A Virginia woman plead guilty on Tuesday to falsely claiming a Navy sailor sexually assaulted her two years ago.
Miranda S. Overton, 21, claimed in 2018 that a Navy sailor sexually assaulted her. She made her accusation to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent in Norfolk, Virginia and claimed the sailor raped and sodomized her at Naval Station Norfolk, the Navy Times reported.
A statement from the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia said the woman made the accusation in July 2018. The accused sailor was interviewed and said he had met Overton on an online dating app and the two had consensual sex on the night in question. Navy investigators then reviewed surveillance footage from the night in question, which showed Overton and the sailor kissing in an elevator just prior to the alleged assault. They also obtained a statement that Overton gave during a sexual assault forensic examination. During her exam, Overton admitted she had agreed to have sex with the sailor prior to meeting him in person.
Investigators then spoke with Overton a second time and she admitted that she made a false allegation against the sailor and that she had made a false allegation in the past as well. She told investigators that she made up the story because she was afraid her “significant other” would break up with her if it was discovered she cheated with the sailor.
On January 22, 2020, federal prosecutors charged Overton with a single count of making a false statement to a department or agency of the United States. On February 11, a court filing revealed she had plead guilty. DOJ officials said in their statement that her plea had been accepted.
Overton faces up to five years in prison, though it is highly unlikely she will get anywhere near that. In the past, women who have falsely accused men have received little to no jail time for their crimes, even though the named men would face decades in prison and had their lives upended due to the false accusation. No doubt the simple fact that Overton made the accusation was enough to cause damage to the falsely accused sailor. Luckily, his name has not been splashed all over media outlets, but just the rumor that he was accused of raping a woman is likely enough to cause trauma and career problems for him.
As The Daily Wire has reported previously, women who made false accusations receive little punishment. A pastor who claimed a teenage boy raped his girlfriend – an accusation that led to the teenager getting arrested – spent just one night in jail for her crime, even though she also allegedly had child porn on her phone and groomed a teenage girl for sex. Taylier Tibbetts, who falsely accused the father of her child of abusing the boy, manipulated photos to make the boy look abused, and tried to raise money off of her lie, was given a suspended sentence of just 30 days in jail and a $350 fine. Nikki Yovino, who falsely accused two Sacred Heart University football players of rape received one of the harshest sentences a false accuser has received in recent memories – one year in prison.