Seventeen years had passed by the level Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to declare they’d identified the person that allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005.
Reporting highlights
A nationwide outlier: Most states enable as a minimum some worn rape situations to be prosecuted, but makes an attempt to lengthen the statute of obstacles in Massachusetts have failed yearly since 2011.
A rapid window: Massachusetts law prevents prosecution of rape suspects after 15 years, even when investigators mediate fresh proof, at the side of DNA, can even lead to a conviction.
A uncommon look: Police experiences of rape situations are secret below an fascinating negate law. But one Boston-negate case provides a uncommon look into the affect of the rapid statute of obstacles.
The suspect used to be now a father of two, a likely serial rapist and certain past the reach of the law, investigators told her. Police had taken see you later to title him that they uncared for the negate’s deadline to prosecute her case.
In Massachusetts, the law says prosecutors have handiest 15 years to file charges after an alleged rape. Previous that statute of obstacles, it’s nearly most not more likely to raise charges. Aloof, prosecutors conception they’re going to be ready to pass this particular case forward on a technicality.
Louise used to be panicked. She had spent years reliving the alarm of that evening and fighting drug exhaust that spun out of management after the attack. From time to time she failed out of rehab purposes or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR doesn’t title victims of sexual assault with out their permission and agreed to title Louise handiest by her center name.)
By 2022, she used to be 42, sober, living in her rep home and raising two college-age sons. She can even not spin support into her worn systems.
But, as the daughter of a Marine susceptible, Louise believed she wished to fight: She felt her community would not be get hold of till her rapist used to be in detention center.
“You’ve got to stand for one thing,” Louise talked about.
Previous the 15-year deadline in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony or even confession can give a rape victim an different at facing an attacker in court.
This statute of obstacles locations Massachusetts at the support of nearly every other negate within the nation.
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A evaluation of prison codes by WBUR and ProPublica came upon that as many as 47 states enable more time to fee rapes or identical assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For instance, Vermont and Maryland are among quite loads of states that assemble not have any deadline to file charges for rape. Assorted states love Montana and Texas lengthen their cleave-off dates when there’s DNA proof.
In loads of states, Louise’s case might maybe maybe be made up our minds in court on the flexibility of its proof. But here, proof would not topic. The case would be nearly most not more likely to uncover.
Lost chances
Legislation enforcement and rape crisis workers at some level of Massachusetts talked about in interviews that they mechanically encounter situations the build no charges had been filed sooner than the negate’s strict deadline. How continually rape suspects steer certain of prosecution which potential’s unclear.
Massachusetts is fascinating in that negate victim privacy authorized pointers bar police from releasing incident experiences of rape to the public. Except a suspect is charged in court, it’s continually sophisticated to win any legitimate files about a rape. And even when somebody is charged, police can still preserve information about what they did — or didn’t enact — to title and take hold of a suspected rapist.
This makes all of it but most not likely for somebody outside law enforcement to mediate rapes which might maybe maybe be past the deadline to prosecute.
In recount to stamp the extent of situations misplaced to the statute of obstacles, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.
Rape crisis center leaders dispute survivors of sexual assaults that came about many years ago on a novel basis ask whether or not the prison correct plot can support them. The Suffolk County district authorized legitimate’s plot of commercial, one of many most populous jurisdictions within the negate, is basically based entirely in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime sex crimes prosecutor there talked about his plot of commercial opinions loads of situations yearly that it could in point of fact well not pursue thanks to the statute of obstacles.
“These are serious charges. Ladies are being raped.”
Bristol County District Licensed legitimate Thomas Quinn
About two years ago, the Bristol County district authorized legitimate’s plot of commercial identified 21 rapes that it is far going to even have prosecuted had been it not for the statute of obstacles. They got here to gentle when the company feeble a federal grant to assessment DNA proof in rape situations that had not been completely tested when it used to be first still.
Bristol County District Licensed legitimate Thomas Quinn is one of many negate’s few prosecutors who has spoken in settle on of allowing charges after the deadline in situations with DNA proof.
“Right here’s to rectify a unfriendly, when you might maybe presumably well, or a process that didn’t work,” Quinn told WBUR. “These are serious charges. Ladies are being raped.”
Well-known functions of Louise’s case handiest grew to become public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the fascinating step of filing charges even supposing they’d uncared for the negate’s charging deadline. This led to the open of some files about the rape that would in every other case had been shielded by the negate’s privacy authorized pointers.
Those files indicate that years sooner than the deadline passed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered many of the clues they would later exhaust to title a suspect, but didn’t clear up the case.
Louise: His name is Ivan
When she used to be 25, Louise’s life used to be starting up to tumble aside. She labored as a waitress and switchboard operator, and he or she used to be experimenting with medication.
Within the overnight hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a man she had been chums with demanded price for medication he had given her, in step with a court listing, then coerced her into having sex with a stranger at a resort to pay off the debt.
Whenever you happen to or somebody you realize has skilled sexual violence, you might maybe presumably well presumably presumably also contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or talk about with RAINN’s net difficulty.
After 2 a.m., the friend dropped her off in downtown Boston.
