Court affirms conviction in false rape case

PORT HURON – Sara Ylen will not be leaving prison.

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the 40-year-old Lexington woman’s conviction and sentencing for falsely accusing two men of raping her.

The court’s Friday decision says there were no errors made by the judge in sentencing Ylen to at least five years in prison.

Ylen’s appeal argued there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction, that she was denied a fair trial, she had ineffective counsel, and the trial court abused its discretion by departing from sentencing guideline recommendations.

She was sentenced in January 2014 in St. Clair County to five years in prison after being found guilty by a jury of filing a false report of rape and tampering with evidence.

Ylen had claimed she’d been raped at her Lexington home in the late morning of Sept. 18, 2012. The men she accused had sturdy alibis, and doctors said bruising from the alleged assault wiped off with some gauze.

Her conviction came about a year after James Grissom — a man convicted in 2003 of raping Ylen — was released from prison after nearly a decade behind bars.

In February 2014, Ylen was sentenced to a year in jail for health care fraud. Ylen pleaded no contest to obtaining more than $20,000 in services under false pretenses. She had said she had terminal cancer.

Ylen’s name became well-known when she asked the Times Herald to recount the story of her rape and Grissom’s conviction. Her story was published in a series of articles in 2003 under the title, “Sara’s Story.” In 2009, Ylen told the Times Herald she believed she'd contracted HPV, which developed into cervical cancer, during the alleged Grissom assault.

Contact Liz Shepard at 810-989-6273 or lshepard@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @lvshepard.