A scathing new lawsuit claims that a “male-dominated culture” within the NYPD has led to widespread mistreatment and discrimination against female sexual assault survivors and aims to change it.
The New York City Police Department has failed “countless female victims of sexual assault,” according to Jennifer Welch and Alison Turkos, who filed the lawsuit Thursday. “This action seeks to remedy these failures.”
Welch and Turkos say they were discriminated against by police when they reported their own sexual assaults, and that such treatment is part of a larger system that results in silencing female victims.
“For years, sexual assault victims have been met with disdain, disbelief and disrespect by the NYPD officers and detectives who took their reports,” said Mariann Wang, the plaintiffs’ attorney.
“A discriminatory culture permeates the NYPD, from the young, often male and usually unenlightened patrol officers through the rank and file up to the top brass at One Police Plaza,” she said.
Welch said she was sexually assaulted in July 2015 by a male acquaintance with whom she had a brief romantic relationship.
“He waited until I was asleep to do things to my body I’d explicitly said no to earlier in the night when I was awake,” she said.
In documents filed in court, Welch says she awoke to find that the man had removed her tampon and then had intercourse with her without a condom.
Welch initially did not report it, but in January 2016, she went to her local police station after hearing a similar account about the same man from another woman.
When Welch met with police officers, she said they told her that she had not been raped because she had not fought back, and that a sergeant told her that “he has sex with his wife while she’s asleep, and she’s not reporting him for rape.”
Her report was categorized as a “dispute,” and she was told the NYPD would not investigate it.
Welch again contacted police more than two years later after a Department of Investigations report charged the NYPD with undermining the investigation of sex crimes.
She met NYPD Special Victims Division officers in May 2018. Six months later, she was told the district attorney would not prosecute her case.
“I am filing this suit so that no other survivor has to experience what I experienced when she bravely walks into an NYPD precinct to report her assault,” Welch said.
Turkos’ story follows a similar pattern with regard to the way it was handled by police, and Wang said it helps to demonstrate a culture of gender bias within the NYPD.
Turkos was kidnapped at gunpoint by a Lyft driver in October 2017, brought to New Jersey and raped by the driver and two other men, she said.
She reported the assault two days later when she went to a Brooklyn hospital for a rape kit, which is used by medical staff to collect evidence of sexual assault.
Four police officers showed up at the hospital to question her before the rape kit was completed, and two more arrived afterwards for another round of questioning.
A detective from the Special Victims Division was assigned to her case the same day Turkos reported it, but she heard nothing for five weeks and her requests for information were ignored.
“She would not return my phone calls or emails, no matter how much I begged for more information,” said Turkos. “It became clear to me that the NYPD wasn’t interested in getting justice for me or for any other survivor.”
Months later, Turkos pressed the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau about her case, and a different detective was assigned to it.
The case was eventually turned over to the FBI on because she had been kidnapped and taken across state lines.
“Virtually since its inception, the Special Victims Division, which was designed to focus on sexual assault investigations, has faced unique structural challenges,” the lawsuit contends.
Welch and Turkos are seeking damages and injunctive relief, which would force the police department to institute reforms to address problems within the system.
The lawsuit says the Special Victims Division is inadequately staffed, poorly trained and that an unwillingness by NYPD brass to address these issues demonstrates gender bias.
The NYPD said that it has instituted “major improvements” to its Special Victims Division since the Department of Investigation report was released.
“NYPD leadership continues to meet with survivors, advocates, elected officials and other partners to solicit feedback, which has been an important part of the bureau-wide review,” Detective Sophia Mason said in a statement.
