A False Accuser Has Been Sentenced to Jail

But her punishment and official reactions to her crime are patently inadequate.

Anjela Borisova Urumova of Bristol Township, Pennsylvania [pictured above], was recently sentenced for a false allegation of sexual assault against Daniel Pierson, a 41-year-old man from Lower Makefield Township.

Urumova, 20, had claimed that Pierson tried to kidnap her in a parking lot on the evening of April 16^th 2024, allegedly grabbing her from behind, punching her, attempting to pull her pants down, and dragging her towards his vehicle in the Redner’s grocery store lot.

She provided a detailed description of her claimed assailant, later picking him out of a police lineup. Pierson was charged with multiple felony offences and jailed.

The entire encounter, however, was a fabrication. Urumova had never met Pierson and had no reason to accuse him. She had seen him in the parking lot previously and found him “creepy.” I wrote about the story in detail here.

Now she has at last been sentenced, receiving a jail term of “45 days to 23 months” in the Bucks County jail.

That will mean, I presume, that if she stays out of trouble and says the right things to corrections officers, she will be a free woman in about six weeks.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office details other punishments:

“In addition to the county jail sentence, Common Pleas Judge Stephen A. Corr sentenced the defendant to one year of probation and ordered her to undergo a mental health evaluation, have no contact with the victim or his family and pay $3,600 in restitution to the victim.”

Well, it’s something, but not much.

Urumova will spend little more time in jail than did the man she falsely accused. The $3,600 restitution might as well be nothing for all the good it will do. As a rape claimant, Urumova would have been entitled to up to $35,000 from the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape Victims Compensation Assistance program. It’s not clear if Daniel Pierson is entitled to anything.

**

Urumova’s crime, let us be clear, was not an honest mistake, not the fruit of duress, not even the result of a powerful impulse soon regretted. She retracted the allegation only after police confronted her with hard evidence, including cell phone data and street surveillance video, showing that no part of the crime could have occurred as she said.

Her victim [pictured above] sat in jail for 31 days because of her make-believe, and he would likely still be behind bars if Urumova’s story hadn’t been so easily disproved. One has to wonder why it took 31 days for police to check the video evidence in the area to discover that the victim’s truck was nowhere near the parking lot where Urumova claimed he had assaulted her. Urumova has not offered an explanation for her false report, still less any sort of apology.

She deserves a sentence that would not only correspond to the gravity of what she did, but would send a clear message that American courts recognize the serious harms of false allegations.

**

Unfortunately, statements by the district attorney and the chief deputy district attorney, both women, instead showcase the gynocentric bias of the justice system.

District Attorney Jennifer Schorn did express (somewhat rote) concern about the victim’s suffering and that of his family; but she expressed near-equal concern about the potential impact of the crime on other accusers:

“Not only did this targeted false report impact the victim and his family in unimaginable ways, but there is also a profound ripple effect. A crime like this can shatter the community’s confidence in the system. It can jeopardize prosecutions of legitimate crimes of sexual violence."

Note how Schorn’s declaration quickly skates past the actual victim. While it may not be groundless for her to fear an impact on sexual assault prosecutions, such a hypothetical should never be claimed to rival the immediate and undeniable suffering of a wrongfully imprisoned man.

Schorn is quick to pass over the victim’s “unimaginable” suffering. All deep suffering is, to some extent, “unimaginable,” but that is no reason why a good-faith attempt to imagine it shouldn’t be made. Schorn might have discussed in detail and in vivid language the mental anguish of the victim and his family. She should have quoted the victim’s words and those of family members about their shock, fear, lost wages, lost opportunities, anger, sense of betrayal, and trauma.

Moreover, she should have clarified what she meant in referring to the “ripple effect” by which “the community’s confidence in the system” is weakened. One hopes she was referring to the millions of American men who are coming to the realization that no man is safe from a false accusation—whether because he looks “creepy” or, alternatively, because he looks sexy or nerdy or unattainable or wealthy or entitled. Confidence in the so-called justice system should indeed be weakened as a result of such awareness. How many innocent men have been locked away in prisons for years over equally baseless allegations? Schorn avoids any serious reckoning, falling back on vagaries about the need to prosecute rape.

And Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin M. McElroy is equally engaged in feminist re-direction. After thanking detectives “for continuing to investigate the case” (!!), she did explicitly acknowledge the hurt of the victim and his family. But she had notably little to say about the crime generally: no warning to other potential false accusers; no lamentation about the ease with which a false accusation can be made; no statement about the need for continual vigilance to protect the rights of the accused; and certainly no thunderous promise to hold false accusers accountable to the furthest extent of the law.

Instead, she reflected on women as the real victims. She might as well have said it explicitly: “Better 100 innocent men be imprisoned for rape than one potential rape accuser be deterred from coming forward.”

If you think I’m exaggerating, read the report of her words:

McElroy said she hopes the case doesn’t impact real sexual assault victims from coming forward. She said research suggests that very few women make false reports like the one the defendant committed. “To any woman who is sexually assaulted, we encourage them to come forward to law enforcement, even if they don’t know what they want to see happen or if they would want the case to be prosecuted,” she said. “It should be documented, investigated and they should be heard, and they shouldn’t be silenced with fear when they see things like this.” “It just makes this case all that more egregious that this woman claimed to be a victim and used the system, I don’t even know for what purpose, used this system to target a man she didn’t know. I would hope that it doesn’t have a chilling effect on women, but it is a concern.”

Any man who has ever been falsely accused, threatened with a false accusation, or fearful of a false accusation must feel his heart sink (or his blood pressure rise) upon reading such a ridiculously misplaced peroration. I’ve already reported, many times, on the lack of data on how rare or common false allegations actually are (the best explanation is by William Collins here): suffice it to say that nobody knows how many women make false reports like the one Urumova made. We know something about how many reports are proven false, but those are only the tip of the iceberg. The nature of a false report is that it hides itself.

It is the height of irresponsibility, therefore, for a chief deputy district attorney to be repeating feminist talking points. Her focus should be on the known crime, not on imagined ones. Feminist advocates have for decades chipped away at men’s avenues of defense against allegations of rape, with the result that false allegations are a serious threat. In this case, the victim didn’t even know his accuser. In cases where men do know their accuser, their peril is even greater.

The chief deputy district attorney cannot be bothered to imagine what it’s like to realize that one’s reputation, liberty, job prospects, and family security can be so easily taken away.

False allegations do hurt women, of course, though not mainly in deterring rape prosecutions. They hurt women’s accepted status as an innocent victim class, unimpeachable in word and deed. They show women as fully capable of malice and deceit. The more false allegations come to light, the more men see the real nature of some women—and that’s a good thing. The entire feminist rape industry, with its repeated mantra about believing women, is revealed as grotesquely over-stated and dangerous.

In conclusion, it is good to see Urumova punished for her crime. One can only hope that her victim—who, like so many male victims, is not interested in speaking about his experience—can rebuild his life. Sadly, widespread recognition of the seriousness of false accusations remains a long way off.