A Stanford University employee has been arrested and placed on administrative leave after she allegedly lied about being viciously raped o...
A Stanford University employee has been arrested and placed on administrative leave after she allegedly lied about being viciously raped on campus twice.
Jennifer Ann Gries, 25, of Santa Clara works as a housing service center supervisor at Stanford University, and last fall, she allegedly reported that she had been brutally raped twice in connection to her job in less than two months.
According to a press release from the County of Santa Clara Office of the District Attorney, on August 9, 2022, Gries claimed that she had been trying to get into her car, which was parked in a campus parking garage, when a black man in his "late 20s" approached her, grabbed her, told her not to scream, and then dragged her to a nearby bathroom, where he raped her. Then on October 7, 2022, Gries reported that she was returning to her office from a lunch break when "a Black male, slender, young, 6ft, late 20s" grabbed her by the arm, dragged her to the building basement, and raped her in a storage closet.
In both instances, Gries declined to file a rape accusation with law enforcement herself but instead reported the alleged assaults to nurses, who are mandatory reporters by law. In each case, Gries signed a consent form acknowledging that her nurse would have to report the alleged attack to the police.
As a result, the university's Department of Public Safety issued a campus alert to other Stanford students and staff, warning them about a possible predator on campus. In October, hundreds of students gathered to protest what Stanford Daily columnist Diya Sabharwal called "the omnipresence of rape culture on Stanford campus."
But, it turned out, Gries may have made up both alleged attacks. The forensic evidence collected through the rape kits given to her was "not consistent with her story," the DA's statement said. When questioned, Gries allegedly admitted that she had concocted the rape stories to hurt a co-worker who had spurned her advances.
"She stated she was upset with the victim because she felt he gave her 'false intention' and turned her friends against her," prosecutors said. Reports indicate that the co-worker closely resembles the description she gave the nurses about her two assailants.
Gries also supposedly filed a sexual harassment complaint against the same co-worker in March, 2022, five months before she made the first rape allegation. In the complaint to human resources, Gries alleged that the co-worker had raped her, that she had become pregnant with twins as a result, but that she had tragically lost the babies through miscarriage. However, according to the DA, the "investigation revealed that she was not pregnant at that time."
After confessing to police that she had lied about all of the allegations, Gries reportedly wrote a letter to the victim to apologize.
Unfortunately, her co-worker is not the only victim of Gries' alleged lies. The DA's office stated that Gries reported herself as a rape victim to the California Victim of Crimes Board and that she "twice applied under penalty of perjury to get public money" from CVCB as a result. Though the amount of money she may have collected is unclear, CBS News reported that CVCB applicants can receive up to $70,000 in compensation.
Gries has been arrested and charged with two felony counts of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of making a false crime report to the two nurses who examined her. The university has announced that she has been placed on "a leave of absence" and that her position at the school is under review "in light of the information shared by the District Attorney’s Office."
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