NYC Cops' Unbelievable Rape Acquittal Sparks Protest (As It Damn Well Should)
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Despite an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests a New York police officer raped a woman in her apartment while his partner stood guard, today the two men were cleared of all charges except three counts of “official misconduct.” The outcome is profoundly disturbing, and sends the message that if a woman decides to go through the horrific ordeal of prosecuting her attackers, she still won’t get justice — particularly if she’s accusing two NYPD officers.
In December 2008, officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata responded to a 911 call from a cab driver who had an intoxicated woman in his car. The 27-year-old woman had gone to a Brooklyn bar to celebrate her recent promotion with friends. The officers took her back to her apartment where, she threw up and then blacked out. The N.Y. Daily News reports:
She said the officer tried to lift her up before she blacked out. When she woke she was in bed and heard sounds of “Velcro ripping” and realized “somebody was rolling my tights down my legs.” Then, she said, it happened.
“I woke up to being penetrated from behind,” she said. “I woke up because the action of his penetration was so hard that my head was moving toward the window [at the head of her bed] like it was going to go through it.”
The woman said she had no way to fight back “because I was so intoxicated, I was dead weight …I couldn’t say or do anything.”
Surveillance footage shows the officers returned to her apartment three times that night, and there’s a recording of a fake 911 call they made to justify going back to the apartment. The defense claims that on their fourth visit the woman “became flirtatious” and Moreno “succumbed” to physical contact with. He says that he cuddled with her in bed while she was wearing only a bra, but they didn’t have intercourse.
One juror told the New York Times today that they found the men not guilty on the more serious charges because there wasn’t enough evidence:
“I did think that they might have had sex, but that doesn’t mean that they did have sex,” he said. “There is nothing to substantiate this. There’s no DNA, there’s no proof in any way that they had sex.”
Yes, the woman took a shower the next morning, so there’s absolutely no way to know what happened. Well … there are plenty of other facts that could convince a reasonable person that the woman is telling the truth, but as numerous media reports have reminded us, she allowed herself to get drunk, so we can’t trust a damn thing she says.
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