A 19-year-old female student who claimed she fought off an attempted knifepoint sex assault in a bathroom on the University of Hawaii at Hilo campus has recanted her story, police said Monday.
Capt. Robert Wagner of the Hilo Criminal Investigation Division said an investigation was opened Monday into possible charges of filing a false police report, but the young woman, who is from Oahu, had not been charged.
“Basically, she said it never happened,” Wagner said. “It stemmed from some inconsistencies relative to the original report that when we looked into it further, we eventually discovered it being untruthful.”
Wagner said detectives contacted the woman to point out the inconsistencies and “she eventually did come clean.” He said the woman told police why she made the allegations but he declined to provide details.
The woman, a Hawaii Community College sophomore who has a campus job at UH-Hilo, told police she was attacked in the geography building classroom at UH-Hilo at around 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 19. She described the alleged attacker as a Caucasian man in his early 20s, 6 feet tall, 160-180 pounds with a thin build, curly blond hair and facial acne, and wearing a white tank top and black surf shorts.
She said the alleged assailant fled in an older model red Ford Explorer with tan or gold on the bottom.
Jerry Chang, director of University Relations at UH-Hilo, said Monday afternoon a forum for students to talk to administrators about their concerns in the wake of the initial sex assault report was still scheduled for Monday evening. He said there is another meeting for faculty today.
“I believe the campus needs to heal, especially the secondary victims like the complainant’s friends and family who she confided in,” he said. “They trusted her. They had compassion for her. And all of a sudden they find out this was all fabricated. So it’s a big disappointment. Of course, they’re happy that it didn’t happen, but to be falsifying all that emotion does not build trust in the complainant.”
The woman returned to Oahu after making the report and has not yet come back to school, Chang said.
Asked if the woman would face any punitive repercussions from the school over filing the false report, Chang said he hoped the student would issue “a public apology” to the university “and possibly, if she’s here, (serve) some community service.”
“As far as any (other) penalties, I think she’s been penalized enough with all this media attention,” he said. “Obviously, she’s going through some kind of crisis and appears to be crying out for help. We don’t know what that is and we don’t know how to help her.”
Chang said the campus provides mental health counseling for students in need and that an incident such as this “is very rare in this small community.”
The federal Clery Act requires university campuses to compile and make available to the public on-campus crime report statistics. Between 2009-2012, there were seven reported “forcible sex offenses” on the main UH-Hilo campus — three in 2010 and four in 2011 but none for 2009 or 2012, according to the school’s website.
Chang called the initial sex assault report and its subsequent recantation “a very unusual situation because much of the information came from the social media.”
“With the advent of social media, some of the inexperienced journalists on the blogs take advantage of things that they hear and print it before administrators and the police even get the information out there, which excites and alarms everyone,” he said. “I believe we did what we could, knowing the information that we had. Basically, much of the information presented was inconsistent information, but we did what we could knowing what we do. And I think we responded appropriately and responsibly.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.