It used to be raining laborious, the trains had stopped operating and he or she wanted a fling to a buddy’s condo. That’s when she conception she noticed a friendly face.
The person that drove up to her in a Lexus SUV introduced himself as Ivan and talked about he knew her from UMass Boston, the build she had taken classes, she recalled. He talked about he used to be on a stare fracture, and he regarded the fragment. He had a young face and wore a baseball cap with a college name on it.
She talked about the person supplied to pay for sex and he or she refused, court files indicate. He drove her to a secluded negate in Everett, and raped and stabbed her, she told police. When Louise escaped his automobile, he chased her down with a knife and he or she fell.
“He stored stabbing me,” she talked about in an interview. “I consider my head jerking support since the knife used to be in my head.”
The person fled to his automobile after the warfare. Louise sought support at a nearby condo.
At the health facility, it took more than 100 stitches to shut the stab wounds that lined her physique. Doctors told her the knife barely uncared for her well-known organs.
Louise let a specialist swab her physique for the person’s DNA. Whereas she talked about she didn’t stutter at the time that she had been coerced into sex work earlier that evening, she told investigators the entire lot else she knew: Police files talked about she gave the name her attacker feeble, his jog, which she talked about used to be both white or Asian, and a description of his automobile. At the time, she told police that he talked about he had attended UMass Boston and used to be now at Tufts. She hoped this files would lead to an arrest.
Had police checked with UMass Boston, they would have came upon that 18 males named Ivan attended the college within the years surrounding the attack, in step with student files reviewed by WBUR. The person that police not directly associated to DNA proof in Louise’s case used to be among them.
Everett police interviewed Louise loads of times and reviewed surveillance digicam images, she talked about, but the calls and visits from police waned over the approaching months.
Louise stopped calling the police to ascertain on her case as the years glided by. She talked about she had moved on from the usage of painkillers to counting on heroin, cocaine and other medication to develop it by the day. She feared that her rapist would return to murder her, and the medication had been her reach of facing severe dejected and post-demanding stress disorder, she talked about.
In 2008, Boston police obtained fresh proof suggesting that whoever attacked Louise is most incessantly a serial rapist, a detective later talked about in court files. The department’s crime lab came upon that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 attack. That victim used to be picked up in Boston’s North Discontinuance, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.
It’s unclear how police answered to this fresh files. With the support of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise feeble an exception for survivors within the negate’s privacy law to develop her Everett police document. However the two-net page listing indispensable functions nothing of the investigation past the well-known 24 hours after the attack.
Everett police declined to touch upon the case. The Middlesex County district authorized legitimate’s plot of commercial, which had jurisdiction at the time of the attack, didn’t comment. The Suffolk County district authorized legitimate’s plot of commercial, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction identified a suspect, talked about it did not have indispensable functions about how prior companies handled the case. Boston police didn’t provide a response to multiple requests for an interview.
Louise talked about she doesn’t recall whether or not police or prosecutors told her that DNA assessments showed her unknown assailant can even simply have attacked one other woman.
Years later, when police lastly identified a suspect, it is far going to be too late to abet somebody responsible. The deadline to fee a suspect with tried murder in Louise’s case had passed after 10 years and the deadline for rape had passed at 15 years.
Extending the statute of obstacles
At indicate, the excellent states which have shorter cleave-off dates than Massachusetts and don’t develop exceptions for DNA proof are North Dakota and Fresh Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica evaluation of negate authorized pointers came upon. Basically the most restrictive is Fresh Hampshire’s six-year deadline.
Decades of learn into how rape is reported and investigated has driven lawmakers outside of Massachusetts to develop their statutes of obstacles.
All the map in which by the 2000s, loads of states passed exceptions for situations with DNA as it grew to become certain that this map of forensic proof can even support clear up even very worn situations.
Assorted states followed as police departments began to stutter within the 2010s that they systemically failed to check DNA proof in rape situations. Meanwhile, a rising physique of learn came upon that police on a novel basis done insufficient rape investigations, deciding experiences had been untrue sooner than interviewing witnesses, accumulating proof or checking out DNA. Throughout the nation, most experiences of rape enact not outcome in prosecution, learn presentations.
“They think the victim,” talked about Michigan Articulate University professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored multiple learn on how police behavior rape investigations. “That’s what I indicate in my learn, and it’s been replicated by other learn teams and other jurisdictions within the path of the United States.”
The frequent complications triggered nationwide reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice launched its National Sexual Assault Equipment Initiative to devote a full lot of millions of greenbacks to checking out previously left out DNA. This effort produced enough proof to lastly elevate charges in nearly all these situations, and lawmakers in other states revised their cleave-off dates so prosecutions can even pass forward.
The pass to develop the deadline has been a bipartisan reason in loads of states. Staunch last year in Oklahoma, susceptible negate Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a successful effort to get rid of the negate’s statute of obstacles in situations the build there is a confession or DNA proof. The invoice passed unanimously.
“We had been ready to attain that last session with in fact runt or no, if any, pushback,” Garvin talked about. “It’s not a Republican state. It’s not a Democratic state.”
