Law enforcement agencies surveyed by CNN reported destroying rape kits after they stopped investigating cases. Reporters determined that hundreds were trashed before the statutes of limitations expired.
Experts in policing, trauma, forensics and the law analyzed the cases you’ll read here. They found flawed investigations played a role in the destruction of evidence. Some departments defended their decisions; others acknowledged mistakes. | See “One department's botched investigations” »
“What CNN discovered is a systemic problem,” said retired San Diego Police Sgt. Joanne Archambault. “There are mistakes in these cases, but the worst mistake in each is the destruction of evidence.”
Meet our experts
Experts in policing, trauma, DNA and the law reviewed these investigations. Hover over the photos to learn more about them.
SC | NORTH CHARLESTON POLICE DEPARTMENT | #11-0041416
Raped at knifepoint
Case closed after 17 days
Kept 11 months
Not tested
Victim uncooperative
VICTIM UNCOOPERATIVE
On November 5, 2011, a South Carolina woman reports that a man she knows and used to have sex with showed up at her home, held a knife to her throat and raped her.
The suspect then took off his pants after he pulled a knife from his back pocket, and pulled down the victim's pants and got on top of her. The victim yelled, "get off of me, you are hurting me," and he said "no, I want this pussy." The victim said he held the knife to her neck while he had sex with her. The victim stated that she tried to scream, and she was able to push him off.
When he stops raping her, the victim tells him she is calling the police and walks out of her home. After her attacker leaves, she goes back inside and notices that her “tv box is missing.” She runs across the street and calls North Charleston police.
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“This is an opportunity to interview any witnesses who saw her, who might have seen him.”
She undergoes a forensic exam and, in addition to her rape kit, police take into evidence a used condom, a pillowcase and the suspect’s shirt.
The woman calls police several times, offering more information to investigators: the suspect’s possible nickname and last name and that he might have been arrested in the past.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“She’s actively trying to help the investigation.”
Police run the last name through several databases, including a jail management system and motor vehicle records, but are unable to identify the suspect.
An officer asks the victim if her attacker was once a “client” and she says he was not but that she has had sex with the man previously. The detective assigned to the case notes the victim’s arrest history.
NOTE: VICTIM WAS ARRESTED ON 11/4/09 FOR SOLICITING FOR PROSTITUTION
“The detective awkwardly interjects her prostitution arrest from two years ago into his report. Why?”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“You have to wonder if they didn’t work this case very hard because she had a history of working as a prostitute.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“This jumped out at me, too. Offenders are looking for someone who is vulnerable, someone who is less likely to report the crime… less likely to be believed if they do report.”
Sex workers are at an increased risk for sexual assault, according to police, victim advocates and law enforcement experts interviewed by CNN. Experts said it’s particularly challenging for prostitutes to report rape because they could be arrested and they fear not being believed. The stereotype that exists in society, they said, exists in law enforcement: that prostitutes cannot be raped.
On November 15, 2011, 10 days after reporting being raped, the woman calls police and an officer tells her she must talk with the detective handling her case. The detective tries to call her, doesn’t reach her and leaves a voicemail asking her to call him. He leaves her another voicemail the next day.
Seven days later, the detective closes the case because he has not heard back from the woman. He notes she is uncooperative and that “the suspect is unknown.”
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“I think she not only was cooperative, she contributed. I think her contacting police and adding information where she could was her trying to help. Did she have all the answers? No. But she wasn’t completely MIA either.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There were times when I couldn’t get ahold of a victim either. But it’s important to leave a good first impression and provide that safety net — say, ‘Okay, we are going to do some follow up work. I’d like to interview you more, in detail. How do I do that? Is it safe for me to text you? Email you?’ So closing this case in 17 days? Not thorough.”
Her rape kit, the condom and other evidence collected by police are not tested.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“If this was an aggravated assault, a robbery or a murder case, what would you do? Would we test all the evidence? You bet we would. Is there a difference in the way that we treat rape?”
Testing the victim’s rape kit might have helped identify the suspect. The assailant’s DNA, if obtained during the forensic exam, could have been uploaded to a national database system that contains more than 17 million DNA profiles from convicts, arrestees, detainees and crime scenes. Through the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, run by the FBI and fed by labs in every state and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, an unknown assailant’s DNA could be matched to the DNA profile of a known offender already in the system.
But in this case, police destroy the victim’s untested rape kit on November 7, 2012, one year after she reported her rape, even though there was no statute of limitations for any criminal offenses in South Carolina at the time, nor is there now.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The bottom line: This is a poor investigation. There’s absolutely no excuse for destroying an untested rape kit in an unknown suspect case in a state with no statute of limitations.”
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“The kit should have been tested. It could have yielded some fundamental information, linked him to other crimes. This is an inadequate, substandard investigation.”
Ron Lacher, the detective assigned to this case, did not respond to CNN’s efforts to reach him by certified mail and calls to his home and the department.
CNN asked Major Scott Perry of the North Charleston Police detective bureau why the rape kit was destroyed in a state with no statute of limitations on any criminal offenses. His response: “Each case is evaluated on its own facts.”
Perry referred CNN to Lacher to answer why the kit was not submitted for testing.
Since 2010, North Charleston police destroyed nine rape kits tied to cases that still could be prosecuted; four were never tested.
Perry said that the victim’s history as a prostitute had no bearing on how this case was handled. “All cases are investigated thoroughly regardless of who the victim is,” he wrote in an email.
Asked if he thought it was appropriate that the department gave the victim only seven days to reply to a phone call before deeming her uncooperative and closing the case, Perry did not give a direct answer, but wrote: “Unfortunately, many times we find that victims with this lifestyle are transient and difficult to locate.”
Perry said that had the victim re-approached police about her case, which is her right in a state with no statute of limitations on sexual assault, the department would have reopened it.
But, he conceded, the fact that her untested rape kit was destroyed would have made the case “more difficult to prosecute.”
On September 21, 2015, a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, woman tells police she suspects a man drugged and sexually assaulted her early that morning and the previous night.
She tells an officer that she met the man at her job and got to know him through a dating website; they were on their second consecutive date on September 20.
He picks her up at 7 p.m., and they hang out at his home. He gives her a beer. She is hesitant to take a drink from someone she’s just met, but she watches him open it so she thinks it will be fine.
Between the time he opened the beer and she took possession of it, she took her attention off of and the beer to check her cell phone.
After a few sips of the only beer she drank that night, she “immediately” begins “feeling tired,” which is not normal for her, and she suspects he put something in her drink when she looked away.
She tells the officer that on both dates the man mentioned the date-rape drug Rohypnol several times, saying that he knows where to get it and “other drugs that would be out of a victim’s system the day after” ingesting it. She says she thought there was something odd about the flavor of the beer he served her.
made a comment about not putting a ruffie in the beer.
“There are some real elements of a crime here. This is really a bad guy. He’s talking about roofies. She’s managing to stay awake. He seems like a predator. I’m reading this investigation and thinking, ‘Dig a little deeper here, guys.’”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“We train investigators to pay attention to the way a victim tells you he or she was feeling, what their instincts were. I know at this point that I’m going to look for drugs, drug packaging, for Internet searches of how to buy drugs with this suspect.”
Around midnight, the man asks why she is not drinking more beer. He wants to walk to a store to get more, and she goes with him. As they walk, he wraps his arm around her waist and shoulder. He buys beer; she buys food and water. On the way back to his home, she makes a point to memorize the name of the street where he lives. When they arrive there, she tells him she wants to go home. But she feels stuck. She knows that the bus is no longer running, and he’s been drinking so she doesn’t want him to drive. She agrees to sleep on his bed after he promises to sober up and then take her home.
He says to her:
This is a safe place. Your lady parts are safe. Nobody's going to touch them."
That makes her very uneasy, and she grows afraid. As she starts to fall asleep, he begins touching her, moving his hand over her breast and into her pants. She stops him, and says she barely knows him. He says he’s sorry. But then he says she should have known what to expect when she came there.
“You should have known coming here that this was going to happen.”
He is big and his “demeanor” frightens her, the officer notes in his report. She is afraid to leave and worries that “if she called for help, he would get angry and try to hurt her.”
She remembers him saying he will leave her alone, but when she begins to nod off again, he does something else.
As she started to fall asleep again, she noticed him touching her neck. believes he was checking her pulse.
The assault continues through the night. At one point, he penetrates her vagina with his fingers.
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“As a prosecutor, if this investigation were handed to me, I would have asked police to test her rape kit for touch DNA.”
She pretends to be asleep to see if that will make him leave her alone. It does not; he grabs her hand and makes her touch herself.
She rolls over on the bed, and he rolls on top of her. She pushes him off, he pulls her close again and starts touching her again
At 5:30 a.m., he tells her he’ll drive her home.
When she finally gets there, she feels “extremely drained,” she tells police. She’s asked if he ever penetrated her vagina with his penis. She says she doesn’t think so.
She undergoes a rape exam by a registered nurse. The nurse gives police the victim’s undergarments and the rape kit, which contains a sample of blood.
A day after the woman reports her assault, a detective is assigned to the case. The responding officer was able to match the suspect’s address (provided by the victim) and the picture on his dating website profile page with a booking photo the police have in their system.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s no information [in this case file] — what was the arrest for? Was it for rape? Was it a sexual offense? Did it include a similar course of conduct or MO? A thorough investigation starts with ‘Who is this suspect? What’s their background? Do they have any prior offenses that are related to this offense?’ Had they done that maybe they would have seen a serious red flag.”
According to court documents CNN found, the man’s prior criminal record included a sex offense.
