Stanford University employee charged with lying about campus rapes

STANFORD, Calif. - A Stanford University employee who claimed that she was raped twice on campus was charged with lying about the alleged sexual assaults, prosecutors said.

Authorities unearthed alleged evidence showing that Jennifer Ann Gries made up the bogus accusations about a co-worker whom she also falsely claimed to be dating.

Gries, 25, told county sexual assault forensic exam nurses on Aug. 9 that she had been attacked by a Black man in his 20s in the Wilbur parking garage on campus. 

Gries, a Stanford Housing Services employee, told nurses, "'He grabbed both my arms, had me on the ground facing up. He told me not to scream.'"

Then two months later, on Oct. 7, Gries, reported being attacked again by a Black man in a storage closet. She alleged that after returning to her office from lunch, an unknown man grabbed her arm and took her into a basement storage closet where he raped her, according to charging documents.

She described the assailant as a Black man in his late 20s.

The reported attacks triggered campus-wide safety alerts and campus unrest, prosecutors said.

Both of Gries’s sexual assault examination kits were analyzed as priority rushes given the extreme public safety risk of a potential sex offender. The lab results were not consistent with her story. The reports showed that there was no male DNA evidence detected.

Despite that, authorities continued to investigate the two alleged rapes. The investigation revealed that in March 2022, she made a sexual harassment complaint against a male co-worker, who fit the description of the alleged rapist, authorities said.

Prosecutors said that Gries had told another colleague that she was in a relationship with the man. She claimed that she was sexually assaulted by the man and became pregnant with his twins. Gries claimed to have suffered a miscarriage. Medical records showed that Gries was not pregnant at the time, authorities said in court documents

In text messages between Gries and her colleague that were also included in the charging documents, she blamed herself for the alleged assaults.

"Can’t I just make his life a living hell myself," Gries texted. "I need to start standing up for myself…. I am so annoyed…. I’m coming up with a plan. That way he’s shitting his pants for multiple days".

In January of this year, Gries admitted to investigators that she lied about being raped because she was angry at her co-worker. Greis said she felt that her co-worker gave her "false intention" and turned her friends against her, according to prosecutors.

Gries' co-worker was never terminated, and from the beginning of the investigation, he denied any sexual or romantic contact with Gries.

The saga "scarred" him and the false accusations took a toll on him, especially during a time when he was caring for his gravely ill mother who later died.

The man, a victim in the ordeal, was able to also provide evidence that corroborated his whereabouts, authorities said.

He told investigators, "This is disgusting. I don't feel human. I don't feel human at all."

Gries was charged on Monday with two felony counts of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of inducing false evidence.