In Massachusetts, rules that would lengthen the deadline has been introduced at some level of every session since as a minimum 2011. But every time, it has failed to assemble steam.
Defense attorneys have adversarial any adjustments, announcing that making the deadline longer dangers violating the rights of the accused.
Witnesses, surveillance images and other proof that can certain a suspect becomes more sophisticated to win as time passes, talked about Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Affiliation of Criminal Defense Legal professionals.
“The extra and extra you win far off from the alleged commission of the crime, the tougher it is far for somebody to ever mount a defense,” she talked about.
The last time negate lawmakers modified the statute used to be in 1996 after victims got here forward to declare they’d delayed reporting their rapes thanks to community backlash or downhearted remedy by police.
Legislators lengthened the negate’s deadline to prosecute rapes of adults from 10 to 15 years.
Connecting the dots
In late 2021, the Department of Justice initiative awarded Boston $2.5 million to reexamine up to 100 of the metropolis’s most serious unsolved rapes. The funds paid a little neighborhood of investigators to brush by worn case files to appear for clues.
The fresh team revisited Louise’s rape within months. This time they certain that her case and the North Discontinuance rape had been akin to earlier attacks, court files indicate.
Most had been unsolved, but a man named Ivan Cheung used to be arrested in a single of them. Boston University police took him into custody in 2003 after they came upon him in possession of a knife and the assets of a lady who used to be allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Department, which took over the case, talked about in court files that they suspected the victim used to be defending up her ties to the sex work replace. Prosecutors dropped the costs loads of weeks later.
When the fresh team of investigators revisited this case in 2022, they noticed that Cheung resembled the assailant Louise described in her attack: a man named Ivan who had attended UMass Boston. At the time of the rape, he owned a Lexus SUV.
This level of curiosity on Cheung led to a breakthrough. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall car automobile parking space in Dorchester, the build they watched him smoke and toss away a cigarette.
DNA from that cigarette matched two assaults: Louise’s rape and the North Discontinuance attack.
By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s attack, the North Discontinuance rape and two other starting up situations attractive teenage girls. He used to be living within the Boston negate and dealing as a monetary companies and products executive.
The arrest used to be likely because investigators obtained the time and resources to take hold of a new look at worn situations, talked about Suffolk County Assistant District Licensed legitimate Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.
A detective showed Cheung a describe of Louise and asked if he had raped her and others. Cheung told police that he didn’t see the females and that there used to be no reach his DNA can even had been came upon on any of them, court files indicate.
“I’m telling you no f—ing reach. I don’t even know her name. I don’t even know her face,” he talked about at some level of the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his authorized legitimate declined an interview with WBUR.
The handiest reach Suffolk County prosecutors can even pass forward with Louise’s case and the North Discontinuance attack used to be on a technicality: A negate law suspends the deadline if a suspect lives out of negate. Prosecutors talked about Cheung traveled generally, but they couldn’t stutter he had relocated. In October 2023, charges against Cheung for the attacks on Louise and the North Discontinuance victim had been dropped.
Along with her case over, Louise talked about she pinned her hopes on the two closing situations associated to the suspect. Police talked about in court files the alleged victims had been 13 and 14 and being trafficked for sex at the time of their attacks. Because they had been so young, the negate’s statute of obstacles didn’t block their situations from challenging forward, and there used to be an different a think would enable Louise to testify if they went to trial.
But these two situations had other complications: They’d no DNA proof, and prosecutors acknowledged that the proof tying these situations to Cheung used to be not as sturdy. In one of many situations, Boston police had not interviewed the alleged victim till nearly two many years after her attack, and he or she used to be unwilling to testify, court filings indicate. Within the different, a think noted in a ruling that police performed no forensic medical exam of the victim and perceived to develop no strive at locating against the law scene.
“The police response used to be severely downhearted,” Suffolk Superior Court docket Deem Christopher Belezos wrote within the December 2024 ruling.
The district authorized legitimate told the think they wished Louise’s testimony to level the rapes had been so identical that Cheung used to be the excellent likely assailant. But Belezos barred Louise from testifying, announcing her case used to be too diversified: The attacks had came about in diversified locations and their descriptions of their assailants’ jog and autos didn’t match.
Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s closing charges in January.
“ It used to be frustrating, but at that level, legally we had no different,” talked about Polumbaum. In court files, Cheung furthermore denied any involvement in these alleged attacks.
Now that the court fight is over, Louise is fighting to preserve her peace of tips. She crowds her spare hours with therapy and make stronger groups, and he or she fills her home walls with symbols of renewal, replace and faith. A red foil decal with the be aware “Assume” hangs among prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.
When WBUR interviewed Louise, it used to be the well-known time she had discussed her rape publicly. She talked about these interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her stamp she wanted to enact more.
In June she testified sooner than the negate Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to travel them to coast Dwelling Invoice 1987, which is pending. It will maybe presumably well presumably enable prosecutors to fee suspects after the deadline in some rape situations with DNA proof.
“ It in fact desires to be modified for the protection of all, for the public at great,” she testified. “That’s why I’m talking.”
WBUR’s Patrick Madden contributed reporting, and WBUR’s Jesús Marrero Suárez contributed learn.
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