Last month, The Accountability Project published a story about a sexual assault victim who was arrested for lying about her assault. An expert reviewed the police report for the case and concluded that the detective did not gather enough evidence to make an arrest.
Our investigation found that the victim is not alone, and many other victims of sexual assault have similar experiences when reporting their assault to the police.
In March, we received a tip from someone saying they were sexually assaulted and had a bad experience with their case in court. This led them to start researching other sexual assault cases and they came across multiple cases in Connecticut where victims were charged with false reporting.
Around the same time, journalist Rachel De Leon reached out to us about a story she had worked on. She produced a story for Reveal about the case of Nicole Chase, a woman from Canton, Connecticut who was charged with falsely reporting her sexual assault. De Leon expressed to us that there was more work to be done investigating these types of cases in Connecticut.
Once we reviewed the tip and spoke with De Leon, we decided to look into the issue further to see what we could find. In addition to looking at cases of false reporting, we also wanted to examine the training police officers get for investigating cases of sexual assault.
We found that while some officers go through more in-depth training, not all officers in Connecticut are getting that experience.
De Leon’s work was also the subject of the new Netflix documentary “Victim/Suspect.” The film discussed false reporting cases she found across the country, including cases in Connecticut. Members of The Accountability Project team were invited to attend a screening of the film in New York City. Some of the victims shown in the film were at the event and we were able to hear their stories firsthand.
If you or anyone you know has an experience they'd like to share, we welcome you to share your story with us by sending an email to tips@ctpublic.org.
