On Wednesday, a 25-year-old Stanford University employee, Jennifer Ann Gries, was arrested and charged with felony perjury for allegedly lying about being raped twice on campus last year.
Gries reported a false sexual attack in August, claiming that a man had sexually assaulted her at a campus parking lot, but declined to speak with the police.
In October, she went to Stanford Hospital for another rape examination, where she claimed to have been raped again. Gries also claimed that she became pregnant with twins but suffered a miscarriage.
However, the investigation revealed that she was not pregnant at that time.
Gries signed consent forms acknowledging the nurse was a mandated reporter who must inform law enforcement of the attack and signed forms to get public funds, prosecutors said.
In January, Gries admitted to lying about the rapes during an interview with a District Attorney’s Office investigator and wrote an apology letter to the man who was the target of her allegations.
She was charged with two felony counts of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of making a false crime report to nurses at two different hospitals.
In a statement, Stanford said Gries was placed on a leave of absence and the university “will be reviewing her employment.”
False reports in sexual assault cases are rare, and such reports are damaging for true survivors of sexual assault and for the members of the community who experienced fear and alarm from the reports, the university said.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen called the alleged false rape reports “a rare and deeply destructive crime.”
Stanford University was in the national spotlight in 2016 after the emotional victim impact statement of Chanel Miller, who was sexually assaulted on campus by Stanford athlete Brock Turner, went viral.
Turner received a six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious Miller the previous year, and Judge Aaron Persky, who imposed the sentence, was recalled by voters in 2018, the first judge to be recalled in California since 1932.
»Stanford University Investigates Employee Accused of Making False Rape Claims«
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