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SAN FRANCISCO, March 16 (AP) — A 25-year-old Stanford University employee was arrested Wednesday and charged with felony perjury for allegedly falsely reporting that he was raped twice on campus last year, authorities said.
Jennifer Ann Gries of Santa Clara first reported a false sexual assault in August when she told a nurse at San Jose Valley Medical Center that a man grabbed her while she was in a campus parking lot. grabbed her, dragged her to a bathroom and sexually assaulted her, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said.
In October, she went to Stanford Hospital for another rape exam and told the nurse conducting the exam that she was returning to her office from lunch when a man grabbed her by the arm and forced her into the basement, prosecutors said storage room and raped her. She again refused to speak to police, they said.
Both of Gris’ sexual assault check kits were quickly analyzed “given the extreme public safety risk to a potential sex offender,” prosecutors said, adding that lab results were “inconsistent with her story.”
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On both occasions, she signed a consent form acknowledging the nurse as an authorized reporter, who must notify law enforcement of the assault and sign forms to receive public funding, prosecutors said.
In a January interview with investigators from the District Attorney’s Office, Gris reportedly admitted to lying about the rape and wrote a letter of apology to the man she accused.
“She said she was upset with the victim because she felt he was giving her ‘false intentions’ and turning her friends against her,” prosecutors said.
Gris was charged with two felony counts of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of providing false crime reports to nurses at two different hospitals, prosecutors said. It was not immediately clear if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf.
Gris was placed on leave and the university “will review her employment,” Stanford said in a statement.
“These false reports are harmful, both to genuine survivors of sexual assault and to members of our community,” the university said, adding that false reports in sexual assault cases are rare.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen called the alleged false rape report “a rare and devastating crime” and expressed his sympathy for those who are falsely accused, students who have to be vigilant and ” Legitimate victims of sexual assault” who wonder if they will be believed. “
The rape reports led to a campus-wide electronic alert from Stanford police, sparking widespread fear and an October protest by hundreds of students who marched to demand that university officials do more to protect students.
Investigators also found that Gries filed a sexual harassment complaint in March 2022 with a male colleague in the university’s human resources department, which the department found baseless, prosecutors said. The colleague fit the description Gris gave her of the nurse who reported the rape, they said.
Gries is listed on the University website as Director of Housing Services.
The university came into the national spotlight in 2016 after an emotional victim impact statement about the sexual assault of Chanel Miller on campus by Stanford athlete Brock Turner went viral . Turner, a star swimmer, was infamously sentenced to six months in prison for sexually assaulting an unconscious Miller last year.
Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down the sentence, was recalled by voters in 2018, the first judge to be ousted in California since 1932. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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