Wife Of NYC Cop Acquitted Of Rape: "She Can Go To Hell"

“I find it hard to believe that people can’t believe a gentleman said no,” Kenneth Moreno, the former New York City cop acquitted of rape but convicted of misconduct, said over the weekend. He also said, “I know what happened. I didn’t suffer from any blackouts.”

With that comment to the New York Daily News, Moreno both tried to take the high road and smear the accuser as a drunken seducer. His wife Julia was more unequivocal, telling the New York Post, “She can go to hell,” and “She should go to jail.” In an interview with The New York Times, Kenneth Moreno began a sentence with, “I should hate this person,” and was interrupted by Julia: “I’ll do that for you.”

We suppose that if you’ve made the decision to stay with a man who (admittedly while you were separated) made a false 911 call to visit the apartment of a very inebriated woman a total of four times, who claims he “cuddled” this woman he was supposed to be protecting while she was wearing only a bra and kissed her forehead and shoulder, who admitted to her that he used a condom, who this woman and prosecutors and experts and women around the city very much believe is a rapist — well, you have to hate someone.

So Julia Moreno read from the victim-blaming playbook: “From the beginning of time, this is what girls do — young girls, inexperienced. They’re not mature. They get drunk. They do these things and, you know, they want sympathy. In his case I believe she wanted sympathy from her friends because they threw her out of her own party.” Moreno is one year younger than the alleged victim.

Kenneth Moreno declared, “Rape is a horrible crime,” and suggested that the woman had been manipulated by prosecutors (“I will remember her as the girl from Dec. 7, not the girl who testified on the stand”) and implied the protesters who took to the streets Friday were being paid off: “I don’t know what they are being told. There are rumors that the protesters are being orchestrated by her friends. There is a lawsuit. There is a lot of money involved in this lawsuit.”

In fact, the protests were “orchestrated,” or organized, by a group of mostly younger women who saw in the acquittal a variety of outrages — from the jury’s inability to believe a drunk woman was raped to the undermining of any feeling of safety at the hands of the police. Not to mention the role of the “CSI effect” in the acquittal — jurors believed no penetration had taken place because there was no DNA, despite the fact that a condom could have negated the DNA’s presence, and heard the defense suggest that a woman’s cervix could be bruised by vigorous scrubbing in the shower.

Those feelings remain raw. Moreno and Mata’s faces appeared in posters around the East Village, with the simple message, “NYPD Rapists.”

For Ex-Officer’s Wife, Anger At His Accuser And Tears At An Upended Life [NYT]
Kenneth Moreno, NYPD Officer Acquitted Of Rape, Rips Prosecutors For Bowing To Political Pressure [NYDN]
Anatomy Of A Travesty [NYP]
Ex-cop’s Wife Says ‘Lying’ Rape Accuser Should Be Locked Up [NYP]
Earlier: NYC Cops’ Outrageous Rape Acquittal Sparks Protest