After 17 years, DNA tied a person to her rape. Beneath Massachusetts law, it used to be too unhurried

Seventeen years had handed by the time Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to claim they’d identified the man who allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005.

Reporting highlights

A national outlier: Most states allow no longer no longer as much as a couple feeble rape cases to be prosecuted, nonetheless attempts to lengthen the statute of limitations in Massachusetts respect failed yearly since 2011.

A transient window: Massachusetts law prevents prosecution of rape suspects after 15 years, even when investigators mediate contemporary proof, along side DNA, could well well perchance result in a conviction.

A rare gaze: Police experiences of rape cases are secret below an contemporary impart law. Nevertheless one Boston-space case gives a rare gaze into the impact of the short statute of limitations.

The suspect used to be now a father of two, a conceivable serial rapist and seemingly beyond the reach of the law, investigators suggested her. Police had taken see you later to name him that they missed the impart’s lower-off date to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the law says prosecutors respect most attention-grabbing 15 years to file prices after an alleged rape. Past that statute of limitations, it’s almost no longer doable to lift prices. Composed, prosecutors thought they’d perchance well perchance very effectively be in a pickle to scuttle this recount case ahead on a technicality.

Louise used to be greatly stunned. She had spent years reliving the terror of that evening and struggling with drug utilize that spun out of protect an eye on after the assault. At cases she failed out of rehab programs or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR does no longer name victims of sexual assault without their permission and agreed to name Louise most attention-grabbing by her center name.)

By 2022, she used to be 42, sober, living in her personal dwelling and raising two college-age sons. She could well well perchance no longer poke help into her feeble ways.

Nevertheless, as the daughter of a Marine dilapidated, Louise believed she wanted to wrestle: She felt her community would no longer be safe unless her rapist used to be in penal complicated.

“You’ve bought to face for one thing,” Louise acknowledged.

Past the 15-one year lower-off date in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony and even confession can give a rape victim an opportunity at going by an attacker in court docket.

This statute of limitations locations Massachusetts on the help of virtually every diversified impart in the country.

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A review of criminal codes by WBUR and ProPublica chanced on that as many as 47 states allow more time to payment rapes or same assaults of adults than Massachusetts. As an illustration, Vermont and Maryland are amongst a replacement of states that don’t respect any lower-off date to file prices for rape. Diversified states like Montana and Texas extend their cut-off dates when there’s DNA proof.

In a entire lot of states, Louise’s case could be decided in court docket on the energy of its proof. Nevertheless right here, proof would no longer matter. The case could be almost no longer doable to gain.

Misplaced chances

Law enforcement and rape disaster workers all the draw in which by Massachusetts acknowledged in interviews that they mechanically stumble on cases the do no prices had been filed sooner than the impart’s strict lower-off date. How in total rape suspects steer decided of prosecution as a result’s unclear.

Massachusetts is contemporary in that impart victim privacy prison pointers bar police from releasing incident experiences of rape to the public. Unless a suspect is charged in court docket, it’s in total hard to acquire any official records a couple of rape. And even when any individual is charged, police can aloof withhold files about what they did — or didn’t attain — to name and grab a suspected rapist.

This makes all of it nonetheless no longer doable for any individual outdoors law enforcement to perceive rapes which could be previous the lower-off date to prosecute.

In sing to value the extent of cases misplaced to the statute of limitations, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.

Rape disaster center leaders assert survivors of sexual assaults that came about a few years ago on a regular foundation quiz whether or no longer the criminal excellent draw can serve them. The Suffolk County district prison legitimate’s feature of job, one in every of the most populous jurisdictions in the impart, depends mostly in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime intercourse crimes prosecutor there acknowledged his feature of job opinions plenty of cases every one year that it can’t pursue thanks to the statute of limitations.

“These are severe prices. Ladies are being raped.”

Bristol County District Licensed legitimate Thomas Quinn

About two years ago, the Bristol County district prison legitimate’s feature of job identified 21 rapes that it can perchance well well respect prosecuted had been it no longer for the statute of limitations. They came to light when the agency ancient a federal grant to analyze DNA proof in rape cases that had no longer been completely tested when it used to be first accrued.

