A ‘perfect storm’
Falkenberg: DA defends jailing of rape victim.
The defiance was gone from Devon Anderson’s eyes when she walked into a quiet conference room at the criminal courthouse late Friday.
Her patient demeanor and a voice that quivered a few times bore little resemblance to the fierce, finger-jabbing prosecutor we’d seen in a video statement, defending against arguably the most serious allegation she’d ever faced as district attorney — that her office had re-victimized a victim.
As first reported by KPRC, one of Anderson’s prosecutors had a mentally ill woman who had been brutally attacked by a serial rapist jailed for nearly a month in Harris County to ensure her testimony. Without her, the monster would have gone free. But the victim wasn’t just jailed. She was thrown into general population, and, according to her lawsuit, she was bullied, assaulted and traumatized all over again.
It shocks the conscience, as her lawsuit states.
After a week of declining media interviews, citing the lawsuit, Anderson agreed to sit down and give me her office’s side of a nationally reported story that seems to defy explanation.
“I became a prosecutor because of rape victims and sexual assault, so this one has been very difficult for me,” Anderson began, explaining that the crime represents the ultimate form of degradation and bullying. She fears the chilling effect of this story.
“I don’t want people to think that this is what we do to victims. It’s just not,” she said. “This is an extraordinary set of circumstances, a perfect storm.”
Anderson said she regretted the lack of compassion in her video statement. But she didn’t waver in her support for the prosecutor, Nick Socias. The fifth-year prosecutor is named in the lawsuit and declined to be interviewed.
“I believe that everything Nick did was correct. He went to extraordinary efforts to try to get her help,” Anderson told me.
According to Anderson, Socias drove the victim, who has bipolar disorder and symptoms of schizophrenia, from her home in Longview to Houston on the eve of trial and later left her at her mother’s home in a northwest suburb.
“All of a sudden, at 10 o’clock that night, she’s calling Nick, saying: ‘I’m on the street, I have nowhere to go. Can you come get me?’ ” Anderson said.
She said Socias found the victim in a patrol car, where she was being detained after someone reported her roaming the streets with a bag. Anderson
said he understood that the victim was no longer able to stay at her mother’s home, so he drove her to a motel, which Anderson said he paid for out of his own pocket.
In an interview Saturday, the victim’s mother, Barbara, pushed back against Anderson’s version, calling it “halftruth.” She said she is the one who contacted the prosecutor after her daughter wandered from the house and couldn’t be found. She continued to dispute that her daughter was ever “homeless,” as Anderson had said in her video, and she said she never refused to take her in.
Barbara is not being fully identified to protect her daughter’s identity. The Chronicle does not name the victims of sexual abuse.
She said her daughter left the house after becoming “completely and utterly distraught” following what she described as an unexpected, five-hour “interrogation” by prosecutors at the courthouse. Only secure place to go
The victim’s attorney, Sean Buckley, blames the prosecutor’s last-minute preparation for initially upsetting the psychologically fragile 25-year-old.
The next day at trial, the victim broke down on the stand and rushed outside the courthouse into traffic. She was treated at St. Joseph Medical Center for about 10 days. Before discharge, Anderson said, Socias began looking for somewhere she could go.
Anderson said the prosecutor called three places, including the Houston Area Women’s Center and the Harris County Psychiatric Center, but no one could take her, perhaps because she was threatening to leave or perhaps because it was days before Christmas.
The women’s center, for its part, says it has found no record of Socias’ call but plans to meet with Anderson on Monday.
At that point, Anderson said, the only secure place for the victim to go was the Harris County Jail. Using a rare tool called a “witness bond,” prosecutors had her arrested and booked. Socias assumed that she would be placed in a special mental health unit, Anderson said. When that didn’t happen, Anderson said, he started making calls to get her transferred, but “for some reason,” he was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, according to reports, a jail paperwork error, indicating the victim was actually a suspect, may have hindered her psychiatric care.
The first week of January, Anderson said, during one of three visits prosecutors made to see the victim, Socias offered to get her transferred to segregation, or an isolated cell, but Anderson said the victim refused because she didn’t want to be alone. Anderson said he also offered to lower the bond so that her mother could take custody of her, but Anderson said the mother declined. ‘Harsh’ email
The mother, Barbara, found Anderson’s characterization misleading. She blames the district attorney’s office for not notifying her about the jailing to begin with or giving her the option to take her daughter in. An email from Socias to Barbara shows that he mentioned lowering the bond, but Barbara didn’t think it was a real option given the prosecutor’s intimidating warnings. In the same email, Socias wrongly suggests that the mother could be “on the line” for $15,000 if her daughter missed court dates, didn’t take her medication, or got into trouble. In reality, the mother, as a surety, would be liable only if her daughter failed to show up to court. Socias also suggested that if the victim didn’t return, “things get very very bad for her legally.”
Asked about this email, Socias acknowledged through DA spokesman Jeff McShan that “it was harsh” but that he was trying to stress to the mother the great responsibility of bonding her daughter out.
Barbara said she felt deceived by the prosecutor and a DA investigator more than once and often left in the dark about her daughter’s welfare. She said she regrets encouraging her fearful daughter to testify.
“They didn’t care,” Barbara said of the DA’s office. Her daughter “was collateral damage, and someone wanted to further their career, and that’s all it was.”
After desperately prodding the DA’s office to let her daughter out of jail, Barbara said she finally got results from Sheriff Ron Hickman’s office. Hickman told KPRC that within hours of learning of the victim’s plight, he helped see that she was released.
So why didn’t prosecutors contact Hickman directly? A DA spokesman didn’t really answer but noted that Socias was in direct contact with the highest-ranking official over Harris County jails.
Clearly, that wasn’t enough. And that’s my takeaway after talking with Anderson. The context and nuance she points out are important, but they don’t change the fact that the district attorney’s office ultimately failed to protect a vulnerable victim. Didn’t ask for help
Socias appeared to have diligently tried to help, but he seemed to be trying alone. Anderson’s office said she wasn’t informed about the situation until near the end of trial.
She should have been involved from the start. The sheriff as well. When I asked, Anderson couldn’t think of a single thing the prosecutor could have done better. One is glaringly obvious: ask for help.
In the end, the victim testified, and her bravery helped get a serial rapist off the street.
But the cost to the victim was too high, something Anderson said “we regret very much.”
“We’ve just been crushed by this,” she told me.
I believe her. But a young rape victim has been destroyed by this. It’s not acceptable to say that was unavoidable.