sexual assault
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A woman who works for Stanford University has been charged with lying about being sexually assaulted by Black men on two occasions last year.
According to reports, Jennifer Ann Gries was arrested and charged on Monday (March 13th) with two counts of perjury among other offenses by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Gries, an employee at Stanford Housing Services, claimed she was sexually assaulted by a Black man in a garage on campus last August. Another claim followed this that she was again attacked by a Black man in a storage closet two months later. Gries would state that the first attack left her pregnant with twins.
The claims triggered safety alerts on a campus-wide level. Gries had also applied to obtain money from the California Victim of Crimes Board (CalVCB), a public fund claiming the attacks forced her to have a miscarriage. The results from her sexual assault examination kits were found to be inconsistent with her story, and there was no presence of male DNA found in them.
Police officers still investigated the allegations, which led them to discover that the 25-year-old woman had a grudge against a Black male co-worker for “false intention” and made the claims out of anger. Detectives uncovered text messages Gries sent to another co-worker. “Can’t I just make his life a living hell myself,” Gries wrote. “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”. The co-worker denied having any sexual or romantic contact with Gries and stated to investigators that he felt “scarred” over the accusations. “This is disgusting. I don’t feel human. I don’t feel human at all.”, he said.
Gries wrote a letter of apology to the victim during an interview with an investigator in January of this year. She is currently facing incarceration if convicted. “This is a rare and deeply destructive crime,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in the press release. “Our hearts go out to the falsely accused. Our hearts go out to students who had to look over their shoulders on their way to class. Our hearts go out to legitimate sexual assault victims who wonder if they will be believed.” Stanford University is dealing with the aftermath, still reeling after the infamous case of Brock Turner, a swimmer at the school who only received a six-month sentence in 2016 after sexually assaulting a woman at the campus. Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down the sentence, would be recalled by voters statewide in 2018.
All state-level charges filed against R. Kelly in Cook County, Illinois, have been dropped, state attorney Kim Foxx announced at a press conference Monday (Jan. 30). Kelly is scheduled to appear in court on the indictments, which include 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, on Tuesday morning.
In making the announcement, Foxx reiterated Kelly’s convictions in federal court in New York and Illinois to explain the prosecutors’ decision. “Due to the extensive sentences that these convictions hold, our office has decided not to continue to expend our limited resources and court time with the indictments that we previously charged Mr. Kelly [with],” she said.
In the New York federal case, Kelly was found guilty in September 2021 on all nine counts, including racketeering and sex trafficking; he was sentenced to 30 years in prison the following June. In September, he was convicted on three counts of child pornography in the Illinois federal case but acquitted of a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge that stemmed from an accusation that he’d fixed his state child pornography trial in 2008. Though he has not yet been sentenced in that case, he faces between 10 and 90 years in prison, according to Foxx.
Foxx — who previously revealed her own history as a victim of sexual abuse — grew visibly emotional during her time at the podium as she admitted that for the four victims in the state case, the outcome “may be disappointing. But I want to acknowledge that when we brought these charges forward, we brought them because we believed the allegations to be credible. And we believed that they deserved to have the opportunity to have the allegations heard.
“These women, both those who are named in our indictments and the women in New York and in the Northern District of Illinois, are to be commended for their bravery and their relentless pursuit of justice, no matter how long it took,” she continued.
Despite Foxx’s weighty and considered comments Monday, the announcement isn’t particularly surprising in light of Kelly’s dual convictions in federal court. After the disgraced singer was found guilty in the New York case, criminal defense attorney Isabelle A. Kirshner told Billboard that local jurisdictions in Illinois as well as Minnesota — where he still faces state charges — may choose to drop some of all of the charges in order to preserve resources.
Based on the New York sentence alone, Kelly won’t be eligible for release until he is around 80 years old.
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Herschel Walker endured several jabs at his intelligence, fitness for office, and character during his Senate campaign run. It has now come out that a member of his campaign staff is accusing a notable Republican Party activist of sexually assaulting him.
The Daily Beast exclusively reports that American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp allegedly groped the crotch of a male staffer in Walker’s camp this past fall. The unnamed staffer says that Schlapp, who is the lead organizer for the powerful Conservative Political Action Conference, committed the alleged act while driving.
From The Daily Beast:
The staffer said the incident occurred the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch in his car against his will after buying him drinks at two different bars.
The staffer described Schlapp, who had traveled to Georgia for a Walker campaign event, as inappropriately and repeatedly intruding into his personal space at the bars. He said he was also keenly aware of his “power dynamic” with Schlapp, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in national conservative politics.
Walker’s failed bid for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat revealed the incredible lengths conservative pundits and voters would go to ensure a win for their candidate. Despite several unsavory news items that came out during Walker’s campaign run, the former football star still enjoyed high levels of support from the Republican Party base.
Schlapp, via his attorney, is denying the charge and threatened a legal response to what their side framed as a hit piece.
Read the rest of The Daily Beast‘s report here.
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Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was hit with a lawsuit Thursday (Dec. 8) alleging that he raped a 17-year-old fan on his tour bus following a 2001 concert in Washington.
In a civil lawsuit filed in Nevada court, Shannon “Shay” Ruth says Carter picked her from a group of women seeking autographs after a concert in Tacoma. She says he then brought her aboard the bus, gave her an alcoholic beverage called “VIP juice” and repeatedly assaulted her.
The woman, now 39, says waited more than 20 years to come forward because she was afraid of retaliation.
“He told plaintiff she would go to jail if she told anyone what happened between them,” Ruth’s lawyers wrote in the complaint, obtained by Billboard. “He said that he was Nick Carter, and that he had the power to do that. Due to his various threats, plaintiff did not report Carter’s crimes for many years.”
The attack allegedly left Ruth infected with the sexually-transmitted infection human papillomavirus, or HPV, according to the lawsuit.
In addition to Ruth, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of three other unnamed “Jane Doe” accusers who allegedly experienced similar attacks by Carter from 2003 to 2006. According to the complaint, all three of those women were also given alcohol before being forced to have sex with him; one was allegedly similarly underage.
A rep for Carter did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard. An unnamed source close to the singer reportedly told TMZ that the accusations were “categorically false.”
The allegations are not the first against Carter. Back in 2017, Melissa Schuman, a former member of teen-pop group Dream, publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2003 when she was 18 years old. Carter denied the allegations at the time, saying Schuman had “never expressed” to him that “anything we did was not consensual.”
After an investigation into Schuman’s accusations, prosecutors in Los Angeles declined to bring criminal charges against Carter on the grounds that the 10-year statute of limitations had expired.
The new lawsuit against Carter contains explicit and disturbing details of the alleged sexual assault.
Once she had finished her “VIP drink,” Ruth says Carter took her to a bathroom and demanded that she perform oral sex on him: “Alone and under duress, Plaintiff reluctantly complied with his demand. Plaintiff cried during the ordeal.”
Following that incident, Ruth says Carter took her to another room on the bus where he “pushed plaintiff down onto the bed and proceeded to mount her.” She says she “begged him to stop” and tried to get away, but that “every time she said ‘No’ and tried to get up, Carter got angry and pushed her down harder.”
After the attack, Ruth says Carter grabbed her, called her a “retarded little bitch” and said that nobody would believe her story. Ruth has autism and cerebral palsy, according to the complaint.
Read the entire complaint here: