Re: Lehigh University student faces trial for alleged false rape report


"Michael Snyder" <msnyder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4af841d1$0$1980$742ec2ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2009/10/lehigh_student_waives_hearing.html

Lehigh University student waives hearing, faces trial for alleged false
rape report
By JD Malone
October 27, 2009, 2:07PM
lehigh university campusView full sizeExpress-Times Photo | JIM
MIDDLEKAUFFStudents walk on Lehigh University's campus in Bethlehem
earlier this month.A 19-year-old Lehigh University student who allegedly
made a false report about being raped by a campus police officer waived a
preliminary hearing today and could stand trial.

Brielynne Neumann, of Shrewsbury, Mass., was lying in the center of
Parkhill Street at 11:49 p.m. Sept. 3 when Bethlehem police approached
her, according to court records. She identified herself as Brei Scano and
gave a fake date of birth, records say.

The lie backfired when police, who claim she was intoxicated, took her to
her sorority house to verify her identity, records say. Neumann then told
officers she had been raped the day before by a man who claimed to be a
Lehigh University police officer, records say.

Bethlehem police turned the investigation over to Pennsylvania State
Police, who interviewed Neumann on Sept. 4. According to records, Neumann
told a state trooper a different tale then the one she spun for Bethlehem
police. She told the trooper she got into a car with a man who said he was
a police officer; he groped her before she fled, records say.

When the trooper asked Neumann to sign her statement, she refused,
according to police, and recanted the entire story. The trooper wrote in
the criminal affidavit, "She admitted that she made the whole thing up."

Neumann waived her preliminary hearing today before District Judge Nancy
Matos Gonzalez. She faces trial on a charge of false reports. She remains
free in lieu of $20,000 unsecured bail.

She also waived her hearing on charges of false identification to law
enforcement, public drunkenness and underage drinking.

So this is another one where no one specific was accused. This is all
incomprehensible to me. She must have done it to divert attention from her
drunk and disorderly state? She may have been embarrassed to have the cops
who picked her see her thus, and then her sorority sisters? And maybe it
snowballed, until she finally told the last guy the truth? She must have
hoped her story would just go away. What an idiot.

jc


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