Rachel Soderblom JACKSON, MI – A 34-year-old Blackman Township woman was sentenced to 100 days in jail for falsely accusing a man of rape in order to conceal a consensual sexual motel encounter from her girlfriend and partner.
Rachel Soderblom must also serve 2 ½ years on probation and pay $1,483 in fines and costs, Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson ruled earlier this month, according to court records.
Soderblom, now in the county jail, pleaded guilty as charged in June to falsely reporting a felony.
She told police a man attacked her from behind and raped her on June 20, 2015 as she retrieved items from the back seat of her vehicle in the driveway of her home on Rosehill Road, just north of I-94.
She underwent an examination, medical personnel collected DNA evidence and a man was identified through a DNA index system as the probable culprit.
Police arrested the man late last year and he spent about 16 days, including Christmas and the New Year's holiday, in jail before he could return to his family.
Shocked at the accusations, he initially denied knowing Soderblom, but, as he sat in a cell, he pieced together what had happened and shared the information with his lawyer, Susan Dehncke, who brought the details to prosecuting authorities.
He said he and Soderblom met at a McDonald's, where she worked as a manager, and the two had consensual sex June 19, 2015 at Americas Best Value Inn.
Blackman-Leoni Township public safety Detective Joseph Merritt found proof of Soderblom renting a room and determined the vehicle associated with the room belonged to the man and his wife, according to a police report. Further, a McDonald's employee said she introduced Soderblom to the man and the pair had been talking.
When confronted, Soderblom at first fabricated more layers to the story, but she eventually conceded she knew the man. They had flirted, she said, and he contended he could "make her go straight."
Any reasons for her lies were not entirely clear. Then living with her partner and girlfriend, Soderblom told Merritt she "went to a point where she never has before," meaning sex with a man, the detective wrote in his report. She said she generated the idea of a sexual assault because there had been a recent break-in in her neighborhood. She figured no one would question an attack and authorities would never make an arrest, the police report states.
The prosecutor's office quickly dismissed the case against the man and he was freed from jail.
"The only thing I was wrong for was cheating on my wife," said the man said in February.
A day in jail is too long for an innocent person to sit in jail, he said.