Again the victim was treated as if they were the criminal. This time in Lynnnwood, Washington.
And this wasn't a questionable rape by any sense of the word either but a violent assault. But since the victim was young the police felt free to torment the victim further.
SEATTLE (CN) - Police told a teenage rape victim she "made up the story," and let the man go to rape more women before he was caught, the teen claims in court.
D.M. sued now-imprisoned rapist Mark Patrick O'Leary; the City of Lynnwood; its police chief, two officers and public defense attorney; Cocoon House, a federally funded youth shelter; and two of its managers, in Federal Court.
Despite physical evidence that O'Leary had raped her, Lynnwood police detectives told D.M. she had "made up the story" and pressured her to recant, she says in the complaint. Detectives "continued to bully" her until she involuntarily signed a confession - then they charged her with filing a false police report, she says.
Three years later, after being arrested for sexually assaulting a woman in Colorado, O'Leary confessed to raping D.M. and another woman in Kirkland, Wash. He "was sentenced for those crimes in Snohomish County, Washington, Superior Court on June 6, 2012," according to the complaint.
D.M. claims O'Leary raped her on Aug. 11, 2008, when she was 18 and was staying in Cocoon House, which help teens make the transition from foster care.
"During the course of the assault, defendant O'Leary threatened plaintiff DM with a butcher knife, bound her wrists with a shoestring he had removed from her shoes, stuffed a pair of underwear in her mouth as a gag, blindfolded her, and took photographs of her," D.M. says in the complaint.
With incidents of false reporting ranging anywhere from one tenth of one percent to two percent of incidences. The fear of getting falsely accused of rape just doesn’t compare to the fear of an actual rapist getting away with his or her crime. The police are enabling sexual predators to get away with harming others.
Instead victim blaming. Slut shaming. And general misogyny is the norm instead of the exception.
As far as I'm concerned the police in this instance are accessories after the fact.