Apparently a woman, Laurie Ann Martinez (a psychologist), thought it was appropriate to lie about being raped to get her husband to move to a better neighborhood. Obviously she was only thinking about herself and her own desires, but what about the potential effect she might have on real victims of rape?
What about the officers who might not believe the next woman who claims rape? As much as we’d prefer to ignore it, our decisions and actions can affect people with whom we never come into direct contact.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Authorities allege a woman was so determined to convince her husband of a need to move to a safer neighborhood that she faked being raped.
She split her own lip with a pin, scraped her knuckles with sandpaper, had her friend punch her in the face, and even wet her pants to give the appearance she had been knocked unconscious, authorities said Friday.
Charges filed by the Sacramento County district attorney allege Laurie Ann Martinez, a prison psychologist, conspired with the friend to create the appearance that she was beaten, robbed and raped by a stranger in April in her Sacramento home.
Police detectives and crime scene investigators spent hundreds of hours on the case, until one of Martinez’s prison co-workers came forward to say Martinez had been talking at work about faking a crime at her home to persuade her husband to move, Sacramento police Sgt. Andrew Pettit said Friday.
“If all you wanted to do is move, there’s other ways than staging a burglary and rape,” Pettit said. “She went to great lengths to make this appear real.”
Martinez had been a psychologist overseeing other mental health workers treating inmates at California State Prison, Sacramento, said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton. The prison 20 miles east of Sacramento was the scene this week of a fight among more than 150 inmates that sent 11 inmates to outside hospitals.
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