In 2003, the prosecutor’s office in Coeur d’Alene had charged him with lewd conduct with a minor under 16. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to a lesser felony: injury to children. Court papers say that he committed the crime by “engaging in unlawful sexual relations” with the victim “under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death… by inflicting upon the child unjustifiable pain and mental suffering.”
He was sentenced to two years of probation and was ordered to stay away from the 15-year-old victim and her family.
On September 30, 2015, nine days after this reported assault, the detective goes to the woman’s workplace and records another interview with her. He notes that her account is “consistent” with what she told the responding officer.
About a week later, on October 6, the woman calls the detective with another detail. While she was in the room, the man was playing music from his computer and visited a few websites. She thinks the man might have recorded the assault on the computer webcam pointed at his bed. At one point during the evening, while he was in the bathroom, she had tried to Google something on his computer.
When came back into the room, he became extremely angry had been on his computer. thought it was odd how angry he became.
“This is not uncommon for someone who may have experienced trauma: fragmented memory. They may remember additional detail over time. There’s no documentation that the detective considered follow up on the computer which, again, tells me this isn’t thorough. I would be looking to get into this guy’s computer — big time.”
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“I would have asked for a search warrant of the suspect's home and computer. You could find your best evidence there if he recorded this whole incident.”
The detective calls the suspect on October 7, and he agrees to come to the police station for an interview the next day. But he doesn’t show up.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“This is not best practice. The detective has put the suspect on notice. ‘Yeah, I’ll come in tomorrow.’ That’ll give the suspect time to destroy or manipulate evidence that may or may not be a part of this case. It also gives him time to potentially get his story straight or put together an alibi. Can you imagine calling a suspect of any other serious felony crime and asking them to come to the police station?”
The detective drives to the man’s home.
His mom told him and he repeated to me that he didn't wish to speak with me at all.
“It’s my experience that sexual offenders can be some of the most manipulative offenders in the criminal justice system. You have to think strategically about your approach to suspects in these cases. Instead of saying I can’t compel you to talk, it would be better to say that as part of a fair and balanced investigation it’s really important for me to hear your side of this.”
Two weeks later, on October 22, the detective communicates with the Idaho State Forensic Laboratory about running toxicology screening on the victim’s blood. The lab informs him that it can test the blood for many illicit and prescription drugs, including Rohypnol, which the detective specifically asks the lab to search for.
But the lab needs urine to screen for another common date-rape drug, GHB. The nurse who conducted the rape exam did not take a urine sample, according to police.
Laura Schile
Forensic scientist
“All of this evidence should be tested, and she should have undergone a full toxicology screening which includes testing her urine and blood. Urine definitely should have been taken.”
The detective does not send the victim’s entire rape kit for testing. Instead, he removes a tube of blood from the rape kit and sends it.
Laura Schile
Forensic scientist
“There is no reason for an officer to unseal a kit to send pieces of evidence to the lab. Protocol should be to send the sealed kit to the lab.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“She wasn’t even sure she was penetrated. When a victim tells you, ‘I believe I was drugged and I’m confused,’ victims don’t know. She may have gone unconscious. So all the more reason to thoroughly test the kit.”
After receiving word on January 28, 2016, that the lab “was not able to locate any controlled substances” in the victim’s blood, the detective writes:
There is no evidentiary value in the Sexual assault kit.
“There appears to be a lack of training and awareness about the most viable type of reference samples — blood or urine. Urine should have been taken and submitted. The statement, “There is no evidentiary value in the sexual assault kit” is ambiguous. Is that the opinion of the detective or was that a summary of the lab’s report?”
The detective calls the victim. Then he clears the case.
I called and talked with regarding this case. I explained there isn't any evidence to take this case to court. She seemed slightly disappointed, but said she understood.
“[Calling the victim] is not in line with following a trauma-informed process in investigations. If you are closing a case, bring the victim in with an advocate and help them understand the difficult decisions that are made in these cases. We’ve got to try to minimize the trauma of those decisions.”
The victim’s untested rape kit is destroyed on February 18, 2016, about five months after she reported being assaulted. Police list the offense as “forcible sexual penetration by use of foreign object.” The kit was destroyed before the expiration of the statute of limitations.
According to the suspect’s 2004 court file, he was required to submit his DNA to the state. Had the rape kit been submitted to a lab and tested, a DNA profile might have been recovered and that profile could have been uploaded to a DNA database for comparison.
At CNN’s request, Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White spoke with the detective who handled this case. CNN attempted to reach Detective Jared Reneau by certified mail and phone calls, but he did not respond.
According to White, Reneau didn’t think he needed to send the rape kit for testing because the victim conveyed that “she was absolutely sure” the suspect did not penetrate her with his penis. Reneau did what the lab requested, White said, and believed he needed to only send the blood.
Idaho State Police Forensic Services Director Matthew Gamette said that had police submitted the entire rape kit, the lab could have searched it for male DNA. Even though the victim said her assailant may not have penetrated her with his penis, “he may have licked or kissed her breasts,” Gamette said. “We could have done some testing on swabs for male DNA and saliva.”
Gamette also said the rape kit could have been sent to another lab for touch DNA screening, a process that can detect a very small sample of skin cells left on a person or object that has been touched.
White initially told CNN that the detective was unaware that the kit could have been tested for touch DNA, then said that the investigator did know touch DNA was an option.
There is no lab in Idaho that performs touch DNA, White said. But Gamette said the lab would work to connect investigators to a facility with that technology.
Regardless, testing the entire kit could have yielded helpful information, the chief acknowledged. He said he shared that conclusion with the detective.
“He understands now that he should or could have sent the entire kit, and that is our protocol today,” White said.
The kit should not have been destroyed, White said. “We should have kept that one.”
Since 2010, the department destroyed at least 25 rape kits before the statutes of limitations expired; 14 of those were untested.
White said the department is now following a new Idaho law that mandates rape kits be tested in cases in which police believe a crime was committed, unless a victim declines that testing. Any decision to not test a rape kit must be reviewed by a prosecutor. Rape kits tied to felony cases or that belong to victims who do not wish to report to law enforcement must be kept for 55 years. In death penalty cases, kits must be kept until a sentence is completed or there are no more suspects known to exist who are associated with the crime.
UT | SALT LAKE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT | #09-0146885
Victim suspects neighbor drugged her
Prosecutor: Rape kit should not have been destroyed
Kept 3 years
Not tested
Victim declined prosecution
None
On August 15, 2009, a Salt Lake City, Utah, woman goes for a walk with her dog after work. It is around midnight, and a neighbor sees her and asks if she wants to come inside for a drink. He is an acquaintance; she hung out at a bar with him and his friends one time. She doesn’t know his last name, but tells police his first name is Nick.
The woman enters Nick’s home with her dog and asks for a drink of water. Instead, Nick brings her a beer. She drinks it and then asks for water again and drinks it. The next thing she knows, she wakes up nude in Nick’s bed at 2 p.m. the next day with no recollection of how she got there or anything that has transpired. Her dog is in the room, and she is the only person in the house.
When she doesn’t show up for work, her concerned boss calls her best friend, who works at the same place. The friend texts the woman, who writes back that she has been raped. The friend then calls, and the woman says she doesn’t “know what the hell happened” and sounds to the friend as if she is crying.
The friend tells the victim to call police and go to the hospital, and the woman does so.
She has a rape exam, which includes collecting her blood and urine for drug screening. The underwear she wore the previous night is also taken into evidence.
Police interview the friend and the boss, who tell police that the victim said she was raped. The boss says that the victim gave no further details about the alleged assault but that he is “worried” about her and that she never misses work.
The woman tells police that Nick had several friends in his house when she went in, including his roommate. She doesn’t know the others but says she could identify the roommate and gives a physical description of him.
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“Everyone here should be interviewed.”
While she is at the hospital, police discuss with the victim whether she wants to pursue charges.
is fearful of what the suspect will do if police contact the suspect. requested that she be notified before the suspect is contacted by police. I advised her that we would contact her first. stated that she is unsure at this time if she wants to pursue criminal charges against the suspect.
“There should be a discussion with her about a safety plan that could be put in place — a way to assure her that she wasn’t going to just report and be left alone.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“This fear is understandable. He’s her neighbor. We shouldn’t be talking to a victim about prosecution before we’ve done any investigating.”
Four days later, on August 19, a detective calls the victim, and she tells him that she has spoken with Nick about “what happened during the time she did not remember.”
said Nick apologized for just leaving, but that he had to go to work. Nick also told her that they had had sex.
She tells police she is going on vacation and asks a detective not to contact Nick until she returns.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Before I would have agreed to not contact Nick, there should have been some effort to find out who he is. Police know his address, so they should be able to come up with a last name and do a background search on him, see if he’s tied to other criminal cases or other reported sexual assaults.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“This requires an investigator's patience — to go back to the victim and say, ‘I know you’re concerned about this. Can we work together to help you make a more informed decision about what you’d like to do?’ I might suggest that if we were to test the kit and find drugs, we would let her know that. But you don’t need her permission to identify him. You talk to his landlord, you find out what vehicle he drives, get a plate number. You get a name and run the check.”
On August 25, a victim advocate reaches out and speaks with the victim; the content of their conversation is not documented in the police file.
On September 9, the same detective who spoke with the victim on August 19 writes that the woman has asked him “several questions about testing for possible date rape drugs.” He notes on this day that he has information for her but cannot reach her.
