Charlie Rogers, Nebraska Lesbian And Alleged Hate Crime Victim, Charged With Making False Report

A Nebraska-based woman who claimed to have been the victim of an anti-gay hate crime last month has been charged with making a false report.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that an arrest warrant for Charlie Rogers was issued after investigators say they found no sign of a struggle in the living room where the 33-year-old claimed she was attacked. She has since been released on a personal recognizance bond after a brief court appearance, the publication notes.

"There was no apparent blood on the bedspread; even though Ms. Rogers reported she was rolled on to her stomach after she had been cut on her arms, abdomen, chest and front of her legs while being held down,” the warrant stated, according to the Journal Star.

Rogers has reportedly pleaded not guilty to the charge.

A small business owner who lives openly as a lesbian, Rogers originally told police she was attacked by three masked men who broke into her home and bound her with zip ties before carving homophobic slurs into her skin, dumping gasoline on her floor and lighting it with a match, on July 22. Friends told local ABC news affilate KLKN-TV that anti-gay slurs were also found spraypainted throughout Rogers' basement.

Immediately after the alleged crime, hundreds of local LGBT rights advocates and allies turned out at candlelight vigils in support of Rogers. Just days later, however, investigators told the Journal Star they had no suspects and "hadn't ruled out the possibility" that Rogers herself had somehow staged the attack.

In an emotional interview with KETV-TV, Rogers responded to those doubts, saying that her "world had been changed forever" by the alleged attack. "The idea that people think it's a lie is so hurtful," she said at the time. "For people to think this doesn't happen here, it does. It did."