2015/11/07
More details have surfaced about what exactly Officer Sanchez did to the victim that night, and how LA County apparently tried to attack the victim afterwards.
Katie Baker reports as follows at Buzzfeed:
The sheriff’s deputy who asked Lindsay for her license and registration was [Jose] Sanchez, then 25 years old. He asked Lindsay if she knew about her warrant. Lindsay told him she did, but that she was taking care of it, and that she had no other way to get to the job interview. When Sanchez asked her if she had been drinking, she told him the truth: only half a glass of wine her friend had offered her a few hours before. Sanchez gave Lindsay a breathalyzer test, which he told her she failed, although he refused to show her the results. Instead, he told Lindsay he had been watching her at the gas station while he ran her license plate number.
“You’re pretty hot stuff,” he told her, according to depositions. Lindsay asked if he was going to arrest her. “No, but what are you going to do for me?” he asked. That’s when Lindsay started to panic.
Lindsay tried to decline Sanchez’s advances by telling him she had a curfew and a boyfriend, but he told her to get in his car. At first, she thought she was under arrest for not having sex with him, but even that didn’t make sense: Where were the handcuffs? Instead, Sanchez drove Lindsay down a dirt road into the pitch-black desert, where he raped her as she cried.
Lindsay tried to do what she thought was right by reporting the rape immediately afterwards — but that just caused her more suffering, it turns out.
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The “authorities” involved in her case made it distressingly difficult for her to find justice. They constantly questioned her and tried to find flaws in minute details, they spent years fumbling around with paperwork and court dates, they even investigated her family members. Baker’s article goes into the details:
The L.A. Sheriff’s Department Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau submitted Lindsay’s case to the district attorney’s office in January 2011. Lindsay was on edge the entire next year, especially as the DA’s office never contacted her with updates, she said, and didn’t schedule her first interview until Aug. 11, 2011. Whenever she checked in, the office told her they were still evaluating her case.
In an August email, the DA’s office indicated it might drop the case entirely, according to Lindsay’s attorneys. In May 2012, it was reassigned. In 2011, Lindsay had filed a civil suit, which her lawyers believe may have moved the criminal case forward. Her attorneys had to go to court multiple times to get an unredacted copy of the internal investigation, which took about a year, they said. The same week they received it, Sanchez was finally arrested. It was July 27, 2013, nearly three years after the rape. (A spokesperson for the DA’s office said these types of criminal cases “are complex and take extensive investigation.”)
This process of her being questioned, stalled, and forced to relive the rape over and over lasted some years — it wasn’t until five years later in fact that Officer Sanchez would finally be sentenced. Check out Baker’s full article to see what the victim herself said about this experience.
It is no secret sexual crimes are running rampant within the police department. Sadly, citizens are not safe from members of law enforcement charged with protecting and serving them.
Often, not only are civilians’ rights directly violated – but frequently their money is used to pay the victims of these offenses.
This week the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to a payment of $6.15 million to a woman who was raped by an on-duty sheriff’s deputy, reports say.
The settlement totals an amount that is one of the largest sums paid out by the board.
At least one third of this payout will be covered by the sheriff’s department and the remaining sum is going to be paid by an insurance carrier.
The rapist is Jose Rigoberto Sanchez, according to reports, who was sentenced to nine years in prison last year.
Reports allege the following:
He admitted to the rape as well as another instance of offering a bribe of sexual activity to a different woman. He is also to register as a sex offender.
The incident took place just over five years ago on September 22, 2010.
At about 1:20 AM, the woman – a Lindsay F, as named in court documents – was stopped by Sanchez who had spotted her at a gas station in Palmdale.
The seven year veteran of the police department believed she was driving under the influence of alcohol and had a suspended license.
Sanchez told her she was “hot”. He then asked her what she would be willing to do if he could give up the idea of arresting her.
Then he ordered her to lock her car with a cell phone and purse and signed it and got her to sit at the back of his patrol vehicle without handcuffing her.
Sanchez offered not to arrest her in return for sexual favors, but she refused his advances. So he drove her down a distant dirt road.
A summary prepared by the sheriff’s office describes the spot where he stopped his car as a “remote, dark, and isolated area”.
Next, Sanchez forced her to have oral, vaginal and anal sex with him against the hood of his patrol car. Then he drove her back to where her vehicle was parked. As if the pain and humiliation were not enough, Sanchez asked Lindsay to give him her phone number in case he wanted to “mess around” again.
Determined that justice be served she gathered courage the next day to report her rape to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Believing that he could get away with anything – Sanchez, only two days after he had raped Lindsay, stopped another woman for driving under the influence and asked her to perform sexual acts with him as bribe for not getting arrested.
The 36-year-old woman refused with the help of a friend.
Sanchez was dishonorably discharged as further details of the case came to light.
In 2011 the Lindsay filed a lawsuit.
She was present at his sentencing in 2014. She told him that what he had done to her changed her forever.
The victim said she lived in fear every day for the three years following her rape. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“You essentially murdered a part of me… A police officer is supposed to serve and protect. I had nowhere to run because the one who I should have been able to run to for help was the one harming me,” she said.
“You deserve far more prison time than nine years.”
Then, in the most poignant part of her statement she said to him: “I know that at some point you will get out of your prison, but me? I am stuck in mine for the rest of my life.”
Watch the video below: