Dressed in his priest’s clerical collar, Father John Taylor was a familiar and respected presence in the seaside town of Margate, Kent, where he was born and grew up.
A jovial, outgoing character, he considered it his mission to bring cheer to the community with relentless good humour, while actively helping the unfortunate, aged and needy.
Fr Taylor, 48, was chaplain at Margate Magistrates’ Court — offering support to crime victims — and also supported a number of charities.
He’d be the first to volunteer at fetes to go into the stocks to be pelted with wet sponges if it meant raising money for a good cause.
Ordained in 2009 into the Old Roman Catholic Church — which broke from Rome in 1908 and does not require celibacy — the former carpenter, a married father of two young children, responded to his vocation with energy and enthusiasm.
In recognition of his charity work, Fr Taylor’s name was expected to be put forward for consideration in the Queen’s Honours list.
He says he might have been in line for an OBE — had he not been falsely accused of rape.
On Monday, on what should have been the first day of his trial, the case against Fr Taylor dramatically collapsed when it emerged his alleged victim had fabricated her story.
Remarkably, Canterbury Crown Court heard that the woman, in her 20s, had based the rape allegation on storylines she’d read in crime novels by popular author Martina Cole.
Fr Taylor walked free from court an innocent man, euphoric with relief, but today sits alone and broken in his seaside flat — the curtains permanently drawn — wondering if his reputation is beyond redemption, despite being cleared.
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‘I’ve been spat at and verbally abused in the street. My car has been vandalised three times and I’ve been too frightened to leave my flat in case I was attacked,’ says Fr Taylor, who has had the case hanging over his head for 14 months since his accuser made a police complaint in February last year.
‘My life’s been completely ruined. People who know me have always believed in my innocence, but others who don’t will always think there’s no smoke without fire.
‘After being charged, I went grey almost overnight. Every night I’d go to bed and dread waking up in the morning. I may as well be celibate now because what woman is ever going to want to go near me when I tell them I was accused of rape?’
In the wake of the sex abuse scandals that have engulfed the Roman Catholic Church, not to mention the Jimmy Savile furore, there has been an overdue change in the way police treat the testimony of alleged victims.
Separated: Father Taylor pictured on his wedding day in Hungary with former wife Zsanett
Where once their voices might have gone unheard or been dismissed in the absence of enough solid evidence to secure a conviction, now they are being listened to and taken seriously.
But is there an unwelcome flip-side to this positive development? Is too much weight being given to the unsubstantiated claims of so-called victims who may turn out to be anything but?
Fr Taylor says he welcomes the support and protection given by police to genuine victims of sex crimes, but says he could have been looking at a jail sentence if he hadn’t turned detective to clear his own name.
After learning his accuser had told police she identified with the characters in Martina Cole’s novels, which often portray violent rape and priests as abusers, Fr Taylor pored through every book written by the author.
It was in Cole’s novel The Ladykiller that he found startling similarities between the plotline and his accuser’s graphic police statement in which she claimed the priest had grabbed her hair with one hand and ripped off her clothes with the other before raping her.
Fr Taylor is considering legal action against not only Kent police, but also the officers who investigated the false rape allegations against him.
As for his accuser, he’s planning to launch a civil action against her and is demanding to know why she isn’t facing police charges.
He BELIEVES the woman deliberately targeted him, having mistaken him for a Roman Catholic priest, with the aim of suing the Church for compensation should he be convicted.
The Old Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, a tiny schismatic sect founded in Britain by Archbishop Arnold H.Matthew in 1910.
It still considers itself part of the wider Church, while retaining independence from Rome. It has few church buildings and offers niche chaplaincy services.
Fr Taylor is also calling for anonymity for men accused of rape to be lifted only once a guilty conviction has been secured.
Why, he asks, does his accuser still enjoy the ‘luxury’ of anonymity while his name has been dragged through the mud?
