Woman who lied about rape gets year for lying about cancer

A Michigan woman who faked stories of rape and collected more than $100,000 in gifts and care for false claims of cancer was sentenced to a year Wednesday. Sara Ylen's sentence in Sanilac County will run concurrently with another five-year term imposed in St. Clair County, the Port Huron Times Herald reported. She was convicted there in December of filing a false rape report and tampering with evidence and sentenced in January. Ylen, 38, appeared in court shackled at the ankles and said little during the hearing. She pleaded no contest to the fraud charges in January. "You took advantage of the good will and generosity of people who were more than willing to assist you, all based on lies," Sanilac County Circuit Judge Don Teeple said. "You also went to extraordinary lengths to defraud your healthcare provider of over $90,000 for medical treatment which you did not require." Teeple ordered repayment for hospice treatment Ylen received and contributions made for her care. Ylen first said she had been raped in 2001 in a parking lot. The man she named, James Grissom, was convicted and spent more than a decade in jail before being granted a new trial. In 2003, she went public about the rape, with the Times Herald running "Sara's Story" about the supposed sexual assault. Several years later, Ylen said she had cervical cancer from being infected with the HPV virus during the sexual assault. A hospice nurse visited her regularly between 2009 and 2011 and Crowell Wesleyan Church raised $10,000 for her. In 2012, Ylen once again said she had been raped. But investigators discovered the men she named as her assailants had alibis and she eventually faced criminal charges herself.