Bristol County District Licensed legitimate Thomas Quinn is one in every of the impart’s few prosecutors who has spoken in desire of permitting prices after the lower-off date in cases with DNA proof.

“This is to rectify a spoiled, in case you are going to, or a direction of that didn’t work,” Quinn suggested WBUR. “These are severe prices. Ladies are being raped.”

Important parts of Louise’s case most attention-grabbing grew to change into public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the contemporary step of filing prices even though they’d missed the impart’s charging lower-off date. This ended in the free up of some records about the rape that will perchance well perchance in every other case had been shielded by the impart’s privacy prison pointers.

These records point out that years sooner than the lower-off date handed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered many of the clues they’d later utilize to name a suspect, nonetheless didn’t clear up the case.

Louise: His name is Ivan

When she used to be 25, Louise’s existence used to be starting up to crumble. She worked as a waitress and switchboard operator, and he or she used to be experimenting with tablets.

In the in a single day hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a person she had been visitors with demanded payment for tablets he had given her, in step with a court docket file, then coerced her into having intercourse with a stranger at a hotel to pay off the debt.

If you happen to or any individual has skilled sexual violence, it is probably going you’ll perchance well be in a pickle to contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or consult with RAINN’s web situation.

After 2 a.m., the friend dropped her off in downtown Boston.

It used to be raining laborious, the trains had stopped running and he or she wished a toddle to a chum’s dwelling. That’s when she thought she saw a friendly face.

The one who drove as much as her in a Lexus SUV launched himself as Ivan and acknowledged he knew her from UMass Boston, the do she had taken classes, she recalled. He acknowledged he used to be on a locate rupture, and he looked the fraction. He had a younger face and wore a baseball cap with a college name on it.

She acknowledged the man supplied to pay for intercourse and he or she refused, court docket records point out. He drove her to a secluded space in Everett, and raped and stabbed her, she suggested police. When Louise escaped his automobile, he chased her down with a knife and he or she fell.

“He kept stabbing me,” she acknowledged in an interview. “I be aware my head jerking help because the knife used to be in my head.”

The person fled to his automobile after the fight. Louise sought serve at a shut by dwelling.

On the effectively being facility, it took more than 100 stitches to shut the stab wounds that lined her body. Docs suggested her the knife barely missed her fundamental organs.

Louise let a specialist swab her body for the man’s DNA. While she acknowledged she didn’t expose on the time that she had been coerced into intercourse work earlier that evening, she suggested investigators all the pieces else she knew: Police records acknowledged she gave the name her attacker ancient, his flee, which she acknowledged used to be both white or Asian, and a top level belief of his automobile. On the time, she suggested police that he acknowledged he had attended UMass Boston and used to be now at Tufts. She hoped this files would result in an arrest.

Had police checked with UMass Boston, they’d respect chanced on that 18 males named Ivan attended the college in the years surrounding the assault, in step with pupil records reviewed by WBUR. The one who police indirectly connected to DNA proof in Louise’s case used to be amongst them.

Everett police interviewed Louise plenty of cases and reviewed surveillance digicam photos, she acknowledged, nonetheless the calls and visits from police waned over the approaching months.

Louise stopped calling the police to establish on her case as the years went by. She acknowledged she had moved on from the utilize of painkillers to relying on heroin, cocaine and diversified tablets to bag it by the day. She feared that her rapist would return to abolish her, and the tablets had been her methodology of facing severe despair and publish-irritating stress dysfunction, she acknowledged.

In 2008, Boston police obtained contemporary proof suggesting that whoever attacked Louise could well well well very effectively be a serial rapist, a detective later acknowledged in court docket records. The department’s crime lab chanced on that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 assault. That victim used to be picked up in Boston’s North Quit, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.

It’s unclear how police responded to this contemporary files. With the serve of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise ancient an exception for survivors in the impart’s privacy law to function her Everett police verbalize. Nevertheless the 2-page file well-known parts nothing of the investigation beyond the main 24 hours after the assault.

