her to leave at 2.30am, the court heard.

Later Purvis phoned her boyfriend and said she had been attacked in the street.

Prosecutor Alec Burns told Newcastle Crown Court: ''She said she had been raped to avoid the obvious trouble that she had left the club with another man.''

Police arrested Mr Cullen, who they believed was the prime suspect, but soon realised Purvis had cried rape and he was innocent.

Mr Burns said 16 police officers, two doctors, forensic scientists and 254 man-hours had been wasted in investigating Purvis' lies.

The teenager, of Park Avenue, Washington, admitted perverting the course of justice by making a false rape claim between February 6 and March 11, 2004, at an earlier hearing.

Jamie Adams, defending, told the court: ''What she did was born out of stupidity, naivety and irresponsibility."

Mr Cullen has since quit his job unable to cope with the consequences being arrested over an allegation of rape.

Sentencing Purvis to six months' detention in a young offenders' institute, Judge Guy Whitburn QC told her: ''The offence is so serious nothing other than custody can be justified.''