Woman who was 18 when two detectives arrested her in 2017 said they repeatedly assaulted her in a van while she was handcuffed

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Prosecutors have dropped rape charges against two former New York City police officers accused of sexually assaulting a woman after arresting her in Brooklyn.

The woman, who was 18 when detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall arrested her for marijuana possession in 2017, said they repeatedly assaulted her in a police van while she was handcuffed.

But Brooklyn’s district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, on Wednesday dropped dozens of charges including rape, sexual assault and kidnapping, citing inconsistencies in the alleged victim’s testimony. The officers have instead been charged with official misconduct and bribery.

The two men quit the New York police department after being accused of rape.

“We are fully committed to holding these defendants accountable by vigorously pursuing the charges in this case that can be proven with independent and reliable evidence,” said the DA’s spokesman, Oren Yaniv.

DNA evidence showed that there was sexual contact between the woman and the arresting officers, prosecutors say. But the officers have reportedly claimed the sex was consensual.

Sign up for the US morning briefing

At the time, it was not a crime in New York for a police officer to have sex with someone in their custody. The law has since been changed to define that as rape, a change motivated by the Brooklyn case.

“We believe – as the newly created statute recognizes - that any sexual conduct between police officers and a person in their custody should constitute a crime. However, that was not the law at the time of the incident,” Yaniv said.

“Because of this and because of unforeseen and serious credibility issues that arose over the past year and our ethical obligations under the rules of professional conduct, we are precluded from proceeding with the rape charges.”

The young woman said she was driving with two friends near Coney Island when the officers pulled her over, found drugs in the car, and loaded her in the van, where she says they took turns assaulting her while driving through southern Brooklyn.

“She’s devastated. She’s depressed. She has a sense of hopelessness. She got raped by two cops, and they’re getting away with it,” said her lawyer, Michael David.

“It’s a complete miscarriage of justice and it’s a bad message to all victims of sexual violence,” he said. “All the evidence is there. You’re under arrest with two big cops with guns and handcuffs – you can’t consent.”

But lawyers for the defendants sought to get the case tossed, saying the woman had made false statements about several aspects of the incident, including saying it was easy for the officers to assault her because she was wearing a mini skirt, when video showed she was wearing track pants. They said she also made statements about the location of the van that were contradicted by cellphone records.

“Rape charges should never have been brought based upon the evidence,” said Mark Bederow, a lawyer for Martin.

In a letter to the judge, the DA’s office asked for a special prosecutor in the case, saying the accuser had made a “series of false, misleading, and inconsistent statements”, some of them under oath. The judge denied the request.

The woman’s attorney said she had been unfairly smeared, and that any inconsistencies in her account were irrelevant to the attack itself.

“Of course crooked cops get away with RAPE charges. Fuck the system,” the woman said in a tweet.

The case exposed a gaping loophole in New York law – which said it was third-degree rape for a correction or parole officer to have sex with a person in custody, but did not apply the same standard to police officers.

“I am disgusted,” said the Brooklyn city councilman Mark Treyger, who pushed the effort to get the law changed. “They handcuffed her. They raped her … There’s DNA evidence, and there’s still no justice. There is something deeply wrong with this picture.”

The New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women planned to denounce the decision outside the DA’s office Thursday afternoon and called for federal prosecutors to take over the case.

“Despite DNA evidence of police raping a teenager in their custody, the Brooklyn DA has reduced the matter to official misconduct and bribery. This is a deep injustice…and an unacceptable violation of public trust that sends the wrong message to victims,” said NOW-NYC president Sonia Ossorio.