Five days later, on September 14, the detective writes that he contacts the woman at her home and explains “the status of her case” and the need to interview Nick. The woman decides she doesn’t want “any further involvement with law enforcement at this time.”
decided she did not desire any further involvement from law enforcement at this time. I explained to that once the process on the case is stopped, it is very difficult to prosecute at a later time. stated she understood.
“The detective shouldn’t be telling her that once the process is stopped it’s harder to prosecute later because that only discourages her more. We investigate cases weeks, months, years old. Law enforcement needs to do the investigation at the pace set by the victim. She wants to know that something happened to her. If we can show that — you do the toxicology testing, you test the kit. You do the investigation with what we’ve got.”
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“There’s too much discouraging conversation going on with a vulnerable victim.”
The detective promises that the victim can re-contact police “should anything else occur” but then closes the case on September 14, one month after she reported being raped, categorizing it as “cleared exceptionally.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“This case shouldn’t have been closed. It should have been left open in case she wanted to re-engage with police.”
Police can categorize a case as “cleared exceptionally” when they have identified a suspect, know that person’s location and have enough evidence to arrest and charge the offender but are not able to because of reasons outside of their control — like a victim who declines prosecution. But in this case, there is no indication in the case file that the detective even identified Nick, much less interviewed him. In fact, the detective writes:
The detective has not met the criteria to clear this case exceptionally, Tremblay said. Police voluntarily report the outcome of their cases annually to the FBI, which publishes those statistics. An exceptional clearance implies that police have done everything possible to solve a case.
The woman’s rape kit, including her blood and urine samples, are never sent for testing. The evidence is destroyed on November 8, 2012, just over three years from the time she reported being assaulted, even though there was no statute of limitations to prosecute the crime in Utah, then or now.
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“This makes me angry. There’s potentially a rapist out there who is using a date rape drug. They needed to do further investigation. The kit should have been tested and maintained.”
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“Had the samples been analyzed and that information provided to the victim, it may have helped her in making a difficult decision about whether she chose to move forward.”
Alan Conner, the investigator who handled this case, no longer works for the police department. He declined to speak with CNN about this case.
Salt Lake City Police told CNN that a Salt Lake County prosecutor reviewed this case and approved the kit’s destruction.
But the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office says it has no record it ever saw the case, and the prosecutor named as having signed off on it no longer works there, according to Blake Nakamura, chief deputy prosecutor in the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office.
Regardless, the kit “shouldn’t have been destroyed under any circumstance,” Nakamura said.
“Without question, I can say that her urine and blood should’ve been tested, right up front,” Nakamura said. Depending on the results, “that may have influenced her in a positive way and encouraged her to participate because it now adds legitimacy to what she is feeling.”
If “Nick” has been a suspect in other sexual assaults or crimes, or is a suspect in the future, destruction of the untested kit and the victim’s bodily fluids robs police of the benefit of that evidence, Nakamura said.
“The first time it may have been circumstances that didn’t warrant a filing [of charges], based on our understanding of what occurred. Then, if you have another incident involving this same subject that appears to be somewhat similar [in modus operandi]…you’re going to want to go back to that old case and see what value it may have for the new case…But we’ll never have that evidence if the kit …is destroyed,” Nakamura said.
In 2011, Nakamura sent a memo to the Salt Lake City Police Department directing that all evidence in sex crimes cases be maintained. CNN discovered that despite Nakamura’s memo, police continued to destroy rape kits and prosecutors in Nakamura’s office continued to approve the destruction of that evidence. When CNN informed Nakamura of that, he told his staff to stop.
In an online search, CNN quickly found a person named Nick living at the address of the alleged assault. Police could have done that, too, conceded Salt Lake City Police Sergeant Derek Christensen.
“The only thing I probably would have done differently on this case is I would have …figured out a possible suspect, put that in the report — ‘This is possibly who it is,’ just in case if [in the future] he’d done this to somebody else,” Christensen told CNN. “Then we have kind of a record of it, and then we could always approach him at that time later.”
The victim told the detective she was scared Nick would “retaliate,” so while obliging her request that police hold off in approaching him, investigators could have tried to do a photo lineup that included a possible suspect’s picture, Christensen said.
But police should be careful not to do what a victim doesn’t want them to do, he said.
“We do get a lot of those where they'll report it and then they're just like, ‘You know, I just really want to put this behind me.’" And even though you have other stuff you can go on, if they don't want us to continue then we respect that and we usually will stop,” Christensen said.
CNN asked Christensen why the evidence wasn’t tested. If it had been and shown the victim was drugged, might that have possibly encouraged her to remain engaged with police? He said that decision is influenced, in part, by whether the department is adequately staffed with enough investigators.
“I could test urine and I could test every…piece of evidence. But if I don’t have a victim who wants to participate in their own case and I have other cases where I do have victims who want to participate. And the problem is you only have so many investigators,” Christensen said. “Right now, we’re averaging over 200 of these rape kits a year with six detectives. You gotta prioritize.”
In this case, the victim was not informed that her rape kit was destroyed, Christensen said.
Since 2010, Salt Lake City Police destroyed at least nine rape kits before the statutes of limitations expired. Of those, eight were untested.
“It didn’t really seem like there was a rhyme or reason on why some were being disposed and some were not,” Christensen said. The department now sends all kits to a lab for analysis and no longer destroys them.
Christensen and other officers have received the latest training in trauma and the Police Executive Research Forum recently cited the agency for strides it has made in handling sex crime cases.
In the early morning hours of July 15, 2009, a woman tells Springfield, Missouri, police that she was raped by a man she knows as “Mo” the day after she met him. She says he locked the door, grabbed her by the arms and threw her on a bed and held her down.
She said she could not move and told me she was "yelling" at MO. said MO then took her pants off, then her underwear, and then her shirt. She said MO undressed and "pulled my legs apart roughly and pushed it in." I asked her to clarify this and she said that MO had penetrated her with his penis. She stated he was not wearing a condom. stated this went on for about 15 minutes saying she was yelling "no" at him.
She gives a detailed physical description of “Mo.”
described MO as being a dark skinned black male around 22 years of age. She said he was around 6'1 inches tall and weighed over 200 pounds. thought MO was wearing a black "Scarface" t-shirt and black shorts.
The officers speak with a witness who says he knocked on the door and that the suspect, who the witness also knows as “Mo,” answered. “Mo” told the witness, “Just gimme 20 more minutes.” The witness was able to get the door open and said he saw “Mo” without clothes on and the woman, who also was naked, crying. She ran to get dressed in the bathroom and then fled outside. The witness provides police with a physical description of “Mo” and confirms that his name is David.
Police note that the victim spoke with her mother about the sexual assault.
The victim submits to a rape exam; police collect the rape kit and then accompany the victim back to the apartment to gather more evidence, including a bed sheet and clothing.
Several people at the scene tell an officer that they know “Mo” but not his last name and that he might live in a specific apartment building.
That information is conveyed to a dispatcher who tells the officer that three men named David live at that address. It appears that at least one man might have fit the description of the suspect; he is not contacted, police note.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Patrol is doing an excellent job getting a lot of detail and working the case. But there’s only so much patrol can do before they have to hand a case over to a detective.”
Close to midnight that same day, police respond to a 911 call from the woman saying that the suspect has returned to her home. She tells police that he banged on her door and, because she didn’t know who it was, she opened it. She quickly shut the door and called 911. “Mo” continued to bang on the door and shouted:
told me continued to "bang" on the door and shouted, "Open the door you fucking cunt".
After about five minutes, Mo left. When police arrived they found urine on her door.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I’m sure this victim was terrified. A safety plan should have been put in place.”
A safety plan could involve obtaining a protective order, asking law enforcement to patrol the victim’s neighborhood or helping her access emergency shelter.
Springfield Police Major Vance Holland, the department’s investigations commander, told CNN he did not know for certain if a safety plan was offered to the victim because it’s not noted in the report and it’s “often not documented, especially if a victim declines those services.” He said it is standard procedure to connect a victim with an advocate and services at a shelter in these kinds of cases.
Police take photos and collect a sample of the urine on the victim’s door.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Test this urine, test the rape kit. It’s that simple. I want to test that urine because it can corroborate the victim’s history, statement, narrative.”
An officer also checks the area for the suspect but does not locate “Mo.”
On July 16, the day after the victim reported her rape, a detective is assigned to investigate the rape. The detective writes that she calls the woman and leaves a message and also mails the victim a letter warning that unless the victim contacts the investigator within 10 business days, the case will be closed and not investigated further.
I also sent a letter to the victim asking her to contact me for a follow-up interview. The letter states if the victim did not contact me within 10 business days from the date of the letter, then the case would be closed and receive no further investigation.
“This 10-day letter tactic is used sometimes by police for non-violent offenses — someone’s car is broken into. It shouldn’t be used in any sexual assault case. This is not how you build rapport with a victim who has just endured sexual trauma. What is the message to the victim?
“This type of response will guarantee that the majority of victims will not participate in the investigation. It tells me (the detective) is trying to get this case over quickly.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“I have never heard or seen investigations that require the 10 business-day limit to conduct a further interview. It is heavy-handed and clearly does not understand anything about trauma.”
On July 30, 2009, the detective notes that she calls the victim a second time and leaves a message asking the woman to let the investigator know if she does not wish to pursue an investigation.
Then on August 13, 2009, less than one month after the victim reported her rape, the detective closes the case. The detective writes:
Articles of evidence have not been submitted to the Missouri State Highway Patrol for forensic analysis due to an uncooperative victim.
