Our justice system too easily dismisses the homeless as secondclass citizens.
More must be done to ensure that those who are living on our streets are less vulnerable.
Keith Edward Hendricks knew how to find perfect victims.
A violent rapist who choked and threatened women with knives during his sexual assaults, Hendricks targeted homeless women living on the streets in Houston’s Midtown area. What’s especially shocking and shameful is that he slipped through the criminal justice system for almost a decade precisely because he knew people either wouldn’t believe or wouldn’t care about the women he terrorized.
“I do admit that I do crack,” he told police in a sworn statement. “But so do all these other women that are making allegations against me.”
The long effort to finally get Hendricks off the streets and in prison where he belongs is harrowingly detailed in “Serial Indifference,” Chronicle reporter Anita Hassan’s deeply disturbing series of stories investigating how a man described as a “monster” somehow stayed on the loose for years and sexually assaulted countless women. Despite the dogged work of a dedicated police investigator and the staggering bravery of homeless victims determined to bring him to justice, Hendricks continued committing his vicious crimes through the tenures of two Houston police chiefs and five Harris County district attorneys.
What happened in this case attracted national attention after one of the victims, a mentally disturbed young woman publicly identified as “Jenny,” was locked up in the Harris County Jail to ensure that she would be available to testify against her attacker. As it turned out, that was just the most heavily publicized development in a series of investigations and prosecutions that repeatedly allowed a serial rapist to go free and continue attacking women living on the streets of Houston.
Texas state senators last week approved a piece of legislation called “Jenny’s Law” that’s designed to give crime victims legal representation and a public hearing before they can be jailed to ensure their testimony. But as lawmakers noted, that addresses only one of many issues highlighted by this case: that our jails have become de facto mental health centers, that violence is all too common behind bars, that our detention facilities are holding far too many people who really don’t need to be locked up.
But above all, it’s clear that our criminal justice system and our society at large must do more to protect the homeless and mentally ill people living without permanent shelter. Melissa Jackson, one of the survivors who said Hendricks sexually assaulted her in three different attacks, told the Chronicle she’s been raped 15 times. (The newspaper routinely does not name sexual assault survivors, but she’s one of the victimized women who volunteered to be identified.) The simple truth is we don’t know how many women Hendricks raped during his years on the streets of Houston; in all likelihood, many of his victims didn’t bother reporting the crime because they assumed no one would care. Prosecutors who worked on this case repeatedly said jurors were unlikely to believe or sympathize with the homeless victims.
In a saga littered with bad decisions and missed opportunities, some very dedicated people deserve praise. A veteran Houston police officer named Pedro Moreno, nicknamed “Father Pete” because he had an unusual talent for coaxing rapists into confessing to their crimes, spotted the similarities between a series of sexual assaults and spent seven frustrating years repeatedly arresting Hendricks before a jury finally sentenced the convicted rapist to life in prison. Above all, Hendricks would still be on the street today if a few of his victims hadn’t mustered the extraordinary courage to defy his threats and talk to police and prosecutors, even though their rapist was still wandering around the same area where they lived and slept. Hendricks actually raped one of his victims again and assaulted another in an attempt to silence them, but they bravely persisted, and our city is safer for their heroism.
“Who’s going to believe these girls?” a prosecutor asked jurors at Hendricks’ last trial. “Who’s going to care?”
If you’re disturbed about what happened to Jenny and Melissa, just think about that haunting question the next time you see a homeless or a mentally disturbed person on our city’s streets.
Our criminal justice system needs to care. The homeless and mentally ill people living on our streets are an especially vulnerable population, a sad fact that Hendricks successfully exploited far too long. They should not be dismissed as second-class citizens for whom victimization is all but inevitable.