In late 2011, Caitlin Speck told a Clackamas County sheriff's deputy that she'd been sexually assaulted eight days earlier by an acquaintance in his apartment.

The encounter started innocuously, according to a police report detailing her account. She and Dean Pederson ate pizza, watched television and had drinks.

At one point that night, Speck, then 22, told the deputy, Pederson pinned her down, took off her clothing and assaulted her after she had said no to sex.

According to her statement, she lay awake in the man's bed, in shock, until morning, when he sat on her and began to touch her sexually again. She said no, she reported, and he stopped. He eventually gave her a ride to a friend's house, she told the deputy.

Speck's case landed on the desk of Detective Jeff Green, who in 2015 was accused by his supervisor of failing to investigate reported crimes, including sexual assaults.

In Speck's case, internal Sheriff's Office records say, Green told a supervisor he couldn't find Pederson's address or phone number, even though the original report listed the suspect's name, driver's license number, date of birth and place of employment - typically more than enough information for a detective to locate someone.

Speck also had turned over the clothing she wore that night but Green never submitted it for testing, court and Sheriff's Office records show.

It appears Green did little else before suspending the investigation the following year, according to Sheriff's Office records and court filings. Speck's complaint -- the only one prosecutors salvaged from those Green had neglected -- wasn't investigated until 2015. That work resulted in Pederson's arrest in August.

Speck, now 28, is speaking publicly for the first time about her experience. The Oregonian/OregonLive does not typically identify people who report sex crimes, but Speck said she wants the public to understand the impact of the detective's misconduct on the people who reported crimes he was supposed to investigate.

"It's important to say I had this happen to me -- through no fault of my own -- and I want people to be held accountable," Speck said.

She says she was not informed that the investigation had been suspended. As weeks passed, she assumed police had moved on. She recalled reaching out to the Sheriff's Office once or twice over the years but said no one knew about her case.

"I felt like nobody cared," she said. "I just figured, OK, so maybe it's not so big of a deal on the scale of importance to the Sheriff's Office."

It would be six years before a different Sheriff's Office detective would come to her house to tell her that her assault complaint was under investigation.

Green retired in 2015 after a supervisor complained the longtime detective had failed to pursue not only Speck's complaint but allegations involving the sexual abuse of a toddler and the rape of a teen, among other crimes.

Speck said her feelings of devastation over the years were compounded by the sense that she had been ignored. It wasn't until she was contacted in September by The Oregonian/OregonLive that she realized her case had been assigned to the disgraced detective, who ultimately was convicted of two counts of second-degree official misconduct.

"You can kind of make sense of people being horrible," she said. "But when it's people being horrible who are in higher positions, I feel like that especially shouldn't be swept under the rug. They should be held accountable for that."

Sheriff Craig Roberts did not respond to an email message seeking comment on Friday.

Speck joins a growing chorus of women who have gone public with their claims of rape, sexual assault, sexual misconduct and harassment.

Her allegations come on the heels of a recent story by The Oregonian/OregonLive about another rape investigation involving a Portland woman. Juliette Simmons, 44, spoke out after her sexual assault kit languished for a year in a backlog at the Oregon State Police crime lab. In that case, Simmons said she wanted to be publicly identified and photographed to shed light on how lengthy delays take a toll on victims. Her case is unrelated to Green's conduct.

Vanessa Timmons, executive director of the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence, a statewide advocacy group, said some women may feel comfortable speaking out given the current nationwide focus on rape, sexual assault and harassment.

"There is safety in numbers," said Timmons. "The narrative is out there and they feel like the community is responding well. People are responding in a good way. They are believing the survivor. They are listening to the story."

Yet sexual assault continues to be woefully under-reported to police, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. The center, which advocates for victims of sexual assault, says 63 percent of rapes go unreported, according to the latest data.

Oregon has among the highest rates of sexual and domestic violence in the country, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to 2011 government statistics, the most recent available, 27 percent of women in Oregon have experienced rape compared with 18 percent nationwide. And 56 percent of women in Oregon experienced sexual assault other than rape, compared with 45 percent of women nationwide.

Nationally, in eight out of 10 rapes, the victim knows the attacker, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Generally speaking, rape and sexual assault cases involving people who know each other can pose a particular challenge for prosecutors, said Norm Frink, a retired chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County. Those cases are often complicated by the use of drugs or alcohol, he said.

