Sex crime victims deserve unbiased investigations
Last year, over a dozen women wrote a letter to the U.S. Justice Department calling for an investigation into the NYPD Sex Crime Unit. Their experiences revealed that New York City police preferred investigating rapes involving strangers over those involving assailants that the women knew. Since most rapes are committed by men that women trust, the police were telling the women to keep quiet.
The U.S. Justice Department rejected that message. “Victims of sex crimes deserve the same rigorous and unbiased investigations of their cases that (the police) afford other categories of crime,” announced U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, launching the first federal investigation into how sex discrimination affects police.
The result of that work was evident last month when Dr. Robert Hadden, a serial sexual offender who preyed on over 245 women as an OB-GYN at Columbia University, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Think about that: over 245 women. And that’s only counting the ones who came forward.
If you’re wondering how Hadden was able to harm so many women over the course of his career, consider the words of JoHanna Cox, spokeswoman for New Mexico’s First Judicial District Attorney’s Office, in response to questions about the DA’s persistent failure to file sex abuse charges against Vernon Jaramillo, former CEO of Española’s Cariños Charter School.
“Our charging decisions,” said Cox, “are based on the investigation and information submitted by the originating law enforcement agencies.”
Cox’s statement suggests that if police officers can’t find probable cause in a case that cost New Mexicans $4.25 million to settle, prosecutors won’t lift a finger. That’s a fiction. Prosecutors take calls from law enforcement officers 24/7, answering questions and offering guidance on what crimes can or should be charged. They file criminal charges with or without adequate police investigations, dismiss or reduce those charges at their own discretion and leverage civil suits to score pleas to lower sentences, securing convictions that promote a “tough on crime” image without disturbing the status quo. That’s a fact.
To be sure, civil suits help redress harms, a tab picked up by taxpayers, public health care providers, and employers that taken together will cost our state over $500 million this year. Despite these settlements, perpetrators often return to the system undetected, revolving in and out of schools, jails, hospitals, police departments, child welfare agencies and other public spaces.
As a former prosecutor, I know the limitations of police training firsthand. To stop the cycle, we need to listen to survivors like Marissa Hoechstetter, who pushed for a change in New York’s statute of limitations for sexual assault lawsuits and Evelyn Yang, who called out Columbia University for maintaining Hadden’s employment despite knowing his history as a sex offender.
Their courage reminds us that power lies in collective action. By resisting business-as-usual strategies to gaslight them into silence and working closely with well-trained police officers, prosecutors, investigators and social workers, survivors are putting the “public” back into public safety.
It’s worth trying here, too.