Molly Tumanic

When Madison police announced they were no longer looking for a suspect in the Audrey Seiler “kidnapping” case, I immediately flashed back to a more local example of much ado about nothing.

And while former UW-Eau Claire student Emily Piette didn’t fake a kidnapping – instead, she claimed an assailant tried to stab her and later recanted the story, admitting to fabricating it – it nonetheless involves an eerily similar set of circumstances. And it raises similar issues in my mind.

Seiler, 20, disappeared from her Madison apartment building on March 27, prompting a massive four-day search. After police found her in a nearby marshy area, she claimed to have been abducted at knifepoint from her place of residence. She gave a description of her attacker, prompting a manhunt in the area.

Citing inconsistencies in Seiler’s story, police later stopped looking for a suspect. Assistant Madison Police Chief Noble Wray told the Associated Press Friday there had been no abduction.

The story probably sounded familiar to many Eau Claire students. Like Seiler, Piette, then 19, accused a non-existent suspect of a crime that never happened. Piette claimed to have been attacked by a man with a knife behind Governors Hall on the evening of Nov. 5. She gave police a detailed description of her “attacker,” down to the clothes he was wearing – shorts in November – and what he said to her.

Later admitting that she fabricated the event, Piette pled guilty to resisting or obstructing an officer. As part of a plea bargain, she was sentenced to perform 80 hours of community service.

I feel bad for the women in these cases. I really do. Something must have been very wrong in their lives that prompted them to fabricate these events. But that does not excuse their actions, which doubtlessly caused considerable emotional and financial harm to those who had no choice but to be involved in these “incidents.”

Due largely to police overtime costs, the Seiler case cost authorities about $100,000, according to an article in Monday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. And while Piette’s case obviously didn’t have the high monetary price tag attached, it nonetheless cost University Police and other officials their time and energy. It’s what parents tell young children when they experiment with calling 911 at a young age: “While the police were dealing with you, someone who really needed help might not have gotten it.”

Aside from what these faked incidents cost in time and money, the emotional toll on these students’ families must have been enormous. This point is obvious and needs no elaboration.

What perhaps bears examining, however, is what a “crime” like this does to the psyche of a community. As a student who lives in Chancellors Hall, not far from where the “attempted stabbing” took place in November, I feared for my safety in the days following the attack. My position at The Spectator necessitated that I work a lot of late nights, and I’d often come home at 3 a.m., park at the far end of the Towers Hall lot (spaces are hard to come by in the middle of the night) and walk to my room in the dark.

What was once a safe community had become a dangerous place overnight. And while being aware of your surroundings and cautious in sketchy situations is smart, no one should have to live in fear. I would imagine students in Madison had a similar reaction in the days following Seiler’s “kidnapping.”

I have sympathy for Seiler and Piette, but that doesn’t change the fact that what they did was wrong.

I cannot imagine what the parents of Dru Sjodin, the North Dakota college student missing since November, were feeling when they heard Seiler had faked her abduction. Any sense of hope they might have gleaned from Seiler’s safe return would have been immediately dashed.

Perhaps the media are partly to blame, especially for the Seiler case; kidnapping cases, particularly those involving young women, seem to capture the headlines like nothing else. But media frenzy or no, these individuals caused a lot of pain, anguish and just plain wasted time. Hopefully others in their situation will see a counselor or otherwise seek help, rather than turning to such acts of desperation.