"That always raises the issue of whether it was consensual or nonconsensual," Frink said. The burden is on the prosecution to prove something happened and sexual contact was unwanted.

"That obviously tends to be much less of a problem in a stranger to stranger situation, but, you know, you get these cases where people are at a party, there is some ambiguous situation, and even if you are very sensitive to sexual assault victims and their needs and concerns, that type of setting can raise issues that the defense can try to use before a jury," said Frink.

According to court records and the account Speck provided police, Speck told a deputy that she knew the suspect from high school. The two attended Molalla High. She told police they communicated via Facebook and he invited her to get together.

According to a copy of her original statement, they had drinks at his apartment and went into Pederson's bedroom, where he asked her to have sex. She said that she told him no.

"He sat on top of me, I told him to get off of me and he would not and he pulled off my clothes," she told the deputy, according to the statement, which she shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive. She said she was not impaired by alcohol that night.

She tried to push him off but could not, she told police, and he sexually assaulted her.

She remained in bed with him until the following morning, she said. She said he sat on top of her and placed his hand on her genitals again in the morning but moved it when she said no. According to court records, Speck said she told him that he had raped her the night before and that he "blamed the sexual assault on tequila." She said she took a shower and Pederson took her to a friend's house.

She told her mother about the alleged assault soon after it took place.

In following days, she went to Planned Parenthood for pregnancy and HIV/AIDS tests, both of which came back negative, she said.

Speck said she did not immediately call police or go to the hospital for a sexual assault exam because she was shocked by what had happened.

"I didn't know what to do," she said. "It's never happened before. I was at a loss as to what to do about it."

At some point in the months after the attack, Speck resumed her relationship with a former boyfriend, Taylor Luttrell, 27, of Colton. Luttrell said Speck told him about the alleged assault.

Speck, a soft-spoken woman who grew up in Molalla and still lives in Clackamas County, said over time she suffered from acute anxiety and depression. She was unable to keep a job. She said she had emotional breakdowns and, by her own account, was hospitalized twice for mental health problems.

Her mother, Deveron Speck, said she was deeply concerned about her daughter's mental and emotional deterioration.

She said her daughter had been a joyful woman who attended community college and looked forward to finding a stable government job before settling down to start a family. After she reported the assault, her daughter had trouble sleeping and her hair began to fall out, she said.

According to statistics compiled by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, about 80 percent of women who experience rape or sexual violence suffer from significant short- or long-term mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder.

"She grew up in a loving family," Deveron Speck said. "I couldn't put two and two together. I couldn't understand why she was having these horrible nightmares."

After Green's misconduct surfaced, in 2015, the deputy who initially took Speck's report went to the address listed in the Oregon Motor Vehicle records, got a statement from Pederson and a sample of his DNA.

Only then was Speck's clothing submitted to the Oregon State Police crime lab. The results came back 18 months later with a finding that the DNA in Speck's underwear was "1.19 sextillion times likely" to be Pederson's, court records said.

Pederson, 30, was arrested in August and booked into the Clackamas County Jail. He is accused of second-degree sexual abuse, a felony.

Pederson has pleaded not guilty and, according to a legal motion filed in the case, told a Clackamas County deputy that he did not know Speck and that he knew the names of those with whom he had sex. He denied having sex with her.

Reached Friday, Pederson's attorney, Jerry Seeberger, declined to comment on Speck's allegations.

Speck's case was among more than 100 cases in Green's caseload that law enforcement officials reviewed; some of the victims were so discouraged by the delays they no longer wanted their cases prosecuted.

Detective Eric Lee, the detective who helped review those cases, visited Speck's home earlier this year to discuss the case. Speck said she appreciated the detective's efforts but revisiting details of the alleged crime after so much time had passed left her shaken and unable to sleep.

During a recent hearing, a judge expressed serious reservations about the prosecution, given the lengthy delays in investigating the case. No further court hearings are scheduled this year.

Steven Wax, legal director of the Oregon Innocence Project and the former top federal defender for Oregon, said long delays in criminal cases can be a challenge for prosecutors and defense attorneys "because of the disappearance or death of witnesses, the loss of memory or lost evidence."

Meanwhile, Pederson was allowed to go free and Speck is left waiting and wondering.

-- Noelle Crombie

ncrombie@oregonian.com

503-276-7184

@noellecrombie