A WOMAN IS suing an NYPD Lieutenant and Detective for rights violations, after she claims they coaxed her into going on a pub crawl, and that one of them tried to have sex with her.
The two officers were assigned to the Special Victims Division, and had themselves been investigating a previous alleged sexual assault on the woman.
She claims the officer who made advances on her had said “You’re my favourite victim,” before later warning her to keep quiet about the alleged incident.
In a complaint filed in civil court in New York yesterday, and obtained by TheJournal.ie, the woman – a 25-year-old nursing student living in Brooklyn – alleges she was sexually assaulted by a male acquaintance in January 2013.
To recover from the ordeal, she left New York and lived with her family in Seattle, before gathering the courage to report it.
That July, the two SVU investigators visited her in Seattle, and conducted two separate interviews about her experience.
On the day of the second interview, a Saturday afternoon, she claims they persuaded her to go drinking with them, starting at 2pm.
When she expressed some hesitation about socialising with the officers who were investigating her case, they allegedly told her it would be “ok”, and added “we’ll protect you.”
Over the next 10 hours, the Lieutenant and Detective are accused of taking the then 23-year-old on a pub crawl, and repeatedly buying her shots of whiskey.
She says the cops became “loud and intoxicated” to the point that they were refused service at one bar, and drove to another, where the Detective began flirting with her and making inappropriate comments such as “You’re my favourite victim.”
Over the course of the night, the officers openly discussed her case, and other similar sexual assault cases they had worked on, according to the complaint.
After midnight, when the woman said she had to go home because she had work in the morning, the two men allegedly urged her to call in sick, and offered to “vouch for her” as police officers.
They then “coaxed” her to stay the night at their hotel, and the Lieutenant, the superior officer, left her in the Detective’s room, where she slept in his bed, while he took the couch.
The woman claims that the next morning, the Special Victims Detective climbed into bed with her, and began kissing, fondling and inappropriately touching her, for between 20 and 30 minutes, while she attempted to stop him.
He later allegedly told her “It can’t leave this room.”
Before returning to New York the next day, the officers told the woman they would investigate her original sexual assault claim, but that if she mentioned what happened the night before, “her credibility would be shot,” the complaint states.
In November, that investigation was closed, after what the woman claims was an unsatisfactory effort by the NYPD.
Last year, an internal investigation into “prohibited conduct” led to the retirement of the Lieutenant involved, while the Detective was demoted and moved out of the Special Victims Division.
The woman is suing the two officers, and the city of New York – for not properly training and supervising them – and demanding $2 million in damages and $1 million in compensation.
In response to an enquiry by TheJournal.ie, a spokesperson from the New York City law department said:
The City will review the complaint once it is served.
You can read a redacted version of the complaint here.
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