Woman gets 3 years for false rape claim
She lied about being assaulted by a police chief.
State agents obtained cellphone records that showed Davis made Google searches that included the phrase ‘can you go to jail for lying about a cop raping you.’
A judge handed CLEVELAND— down a three-year prison sentence to a woman who admitted she falsely accused Parma Heights Police Chief Steve Scharschmidt of rape.
Sylvia Davis, 42, will be on probation for three years after she completes her stint at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. She pleaded guilty in January to intimidation, tampering with records and tampering with evidence charges, all third-degree felonies that carried a maximum of three years in prison.
In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dismissed charges of extortion.
Davis, of Brooklyn, came clean about her allegations after state agents confronted her with multiple inconsistencies in her story. They also obtained cellphone records that showed Davis made Google searches that included the phrase “can you go to jail for lying about a cop raping you.”
Davis filed a written report with Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department investigators in August accusing Scharschmidt of raping her on July 26, according to records.
Davis told investigators that Scharschmidt picked her up in a car while she was walking along a street and told her she owed him a favor from a previous case. She then claimed that Scharschmidt drove her back to the police station and raped her in his office.
The sheriff ’s department turned the case over to the Ohio Attorney General Office’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Agents with the bureau interviewed Davis the same day, court records say.
Davis’ story started began to fall apart within days of her accusation.
Surveillance video backed up Scharschmidt’s alibi. He told investigators that he went to Yorktown Lanes the night that Davis said the assault occurred, that his mother fell down and hurt herself and that he and other family members took her to a hospital to get checked out. He spent much of the evening there.
Investigators also quickly found multiple inconsistencies in Davis’ version of the events. The car she said Scharschmidt was driving did not match the one he drove, and the sketch that she drew of his office, where she said the attack took place, was not accurate, prosecutors said.
Agents found the Google search on her cellphone, as well as searches of “can you go to jail for lying to police on a police report” and “Parma Heights sex scandal,” prosecutors said.
They confronted her with the evidence and, 13 days after she first reported the rape, she confessed to making it up, prosecutors said.