The final line in the detective’s report lists the suspect’s possible name, his race, date of birth, Social Security number and last known address.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s no investigation. The detective is like, ‘She doesn’t call, we close the case. My day just got a lot easier.’ Getting a letter that says, ‘do this or else’ shows no recognition that victims who have experienced something like this need to feel safe before they can engage in the process. Victims who are raped have lost control of the most personal decision we make — who we choose to be intimate with. They want some control back.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The detective has just about everything needed to at least try to find this suspect. This detective is telling me here that she didn’t care about this case. She was getting it off her desk as soon as possible.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“This was terrible. There were witnesses that were not fully interviewed. There’s no reason not to test the rape kit.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“So much could’ve been done in this case, including testing the kit. You have all kinds of corroborative evidence in text messages — the victim was calling for help. No background or criminal history documented. There was a limited effort to identify the suspect.”
The victim is informed of the end of the investigation into her rape with a letter which tells her that her “failure to cooperate” resulted in no more work being done on her case.
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“This is so blatantly offensive…‘due to your failure’ is alienating to anyone much less someone who has presented willingly as a victim of a crime, endured an uncomfortable exam, evidence collection, questions, details. [The police] blame, shame the victim for not meeting a ridiculous deadline. Such actions and demeanor powerfully convey, ‘This is not important, you are not important, I’m busy, the end.’”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“They don’t seem to understand they’re making victims uncooperative with these letters. This particular letter doesn’t say ‘Contact us at a later date if you’re ready. We want you to get help’ — that’s the trauma-informed recommendation. There’s none of that. That letter conveys, ‘Case closed. I’m done.’ Why would a victim ever think they have the right to call back?”
The detective files a request with the property room to destroy the victim’s untested rape kit on August 16, 2011. The request does not require the detective’s supervisor to approve, according to police documents. The kit was destroyed on October 4, 2011, about two years and three months after the reported rape. Police listed “rape” as the offense in the case file. At the time of this case, there was no statute of limitations on forcible rape in Missouri and the shortest statute of limitations for any felony was three years.
Maggie McDowell, the investigator who handled this case, retired from the department in 2014 and declined to talk with CNN.
Police Chief Paul Williams said there was no pressure from anyone in his administration to close cases to move them off their desks. The 10-day letter is a department-sanctioned tool that investigators should use only as a last resort to get a victim of any crime to engage after an officer has tried other means to reach them. There is no written policy outlining when and under what circumstances it can be sent, he said. Williams told CNN that its use in sex crimes is “rare.”
CNN emailed Williams nine cases that ended in kit destruction in which McDowell mailed the letter soon after inheriting cases, some on the same day, did little else to investigate and then closed cases when victims had not answered her.
Williams declined to review the case files.
CNN asked Williams why the kit or urine was not submitted to a lab for analysis and why McDowell did not appear to do anything to pursue the suspect.
“I can understand how that happened,” he responded.
Around 2009, investigators were encouraged to wrap cases in 30 days because the department didn’t have enough sex crime investigators to handle the volume of assaults that were reported.
“The 30-day protocol was absolutely in place. We were lowest staffing ever,” Williams said. “You have a stack of cases, and you’re trying to spend time where it’s most appropriate. And if you wait 30 days and you haven’t heard from a victim, I can certainly see how the case would have been suspended at that point.”
McDowell did not suspend — or leave open — the case. McDowell cleared the case exceptionally, meaning she ended the investigation.
To properly clear a case exceptionally, law enforcement has to identify an offender, know that person’s location, gather enough evidence to support an arrest and then encounter a circumstance out of law enforcement’s control that prevents an arrest and prosecution. When law enforcement exceptionally clear a case, it implies that officers have done everything possible to solve a case.
“That would be an incorrect classification on that one,” Major Vance Holland said. “It should have been suspended.”
On March 24, 2011, a woman in Ogden, Utah, is hospitalized because she is threatening to kill herself; she says she was raped the previous day by a man she knows only by his first name. She tells police that he is the brother of a friend, and he was at her apartment when he started acting “weird.”
stated that started following her around her apartment trying to hug and kiss her. stated that followed her into the kitchen and grabbed her left arm to keep her from continuing to walk away from him. stated that when had a hold of her arm he said "Come on , you know we have been feeling each other for a while."
She pulled a chair between them to try to get away and ordered him to leave her alone.
She told him she was not interested in him and didn’t want to get intimate. She says he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her into the bedroom.
stated that once got her into the bedroom he forcibly held her up against a wall and took off her pants and her underwear. stated that then held her down on the floor of her room and he took off his pants and underwear and then proceeded to assault her sexually.
She tried to push him off her for the first few minutes but realized she couldn’t stop him and she “shut down emotionally.”
The victim tells the investigator that when she “gets upset or frustrated she shuts down and blocks things from her memory” and she doesn’t “remember too many details about what happened.”
Rebecca Campbell
Psychology professor, Michigan State University
“This is the fight, flight or freeze response — and it’s not something the victim decides. The body is reacting in whatever way (necessary) to keep the person alive.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“You’ve got a victim disclosing who may have blanked out, couldn’t remember details. An investigator trained in how trauma affects victims recognizes that this is not uncommon for a victim to disassociate.”
Her attacker did not wear a condom, and she says she believed he ejaculated while he was inside of her, but she is not sure. After he rapes her, he gets dressed and tells her, “Do not tell my sister, she will kill me” and then leaves her apartment.
She takes a shower. The officer notes in his report that she says there is “nothing inside her house with any evidence on it.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“You don’t rely on victims to tell you whether there is evidence at a crime scene.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“First thing that stands out is there’s no documentation of crime scene processing, collection of victim’s clothing for evidence.”
The victim tells police the man’s height, age, weight and race. She describes his hair color and style and tells police what he was wearing. The victim also gives the name of the assailant’s sister, who she says lives in Nashville. She says she doesn’t have contact information. The officer writes that if the victim gets it, she’ll give it to police.
The case file shows no indication that the detective attempts to ascertain the assailant’s identity based on knowing his sister’s name.
The victim shows the detective her arms and points to where she says she was grabbed. The officer writes that he can’t see any bruising or other signs of injury.
She submits to a rape exam. The investigator writes that the exam’s preliminary findings are “normal” with “no signs of trauma.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The absence of visible injury doesn’t disprove a sexual assault.”
Certified sexual assault nurse examiners say “normal” findings are common in rape exams; that injury will not always be found.
Next, the investigator asks the victim “why she didn’t report this incident right after it occurred.”
stated that she was in shock because of what happened to her and she didn't know what to do.
“The investigator shouldn’t ask this in this way because it sounds like the victim did something wrong. Her reaction is normal. Many rape victims have this reaction.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“I think this investigation was rife with victim blaming, and it sounds like they wanted her to do this investigation to find out who this guy was instead of doing their work. She seems very credible to me.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“When we ask, ‘Why didn’t you report?’ that says, ‘You should have reported earlier’ — which doesn’t make a victim feel like they’re being supported.”
The detective writes that he cannot investigate because the victim hasn’t provided contact information for her assailant or his sister.
At this point in time I was unable to investigate this incident any further because of the lack of contact information given by . I provided with a case number and she stated that she will contact Ogden PD if contacts her or if she has any information on how to contact him or his sister. I ended my contact with .
On April 18, 2011, less than a month after the victim reported being raped, a detective says the victim called to say she was moving out of Utah and “dealing with the incident in her own way.” She says she doesn’t want to pursue an investigation.
In a state with no statute of limitations on rape, she is free to change her mind at any time.
Regardless, her untested kit is destroyed on May 1, 2012, a little more than a year later. The detective had closed her case “unfounded” — a police term that means a crime did not occur or was not attempted. That classification requires a thorough investigation and should not be applied just because a victim stops engaging with law enforcement.
The investigator ends the case by writing, “There is no physical evidence to support [the victim] had been raped as she reported it.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s no evidence to support that the victim was raped except her statement because there was no investigation. They didn’t test the evidence or look for any other evidence. This case was bothersome to me.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“This should not have been unfounded. This is improper. I believe the sexual assault went down as she described.”
Tosh Bennett, the responding officer in this case, and Detective Nicholas Remkes, who was assigned to follow up, declined to talk to CNN. Both have left the Ogden Police Department.
Remkes improperly closed this case, said Ogden Police Captain Danielle Croyle, who oversees investigations.
“It probably should not have been unfounded. Unfounded means there’s no merit to the case. In this case, there is merit,” Croyle said. The case should have been cleared in a way that indicated the victim could re-approach law enforcement at any time and ask that the investigation be reopened, she said.
CNN asked how difficult that might be considering the department destroyed the victim’s untested rape kit.
“There’s probably not much we can do with this case [now],” she answered.
As for the criticism that Bennett relied on the victim to tell him whether there was evidence at the crime scene, Croyle declined comment. “That person doesn’t work here anymore,” she replied.
Since 2010, the Ogden Police Department destroyed at least 17 rape kits before the statutes of limitations expired. None were submitted to a lab for analysis.
Croyle explained how kits were destroyed at the agency.
“Every once in a while our evidence custodian would look at storage space and say, ‘Okay, nothing has been done on these cases,’” she said. The custodian would then ask detectives handling those cases if the kits could be trashed to “clear out the space in storage,” she said.
Detectives had sole authority to approve destruction of kits; they didn’t need a supervisor’s approval, Croyle said.
CNN asked Croyle if the department had destroyed kits in open investigations, as documents indicated. She confirmed that was true. “We haven’t always gotten it right,” Croyle said. “And we’ve screwed up.”
Kits were also destroyed because victims didn’t show up for appointments, or “the victim was reluctant, didn’t come in for an interview” with a detective, she said.
