Woman gets 5 years for making false rape report
A 38-year-old Michigan woman was sentenced Friday to five years in prison after being convicted last month of making up a story that two men had entered her home about 80 miles from Detroit and raped her.
The two men, who attended the same church as Sara Ylen’s ex-husband, likely would have been charged, but for the “airtight alibis” they offered, said St. Clair County Judge Daniel Kelly. He gave Ylen two years for making a false rape report and a consecutive three-year sentence for tampering with evidence, the Associated Press reports. The evidence-tampering concerned makeup she applied to make it appear that she had been bruised.
Also present at the sentencing hearing was James Grissom, who was sentenced to 15 years in an earlier case in which Ylen said she had been raped. He was released after his conviction was reversed in 2012. At that point, he had served nearly 10 years.
He called Ylen’s sentence a “slap on the wrist,” the AP reports.
An appellate brief (PDF) filed with the Michigan Supreme Court in 2011 provides additional details from the defendant’s perspective.
See also:
Associated Press: “Cancer, rape fraud case bowls over Mich. community”
Detroit Free Press: “Sara Ylen pleads no contest in fake cancer, health care fraud case”
Detroit News: “False rape victim’s lies unraveled many lives”
National Registry of Exonerations: “James Grissom”
