Treva Throneberry (born 1969) is an American who pretended to be a teenage victim of sexual and satanic ritual abuse. She spent several years traveling the country, residing in foster homes and colleges, using several aliases. As of 2003, she maintains that she's a woman named Brianna Stewart who was born in 1981.
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Treva Joyce Throneberry was born May 18, 1969, in Wichita Falls, Texas. Her family later moved to Electra. Her uncle allegedly molested her and her sisters, though later Treva told the police it was her father.
Throneberry left Electra for Wichita Falls in December 1985 when she was fifteen years old, enrolled in the local high school and cut contact with her family. She began to tell stories about how she had been abducted and raped by Satanists. A year later she was in a local mental hospital for five months and refused to speak with her family when they visited. Later she was sent to Lena Pope Home for troubled girls in Fort Worth, Texas. She kept a distance from her family, sending only a letter now and then. She graduated from Arlington Heights High School in 1987 and moved to Arlington, Texas. Eventually she quit her job as a janitor and began to wander around the USA.
For most of the 1990s, Throneberry wandered around the country using various names and identities. She said she was a teenager with an abusive background, lived in homeless shelters and foster homes and enrolled in local high schools. She said that her Satanist father had raped her and killed her mother or sometimes accused her foster parents of abuse for which police could not find any evidence. All cases were dismissed.
In 1996 Throneberry appeared in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She said that her name was "Stephanie Danielle Lewis" and that she was sixteen and was fleeing her Satanist parents with the help of the religious underground. After eighteen days of investigation, police contacted a girl she had known in Texas and found out who she really was. She was arrested, charged with giving false information and sentenced to nine days in jail. After her release she disappeared again and continued her wandering.
In 1998 she lived in Vancouver, Washington, as sixteen-year-old Brianna Stewart, attended Evergreen High School, and lived in various foster homes. She had a boyfriend for a year and a half, Kenny Dunn and told him about her alleged abuse. First she claimed that she originated from Mobile, Alabama. Sympathetic benefactors gave her money and shelter but she eventually betrayed their trust by making false claims of abuse. In hindsight, many of the foster homes said they began to suspect that she was not a teenager. One dentist noticed that Stewart no longer had wisdom teeth.
Stewart graduated from Evergreen High School with the class of 2000 and enrolled in Clark College. She said that she planned to become a lawyer and children's advocate.
In January 2001 she tried to get an official birth certificate so she could obtain a Social Security number. When her fingerprints were checked, her original identity was revealed, leading to her arrest in Vancouver, Washington.
On March 22, 2001, Throneberry was arrested for theft, fraud, and perjury for trying to obtain legal documents with false identity. She had defrauded the state for foster care and college tuition worth $4670. She could not raise bail of $20,000. Other charges around the country also increased the load.
Throneberry continued to insist that she was Brianna Stewart and refused to acknowledge her parents. Authorities proved her original identity with fingerprints and DNA testing. Psychologists and lawyers began to study her, trying to find out if she was a con artist or delusional.
Her trial started in November 2001 in Vancouver. State prosecutors charged that Throneberry was a con artist who had intentionally taken advantage of the social security system for personal gain. Throneberry fired her court-appointed lawyer and decided to defend herself in court. She was not successful and received three years and two months for fraud and perjury and was sent to the Washington Correction Center for Women. The judge recommended that she receive psychotherapy in prison.
Throneberry was released on June 18, 2003, after two years. As of 2003, she continued to maintain that she is Brianna Stewart and tried to appeal her fraud conviction.