Investigations Lieutenant Tim Scott told CNN that the department stopped destroying rape kits during the summer of 2016 and now submits all kits for testing to the state crime lab.
Police in Nampa, Idaho, a city just west of Boise, are called to a bar at about 12:45 a.m. on April 24, 2010. A bouncer leads a patrol officer to two sisters in the kitchen who say they were hanging out and drinking with two men who they know only by their first names — Terrance and Robbie. One of the women says Terrance raped her in a car in the parking lot.
said she was in the back of the black SUV and Terrance had sex with her. said she told Terrance "No" several times. Terrance said he would be finished in a second. Terrance got off of her and she got out of the vehicle.
The woman says that when the assault ended, three men walked past her as she was crying and asking Terrance for her pants.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I would try to interview the bouncer and anyone else at the bar that night.”
The victim tells police that she used a napkin to wipe Terrance’s semen off her body. Police take the napkin into evidence, observing that it has “semi-dried clear liquid” and a pubic hair on it.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I would have submitted the napkin to the lab for DNA and uploaded it to CODIS,” the national DNA database, “to search for any hits with known offenders to identify this unknown offender.”
At a hospital, police take photos of abrasions on the woman’s shin and hip, a bruise on her forearm and what appears to be a bruise on her bicep. The woman is crying and “visibly upset and intoxicated.” An officer watches as a sexual assault nurse questions her about how much she had to drink, when she last had consensual sex and if “anything had been put inside of her.” After the nurse is done questioning the woman, the officer asks her to recall what happened.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The victim already gave a good, detailed description of what happened. She’s clearly upset, still intoxicated. I would want her to be able to go home, take a shower and follow up within a couple days. They don’t have to keep interviewing her and pressuring her.”
The woman submits to a rape exam, and police take possession of her rape kit.
That same day, an officer goes to the bar and asks for a copy of the video from earlier in the night and speaks with someone who assures him that they will “take care of it.” But there’s no indication in the case file that police obtain the video. The officer also notes that he speaks with “employees” — though their names are not included — who tell him they will call the investigator if Terrance or Robbie show up again. There is no record in the report showing police receive any calls or communicate further with anyone at the bar.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I would have also at least interviewed people in the bar. The video is important and so is trying to get bar tabs of everyone to try to identify Terrance and Robbie.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“A thorough investigation starts with, ‘Who is the suspect?’ There is little effort to try to identify who this suspect is.”
The next day, police ask a female victim witness coordinator to call the woman. The coordinator can’t reach her but leaves several messages asking that she call the detective.
Two days later, on April 27, someone (whose identity is not clear from the redacted case file) calls the detective and leaves a number. In a report dated April 29, the detective notes that he called that number and reached the victim’s grandmother who told him that her granddaughter just started a new job. She said she would have her granddaughter call the detective to set up a time to meet, most likely the following week.
Before the following week is over, in a report dated May 5, the detective writes that he and a victim witness coordinator went to a location to speak with the woman “because she has failed to return our numerous calls.”
The victim’s sister answers the door and tells them that the woman is at work, and says she will give her sibling a message to call them.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Speaking to the victim’s sister and grandmother might further alienate the victim. Rape is an intimate crime that a victim might not want shared with a family member. This is also a classic example of how victims sometimes just need time to process what has happened before they can participate. It’s always important to ask victims when and where they would like to be interviewed. Instead, law enforcement tends to do things on their schedule. It has to be about showing empathy and establishing rapport and trust with a victim. I don’t see that here.”
Two weeks later, on May 19, the detective reviews the case with Canyon County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Erica Kallin “and she advised to close case victim refusal as she [the victim] is not appearing to be cooperative in the investigation,” he writes in a report dated May 25.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“This case should not have been referred to the prosecutor since the suspect had not even been identified — you have to establish probable cause before giving a case to a prosecutor. I don’t understand why a prosecutor would tell a detective to close a case. And I don’t think the victim is uncooperative. She needs time. But the minute the police label her ‘uncooperative’ she could be denied victim compensation funds.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s this ‘code’ — victim uncooperative — that I’ve seen in cases I’ve reviewed and we have to change that. A victim’s not uncooperative; it’s more likely they are reluctant to engage in our process. That reluctance comes from trauma. It comes from fear. It comes from having to disclose the most personal details of a crime. Before we ask a single question, we should provide a safety net of physical, psychological and emotional safety to build trust with a victim. I see none of that in this case.”
Idaho law requires a victim to cooperate with law enforcement and a prosecution, if one occurs, to receive state funds for counseling, lost wages or other needs arising after a crime, said Kristi Abel, Idaho Victims Compensation Board bureau chief. But caseworkers do ask why the victim isn’t cooperating, and an appeal can be made for an exception to the rule.
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“More could have been done here. Witnesses were not interviewed. The bouncer should have been interviewed. It’s just an incomplete investigation.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“They took a report; they didn’t do an investigation. It was outrageous.”
The woman’s untested rape kit is destroyed less than three years later, on January 10, 2013, even though there was no statute of limitations in Idaho on prosecuting rape — the offense listed in the case file. No statute of limitations exists today, either.
Since 2010, Nampa police destroyed at least eight rape kits before the statutes of limitations. None were submitted to a lab for analysis.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“Not testing the kit and then destroying it — should the victim re-engage, they’ll have no recourse without the kit. And we’ll never know, because it wasn’t tested, if that suspect is linked to other crimes.”
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“The reality for law enforcement is that there is great pressure to close cases, which leads to actions and decisions made prematurely. Sadly, in that rush, evidence is held and then destroyed without regard for what testing may have shown.”
The Canyon County prosecuting attorney did not tell police to close this case, and the office does not as a practice advise law enforcement how to conduct investigations, said spokesman Joe Decker. The prosecutor had a conversation about the case with the officer and declined at that time to charge because police had not developed sufficient evidence to file charges, he said.
Troy Hale, the officer listed as responsible for the investigation, and responding officers Gary Marang and Chris Davenport declined to speak with CNN.
Nampa Lieutenant Eric Skoglund agreed more should have been done in the investigation, including testing and keeping the victim’s rape kit. The case should have been left open in the event the victim decided to cooperate with police or more information emerged, he said.
“You identify several areas where this investigation was not thoroughly completed,” Skoglund wrote to CNN. “Assuming the detective has followed up on all available information, cases where a victim does not return contact, avoids contact, or otherwise demonstrates an unwillingness to participate in the investigation should be considered inactive” — or open — “until they express a desire to pursue the case.”
He said there was no indication that the bouncer was interviewed. The business didn’t respond to the officer’s request for surveillance footage, and the police didn’t follow up. Like the victim’s rape kit, the napkin and pubic hair were not tested, he said.
The evidence was not tested because “the victim did not cooperate with police,” he said.
CNN asked what was done to identify the suspects. Skoglund wrote, “There is no information in the report to identify suspects beyond the first names and physical descriptions provided by the victim the night of the incident.”
He suggested that identifying the suspects was partly the victim’s responsibility. “The victim did not further aid in this process” after she reported, he wrote.
CNN asked Skoglund if he agreed that testing the rape kit could have helped police identify the unknown suspect.
“In this case, I think it was likely that there was DNA on the napkin or the kit and submission of that evidence could have helped identify who that suspect was if they were in CODIS,” the national DNA database system containing millions of offender, arrestee and detainee profiles.
Wayne County, Michigan, chief prosecutor Kym Worthy has fought to test some 10,000 backlogged rape kits in her jurisdiction, an effort that has produced CODIS hits identifying at least 833 suspects linked to more than one sex crime. She told CNN that scores of those untested kits were connected to cases in which victims were dismissed as uncooperative.
Skoglund said investigators have recently received training on how to understand victim behavior after sexual trauma, patrol officers have undergone training on best practices in sexual assault response, and all officers have been trained again in the statute of limitations pertaining to sex crimes.
Nampa police are following a new Idaho law that mandates rape kits be tested in cases in which police believe a crime was committed, unless a victim declines that testing. Any decision to not test a rape kit must be reviewed by a prosecutor. Although there is no time limit to prosecute rape in the state, another law, effective July 1, 2017, mandates that rape kits tied to felony cases or that belong to victims who do not wish to report to law enforcement must be kept for 55 years. In death penalty cases, kits must be kept until a sentence is completed or there are no more suspects known to exist who are associated with the crime.
UT | WEST VALLEY CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT | #09-I002420
From rape report to case closed:10 days
Detective regrets destruction of rape kit
Kept 3 years
Not tested
Victim declined prosecution
CASE CLOSED,VICTIM UNCOOPERATIVE
On January 17, 2009, a West Valley, Utah, woman tells police that a man she dated for two weeks and broke up with has grown obsessed with her and showed up at her home. He rapes her, then tells her to “shut her mouth” and “go with him” in his car. They arrive at a liquor store where she asks someone to write down her attacker’s license plate.
They ended up at a liquor store and she asked a gentleman that was parked next to them to help her and to write the license plate down because she knew something bad was going to happen to her.
She stated that he kept calling her names. "Fucking cunt, she better shut up or he will hurt her because she's a fucking bitch and a fucking cunt."
The victim says that when the man left the store and they got to an intersection, she jumped out of the car. She asked other people to help her. When no one responded, she ran into a nearby K-Mart and asked workers to call 911. She gives police her assailant’s full name and goes to the hospital for a rape exam. Police take custody of the kit, a blood and urine sample and the underwear she wore during the assault.
Ten days later, on January 27, 2009, an investigator writes that the woman phoned to say she is “scared to pursue charges.” The detective closes the case.
