24 Years Later, Woman Who Was Maligned After Rape Gets Apology From Police Commissioner

(so, an obvious question is, just how many of those so-called "false" rape accusations are actually true, but the police and other responsible groups are simply too lazy, too hate-filled, too ignorant, or. . covering up, failing to do their damned jobs? but, hey, it's only women, right? who cares? not like we are important or anything. HOW MANY rape kits are still untested????)

24 Years Later, Woman Who Was Maligned After Rape Gets Apology From Police Commissioner


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New York’s police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, apologized to the victim of a 1994 rape in Prospect Park, whose story investigators doubted. Earlier this year the rapist was identified through DNA.CreditCreditMark Lennihan/Associated Press


It took 24 years, but a woman who was raped in a Brooklyn park and then maligned by police officials and a columnist who doubted her story has received what she wanted: a formal apology from the New York City police commissioner. The commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said in a letter released on Sunday that the treatment of the woman and the handling of the case amounted to a “miscarriage of justice.” Police officials, quoted by a columnist in The Daily News, cast aspersions on the woman’s report of being dragged off a path in Prospect Park in broad daylight and raped at knife point on April 26, 1994. Investigators then allowed the case to languish for decades after a lab report showed they had been wrong. Mr. O’Neill wrote in a letter to the woman that the police had “let her down in almost every possible way,” compounding her pain. “For that,” he added, “I am deeply and profoundly sorry.”

It was a remarkable admission of failure by the head of the nation’s largest police department, which has struggled recently with shortcomings in the Special Victims Division that investigates sex crimes. Rarely do big-city police commissioners publicly apologize, and Mr. O’Neill’s letter seemed to reflect a cultural shift in attitudes toward victims of sexual assault and harassment, fanned by the #MeToo movement. Mr. O’Neill, a career police officer, has staked his legacy on building trust with communities wary of the police.

The woman, who is African-American and now 52 years old, said in an interview that the apology left her feeling grateful and unexpectedly emotional.“I wanted to see this happen so that the N.Y.P.D. would have to take a public stance in support of survivors, so that there would be a public statement that would make it clear that it was safe and beneficial for survivors to come forward to the police, and that they would not be attacked or pilloried by the police,” she said.

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The doubts raised in 1994 about the account by the survivor of the Prospect Park rape drove a wedge between the police and the overlapping communities of sexual assault victims and lesbian and gay people. Mr. O’Neill lamented that divide in his letter, singling out the hoax accusation as “egregious.” “I firmly believe that no one in the N.Y.P.D. would draw such an implausible and ridiculous conclusion today,” he added. The Police Department reopened the investigation a year ago after accusations of sexual assault against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein were published, fueling the rise of the #MeToo movement, which has felled the careers of more than 200 powerful men and forced a national reckoning about consent, sexual assault and believing women who make complaints.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/nyregion/apology-police-prospect-park-rape.html