A Stanford University employee was arrested Wednesday on charges of lying to authorities about two alleged incidents of rape that she claimed occurred on the California campus, prosecutors said.
According to the complaint, obtained by NBC News, Jennifer Gries, 25, of Santa Clara, was arrested on two felony counts of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of inducing false testimony after an investigation found that she twice made false accusations of rape against someone matching the description of a Black male co-worker, in what Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen called a "rare and deeply destructive crime."
The false assault reports — which did not identify Gries by name — “triggered campus wide safety alerts and campus unrest,” the DA’s office said. They also spurred national media coverage, including by NBC News, which covered the two false assault reports, as well as a student-led protest on the campus in October after the second false report.
“These false reports are damaging, both for true survivors of sexual assault and for the members of our community who experienced fear and alarm from the reports,” Stanford officials said in a statement Wednesday, noting that evidence shows false reports of sexual violence are extremely rare.
Indeed, research has shown that false reports make up 2% to 8% of sexual assault reports, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And Black men in particular have long been falsely accused of sexual assault. Five...
Foley partner Lisa Noller, Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Department, will be speaking at the American Bar Association’s Qui Tam & Civil False Claims and Healthcare Fraud Institute in Washingt...