Teen NYPD rape victim accuses cops of intimidation
Two NYPD police officers, Eddie Martins, 37, and Richard Hall, 33, were charged last month with the rape and kidnapping of an 18-year-old girl they had handcuffed in the back of their van. Now reports are emerging that while the teen was at the hospital following her alleged rape, members of the NYPD were there harassing her and saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. According to the Huffington Post, the rape victim is going by the online name of Anna Chambers. Chambers’ lawyer, Michael David, told the Post that NYPD officers approached her while she was at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn for “a sexual assault forensic exam ― commonly referred to as a rape kit.”
“Nine cops came initially from the 60th Precinct and then another four or five from another precinct,” David said. “They were basically trying to intimidate [Chambers] and her mother … to get them to say it wasn’t cops.”
David said that according to Chambers’ mother, the teen was being bullied by the cops who came to the hospital the night of her forensic exam. Those officers interviewed and interrogated the teen following the rape report being filed by Chambers and her mother. David also said that it was a nurse at the hospital who encouraged Chambers’ mother to “be strong” and “stand up” for her daughter.
The New York Post reported that Chambers and her mother were at at the Maimonides Medical Center on the evening of September 15 following Chambers’ alleged rape by detectives Martins and Hall. Around 8 p.m. that evening in Coney Island, the two detectives pulled Chambers over and accused her of drug possession according to CBS News in New York. The two plainclothes detectives told Chambers’ two male companions to get lost and then reportedly placed the handcuffed Chambers in their undercover van and drove her to a nearby parking lot where Martin allegedly raped her while Hall watched the rape in the van’s rearview mirror before he took his turn and forced Chambers to perform oral sex on him. The detectives then dropped Chambers off a few blocks away from the 60th precinct police headquarters.
After DNA from Hall and Martins was recovered during Chambers’ forensic exam, the two detectives admitted to having sex with the teen, but said that the sex was consensual. “Someone in police custody cannot give consent, in any meaningful sense of the word, to the officer holding them,” The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the case. “Claiming to have received consent, whether it is based in any truth or not, betrays a policing culture that refuses to recognize its own outsized power over those it alleges to protect and serve.”
Both Martins and Hall resigned from the NYPD in early November, according to the New York Times. The two former detectives have pleaded not guilty to their 50-count indictments. They are scheduled to be back in court on January 15. If found guilty of their charges, they would be looking at 25-years behind bars.
Written by: Ace News Today Staff
