The woman whose false rape claims put an innocent man behind bars for nearly four years was sentenced to one to three years in prison on perjury charges. After pleading guilty to making up a story that she was gang raped in Upper Manhattan in 2005 to elicit sympathy from friends, Biurny Peguero Gonzalez was hit with jail time. "I question myself every day as to how I could have done this," she told the judge at her sentencing hearing.
Gonzalez's false accusations lead to a 20-year prison sentence for Bronx construction worker William McCaffrey. That conviction was overturned late last year after Gonzalez underwent a religious conversion and admitted she made up the story. DNA evidence revealed that a bite mark on her arm was made by a woman, not man—bolstering the prosecution's case that Gonzalez invented the story to make her female friends feel sorry for her, then backed up her phony claims using injuries she suffered in a fight with her pals. Gonzalez's lawyers argued that she was so drunk on the night of the incident that she started to believe her own lies.
"What happened in this case is one of the worst things that can possibly happen in our criminal-justice system," said the judge as he issued sentence, which allows Gonzalez to be eligible for parole in one year. According to the Post, prosecutors wanted her to be sentenced to two to six years "so that there's a chance that she will serve what he served." McCaffrey said he hopes Gonzalez "doesn't go through what I went though," considering that in prison "rape is the worse crime possible." He added that anyone who would "lie and paint somebody as a rapist is worse than a real rapist or a real murderer," but said he wishes her "the best of luck," the tabloid reports. "Jail isn't easy," he said.
