|
In a 2018 Reveal episode, we teamed up with Newsy and ProPublica to investigate how police across the country make it seem like they’re solving more rape cases than they actually are. A year later in another Reveal episode, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting used our data to investigate police in Louisville, Kentucky.
They found that the Louisville Metro Police Department sometimes brought rape cases to prosecutors to decide whether to make an arrest before they’ve done much investigating. If prosecutors declined the case, the police could act like they’d dealt with it through a bookkeeping trick. They could say it was cleared “by exception.” And at the time, Louisville had the sixth highest rate in the nation of clearing rape cases by exception rather than by how you might expect a case to actually be cleared – by arrest.
A central part of the investigation was the case of Jen Sainato. While she didn’t get justice from the police, she recently found it through the civil courts.
Sainato reported a rape to police while she was visiting Louisville for a business trip, but they closed the investigation by exception because the prosecutor declined the case. Sainato filed a civil suit as her last chance to seek justice against the man she said drugged and raped her. In late January, five years after the incident, a jury ordered that the man pay her almost $1.2 million.
“This has given me some solace in that the jury did see that, yes, there was a sexual assault and we will hold him accountable,” Sainato said. “I feel they did the job that the police could have done.” Read the full update from Louisville Public Media. Listen to season one of the Dig podcast to hear a full season about how Louisville rigs the rape stats.
|
