After 17 years, DNA tied a man to her rape. Beneath Massachusetts laws, it turn out to be too late

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

Reporting highlights

A national outlier: Most states allow no lower than some historical rape cases to be prosecuted, however makes an strive to elongate the statute of barriers in Massachusetts have confidence failed every 365 days since 2011.

A instant window: Massachusetts laws prevents prosecution of rape suspects after 15 years, even when investigators snort fresh proof, in conjunction with DNA, might perchance perchance also consequence in a conviction.

A uncommon investigate cross-check: Police experiences of rape cases are secret below an irregular hiss laws. But one Boston-home case offers a uncommon investigate cross-check into the affect of the instant statute of barriers.

The suspect turn out to be now a father of two, a doable serial rapist and certain previous the attain of the laws, investigators commended her. Police had taken so lengthy to title him that they ignored the hiss’s lower-off date to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the laws says prosecutors have confidence most effective 15 years to file fees after an alleged rape. Previous that statute of barriers, it’s with regards to very now not going to bring fees. Mute, prosecutors belief they might perchance well also have the selection to switch this say case forward on a technicality.

Louise turn out to be petrified. She had spent years reliving the phobia of that evening and combating drug spend that spun out of take care of a watch on after the assault. At instances she failed out of rehab capabilities or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR would now not title victims of sexual assault without their permission and agreed to title Louise most effective by her heart title.)

By 2022, she turn out to be 42, sober, living in her have confidence home and raising two college-age sons. She might perchance perchance also now not mosey assist into her historical ways.

But, as the daughter of a Marine frail, Louise believed she wished to strive towards: She felt her neighborhood wouldn’t be safe till her rapist turn out to be in penal complicated.

“You’ve obtained to face for one thing,” Louise mentioned.

Previous the 15-365 days lower-off date in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony and even confession might give a rape sufferer a giant gamble at going through an attacker in court docket.

This statute of barriers locations Massachusetts at the assist of practically every varied hiss in the nation.

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A analysis of prison codes by WBUR and ProPublica stumbled on that as many as 47 states allow extra time to price rapes or identical assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For instance, Vermont and Maryland are amongst a different of states that have confidence no lower-off date to file fees for rape. Various states admire Montana and Texas prolong their time prick-off dates when there’s DNA proof.

In loads of states, Louise’s case might perchance perchance also be determined in court docket on the energy of its proof. But right here, proof wouldn’t subject. The case might perchance perchance be practically very now not going to glean.

Misplaced chances

Legislation enforcement and rape crisis workers all over Massachusetts mentioned in interviews that they robotically bump into cases the attach no fees had been filed sooner than the hiss’s strict lower-off date. How regularly rape suspects steer clear of prosecution this skill that is unclear.

Massachusetts is irregular in that hiss sufferer privateness licensed guidelines bar police from releasing incident experiences of rape to the public. Except a suspect is charged in court docket, it’s regularly sophisticated to search out any legitimate records about a rape. And even when any person is charged, police can nonetheless withhold info about what they did — or failed to enact — to title and capture a suspected rapist.

This makes all of it however very now not going for anybody exterior laws enforcement to behold rapes that are previous the lower-off date to prosecute.

In announce to admire the extent of cases lost to the statute of barriers, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.

Rape crisis heart leaders order survivors of sexual assaults that came about decades ago typically put a quiz as to whether or now not the prison just correct plot might perchance well lend a hand them. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office, one amongst essentially the most populous jurisdictions in the hiss, is predicated mostly in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime intercourse crimes prosecutor there mentioned his office reviews several cases each and each 365 days that it is miles going to now not pursue on account of the statute of barriers.

“These are serious fees. Girls folk are being raped.”

Bristol County District Licensed legit Thomas Quinn

About two years ago, the Bristol County district attorney’s office identified 21 rapes that it can perchance perchance even have confidence prosecuted had been it now not for the statute of barriers. They came to mild when the company aged a federal grant to analyze DNA proof in rape cases that had now not been totally examined when it turn out to be first easy.

Bristol County District Licensed legit Thomas Quinn is one amongst the hiss’s few prosecutors who has spoken in desire of allowing fees after the lower-off date in cases with DNA proof.

“This is to rectify a scandalous, in case you would perchance perchance well, or a job that didn’t work,” Quinn commended WBUR. “These are serious fees. Girls folk are being raped.”

