FARMINGTON – A Massachusetts teenager has been charged with filing a false report and causing false public alarm for fabricating a story that she was raped in a parking lot on the University of Maine’s Farmington campus.

Nicole Marie Armitage, 18, of Norfolk, Mass., faces up to 364 days in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted.

Franklin County Sheriff’s Department investigator David St. Laurent said Armitage also might be asked to pay restitution for the overtime that police put in investigating the case.

Police said Armitage reported that she was raped on Sept. 26 by a muscular man in his 30s with a panther-head tattoo on his arm. Armitage was a freshman at the school but voluntarily left the school after she recanted her story.

The report caused alarm on the small campus and triggered an “intensive manhunt,” St. Laurent said.

Contacted at home, Armitage’s mother declined comment.

St. Laurent said Armitage was charged not simply because of the false report, but because of the panic it caused at the college and in the community.

“This is the worst false report case I’ve been involved in,” he said. “There was so much panic.”

St. Laurent last week mailed a summons to Armitage’s local police department, where it will be served on her.