A 19-year-old Texas girl walked into a church with injuries and wearing only a shirt and underwear claiming she had just been raped by three black men. But police say she made it all up and have now pressed criminal charges.
Breana Harmon of Pottsboro claimed she was kidnapped by the men near her apartment before later walking into an unnamed local church where she told witnesses she had been sexually assaulted in the nearby woods, according to KXII.com.
Harmon was wearing only a shirt and her underwear and had cuts on her body at the time she appeared in the church.
She had earlier been reported missing to the Denison Police Department by a man claiming to be her fiancé, who said her car was parked in the apartment's parking lot with its door open and phone, keys and shoe close by. The call triggered a major police search for the teenager before she turned up at the church later in the evening.
During questioning by detectives, Harmon said the men had taken her to the wooded area close to the church in a black SUV. Once at the woods, two of them raped her while the third man held her down.
But suspicions were aroused when she was taken to the Texoma Medical Center for examination where doctors were unable to find physical evidence in line with her claims. According to the police report, she later confessed to an investigating officer that her story was made up.
Now Harmon has been indicted on two counts of tampering with physical evidence and two counts of tampering with a government record.
Three of the charges are felonies that could see Harmon imprisoned for up to 10 years and fined $10,000. The fourth charge is punishable up to two years in prison and also carries a $10,000 fine. If found guilty of all charges, Harmon faces up to 32 years in prison, KXII.com reports.
Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown said in a statement that Ms. Harmon had originally been arrested for the misdemeanor offense of false report to a peace officer, which carried a maximum prison sentence of 180 days and a $2,000 fine.
'However, the more we have looked at what happened in this case, and considered the harm it caused, and certainly could have caused, we believe what she did fits the elements of these higher charges. What she did was very serious, and we believe it was felony conduct,' he said.