Everett police declined to comment on the case. The Middlesex County district prison legitimate’s feature of job, which had jurisdiction on the time of the assault, didn’t comment. The Suffolk County district prison legitimate’s feature of job, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction identified a suspect, acknowledged it didn’t respect well-known parts about how prior companies handled the case. Boston police didn’t present a response to plenty of requests for an interview.

Louise acknowledged she does no longer recall whether or no longer police or prosecutors suggested her that DNA assessments confirmed her unknown assailant could well well perchance respect attacked one other girl.

Years later, when police at closing identified a suspect, it can be too unhurried to protect any individual responsible. The lower-off date to payment a suspect with attempted fracture in Louise’s case had handed after 10 years and the lower-off date for rape had handed at 15 years.

Extending the statute of limitations

For the time being, the excellent states that respect shorter cut-off dates than Massachusetts and don’t bag exceptions for DNA proof are North Dakota and Recent Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica review of impart prison pointers chanced on. The most restrictive is Recent Hampshire’s six-one year lower-off date.

Decades of learn into how rape is reported and investigated has pushed lawmakers outdoors of Massachusetts to expand their statutes of limitations.

All the draw in which by the 2000s, plenty of states handed exceptions for cases with DNA because it grew to change into decided that this roughly forensic proof could well well perchance serve clear up even very feeble cases.

Diversified states followed as police departments started to expose in the 2010s that they systemically failed to study DNA proof in rape cases. Meanwhile, a rising body of learn chanced on that police on a regular foundation done inadequate rape investigations, deciding experiences had been unfounded sooner than interviewing witnesses, collecting proof or testing DNA. Across the country, most experiences of rape attain no longer result in prosecution, learn shows.

“They resolve the victim,” acknowledged Michigan Allege University professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored plenty of stories on how police conduct rape investigations. “That’s what I sing in my learn, and it’s been replicated by diversified learn groups and diversified jurisdictions all the draw in which by the US.”

The frequent complications brought about national reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Division of Justice launched its National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to devote hundreds of millions of bucks to testing beforehand passed over DNA. This effort produced adequate proof to at closing lift prices in most of those cases, and lawmakers in diversified states revised their cut-off dates so prosecutions could well well perchance scuttle ahead.

The scuttle to expand the lower-off date has been a bipartisan trigger in a entire lot of states. Unprejudiced closing one year in Oklahoma, used impart Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a successful effort to eradicate the impart’s statute of limitations in cases the do there’s a confession or DNA proof. The bill handed unanimously.

“We had been in a pickle to attain that closing session with indubitably very minute, if any, pushback,” Garvin acknowledged. “It’s no longer a Republican command. It’s no longer a Democratic command.”

In Massachusetts, laws that will perchance well perchance extend the lower-off date has been launched one day of every session since no longer no longer as much as 2011. Nevertheless every time, it has failed to prevail in steam.

Protection attorneys respect opposed any modifications, asserting that making the lower-off date longer dangers violating the rights of the accused.

Witnesses, surveillance photos and diversified proof that will perchance well perchance decided a suspect turns into more hard to acquire as time passes, acknowledged Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Protection Lawyers.

“The additional and extra you bag away from the alleged commission of the crime, the more challenging it is a ways for any individual to ever mount a defense,” she acknowledged.

The closing time impart lawmakers modified the statute used to be in 1996 after victims came ahead to claim they’d delayed reporting their rapes thanks to community backlash or heart-broken therapy by police.

Legislators lengthened the impart’s lower-off date to prosecute rapes of adults from 10 to 15 years.

Connecting the dots

In unhurried 2021, the Division of Justice initiative awarded Boston $2.5 million to reexamine as much as 100 of the city’s most severe unsolved rapes. The funds paid a little community of investigators to brush by feeble case files to witness clues.

The contemporary crew revisited Louise’s rape interior months. This time they obvious that her case and the North Quit rape had been equal to earlier assaults, court docket records point out.

