AUSTIN, Texas – Three women are suing the Austin Police Department, along with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, claiming a failure to pursue cases involving sexual assault.
The lawsuit claims the constitutional rights of sexual assault survivors were violated by the department, as well as discrimination based on gender.
One of the women is choosing to stay anonymous, while two others came forward Tuesday and joined their attorneys to announce the class action lawsuit.
“With every injustice that APD, Travis County and District Attorney Margaret Moore, committed against me, I lost more and more trust in every system and essentially in the world around me,” said plaintiff Marina Conner.
According to the lawsuit, an estimated 1,000 sexual assault survivors report their cases to APD annually. Of those cases, only a handful ever makes it to trial.
“If we come together and we fight the system, we can see real change,” said plaintiff, Julie Ann Nitsch. “we don’t have to have our daughter and our nieces and the young women that are coming up right now to live with the fear and the trauma that we live with every day.
District Attorney Margaret Moore is named in the lawsuit for statements claiming rapes by acquaintances are “traumatic occurrences,” more than criminal cases. Moore is also noted as indicating that testing the backlog of rape kits at APD is for “informational purposes,” not prosecution.
After the backlog of thousands of untested rape kits were discovered at APD in 2011, in April 2018 a new audit showed that the cases were now in the hands of forensics analysts. An initial audit showed serious flaws at the Austin Police DNA lab using outdated scientific practices.
The lab is staffed by police officers, city employees, and prosecutors at the local or regional levels.
The lawsuit also names the former Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, former Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, and Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.
“It is shocking that the vast majority of women who survive sexual assault are provided so little protection or recourse, and are essentially blamed for the refusal of law enforcement to seek justice in their cases,” said Jennifer Ecklund of Thompson & Knight and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Women go to authorities in order to seek justice and to protect other women, but the policies and practices of law enforcement instead re-traumatize survivors while allowing their attackers to walk free.”
Ecklund argued that city and county officials perpetuate a culture of disbelieving victims of rape. They want these investigations to be fully staffed and employees to be trained in trauma-enforced approaches. In addition, they called out the county for its failure to timely test sexual assault kits and refusal to take a majority of cases to trial without that DNA evidence.
“The testimony of the person that it happened to is evidence and their credibility for them, the person that its happened to, they’re the only person who can testify about how it went down and what it meant to them,” Ecklund said.
A Travis County spokesperson says they are aware of the lawsuit, and do not wish to comment on pending litigation.
In a statement the City of Austin said:
The integrity of the criminal justice system is of utmost importance to the City and our law enforcement partners. We are aware of the issues raised in this lawsuit and will be reviewing the details as we determine our next steps.