Rape...On the Hush Hush

[IfasehunReincarnated]

Mayor's panel urges changes in the handling of sex cases
By Jeremy Kohler
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/24/2006

The St. Louis police should put more detectives on sex crimes, work more closely with hospitals and counselors and better prepare officers to handle rape cases, a task force appointed by Mayor Francis Slay said on Thursday.

The mayor asked advocates of crime victims last summer to examine the police department's treatment of sex cases in the wake of a Post-Dispatch investigation that highlighted a pattern of problems .

The newspaper disclosed in August that the police had for years kept many rape cases off their books by detailing them in informal memos, which they periodically shredded.

The stories also reported that the department often failed to analyze rape kits and that some women who reported rapes were given waivers to sign that released police from investigating and counting the complaints as crimes.

The task force said the newspaper illuminated problems but also overlooked the overall competence of the police department.

The department ended the practice of using memos and waivers amid the newspaper's questions. After an internal audit last summer, the department acknowledged that it had historically misclassified some rapes as other crimes that were not reported to the FBI for publication in crime statistics.

This year, the department announced that it tallied 276 reports of rapes for last year, about 3 1/2 times as many as the department recorded two years earlier.

In about 1,000 words posted Thursday on Slay's Web site, mayorslay.com, the task force urged the police to:

Seek feedback from victims to see if they were satisfied with their treatment.

Allow a committee to review sex cases every quarter.

Assign all sex crimes to specialists instead of letting district detectives handle some cases.

Hire a victims' advocate and an additional lab worker to analyze evidence from sex cases.

In the police department's official response, also posted on Slay's site, Chief Joe Mokwa said the department would seek outside help for training in rape investigations, continue to work with victims' advocates, and seek feedback from victims about their dealings with officers. Mokwa also said he welcomed a regular review of sex-crime cases.

Mokwa said the department has assigned two more lab workers to analyze sex-crime evidence, but said he needed more funds from the city for three additional detectives.

Mokwa was not available for further comment on Thursday, a department spokesman said.

Task force member Sylvia Jackson, executive director of Women's Safe House, said instances of mishandled sex-crime cases cited by the newspaper series were areas for concern for the task force.

Officers need to understand that traumatized and confused rape victims often embellish or downplay accounts of their attacks, and their claims should not be discounted, she said.

"More attention needs to be given to interviewing of sexual assault victims," she said. The department was "very responsive to that."

jkohler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8337