Actions by detectives alarm experts
Email reveals they asked teen victim to ‘recreate’ sexual battery
The victim was a 14-year-old girl who said she was inappropriately touched multiple times by a 17-year-old living in the same house. On July 29, the victim was interviewed by detectives, who made an unusual request.
She was asked to demonstrate, on camera, “the position she was in when the assault occurred.” Then, she was told to “recreate the suspect’s actions.”
An incident report by the Osceola County Sheriff ’s Office made no mention of how the victim described what happened to her. But an Aug. 18 email written by Maj. Robert Yawn to subordinates and obtained by the Orlando Sentinel revealed the extent of the demonstration, described as having “played out on the floor of the interview room.”
The teen was also not presented to a child protection team, or CPT, for her interview, a requirement for victims under 16, according to agency policy governing its Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes.
“Although I am new to [the Criminal Investigations Bureau] and have minimal experience investigating crimes of a sexual nature, I am familiar with investigative interview protocols and was alarmed we had a victim reenact a traumatizing event and confused as to why policy was not followed,” wrote Yawn, who took over the CIB from Maj. Wiley Black around the time of the investigation.
Experts in working with victims of sexual violence say the recreation was a clear violation of best practices for such interviews and risked both needlessly retraumatizing the teenager and jeopardizing the potential criminal case against her alleged abuser.
In his email, Yawn ordered in all capital letters that recreations of sex crimes by victims should “immediately cease” and that unless approved by a captain or someone of higher rank, “we will not deviate from policy with regard to CPT interviews.”
No internal probe into the reenactment was opened and the detectives who conducted the interview — Carmen Abad and Sara Ríos, the latter being the senior detective in the room — were not disciplined, the Sheriff ’s Office said in response to questions from the Sentinel.
Sgt. Stephanie King, who supervised the unit at the time of the investigation, was subsequently removed from the SVU and returned to her previous role overseeing the agency’s patrol
“Our brains are designed to keep us alive, but they aren’t wired necessarily to remember chronologically every detail of what happened. It’s an unreasonable ask.” – Erin Earp, interim vice-president of public policy at RAINN
unit. Her actions were also never formally investigated.
The Sheriff’s Office declined to explain why Black was reassigned to the agency’s Patrol Bureau only to return to running the CIB after Yawn retired in September.
“The Sheriff [Marcos López] is dedicated to providing a safe and comfortable environment for victims of sexual abuse to disclose what happened to them,” an agency spokesperson said in an unsigned statement. “Detectives need to get as many details as possible regarding the facts of the crime in order to be able to hold the victim’s abuser accountable.”
The agency didn’t say whether it is aware of other instances where survivors were told by detectives to reenact the actions of their attacker. Despite the practice violating protocol, the spokesperson said survivors in some circumstances are “more at ease demonstrating what took place, rather than verbalizing each detail.”
Yawn wrote in his email that he reached out to the Orange County and Seminole County sheriff ’s offices and the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office, and that none “endorse or practice this type of victim reenactment.”
A spokesperson for the State Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to a message seeking comment. The status of the case against the accused 17-year-old, who the Sentinel isn’t naming because he is a minor and not charged as an adult, is unclear.
But spokespeople for the sheriff ’s offices confirmed the conversation with Yawn took place and reiterated their opposition to the Osceola detectives’ request of the victim in this case.
That’s because having survivors reenact their attacks goes against best practices when investigating sex crimes, said Erin Earp, interim vice-president of public policy at RAINN. It reopens the wounds of the original attack while not necessarily adding anything to the investigation itself, she said.
“A victim being asked to inhabit the mind of their perpetrator and act out as if they are their perpetrator is incredibly traumatizing,” Earp, a former prosecutor, said. “Our brains are designed to keep us alive, but they aren’t wired necessarily to remember chronologically every detail of what happened. It’s an unreasonable ask.”
The other problem, Earp added, is the detectives potentially introduced “bad evidence” that could be fodder for a defense attorney. A misremembered position of the body or a question asking the victim to fill in memory gaps could jeopardize the entire case, she said.
Tiffany Sanford Jenson, senior lecturer at the University of Florida who researches sexual victimization, called the reenactment “beyond comprehension,” as it risks putting the survivor on trial along with her being retraumatized.
“It’s normal to secondguess ourselves, but sometimes an investigator might interject because they’re trying to get a consistent story from the prosecutor,” Sanford Jenson said. “If that gets on camera, even the smallest little interjection, that can be construed as leading the witness and interfering with the testimony. That’s where the backfire can happen.”
In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed a bill, lobbied for by RAINN, that required a state training commission to draw up guidelines “with an emphasis on culturally responsive, trauma-informed training on interviewing sexual assault victims.”
The case in Osceola “is one of the reasons why this training is so important,” Earp said.
“You don’t have to have an ill-intent or be suspicious of someone to do something that is not in the best interest of the survivor of the case,” she said. “You might just be doing the best thing you know, and if you don’t have the training to say this is what you shouldn’t do, you’re going to create situations like this.”
Many law enforcement agencies partner with local child welfare organizations to provide proper guidance during investigations. A spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff ’s Office said it follows the protocols of the local children’s advocacy center run by the Howard Phillips Center for Children & Families.
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office partners with Kid’s House in Sanford, where the agency’s unit that solely focuses on crimes against youth is “co-located,” spokesperson Kim Cannaday said in an email. Both organizations offer CPTs, who are specially trained to interview and assess youth victims alongside law enforcement, as well as provide a safe space for children.
“This allows detectives to work closely with professionals who also do their utmost to cause no additional harm to the child victims,” Cannaday said.
In Osceola, the Children’s Advocacy Center run by Embrace Families has interagency agreements with the Sheriff’s Office and the police departments in Kissimmee and St. Cloud, as well as the Osceola County School District. Its chief legal officer, Gerry Glynn, said the organization can’t comment on the case, including whether staff were aware of the detectives’ violation of protocol, citing Florida privacy laws.
Sanford Jenson said having those professionals in the room could have provided an additional layer of accountability, pushing back against detectives asking the 14-year-old survivor to demonstrate what happened to her.
“Even if this victim volunteered to reenact, should they? This is a 14-year-old girl,” she said. “That’s where that professional can say, ‘It’s not really in her best interest or yours to go through with this.’ ”
And though she praised the Sheriff’s Office’s removal of King from the SVU and Yawn for calling attention to the victim’s reenactment, the fact an investigation into the interview was not opened is concerning.
In its statement, the Sheriff’s Office said no complaints were filed against King or any of the detectives involved in the 14-year-old’s reenactment, but that doesn’t stop the agency from initiating a probe into problematic behavior of which it is aware.
“A protective action would be to take those proper steps,” Sanford Jenson said. “Clearly, they’ve removed that [sergeant] from the unit, but they should also do some internal affairs investigations to really make sure that it’s very clear where the deviation happened and why it happened.”
Ríos, the senior detective in the room during the interview, was presented with an employee of the month award at the agency’s quarterly ceremony in early December. At the same ceremony, she also received a Back The Blue Award from the Osceola Chamber.