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Attorney For NYPD Rape Accuser Says 'She's Not The Same Person She Was'
By
David Colon
Published Sep 30, 2017
Modified Sep 30, 2017
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By
David Colon
Published Sep 30, 2017
Modified Sep 30, 2017
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The lawyer for the 18-year-old woman who's accused a pair of NYPD officers of rape in Coney Island told Gothamist that the woman is "emotionally a complete wreck," and said that the officers' claims of consensual sex "brutalized" her.
Michael David, the attorney for the woman who said that a pair of narcotics officers with the NYPD handcuffed her and then raped her in a Chipotle parking lot earlier this month, told Gothamist that his client is "not doing well right now. She's emotionally a complete wreck. As of now she's extremely nervous. She's not the same person she was" before the alleged rape this month.
Contrary to some reports that suggested the woman was at first caught during a buy-and-bust, David said that his client was driving slowly in Calvert Vaux Park on September 15th, when she was pulled over by an unmarked police van. "The officers in the van came from a buy-and-bust they were on with their supervisor," according to David. "It was just a traffic stop in the park, completely without justification," he told us.
That supervisor has been identified as Sergeant John Espey, and the officers involved identified as Detectives Richard Hall and Eddie Martins. All three men were stripped of their badges and guns while the investigation is ongoing.
David said that police found prescription pills on one of the men in the car, but he was able to produce a prescription for it. "Concerning her, the officers thought she was hiding something, so they told her they wanted to see her top to make sure nothing was there." The woman "exposed her top part" to show the officers she wasn't hiding anything, but David says the officers still took her into the police van anyway, handcuffed her and told her she was under arrest.
The officers then allegedly drove David's client to a Chipotle parking lot on 86th Street, near the 60th Precinct house, where he says they told her that she wouldn't have to go to the precinct house, but that "she was going to do some acts for them. Obviously she didn't consent. She was handcuffed." Then, according to David, both officers forced her to perform oral sex and one of the officers raped her.
The woman was dropped off a couple of blocks away from the precinct house, David said, despite the fact that the officers had her call one of the men who had been in the car with her to tell him that they would be taking her to the 60th Precinct. David says that when the woman's friend showed up at the precinct, he was told there was no record of the woman having been there. "They never called it in, they never did anything."
The woman's friend found her on the street, hysterical, according to her attorney, and the friend took her home to her mother who then insisted she go to Maimonides Hospital.
"The rape kit came back with positive with her DNA," David said, "I know they're checking the DNA for the cops, but the fact that they admitted that there was this act, I think they tried first getting the press on their side because they know it's gonna come back positive for them," David charged.
"I don't know how anything is consensual when you're on-duty, undercover, handfcuff somebody and brutally rape them. It's just a mockery. This has really emotionally sickened my client. First she gets brutalized, and then she gets brutalized again," he said about the claim that the sex was consensual.
David said that his client tweeted about being the victim in the case because she was "emotionally a complete wreck, and she wanted the world to know what these cops did to her." David said her emotional state was made much worse with the charge that the sex was consensual.
Speaking about the lawsuit that David is planning on filing, he said that it's being done because "we have to show the world, we have to get to the truth here, and show what these officers did. Something has to be done. We're concerned, because they were so brazen to do this act and think there wouldn't be repercussions. It's just scary."
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David Colon
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