By JJ Hensley

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio signed an agreement in 2004 with 21 heads of investigative agencies promising that his detectives would abide by standards established for investigating sex crimes.

But records reviewed by The Arizona Republic show sheriff’s investigators in the understaffed special-victims unit were already failing to meet the standards Arpaio’s signature promised to uphold.

The new protocols were one of two key developments that revolutionized sex-crimes investigations in the mid-1990s. The second was the use of socalled family-advocacy centers, which were designed to reduce trauma to victims by providing a single, comfortable place where they could receive counseling and treatment as well as meet with investigators. Records and interviews show that the Maricopa County sex-crimes detectives’ failure to follow the standards increased the trauma on victims and decreased the likelihood of successful prosecutions.

The protocols adopted in the mid-1990s offer law-enforcement agencies a guidebook on how to investigate child- and sexual-abuse cases in best-case scenarios, but they also offer practical measures for anyone trying to assess whether their case is being handled properly. The dozens of standards include guidelines on prompt background checks on suspects and prompt follow-up with the victim. They also provide detailed instructions on when a suspect should be contacted; who should interview the victim and under what circumstances; and mandate that law enforcement coordinate with other agencies, such as Child Protective Services or prosecutors’ offices.

For example, an officer responding to a sex-assault call is expected to assess whether the victim is in immediate danger and, if not, write a thorough report to forward to specially trained investigators.

The 400-plus cases the Sheriff’s Office reviewed failed to adhere to many of those basic standards. The Sheriff’s Office is now taking steps to meet those standards but only this year will begin housing detectives in an advocacy center in the southwest Valley. It will be the first in which the Sheriff’s Office will station full-time employees. Other Valley law-enforcement agencies embraced the standards and the investigative practices they embody more than a decade ago.

“It’s really a leadership issue,” said Jim Markey, a retired Phoenix sex-crimes detective who trains law-enforcement agents nationwide on how to conduct investigations. “If there’s not a commitment from the top leadership for addressing violence against women, in particular sexual-assault crimes, that’s what you see — not just in Maricopa County, but across the country.”

A state law passed in 2003 mandates that every county adopt standards, as Maricopa County did nearly a decade earlier. Those standards have been revised, most recently in 2008, but the central point of the 201page document remains the same: Reduce trauma on the child and increase the likelihood of delivering justice.

A 1999 study prepared for the Arizona Children’s Justice Task Force found law-enforcement officers were twice as likely to follow these investigative protocols when working in conjunction with what was then the Valley’s first family-advocacy center in Mesa.

“We were having kids that were alleging abuse, would go from police station to hospital and maybe to CPS. It wasn’t this victim-centered approach that we’re trying to use now,” said Cindi Nannetti, a 30-year prosecutor and head of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office’s Child-Crimes Division. Nannetti in the mid-1990s helped to develop the protocols now used by Valley agencies.

The advocacy centers and the uniform protocols arose out of a realization that the unique aspects of many sexual-abuse cases made them difficult to investigate and prosecute, said victims and Reinstein said.

Those pressures can be extreme, making it all the more important to move quickly to secure statements from victims when they decide to talk.

“When those kids are brought to an advocacy center ... it’s an environment that’s child friendly, they’re able to tell what has happened to them, the medical piece is there, child services, victim crisis center,” Nannetti said. “When that child has that affirmation that they

victimization,”