Anna Was Raped By Police Officers ... And It Was "Legal"

Anna—her last name has not been made public though she is known on social media as Anna Chambers ... not her real name—was sitting with two friends in a parked car when a charcoal gray van pulled up; two men got out and used their flashlights to see inside the car.

The men also flashed their badges and began asking questions. When they discovered marijuana in a cupholder, they ordered Anna and her friends out of the car. Anna was handcuffed, but her two male friends were told they could leave, and then the two officers took Anna into the back of that unmarked police van with tinted windows.

Inside the car each man raped Anna—who was crying and shouting ‘No’—through the streets of Brooklyn, stopping every so often to switch places and allow one to drive and the other to rape the young girl.

About an hour later, but just a few minutes’ drive from where these men took Anna, the detectives dropped Anna off on the side of the road; surveillance footage shows she was about a half-mile from a police station. She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, pacing, until she found a stranger who let her use a cell phone to call a friend.

The detectives didn’t arrest Anna; they issued no citation; they filed no paperwork about the stop. Once Anna returned home, her mother took her to the hospital where the semen collected in Anna’s rape kit was discovered to be DNA matches for Detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall of the Brooklyn South narcotics unit.

Both men have since resigned from the force and been charged with rape. A simple case, everyone, including Anna, thought: two cops dragged her from a car, put her in a van, drove around town and raped her. Simple.

But … in New York, there is no law specifically stating that it is illegal for police officers or sheriff’s deputies in the field to have sex with someone in their custody.

Let that sink in; it isn’t a crime for a police officer to take someone into custody and have sex with them; most officers caught in the act claim the sex to be consensual.

Some states have closed this “rape” loophole, but most have not because few people realize the loophole exists and because it is politically unpopular to push laws that target cops and anger their powerful unions.

So, they let a loophole that allows police officers to legally rape detainees because they don’t wish to piss off their union? Seriously?

Luckily, some good has come from Anna’s case, in that it has brought new attention to the loophole. On October 26, New York City Council member Mark Treyger—inspired and repulsed by Anna’s story—proposed a bill to make it illegal for police officers to have sex with anyone in their custody.

Seriously; they have to propose a bill to make rape a crime, in the case of police officers raping people in their custody.

Hopefully Anna’s case will be the end of that loophole.

Defendants Martins and Hall haven’t told their side though their lawyers have made it clear that they are pursuing the consensual sex defense; you know, Anna was removed from a car, her two male friends sent away, she was placed in handcuffs, driven around for hours, and raped repeatedly and then just let go. No charges filed against her for anything.

Again, let that sink in …and then remember that Anna will be taking this to trial, and she will not give up; she will not stop until, in America, it becomes illegal for a police officer to rape anyone.

Buzzfeed