Gang Rape Victim With Multiple Sclerosis Says Police Ignored Her

A rape victim with multiple sclerosis says police refused to take her report seriously.

According to NBC New York, a woman named “Kris” (who asked her identity not to be revealed) says she was beaten, kidnapped and raped following a bus ride in New Jersey.

The alleged victim, who asked to be identified only as Kris, said she fell asleep on a bus on Dec. 5 and wound up lost in downtown Trenton. She got off the bus and tried to look for her route back home to Hamilton when a man began to follow her. Then everything went black, she said. She woke up inside an abandoned house on Farragut Avenue, on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by dishes and garbage.

“You know when you get a new mattress and it has that plastic sheet on it? I remember that, and my leg hitting plates and dishes and you heard clinking sounds or whatever, and someone was on top of me,” Kris said. She said one of the two men was extremely violent, continuously striking her face and covering her mouth.

When the rapists finally left, Kris tried to seek help from strangers on the street.

“Three or four people I first saw, and they wouldn’t give me the time of day,” she said. “And then I saw four people across the street and … they told me to go away.”

Eventually a restaurant owner helped her called 911. She was taken to Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in Hamilton. Despite a series of violent injuries, hospital staff discharged her and told her to seek an oral surgeon. That’s also when police began to investigate her rape, but not before the case was shifted from department to department due to jurisdictional issues. Kris wasn’t interviewed formally by police until Dec. 23, almost two weeks after the incident occurred. Kris told NBC a detective from Trenton and a Mercer County Prosecutor questioned her about being prostitute of a drug addict. Funny, considering that literally has fuck all to do with her being raped.

She told them that she was a multiple sclerosis patient on a medical pain patch prescribed by her doctor in part for a spine injury she suffered from an MS-related seizure. Her longtime doctor confirmed to NBC 4 New York he’d prescribed a narcotics patch, Fentanyl, due to the injury.

Over the next couple of weeks, Kris’s mom and Trenton police were in contact by phone. But Kris and her mother said Trenton police did not meet with her in person until Dec. 23, nearly three weeks after the alleged attack.

Kris says she gave a detailed account of what she remembered about the rape, but says the detectives began a hostile form of questioning and that they treated it like “it was a big joke and a waste of time.”

“A big joke and a waste of time.” What victim deserves to feel this way?

The rest of Kris’s description of her police interaction is horrifying and depressing.

“When he asked his partner if there was one question they would like to ask, the one and only question he could come up with, out of everything in the book, was: ‘Did you voluntarily pull down the man’s pants before he raped you?'” said Kris.

“They tag-teamed,” said Kris. “‘Was I out there soliciting? Was I out there buying drugs? Why did I get off the bus at that spot?'”

[…]

“‘You sure about her MS?’ That’s all they kept asking me,” said Kris’ mother. “‘Are you sure she didn’t fall and this isn’t MS?’ They wanted to turn everything around, make her the victim all over again, and it was crap. Plain and simple crap. They didn’t want to do their job.”

Kris has no criminal record for drugs or prostitution. Her only criminal case involves a shoplifting, which was dismissed.

So what exactly is taking so long to investigate the gang rape of a woman with multiple sclerosis? Prosecutors say they are waiting for DNA results.

The prosecutor’s office said the rape kit taken on Dec. 5 was sent out for testing on Jan. 2. Sperm and pubic hairs were discovered, but DNA results are still not in.