She told me that she has thought about it and is scared to pursue charges. She doesn't want to follow up with this in court and doesn't want to testify. She wants to forget about this and move on with her life.
“There’s no follow-up investigation documented in the 10 days between the victim reporting the assault and the police closing the case. Did the police do anything in those 10 days?
This is a woman reporting she was raped and abducted — two serious felonies. She said she spoke to someone at a liquor store. I would have been all over that store looking for video, trying to identify the person she spoke with to corroborate that. No witness interviews. No criminal background done on the suspect. All these problems — this is not a thorough investigation.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“She reported on January 17 and on January 27, she says she’s afraid and they close the case. No, you give people more time.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Police should have offered her a protection plan — how to file a restraining order, for example. Something that would have made her less afraid and perhaps more willing to participate in the case.”
Nicole Gorovsky
Former Missouri prosecutor
“If a prosecutor had been consulted about this — and it should be a team approach in these cases — the prosecutor could have told the victim, 'We'll look for opportunities to arrest this guy and get a high bond. We're going to put all these conditions on the bond saying he cannot have contact with you.’”
Although the victim tells police the suspect’s full name, he is not sought for an interview, according to the department. The agency also said it has no record that a safety plan was offered to the woman.
Her rape kit is not tested. Police destroy it on April 5, 2012, a little more than three years after she reported her assault, even though there was no statute of limitations on prosecuting rape in Utah at the time of this reported crime, nor is there today.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“This case should have been investigated first and once everything that could be done was done, then the detective should have suspended the case so it could be returned to during the statute of limitations time period. The kit should have been retained.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“What they sure as hell shouldn’t have done was destroy the rape kit.”
The victim’s name was not redacted in the report given to CNN, and a reporter was able to reach her. CNN does not typically name sexual assault victims and the woman asked that her name be withheld.
She said she backed away from police because she was frightened that the suspect would come after her for working with law enforcement. Police did not put a safety plan into place — such as helping her obtain a protective order or patrolling near her home, she said.
She said a victim advocate told her that because she was not working with police, she was ineligible for assistance from the Utah victim’s compensation fund; CNN confirmed that Utah law dictates that victims cooperate with an investigation in order to receive money for counseling, lost wages, housing relocation and other costs associated with being a victim.
“I just figured I was gonna have to deal with it on my own,” she told CNN.
The woman never received counseling after the rape and became an alcoholic, she said, which she attributes partly to trying to wrestle with the trauma of her sexual assault. She is now sober and doing better, but she was upset to learn her rape kit had never been tested and was destroyed.
Enduring a rape exam was “horrendous,” she said. “It just makes you feel like you’re being re-offended. I was bawling. It was embarrassing.”
The department’s failure to test her rape kit, she said, was “pathetic.”
Former Detective Ryan Humphrey told CNN that he did no investigation in the 10 days between the time the woman reported the assault and when she called him, including any attempt to pursue the suspect.
“She didn’t want to pursue it anymore and knowing that the D.A. won’t file on a case like that … that’s why I closed it,” he said.
Like many detectives CNN interviewed across the country, Humphrey viewed a frightened victim reluctant to engage with law enforcement as uncooperative and assumed a prosecutor would decline to file charges.
CNN shared with Humphrey that the victim said she was unable to access services like counseling because she wasn’t working with police. He said he didn’t know that.
“That makes me very upset,” he said. “That’s terrible.”
Humphrey was reflective about the case, and agreed that it was possible the woman could have changed her mind, which is her right in a state with no time limit to prosecute rape.
“Obviously, she wanted to pursue it because she went to the hospital and had a rape exam done.”
Humphrey said he did not authorize destruction of the woman’s rape kit but understood that once he closed a case, the evidence would be destroyed.
The woman’s rape kit should have been preserved, he said. Not keeping the investigation open, which would have allowed her to re-engage later, was “a mistake,” he said. “I look back at this case and can see that.”
Humphrey said he resigned from the department in 2013. He struggled under the weight of a heavy caseload for the five years he worked sex crimes, he said. “There was not enough of us… That was definitely an issue.”
The woman’s rape kit was among 17 that West Valley destroyed since 2010 before the statutes of limitations expired. Of those, 12 were untested.
Lee Russo became West Valley’s chief in August 2013, he said. He spoke to CNN throughout its reporting on destroyed rape kits, and he recently retired from the department.
He initially told CNN that the agency stopped destroying rape kits in 2013. Because a spreadsheet West Valley Police provided to CNN showed kits destroyed throughout 2014, Russo then clarified to say he made the decision in October 2013 to submit all rape kits to the crime lab for analysis.
Regardless, destruction of all rape kits should have stopped in 2011, according to a memo CNN obtained from the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office, written by Chief Deputy Prosecutor Blake Nakamura.
In that memo sent to West Valley and other law enforcement agencies in the county, Nakamura directed that all evidence in sex crimes cases be maintained.
Russo said he was unaware of the memo until CNN brought it to his attention.
When Russo became chief in 2013, he said he conducted an internal investigation into the way the department had handled rape investigations. That resulted, he said, in the transfer of at least one investigator out of the unit for saying he had done certain things in cases when in fact he had not. Recent training has improved the way West Valley police handle sex crimes cases, Russo said.
CNN asked him about this case.
“The simple request by a victim by itself should not be the sole reason we close a case,” he wrote in an email.
Acknowledging that the statute of limitations was still running, he added, “Evidence being destroyed could undermine the ability to prosecute if the victim were to change their mind.”
Russo told CNN that the West Valley Police Department no longer destroys rape kits.
Police spokeswoman Roxeanne Vainuku confirmed that the new department administration is testing all kits. “We have a much deeper understanding of trauma and its impact on a victim,” Vainuku told CNN. “We’re at a different point now.”

In 2017, Utah enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies to submit all rape kits for testing within 30 days of receipt. The state crime lab retains material that it tests, said lab director Jay Henry.
On February 25, 2012, a 21-year-old woman reports to Monroe, Louisiana, police that a man she knows raped her in her home.
Her case file contains documents from her forensic examination, including a detailed description of her sexual assault that appears to be written or dictated by the victim. The detective who handled the case told CNN that it was the Oauchita Parish sexual assault nurse examiner who asked the victim for her account of the alleged assault.
According to that narrative, the victim is on a couch trying to sleep when the man pulls her up and brings her to a back room, throws her on a bed and holds her down.
I was trying to get him off and he choked me around my neck with his forearm ... I said "Stop, leave me alone, let me leave."
She tries to run for the door. He grabs her by the hair. He takes her phone and becomes angry as he reads text messages between her and her baby’s father, and then he beats her.
He started hitting/punching my head ... He grabbed me by my hair ... Told me to take my clothes off. I said I don't want to. He told me get in bed. I didn't want to — he forced me...
It is against best practices in forensic nursing to record a victim’s account word for word during a rape exam. The focus should be on patient care, said Kim Day, the forensic nursing director at the International Association of Forensic Nurses, which trains professionals to perform rape exams. Recording the details of the assault, she said, is law enforcement’s job.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I’m concerned here that an account is being taken by a nurse who isn’t an investigator. That’s not her job. That’s the job of the police. Also, when you have a lot of people interviewing the victim who shouldn’t be, they are the ones who can introduce inconsistencies.”
Carol Tracy
Director of the Women's Law Project
“A nurse should not have been doing a police investigation. They are supposed to get information related to the exam. It’s important how information is collected in a police investigation…”
The victim continues to resist, according to her account, but finally complies and takes her clothes off.
“I told him I don’t want to do this.”
He starts kissing her and inserts his penis inside her.
“I told him it was hurting, please don’t do this.”
He ejaculates on her stomach and orders her into the bathtub. “I just sat in the tub, and he bathed me. He gave me a towel to dry off and told me, ‘Go to the room and don’t come out.’”
“I was afraid to come out.”
The report says that at some point, the assailant climbs into bed with the victim. Later a grandmother drops someone — possibly a child — at the home. The attacker asks the victim if she is “mad.”
“I said, ‘No’ because I was scared,” she explains.
He then leaves in a 2003 blue Ford Crown Victoria, and she calls police.
The detective’s report closely mirrors the victim’s dictated account, though the investigator makes clear that after the alleged sexual assault, the man wakes the victim up while holding an infant. He tells her to take the baby.
She undergoes a rape exam, and a medical professional documents redness and abrasions on her body.
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“You have a sexual assault nurse examiner who did a thorough job. She’s itemized 22 photographs and summarizes what each of those are, including lacerations, abrasions, redness. She notes blue dye (which is used to show cuts in the skin). I want to know, did the police do what is routine and expected? Did they have a conversation with the nurse about what she found? I don’t see any of that documented. This is really sad. So many opportunities lost in this case.”
Two days after the reported rape, police obtain a warrant and search the car the victim described but seize no items and return the vehicle.
A form in the case file indicates that the man is arrested that day, February 25, for aggravated rape and false imprisonment.
I, the undersigned, have been informed and understand that I (have been arrested and am) being questioned regarding an offense of Aggravated Rape and False Imprisonment in violation of the statutes of the State of Louisiana.
The case file provided to CNN does not indicate what happened after that.
Monroe police trash the evidence on January 1, 2013, less than a year after the woman reported her assault, even though there was no statute of limitations in Louisiana for forcible rape, the offense listed in the case file.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The police department obviously was committed to the investigation, at least in the beginning, by obtaining a search warrant on the car, the charges… Unfortunately, the failure to document the steps taken and all outcomes is a serious problem that happens all too frequently.”
