Witnesses Say Cops Make Rape Cases Go Away

By Colleen Flaherty

WeNews correspondent

Friday, September 17, 2010

A woman who was robbed and sexually assaulted in 2004 wound up as a suspect in her assailant's crime. This week she told her story at a congressional hearing into the under-reporting and poor policing of rape and sex-assault charges.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Sarah Reedy was working at a Gulf Station in Cranberry, Pa., in 2004 when a man came into the store and held the 19-year-old at gunpoint. After robbing the register, he held the gun to her temple and forced her to give him oral sex.

She immediately called 911. Detective Frank Evanson didn't believe her story.

Instead, he accused her of stealing the money herself. Police arrested her six months later for theft, despite several rape cases mirroring her own. She was in jail for five days before being released on bail, all while four months pregnant. Her long road came to an end when her attacker, a serial rapist, was caught and confessed to the assault.

Reedy told her story at a Sept. 14 Senate committee hearing on the under-reporting of rape and poor police response to rape accusations.

Several others witnesses testified alongside Reedy concerning the repeated and systemic mishandling of sex crimes across the country. These included Scott Berkowitz, president of Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network in Washington, D.C.; Lawanda Ravoira, director of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency Center for Girls in Jacksonville, Fla.; and Susan B. Carbon, director of the Office of Violence Against Women in Washington, D.C.

At one point in the proceedings Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota voiced worries, echoed by others, that some police departments bill victims for a rape kit that can be used as criminal evidence and expect them to seek reimbursement.

Crimes Go Uninvestigated

Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project, a rights group in Philadelphia, petitioned for the hearing.

Tracy was made aware of this problem by a Philadelphia Inquirer story about thousands of rapes and other sex crimes that were not investigated by the city police department in 1999.

"Thousands of sexual assault cases--almost one third of all reports from the mid-1980s through 1998--were buried in a non-crime code. The victims were never advised that their complaints had been shelved," Tracy told lawmakers at the hearing.

Philadelphia was not alone. Newspapers across the country contacted Tracy with similar stories about the shelving of rape reports in New York City, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cleveland.

"Initially I thought the reports of egregious police conduct were isolated incidents. However, viewing the totality of the news accounts, it is clear that we are seeing chronic and systemic patterns," said Tracy.

The Baltimore Sun found the number of rape cases reported had declined by 80 percent since 1992, while the percentage of rape cases classified as "unfounded," or not worthy of investigation, had tripled.

The New York Times reported that the number of rapes in New York City declined more than 35 percent between 2005 and 2009, yet the number of sex crimes classified as misdemeanors rose 6 percent with a dramatic increase in forcible rape complaints classified as "unfounded."

The panel of witnesses testified about several problems with sex crimes, including a general reluctance to discuss the issue, the lack of standard criminal definitions and inaccurate statistics.

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One week ago tonight I was in downtown Portland Oregon with my little sister and another friend to see a friend's band play. After leaving the show at around 2:30 am we walked around and saw a small woman who was so intoxicated that she couldn't stand on her own surrounded by 4 men. When I went over to offer her help I was verbally attacked by the men, who admitted that they didn't know her, but continued to "flirt" with her. I called the police, and when they finally arrived one of the men was literally carrying her off. Rather than try to talk to the young woman, asking the man who he was, or where they were going. The police did not even exit their vehicle, and simply stated "She has the right to go home with whomever she chooses." I yelled that it didn't really seem like she was "choosing" anything right now, and the police drove away.

I pray that she got home safe, and I know that the Portland police department will not protect me.

Submitted by userfriendly (2 years ago)

It's hard to believe that there aren't any and I should think, many, comments on this topic. In addition to my experience, I know scores of women who were treated this way or knew that they would be treated this way and chose not to further traumatize themselves by reporting the rape to the police. If you don't report it, you aren't taken seriously and if you do report it, your aren't taken seriously...at a time when your trauma most needs to be acknowledged. Wonderful to be a woman in America instead of one of those foreign countries where women are treated so badly, isn't it.