A disregarded testimony

When I was in the hospital, just hours from my rape, I felt like someone was playing a sick joke on me.

There were so many things that were not done correct or handled the way they should have been.

·      When the doctors and nurses were completing my rape kit they failed to take a blood sample. Their reasoning was that they didn’t have anywhere to store it. (this ruined any chance of proving I had been drugged).

·      The police officer who first responded came and took my statement while I was sitting in a hospital gown in the middle of my rape kit process. The nurse stopped the process so that he could come get my statement. It was incredibly uncomfortable for me. There was little decency to my human condition.  No dignity spared. I suppose there was little time to salvage that, everyone has a job to do.

·      When the police officer filled out my police report he filled it out wrong. To the point where he wrote that I was an acquaintance to my assaulters, even though I told him I didn’t know who they were and I could only definitely identify one of them if I saw them again.

·      They never took any photos of my bruises, although the nurse did comment to me about them. At trial I learned the sickening news that the nurse didn’t even note that I had any bruising and because of that it was disregarded in my trial.

The entire process was very unprofessional and sloppy when this should have been something that everyone I came in contact with that day should have taken very seriously.

A crime had occurred and I had come to get help.

Although I was raped by two Marines, a local civilian detective was assigned to my case before the military was.

This detective was grossly unprofessional. I have not much to compare him to since this was my first encounter with law enforcement, but I have a deep hope that I was just the unlucky one, that other detectives encountering rape victims are nothing like he was.

As I said in my previous post he began to disregard my testimony before I had even finished giving it.

I cooperated with everything even giving my cell phone to them. The detective told me he only needed it to read a text message that was sent to one of my assaulters.

(I won’t go into detail about the rape but during it I kept asking for my phone over and over again and I guess it pissed the rapists off because I remember the first guy saying to the second guy “just call her fucking phone so she will shut the hell up” and then he took his phone out and I just started repeating my number over and over again until I heard my voicemail pick up. I was highly intoxicated and in and out of consciousness and so I was not thinking clearly. The only thing I could get my brain to think about was that I needed to get ahold of my cell phone)

After the two men left me, I sent a text message to the number he has used to call my phone.

The rapist had taken a photo of me and in my text message I told him that he didn’t have permission to take that photo and to delete it. I realize that may sound dumb to some people but for me, in that moment, it was my only chance at gaining back control of the situation.

The rapist actually texted me back denying that he took a photo. (It came up later in trial that he did in fact take a photo on snapchat and sent it to people.)

So, the detective told me he needed those messages, which I was 100% okay with.

I just wanted these men caught.  I’d do whatever it took.

I found out later that the detective actually went on more than just my text messages and even read my emails, my facebook messages, and Lord knows what else. Which I felt was a devastating invasion of my privacy.

Again and again in this process it was me, the victim who was guilty until proven innocent while the accusers are protected, innocent until proven guilty.

It wasn’t long after that, that the district attorney dropped my case.

They dropped my case.

Done. Just like that.

It was then picked up by NCIS. (Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which conducts criminal investigations involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.)

If the two men who did this to me had not been Military my case wouldn’t have even gone anywhere.  It would have ended right there forever with me wondering why…why no one was listening to me.

Is a crime supposed to be this degrading to report?

The district attorney would have dropped it and those two men probably wouldn’t have even known that I went to the police in the first place.

We need to talk about this.

These statistics need to change.

This is an Injustice.

We need to fight for this.

I need to fight.

I do.

And so I write.