Ann Burdges
Former sex crimes investigator
“This is blatantly inadequately investigated. Clearly they had access to the suspect quickly. This would have been a great opportunity to execute a suspect exam. She says she fought him. Her DNA could be on him in places that support her account. Not doing a suspect exam is a failure.”
The victim’s rape exam was performed at the Ouachita Parish Coroner’s Office. The office’s chief investigator, William Lee, told CNN that it was necessary to have the nurse get the victim’s account of the assault word for word.
Told that goes against best practices, he said: “Best practice is not set in stone. It’s a recommendation. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
In documentation provided to CNN, Monroe police said the kit in this case was destroyed at the detective’s request who said it was “not needed.”
CNN asked Monroe Police Sergeant Scott Ferguson why the kit wasn’t needed. He answered that the investigator “advised me to get rid of it. So why? I don’t know. I’m just telling you at that time I was going on what they were saying.”
After CNN inquired about the case, Ferguson said the department reviewed it and realized the rape kit had been wrongly destroyed.
CNN asked about the form in the case file on which the word “arrested” is circled and appears to be initialed by the suspect. The form states that the person signing it understands that they are being questioned about offenses listed as aggravated rape and false imprisonment.
Was the suspect arrested? Was he interviewed? a reporter asked.
Nanci Summersgill, who was an attorney for the Monroe police department, told CNN that police incorrectly filled out the form, and the suspect was not arrested. There is no recording or report of what he told police.
The county prosecutor’s office told CNN it has no record of reviewing this investigation.
The detective in this case, Kim Atchison, said she quit the department in 2013.
Atchison told CNN she didn’t recall requesting the kit’s destruction. She explained the system that leads to kit destruction: Property room workers, needing to free up space, would annually ask detectives what was going on with their cases and if evidence tied to those investigations should be kept, she said.
If evidence has “been sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and nothing’s being done [with the case],” it may be destroyed, she said.
Since 2010, the department destroyed at least 3 kits before the statutes of limitations expired; 2 were never tested.
A reporter asked Atchison if she interviewed the suspect or documented what he said. She said she could not recall; she also said she destroyed all records of her cases when she left the department.
CNN asked Atchison to describe training she received while working for the department. She said she did not get training in how CODIS worked or the testing of rape kits.
But she said that she has an undergraduate degree in criminal justice and attended “numerous rape investigation schools.” She also received instruction about how to investigate child sex abuse cases, she said.
Atchison was unsure what CNN meant when a reporter asked if she had trauma-informed protocol training, or instruction on how the brain reacts after trauma. For instance, when a victim withdraws, it might not mean he or she doesn’t want their reported rape investigated. It may mean they are experiencing avoidance symptoms common after trauma.
Trauma-informed protocol is considered best practice in investigating sexual assault.
After CNN explained what it is, she answered, “We may have touched on that.”
“I guess you would — you would have to say that back then, when I was a detective — if I didn't hear from them in two or three months or, you know, two or three weeks, six weeks or whatever, I just wrapped up my investigation and forwarded it on to the district attorney's office,” Atchison said.
She said she felt pressure to wrap up cases because she had a heavy caseload. Sergeant Ferguson confirmed that she was one of two detectives responsible for investigating both child and adult sex crimes, and she said she was juggling at least 30 cases a month.
“It’s too much for one detective or two detectives to work correctly,” she told CNN.
She said she didn’t feel she could voice concerns about her caseload.
How did she cope?
“I quit,” she answered. Atchison said she is pursuing a degree in nursing.
She also told CNN that she endured a profound personal loss at the time of this case, which she feels may have distracted her at work.
“I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind,” she said.
On April 2, 2013, the mother of a 7-year-old girl calls police in Fallon, Nevada, to report that her daughter woke up that morning saying she had been abducted the night before. A man duct-taped the child’s wrists and ankles and put tape over her eyes, she said, then carried the girl out a sliding glass door, took her to his home and assaulted her.
told her mother the male drove her to his residence and placed objects in her anus, and made her suck his penis like a popsicle.
The girl also says the man kissed her and licked her tongue.
The mother tells police that her daughter says the man made her take a bath, put lotion on her, then brought her back home and told her to get into bed. The police report says that the girl is able to provide a description of the vehicle the attacker drove: a black Ford truck. Because she said tape was placed over her eyes, police ask how she knows this and she says she asked the man what they were in. She reports that she also asked him what time it was, and the man told her 3:30.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“There’s no question in my mind that it’s likely she was sexually abused at some point. This is a tremendously detailed story for a child to contrive on her own. How many 7-year-olds understand that one of the things that predators do to destroy evidence is making victims bathe themselves? Given her developmental age, her account throughout the report is far too detailed, far too extensive and consistently told for her to simply parrot something that has been coached to her. So the investigation needs to start with a quest — figuring out not just was she abused at the time reported, but whoever may have abused this child and when.”
Police swab the child’s mouth and face. They note that she has “bruising in her ears.” A sexual assault kit is taken into evidence.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“The bruising around the ears — that’s never explored. I’ve actually seen cases where someone may have been blindfolded and their ears get folded over and an injury occurs.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“You keep the kit, and I want to screen this kit, and I want a forensic interview with this kid by a trained, professional interviewer.”
The mother tells police that after hearing her daughter’s story, she looked at the girl’s anus, which appeared “enlarged and red.” The girl’s vagina also seemed red to her mother.
Police search the family home, photograph footprints in the backyard, dust for prints on the girl’s bedroom door and doorknob, and confiscate a door placard with latent prints.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There's no documentation in the case file about attempts to identify or eliminate suspects with analysis of the prints.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“Doorknobs are really horrendous places to get latent prints. Everybody touches a door, so if they’re going that route, they should have obtained exclusionary prints and I don’t see documentation of that. I would have talked to the kid to see if the man touched anything else.”
The sliding glass door is also dusted because the mother says that her husband woke up at 4 a.m. to get ready for work and told her that he saw it open. She tells police that seemed odd because she did not see it open before she went to bed. She then offers that she didn’t lock it because the family has a new puppy they let out during the night.
The mother thought their 14-year-old daughter had opened the door, but police do not document, at any time, interviewing the teen.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“The 14-year-old sister should have been interviewed. That should be documented.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s no documentation that the sister was interviewed. I would have had her interviewed — ‘Where were you? What did you see? What did you hear? What time did you go to bed? Did your sister come in and sleep with you?’ There’s a lack of in-depth interviewing of everybody in that house.”
The stepfather’s account is that he woke up around midnight, saw the sliding door open, shut it, checked on the 7-year-old, saw that her bedroom TV was on, but she was not in her bed. He assumed she was sleeping with her sister. He turned the TV off and returned to bed.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“Could her abuser have blindfolded the girl, driven her around, given her details like the truck and fooled her into thinking the scenario she has laid out happened, when in reality she was abused in an entirely different way? Part of the predatory process is a tremendous amount of preparation, forethought. They do think through, ‘What happens if this child speaks up? What do I have to do to create the appearance that what this child is saying is not true?’ I don’t know if that happened, but I don’t see anyone thinking about that as one of many possibilities. They are focused on looking for that person who broke in and took her.”
Detectives interview a sex offender living nearby and search his yard for shoe impressions similar to the ones in the family’s backyard. They find none. The sex offender allows investigators to search his home; they conclude there is no evidence he is involved.
Meanwhile, the girl’s grandmother shows up at the family home while the police are there. The 7-year-old victim says she occasionally stays with her grandmother, and that her grandmother says she has seen her sleepwalk. There’s no indication in the case file that the grandmother is interviewed.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“If the abuse didn’t happen last night, when did it happen? You have to backtrack — where has she lived? Who has she lived with? Who are the other males in her life who may have done this to her? Who is in grandma’s household? Let’s talk to them.”
After the home and yard are processed for evidence, a detective who writes that he is trained in interviewing children interviews the child at the police station.
CNN was not given a verbatim account of the child’s interview.
According to the case file, the child repeats to the detective what she told her mother — that a man came into her room and put duct tape over her eyes. The investigator asks her what color the duct tape was; she answers silver. The girl then “put her hands up near her eyes, using her thumb and forefinger to outline her eyes.” The 7-year-old says the man took her from her home and “put her on his bed.” The investigator asks her why she did not cry out or call for help. The girl answers that the man put tape over her mouth.
Writing what the girl told him, the detective notes:
She then described the guy put her on his bed. He put his private in her butt and made poop come out. She said he was naked and was on her back. She then added that he put his private on her front and back. At the end, he told her she had to suck on his thing like a lollipop. She described it as wet.
“‘It made poop come out’ — that is not a causal effect that a 7-year-old understands might result from this type of rape. Many adults don’t realize that happens. This again says to me that, at some point in time, she was sexually abused.”
The officer asks the girl’s mother if her daughter is taking any medications. The mother says the girl takes half an allergy pill, vitamins and sometimes ibuprofen.
Medical professionals who examine the girl find “no evidence” of anal or vaginal penetration.
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“There’s no documentation comparing what the mother said, who immediately looked at the child and saw redness. I would be interviewing the sexual assault examiner in detail about that. That appears to have been dismissed because it appears the investigator assumes the child’s not being truthful.”
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“Let’s keep in mind that there was a substantial delay between the time the assault is reported to have occurred and the time medical people saw her. In the interim, mom reports that [the girl’s] anus was enlarged and red. The inflammation could have diminished over time.”
The detective expresses concern that the case suffers a “lack of physical evidence.” He writes that there are no marks on the girl from being restrained. He also writes that the child’s “answers were not consistent with her behavior” when he interviewed her. The detective tells the girl’s mother and stepfather that means she was not abducted or sexually assaulted.