Fiction: Father Taylor's alleged victim had based the rape allegation on storylines she'd read in novels by Martina Cole, left, in particular The Ladykiller, right
Certainly, his case raises some deeply disturbing questions. Not least, perhaps, how a man of the cloth could have found himself at the mercy of a sexual fantasist.
Fr Taylor says it was loneliness and grief over the collapse of his six-year marriage that prompted him to invite out the young woman who would later accuse him of rape.
His wife, Zsanett, 34, a former athlete and model whom he’d met when she worked as a waitress in Margate, had returned to her native Hungary with their two children, now aged seven and three, to support a dying relative.
‘Once there, she decided she didn’t want to come back.’ says Fr Taylor. ‘She told me she hated England and hated being married to a priest. Perhaps I did devote too much time to my work, but I never stopped loving her. I still do.’
‘As a man, I missed having someone special in my life. I hate being single, I’m a romantic. This lady looked attractive and seemed very nice, so I asked her out.'
As a modern-minded priest reaching out to the community, Fr Taylor had a large number of Facebook friends, many of whom he had never met.
One day, he spotted a comment about funerals that made him laugh and he sent an innocent message to the woman who’d posted it on her page.
She replied, and a couple of months later a joky exchange about Pancake Day ensued, revolving around her lack of culinary skills.
Finding her profile picture attractive, Fr Taylor sent the following message ‘Well, ur always welcome to come round and raid my cupboards and cook us something,’ and added his mobile number.
They spoke on the phone and Fr Taylor invited her out for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.
‘As a man, I missed having someone special in my life. I hate being single, I’m a romantic,’ he says. ‘This lady looked attractive and seemed very nice, so I asked her out.
‘We had a pleasant meal and there seemed to be a spark between us, so I invited her back to my flat. I’d had one small glass of wine because I was driving and neither of us was drunk.
'I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but when I asked if I could kiss her she said yes.
Dropped: The case against Father Taylor collapsed at Canterbury Crown Court this week
‘She then took her top off, revealing a blue bra. I was quite shocked, but I asked her if she would like to go to the bedroom and she said yes.’
‘I remember saying “When did you decide to sleep with me?” and she replied: “The minute I walked into your flat and saw it was clean.” ’
Fr Taylor — somewhat startlingly for a priest — says he has no moral problem with sex outside marriage or even sex on a first date.
The terms ‘temptation’, ‘sins of the flesh’ or ‘lust’ do not appear to feature in his religious vocabulary and he believes there is nothing ungodly about honest sexual desire between two consenting adults.
‘We went to the bedroom and undressed, but in the middle of making love, she suddenly said: “What time is it?” When I told her it was about ten to nine, she said: “I’ve to go to meet a friend.”'
‘We went to the bedroom and undressed, but in the middle of making love, she suddenly said: “What time is it?” When I told her it was about ten to nine, she said: “I’ve to go to meet a friend.” We’d been in bed for about ten minutes when she got up and dressed to leave.
‘I did think it a bit strange, but said “OK, can I see you again?” because I’d hoped this might be the start of a relationship.
‘We kissed and she kept saying: “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I’m really sorry.” I offered to drive or order her a taxi, but she refused.
‘After she’d gone I felt terrible, thinking I must have been rubbish in bed. It was the first time I’d made love since my wife had left me. It wasn’t exactly a confidence booster.
‘I sent her a text message saying “I don’t know if I’ve done something wrong, but I’d really like to see you again”, but she didn’t reply.
‘When I checked Facebook 15 minutes later, she had already deleted me as a friend.’
Community figure: Father Taylor says that he received some support from people in Margate (pictured) who did not believe the allegations
Two days later, the young woman went with a female friend to Margate police station to accuse Fr Taylor of subjecting her to a violent sexual assault.
In a graphic statement, she alleged the priest had pounced on her, grabbing her hair with one hand while ripping off her clothes with the other before raping her on his living room sofa — ignoring her tearful pleas to stop.
