Woman Sentenced for Fabricating Crimes By Lower Merion Cop After Affair
By Brad Segall
LOWER MERION, Pa. (CBS) -- A Montgomery County judge has sentenced a 28-year-old woman to at least six months behind bars for lying to a grand jury about accusations she made publicly about being sexually assaulted by a Lower Merion police officer.
Prosecutors say Gabrielle Drexler was having an affair with the cop but when she found out he was married with children, she turned on him.
Drexler pleaded guilty in June to a felony perjury charge for lying to a grand jury that was investigating those accusations in 2011 (see related story).
Today, a judge sentenced her to six to 23 months behind bars -- a sentence that prosecutor John Gradel says is warranted.
"She said that she had proof of the officer's sexual assault, and she created that proof out of whole cloth and then lied about it to the grand jury. And we can't have that."
Gradel says Drexler altered some e-mails to make it look like she was assaulted and stalked. She then took her case to a township commissioners' meeting, standing up to say she was being stalked and assaulted.
The officer is back on patrol but says the allegations have had a tremendous impact on his family and career.
Adds Gradel, the prosecutor: "He was a married guy, he shouldn't have been doing it on duty, and he paid the price for that administratively. But he didn't commit a crime here."