I do not believe is intentionally deceiving anybody, but obviously her story is not supported by any evidence.
“He argues that the absence of evidence is evidence that the crime didn't occur, and that is a really huge mistake. The rape kit, the swabs should be tested. The absence of evidence also should never be taken on its own to mean a crime didn’t happen. I've seen tons of cases where you would expect to see injury, you would expect to see latent (fingerprints), you would expect to see biological evidence and we don't see it.”
“I don’t like the detective trying to explain why he’s not believing it to the parents, because that sets up the parents to not believe. I want the parents to be alert, to contact me if the child says anything else at all that’s curious.”
The investigator asks the medical providers who examined the girl if the child “could be suffering from a medical condition, sleepwalking or any other plausible explanation for her story.” The investigator doesn’t document what they said, if anything, then writes that he’ll ask the girl’s mother to have her daughter undergo blood work to see if there’s a “medical issue.”
The mother offers to the investigator that the 7-year-old’s biological father has paranoid schizophrenia, and that the mother’s brother and father also have a “history of mental health.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I want to know what men have access to the child, including the biological father. I don’t see any attempt to talk to the biological father. Who does this child spend time with? I wouldn’t discount the possibility of a stranger, but I’m much more interested in what men have access to this child. And I can’t stand that we’re now asking if the girl is mentally ill. Sleepwalking and mental illness doesn’t have anything at all to do with this poor child giving a detailed and graphic account of sexual abuse. A 7-year-old does not have the capability to make this up. It’s another way to dismiss this case.”
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“The problem with this approach is two-fold. Schizoaffective disorders typically do not emerge until someone is in their teens, even if there is a family history of it. And the lack of physical evidence should actually point to a different conclusion — that the child is making a complaint about abuse that happened before last night. You’ve got a child who has made a credible disclosure. And what message did she receive from law enforcement? ‘You must be crazy.’ ‘There’s something wrong with your brain.’”
On April 9, seven days after the sex abuse is reported, the mother gives the investigator her daughter’s blood work results. There is “no particular health issue noted” except elevated sugar levels. The detective then asks the mother to look into the family’s history of diabetes. He asks the stepfather if he has taken measures to secure the home or check the yard for “new prints.” The stepfather answers that he “kicked all the footprints in the yard to create a clean surface” so he could see any new prints. He’s also bought padlocks for their gates.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“The police are overly focused on finding an intruder and are taking the girl’s account too literally. They should understand that young sexual abuse victims often delay reporting their abuse, and it’s possible that the child was victimized at some other time and her psyche is only allowing her now to disclose that.”
On April 12, the investigator writes that he met with the 7-year-old at the police station to “inform [the child] the evidence did not support any of her story.” He again questions the child about sleepwalking.
“She still feels she was taken from the house,” he writes. “I explained to [the child] about how evidence works, and also how I watched her while she told me about being taken. After explaining all this to [the child], she did not change her story.”
Abbie Newman
Registered nurse and attorney
“This case can make one think, ‘Gee, this has got to be fantasy,’ but you do have cases like Elizabeth Smart who was abducted from her bed. It does happen. The family believes her. Ultimately, I can’t understand how any conclusion can be drawn about this case without testing the rape kit.”
The detective then brings the girl’s mother into the room and tells her there is a “lack of evidence” to support the girl’s story. The investigator shows the mother some “interview techniques” he used with her daughter and how the child would “look to a different place when she did not have an answer to a particular question.”
Abbie Newman
Registered nurse and attorney
“Did the officer interrogate her? Was she uncomfortable? Did she think she wasn’t being believed? There are a lot of reasons why a child might look away…”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“I’d love to ask this investigator, ‘What level of training have you had to interview children? Why wasn’t a child advocacy center involved?’ I’ve interviewed hundreds of children. Rarely do children make eye contact.”
The investigator tries his techniques out on the mother and asks her to intentionally be untruthful with some of her answers. “I was able to identify these untrue answers, which expressly showed [the mother] how the technique works.”
Abbie Newman
Registered nurse and attorney
“This tells me he’s using questioning to detect deception in adults on a child, and that should not be happening. The child should have been interviewed at a child advocacy center by a trained forensic interviewer.”
On May 6, the mother calls to say she needs to talk with the investigator. He drives to their home and speaks with her, the 7-year-old, an older sister who lives with friends [not the 14-year-old sister mentioned earlier], and the grandmother. They tell police the child began “freaking out” at a casino restaurant the previous night when she saw a “fat guy” who she said “was the guy who took her.”
Dr. Steven Berkowitz
Child psychiatrist
“That ‘freaking out’ should be taken seriously. While that man might not be the perp, someone who looked like him might be.”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“This is a serious indicator that something serious happened to this child.”
“I stopped them,” the detective writes, and explained that “the evidence showed there was nobody in the house” and the girl’s sexual assault exam “showed [the girl] was not assaulted.” He urges the family to get the girl counseling.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“The detective is saying there’s no way an obese man could have entered the house. That discounts the timing of the abuse — not that abuse happened. We know that children can generalize the stimulus that triggers them into a traumatic state. So if the attacker is obese, then the child might generalize and say, ‘All obese males are dangerous.’ What this should tell you is that you’re probably looking for an obese male.”
On May 7, the investigator meets with the sister who lives with friends. She says the 7-year-old told her that the man who took her was a “fat guy” and that he did not anally penetrate her but “just played around down there.” The older sister says she asked her sibling if her stepfather ever touched her, and the girl said no.
Then the sister offers that she thinks her 7-year-old sister is a “sociopath because she has been known to lie.”
The investigator writes that he talks to the sister about the possibility that “something else happened” to the 7-year-old and “she made this story up in the hopes the truth of some other situation would come up.”
But he then closes the case, labeling it unfounded.
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I wouldn’t have unfounded the case. I worked a case where a young girl tells us she’s abducted, taken out of a window and sexually assaulted. So this kid goes to grandma and grandpa’s house every day. In the grandparents’ home is one of their sons — so the victim’s uncle. Come to find out, this kid had been molested by the uncle. The uncle is molesting every girl child in this home. So kids sometimes tell us things because they don’t want to name the uncle. It’s complicated for them.”
The child’s untested rape kit is destroyed about seven months later, on November 8, 2013. At the time this case was reported, in April 2013, the statute of limitations for sexual abuse was four years, but if victims reported within the statute of limitations — which is true here — then there would be no time limit to prosecute, according to University of Pennsylvania professor and attorney Marci Hamilton, who is also the CEO and academic director of CHILD USA and an expert on statute of limitations law concerning sex crimes against children.
Michael Dolce
Sex crimes attorney
“You should never destroy this type of evidence when you still haven’t identified the source of the child’s complaint. What happens if you find [the person] who abused this child? The evidence is gone. The defense lawyer’s going to say, ‘This was potentially exculpatory evidence that the state destroyed.’”
Retired Sgt. Joanne Archambault
Former sex crimes investigator
“I would have kept the case open — inactivated it and certainly not destroyed the rape kit with the swabs before the statute of limitations. I would have tested the kit.”
Tom Tremblay
Former police chief and current trainer
“The rape kit should have been maintained. They made an assumption without testing the evidence. This is not a thorough investigation.”
Jerry Edwards, the investigator in this case, told CNN he did not want to comment.
Fallon Police Chief Kevin Gehman responded to questions in an email, writing that the 7-year-old’s case “revealed some weaknesses in the investigative process.” He also wrote that CNN’s questions about the case prompted the city, himself and the city attorney to conduct a “multi-level review of all sexual assault investigations.”
Gehman did not provide details on that review. City attorney Michael Mackedon, reached by phone, refused to answer questions about that probe, including how many investigations were reviewed, how they were chosen, who reviewed them and what was found. Mackedon also would not explain the “investigative weaknesses” Gehman said existed in the girl’s case.
Mackedon acknowledged that the department destroyed rape kits before the statutes of limitations expired — seven of them, according to CNN’s analysis. None of them were tested. CNN’s questions prompted him to instruct police to stop destroying rape kits.
Despite the apparent problems the investigation had, Gehman also wrote that he felt the case was “fully investigated, the child was directed to the appropriate mental health professionals, and all appropriate medical testing on the child was conducted during the investigation.”
Though experts who reviewed this case pointed out that there isn’t always physical or other evidence found during medical exams in child sex abuse cases, Gehman maintained that “physical evidence” and the “medical evidence” did not support that the child was sexually abused.
The sexual assault nurse examiner in the 7-year-old’s case, Gehman wrote, “indicated there was no physical evidence to support the child’s allegations of being physically abducted, restrained and sexually assaulted.”
Gehman said Detective Edwards has 16 years of experience at the department and “appropriate training” in investigating “sexual assault matters and interview techniques” to use on child victims.
There are more than 850 child advocacy centers nationwide. But at the time of this case, according to Gehman and other child advocates, there was no child advocacy center in Fallon, a town of 8,600.
Gehman said Edwards had training in the CornerHouse method, an interviewing technique experts have said is well regarded. Gehman added that professionals working as part of a local sexual assault response team recommended the girl get psychological counseling.
As to whether the 14-year-old sister who lived in the home was ever interviewed, Gehman told CNN that she was but the detective did not include that information in the file.
Gehman said he never thought about preserving rape kits before CNN asked about it. “We may take this opportunity and say, ‘Well, what’s the downside of us keeping the kits or sending the kits [for testing]?’ For us, it’s not going to be an onerous task to maintain the few kits that we have.”
Nevada adopted a law in 2017 requiring law enforcement agencies to submit rape kits to labs for analysis.
