The people we empower to sanction sexual deviance and protect others from sexual abuse are some of the worst perpetrators of sexual violence and exploitation. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
The rapist cop reports just keep increasing; as I wrote in the original “To Molest and Rape” only a month ago,
…in the past [few] months there has been such an explosion of rapist cop reports I’ve been forced to feature them in separate columns because there isn’t enough room in the news columns. “Morality Lessons” contained several reports of cops raping people or otherwise victimizing them via sex; “The Public Morals” contained five more. And this week there were so many that they literally would’ve filled half of a news column had I published them as separate items. Does this mean cops are raping more often, that they’re being reported more often, or that the media used to bury such stories but are publishing them more often now? There’s no way to tell; perhaps it’s all three…
The horrifying trend has shown no sign of abating yet. A week ago today, Elizabeth Nolan Brown included TEN separate incidents, all from the week before, in this article in Reason. I’ve covered two of them already, Scottsdale, Arizona’s “courteous” rapist cop Jay Wu, and the Oakland, California cop sex ring exploiting underage sex worker Celeste Guap (which is also the subject of this pro-decriminalization article by Alison Bass). Liz also featured two items I discovered independently; the first one is from Montgomery, Alabama and demonstrates that men aren’t safe from rapist cops, either: “…Deonte Lashawn Hamner…is charged with first-degree sodomy…[which] occurred when…he…[stopped] the victim’s vehicle [under the pretext of] a noise complaint on June 14…” The second one doesn’t involve a rape:
A [Broward County] Florida deputy is facing 29 child sex-related charges, including sexual assault and using a computer in an attempt to lure a child for sex…Kreg Costa…was arrested [June 9th] and was being held without bail…staff at Costa’s office noticed he was staying in his office during the night shift with the lights off and his service belt removed. A check into Costa’s computer showed he was viewing websites dedicated to hardcore pornography…while at work…[he] also exchanged sexually explicit emails and videos with a 16-year-old girl…
I assume he was later allowed to bail out, because he shot himself dead on the 15th. Here are the others Liz reported:
A…Helena, Montana, [cop] faces a civil lawsuit brought by a woman who had been working as a confidential informant for a local drug task force….Lloyd Thompson initially threatened her with criminal charges and to have her children taken away if she did not have sex with him, and things eventually escalated to physical violence as well…Thompson also sexually abused four other female confidential informants…and that he drank alcohol and used meth while on duty…
From Hawaii, a cop’s idea of “friendship”:
Honolulu [cop] Jessie Laconsay was indicted by a grand jury…on four counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of third-degree sexual assault. He’s accused [of] raping a friend’s 14-year-old daughter on multiple occasions…
Oops, looks like somebody forgot about Miranda:
… a judge rejected a motion to suppress statements made by…Northern Illinois University (NIU) [cop] Andrew Rifkin, allowing the case to proceed to trial. He’s accused of sexually assaulting an NIU freshmen in 2011. The case was complicated by a previous court finding that the NIU Police Department had botched evidence in the case, a ruling that led to the firing of NIU Police Chief Donald Grady.
It’s not only regular cops who rape:
William Averill, a probation officer with the Dorchester [Massachusetts] Municipal Court, was arraigned…for rape, indecent assault and battery, and assault with intent to rape. Averill is accused of sexually assaulting a young woman whom he was supervising during her one-year probation sentence…
No collection of rapist cops would be complete without one from Texas:
…Killeen [cop] Christopher R. Morris was indicted by a grand jury on charges of sexual assault and official oppression, after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in December…
I wonder if juries are getting less worshipful of cops? Morris was indicted by a grand jury, and “…Muscatane [Iowa cop] Tom Tovar was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman whose boyfriend he arrested for drunk driving…” And here’s one more from Louisiana that escaped Liz’s dragnet:
[An] Ascension Parish deputy is under arrest for malfeasance in office and first-degree rape…William Lanoux of Prairieville allegedly had sex with a [14-year-old runaway]…Lanoux said he believed he was meeting an 18-year-old girl…
Of course, it’s not only American cops who rape; UK cops are trying to keep up with them:
A [cop] who repeatedly raping a woman during a nine-month campaign of abuse was dubbed a “monster” as he was jailed for 16 years…Mike Graham…tied up the woman, choked her until she struggled to breath, and brutally attacked her at least a dozen times, ignoring her cries for help and pleas for him to stop…Graham claimed the sex was consensual, but some of the attacks were recorded on the woman’s iPhone on an app designed to capture sleep-talking or snoring. The phone, which was sat on the bedside, was automatically activated by her cries for help and kept a recording of what happened…the woman broke down in tears as she told Graham the impact of his abuse.
“You told me as a police officer you could do as you liked, that no one would believe me and you would tell your colleagues I was mental…You threatened to kill me and dispose of the evidence”…The woman also told the court she lived in fear that Graham would come after her even after his arrest, and said she can no longer listen to music or watch television “in case I can’t hear you breaking in to kill me”…
Some of them prefer to rape by proxy:
…a…murder squad detective hid a secret life as a paedophile who trawled the internet looking for images of young girls…Kenneth Dymond…confessed to being sexually attracted to teenage girls and [claimed to be] addicted to pornography. Dymond…also made contact with a 15-year-old girl over the internet causing such concern that her brother threatened to report him as a paedophile…police raided Dymond’s home…in August 2015 and seized two lap tops and two mobile phones. Analysis…revealed 544 indecent images of children including 172 which were of the most serious level…The images included film footage of a baby girl aged just 18 months being raped by an adult man…Dymond…was jailed for eight months and placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years…
“Porn addiction”. Naturally. Nigerian cops make no such excuses for their rapes, though the media there are just as “addicted” to employing convoluted phrases to avoid the word “rape”:
A community based organization of sex workers…has called for help over the…ill treatment its members receive from policemen…who harass and rape them without protection. “…the Policemen break our doors to start packing us like goats to the station. If you don’t have money to bail yourself, they will say they want to sleep with you unprotected which is very bad…in the brothel, we protect ourselves, we use condoms, but with the Policemen, you don’t have a say”…
Well, that’s all of the “few bad apples” for now, but don’t be surprised if you see another one in tomorrow’s news column. And I’m really wondering if I’m going to need to turn this into a separate feature.
