A woman in Ann Arbor, MI has admitted that she was not a victim of a post-Election Day hate crime, but in fact scratched her own face. She has since pleaded guilty to filing a false report. She had initially claimed that she was targeted for a Brexit pin that she was wearing, but eventually admitted that the attack did not happen.
Halley Bass, 21, said that she was suffering from depression at the time of the attack and had scratched herself in the face with a pin after becoming upset in class. In her embarrassment about the scratch, she developed the "hate crime" story.
"I was suffering from depression at the time," Bass told Judge Elizabeth Pollard Hines. "I made a superficial scratch on my face. It was visible and I was embarrassed about what I'd done. So I made up a story and told a friend that a stranger had done it while I was walking. I was encouraged to report it to the police. I made the mistake of doing that."
At the time, Bass claimed her attack was part of the surge in hate crimes following the election of Donald Trump a week earlier. She told police she was targeted for wearing a solidarity pin connected to Great Britain's "Brexit" vote.
Bass' admission is the latest in a series of debunked "hate crimes" that supposedly occurred after the election. In December, another University of Michigan student admitted that she had made up a story about a man who threatened to light her headscarf on fire.
While I'm glad that there's no phantom slasher wandering the streets of Ann Arbor, it is troubling that someone is willing to run away with a fake hate crime about being attacked for something related to Brexit. (Really? Of all things?) The world isn't that bad of a place--and honesty is the best policy.