Not guilty: Father John Taylor, of Margate, Kent, met his accuser on Facebook and went on a dinner date which ended in sex
‘When two officers came to arrest me and told me what I was supposed to have done, my first reaction was “Are you kidding me?” ’ he says.
‘I knew I was innocent, so I wanted everything held up to the light. I was open and honest about all that had happened that night, so I told them we’d had consensual sex.
‘The allegations were ridiculous. How was I supposed to have grabbed this woman by the hair with one hand and with the other manage not only to rip off her jeans, but also take off my own, while at the same time putting on a condom?
‘I knew it was untrue, so I said to the detectives: “Take the sofa covers and test them.” I told them to take the bedsheets where they’d find our DNA.’
Father Taylor thought it would be only a matter of time before the police concluded the woman’s account did not stand up to scrutiny — and was shocked when he was charged with rape last June.
‘I remember walking to the supermarket and seeing the front page of the local paper with a big picture of me with my arms outstretched and the word rape,’ says Fr Taylor.
‘I just froze and thought: “Oh My God.” I was standing in the queue, wondering what people must be thinking, when someone I knew said to me: “I don’t believe it.” A few people turned all the papers over, so my face wasn’t showing, and gave me a round of applause as I left.
‘I received some amazing support — the local Indian restaurant sent me round takeaways when I felt too ill to leave the flat. But there were others, who didn’t know me, who started spreading even worse rumours about me.’
‘It defies belief that I was charged in the first place when there was no real evidence against me.’
After Fr Taylor was charged, his estranged wife, with whom he had hoped to reconcile, divorced him and he has not been able to see his children since, which he says has been the worst part of all of this.
‘It defies belief that I was charged in the first place when there was no real evidence against me,’ says Fr Taylor.
‘It was almost as if the police wanted to believe my accuser simply because I was a priest. It’s as if all priests are seen as potential abusers.’
Documents seen by the Mail reveal that the alleged victim showed no signs of any injury, despite claiming she’d been violently assaulted.
The only mark on her body was a faded bite mark on her breast and she admitted to police she’d had sex with another man the week before her date with Fr Taylor.
She makes no mention of the priest biting her in her police statement.
She claimed Fr Taylor had pestered her with phone and text messages before and after their date, but this could not be verified because shortly after making her claims she sold her phone.
Unfair law: Fr Taylor is also calling for anonymity for men accused of rape to be lifted only once a guilty conviction has been secured (file picture)
Two of the woman’s friends, who were due to give evidence for the prosecution, gave statements saying the priest seemed ‘weird’ and ‘creepy’ to them.
One — who’d once spoken to the priest in a bar — claimed Fr Taylor had boasted of sleeping with 400 women in one month.
Fr Taylor denies ever saying this, even as a joke. He points out that this would average 13 sexual encounters a day — quite some feat for a man disabled by a road accident 15 years ago, which left him with a broken back and limbs and a fractured skull.
Fr Taylor claims he repeatedly told detectives that if they DNA-tested his sofa — where the attack was alleged to have taken place — the results would instantly disprove his accuser’s testimony.
‘I was told such tests were unnecessary because it had already been established that sexual contact had taken place between us, so basically the whole case consisted of her word against mine,’ says Fr Taylor.
‘I asked my lawyer to order independent forensic tests on the sofa covers, which cost thousands of pounds, because I knew they would come back negative.
And that’s what happened: there was none of the woman’s DNA on the sofa, only in the bed where we’d had consensual sex.
‘Without that DNA testing, I dread to think what might have happened in court. Despite my innocence, I was fully prepared for the prospect that I might be found guilty and jailed, which was very frightening.
‘It’s nice to go to bed at night and look forward to waking up in the morning, instead of going to sleep and not wanting to wake up, but will I ever get my life back?’
Kent Police told the Mail in a statement: ‘Following a review of the findings in the forensic report, it was concluded by the Crown Prosecution Service and Kent Police that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a realistic prospect of conviction.’
A spokesman declined to make any further comment in relation to the case.