A 25-year-old Stanford employee faces felony perjury and other charges for intentionally lying about being raped twice on campus last year.

The reported attacks triggered campus-wide safety alerts and campus demonstrations last fall.

Jennifer Gries, of Santa Clara, told county sexual assault forensic exam nurses in August that she had been attacked by a Black man in a campus garage. Two months later, Gries reported being attacked again by a Black man in a storage closet.

Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said today that evidence shows that Gries made up the stories because she was angry at a co-worker.

Gries twice applied under penalty of perjury to get public money from the California Victim of Crimes Board (CalVCB), attesting that she was sexually assaulted.

She was arrested this morning and will be arraigned at a later date in the Hall of Justice in San Jose. She faces jail time, if convicted, according to the district attorney.

“This is a rare and deeply destructive crime,” Rosen said in a statement. “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.”

On Aug. 9, Gries reported to Valley Medical Center for a sexual assault forensic exam. She said she did not want law enforcement to contact her at that time. She signed the consent form, acknowledging that the nurse is a mandated reporter who must notify law enforcement.

In a press release, Rosen said Gries reported to the sexual assault nurse that she was raped by an unknown assailant in the Munger Residence Hall restroom from Wilbur parking garage.  She then told the nurse that the assailant was in his “late 20s, black male.”  She reported that the assailant approached her when she going to her car, grabbed her, told her not to scream and raped her.

On Oct. 7, Gries reported to Stanford Hospital to get another rape examination. She told that nurse that she was coming back from lunch to her front office and an unknown male grabbed her arm, took to her to the basement into a storage closet and raped her. She described the assailant as a Black male, slender, young, six feet tall and in his late 20s.  Gries signed the consent form, acknowledging that the nurse is a mandated reporter.

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, according to the district attorney.

Given the public safety risk, Stanford DPS continued to investigate the two alleged sexual assaults. The investigation revealed that Gries had made a recent sexual harassment complaint against a coworker who fit the description of the alleged rapist.

“It also revealed that Gries told an acquaintance that she was in a relationship with the man and named him (the actual victim in this case),” Rosen said. She said she was sexually assaulted by the victim and became pregnant with his twins. Gries claimed to have suffered a miscarriage. The investigation revealed that she was not pregnant at that time, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 24, district attorney investigator Sheena Woodland interviewed the defendant, during which Gries wrote a letter of apology to the victim.