Lawsuit: Police willfully botched rape case to protect football player
A Pine-Richland High School alumna sued the Northern Regional Police Department and one of its detectives this week, claiming the department mishandled rape allegations she levied against a former classmate to the point that the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, refers to the woman only as Jane Doe and states that she turned 18 in 2020.
The allegations stemmed from an incident in 2019 when the woman was still in high school. A fellow student allegedly cornered the teenager in a unisex bathroom and sexually assaulted her, “ignoring her pleas to stop and physical resistance.”
According to the lawsuit, the woman, then a teenager, reported the assault that day and gave her statement multiple times to Detective Scott Rick, who allegedly “committed multiple deliberate acts to conceal Ms. Doe’s narrative of the rape and sexual assault and to alter the events.”
Officials with the Northern Regional Police Department could not immediately be reached.
The woman alleged, for example, that Detective Rick gave an incomplete written statement to the district attorney’s office — one that she said she started writing at the school when she reported the alleged assault under the direction of school officials, who then told her to stop writing when her parents arrived at the school. The lawsuit alleges the detective also identified the teenager as “white/nonHispanic;” she is Latina.
In transcribing her full statement, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Rick left out key details, including the forcible and violent nature of the assault. All of this, the lawsuit claims, damaged the teen’s credibility with the DA’s office and played a role in their declination to prosecute.
“Detective Rick’s investigation and reporting to the Allegheny County District Attorney was severely biased,” the lawsuit alleged, “with the intention of protecting (the accused) from prosecution.”
The lawsuit also points out Detective Rick was his department’s liaison with the Pine-Richland School District and “had a vested interest in protecting the reputation of PRSD.”
The student accused in the case, according to the lawsuit, was a member of the high school football team, and the community “is extremely football-centric.”
The lawsuit alleges intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress as well as violations to the teenager’s due process and equal rights. The woman is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
The woman also has an open lawsuit against the Pine-Richland School District. The lawsuit, filed in September, alleged deliberate indifference by the district and officials, who she claimed allowed months of sexual and racial harassment by two other students to carry on. The lawsuit also alleges deliberate indifference to the reported assault, a hostile environment based on race, and retaliation.