Most had been unsolved, nonetheless a person named Ivan Cheung used to be arrested in one in every of them. Boston University police took him into custody in 2003 after they chanced on him in possession of a knife and the assets of a girl who used to be allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Division, which took over the case, acknowledged in court docket records that they suspected the victim used to be covering up her ties to the intercourse work change. Prosecutors dropped the prices plenty of weeks later.

When the contemporary crew of investigators revisited this case in 2022, they seen that Cheung resembled the assailant Louise described in her assault: a person named Ivan who had attended UMass Boston. On the time of the rape, he owned a Lexus SUV.

This deal with Cheung ended in a leap forward. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall automobile car car parking zone in Dorchester, the do they watched him smoke and toss away a cigarette.

DNA from that cigarette matched two assaults: Louise’s rape and the North Quit assault.

By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s assault, the North Quit rape and two diversified starting up cases provocative teenage girls. He used to be living in the Boston space and dealing as a monetary services and products executive.

The arrest used to be conceivable because investigators obtained the time and sources to take a current gaze at feeble cases, acknowledged Suffolk County Assistant District Licensed legitimate Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.

A detective confirmed Cheung a photo of Louise and requested if he had raped her and others. Cheung suggested police that he didn’t acknowledge the females and that there used to be no methodology his DNA could well well perchance had been chanced on on any of them, court docket records point out.

“I’m telling you no f—ing methodology. I don’t even know her name. I don’t even know her face,” he acknowledged one day of the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his prison legitimate declined an interview with WBUR.

The excellent methodology Suffolk County prosecutors could well well perchance scuttle ahead with Louise’s case and the North Quit assault used to be on a technicality: A impart law suspends the lower-off date if a suspect lives out of impart. Prosecutors acknowledged Cheung traveled frequently, nonetheless they couldn’t sing he had relocated. In October 2023, prices in opposition to Cheung for the assaults on Louise and the North Quit victim had been dropped.

Along with her case over, Louise acknowledged she pinned her hopes on the 2 closing cases connected to the suspect. Police acknowledged in court docket records the alleged victims had been 13 and 14 and being trafficked for intercourse on the time of their assaults. Due to they had been so younger, the impart’s statute of limitations didn’t block their cases from transferring ahead, and there used to be an opportunity a resolve would allow Louise to testify if they went to trial.

Nevertheless those two cases had diversified complications: They had no DNA proof, and prosecutors acknowledged that the proof tying those cases to Cheung used to be no longer as solid. In a single in every of the cases, Boston police had no longer interviewed the alleged victim unless almost two a few years after her assault, and he or she used to be unwilling to testify, court docket filings point out. In the diversified, a resolve notorious in a ruling that police done no forensic clinical exam of the victim and seemed to bag no try at finding a criminal offense scene.

“The police response used to be severely deficient,” Suffolk Superior Court Deem Christopher Belezos wrote in the December 2024 ruling.

The district prison legitimate suggested the resolve they wanted Louise’s testimony to point out the rapes had been so same that Cheung used to be the excellent conceivable assailant. Nevertheless Belezos barred Louise from testifying, asserting her case used to be too diversified: The assaults had came about in diversified areas and their descriptions of their assailants’ flee and cars didn’t match.

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s closing prices in January.

“ It used to be frustrating, nonetheless at that point, legally we had no replacement,” acknowledged Polumbaum. In court docket records, Cheung also denied any involvement in these alleged assaults.

Now that the court docket fight is over, Louise is preventing to protect her peace of mind. She crowds her spare hours with therapy and toughen groups, and he or she fills her dwelling walls with symbols of renewal, change and faith. A pink foil decal with the be aware “Imagine” hangs amongst prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.

When WBUR interviewed Louise, it used to be the main time she had discussed her rape publicly. She acknowledged those interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her rate she wished to attain more.

In June she testified sooner than the impart Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to induce them to pass Dwelling Invoice 1987, which is pending. It could maybe perchance well perchance allow prosecutors to payment suspects after the lower-off date in some rape cases with DNA proof.

“ It indubitably desires to be modified for the protection of all, for the public at plentiful,” she testified. “That’s why I’m speaking.”

WBUR’s Patrick Madden contributed reporting, and WBUR’s Jesús Marrero Suárez contributed learn.