Sexual Assault

Since 2015, police in Adams County have taken dozens of reports of rape, yet charges were filed in just two cases.

Before Edgar Coker was exonerated in a rape case, he underwent therapy meant to prevent sexual reoffenses. Thousands of kids involved in sexual offenses are forced into therapies like “relapse prevention” that experts say are ineffective.

The judge who sentenced Brock Turner brought much-needed compassion to the bench, says public defender Sajid Khan.

The DOJ just gave $1 million to the New Orleans DA for rape kit testing, but advocates question whether real change can come to an office fighting allegations that it threatens, intimidates and jails rape and domestic violence victims.

The history of child sex abuse legislation in the United States follows a well-worn pattern: a chilling incident rouses public anger and fear, to which lawmakers respond with expansive, emotionally charged legislative action. The 1994 Jacob Wetterling Act, the first law to establish federal guidelines requiring states to implement sex offender registries, was named after […]

Voters in Florida may soon get to decide whether to give victims of crime a bigger say in the criminal justice system.

In January 2017, the New York City Department of Correction began implementing regulations to address pervasive sexual abuse and harassment in its jails. Rikers Island has an alarmingly high rate of sexual violence: In 2011, the Department of Justice found that 8.6 percent of women incarcerated in the women’s housing unit at Rikers had reported being sexually […]

Dispatches is our series from organizers, attorneys, officials, and others working at the frontlines of local criminal justice reform.

Nearly 70 victims of domestic violence and rape in Memphis are wearing GPS devices thanks to the city’s Sexual Assault Kit Taskforce, according to its monthly progress report published in October. The taskforce was created by the mayor’s office in 2014 after revelations that the Memphis Police Department had failed to test more than 12,000 rape kits. […]

If you’re facing criminal charges in Manhattan, it appears you might be able to get out of that jam with the right campaign donations. And if you don’t have that kind of cash? Expect to face jail time and fines, even for the lowest-level offenses. This is the transactional possibility suggested by a series of […]

A sex crimes detective with the Memphis Police Department will keep her job despite leaking confidential investigative files to the family of a rape suspect, the Commercial Appeal reported last week. Before Detective Ouita Knowlton became the subject of a criminal investigation, she was the supervisor of the DNA Unit, which was formed in 2014 to investigate long-neglected […]

The Office of Bernalillo County District Attorney Raul Torrez has fired a prosecutor who allowed critical evidence to be destroyed in a rape case. Torrez fired Jacqueline James because she authorized the destruction of evidence in a rape case — DNA, witness statements, photographs — that her office had decided not to prosecute. Only one month after that happened, the same suspect […]