Crucial points of Louise’s case most effective turn out to be public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the irregular step of submitting fees despite the reality they’d ignored the hiss’s charging lower-off date. This ended in the open of some records about the rape that might perchance perchance otherwise had been shielded by the hiss’s privateness licensed guidelines.

These records expose that years sooner than the lower-off date handed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered many of the clues they would later spend to title a suspect, however failed to resolve the case.

Louise: His title is Ivan

When she turn out to be 25, Louise’s lifestyles turn out to be initiating to fall apart. She worked as a waitress and switchboard operator, and she turn out to be experimenting with medication.

In the in a single day hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a man she had been chums with demanded payment for medication he had given her, in accordance to a court docket document, then coerced her into having intercourse with a stranger at a hotel to repay the debt.

If you or any person you know has skilled sexual violence, you perchance can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or check with RAINN’s web space.

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

It turn out to be raining annoying, the trains had stopped running and she wanted a roam to an even friend’s home. That’s when she belief she noticed a friendly face.

The person that drove as much as her in a Lexus SUV launched himself as Ivan and mentioned he knew her from UMass Boston, the attach she had taken classes, she recalled. He mentioned he turn out to be on a locate spoil, and he regarded the portion. He had a younger face and wore a baseball cap with a college title on it.

She mentioned the man equipped to pay for intercourse and she refused, court docket records expose. He drove her to a secluded home in Everett, and raped and stabbed her, she commended police. When Louise escaped his vehicle, he chased her down with a knife and she fell.

“He kept stabbing me,” she mentioned in an interview. “I bear in mind my head jerking assist for the explanation that knife turn out to be in my head.”

The person fled to his vehicle after the strive towards. Louise sought lend a hand at a shut-by home.

On the successfully being facility, it took bigger than 100 stitches to shut the stab wounds that lined her physique. Doctors commended her the knife barely ignored her main organs.

Louise let a specialist swab her physique for the man’s DNA. While she mentioned she failed to show at the time that she had been coerced into intercourse work earlier that evening, she commended investigators all the pieces else she knew: Police records mentioned she gave the title her attacker aged, his dash, which she mentioned turn out to be both white or Asian, and a description of his vehicle. On the time, she commended police that he mentioned he had attended UMass Boston and turn out to be now at Tufts. She hoped this info would consequence in an arrest.

Had police checked with UMass Boston, they would have confidence stumbled on that 18 males named Ivan attended the college in the years surrounding the assault, in accordance to student records reviewed by WBUR. The person that police indirectly linked to DNA proof in Louise’s case turn out to be amongst them.

Everett police interviewed Louise several instances and reviewed surveillance digital camera pictures, she mentioned, however the calls and visits from police waned over the upcoming months.

Louise stopped calling the police to verify on her case as the years passed by. She mentioned she had moved on from the spend of painkillers to relying on heroin, cocaine and varied medication to make it through the day. She feared that her rapist would return to smash her, and the medication had been her formula of dealing with extreme despair and post-annoying stress dysfunction, she mentioned.

In 2008, Boston police bought fresh proof suggesting that whoever attacked Louise is on the entire a serial rapist, a detective later mentioned in court docket records. The division’s crime lab stumbled on that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 assault. That sufferer turn out to be picked up in Boston’s North Terminate, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.

It’s unclear how police answered to this fresh info. With the assist of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise aged an exception for survivors in the hiss’s privateness laws to make her Everett police file. However the 2-page document info nothing of the investigation previous the first 24 hours after the assault.

Everett police declined to touch upon the case. The Middlesex County district attorney’s office, which had jurisdiction at the time of the assault, failed to comment. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction identified a suspect, mentioned it failed to have confidence info about how prior agencies handled the case. Boston police failed to present a response to loads of requests for an interview.

Louise mentioned she would now not recall whether or now not police or prosecutors commended her that DNA tests showed her unknown assailant might perchance perchance even have confidence attacked one other woman.

Years later, when police at final identified a suspect, it’d be too late to protect anybody to blame. The lower-off date to price a suspect with attempted smash 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 barriers

For the time being, essentially among the finest states that have confidence shorter time prick-off dates than Massachusetts and don’t make exceptions for DNA proof are North Dakota and Unusual Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica analysis of hiss licensed guidelines stumbled on. Essentially the most restrictive is Unusual Hampshire’s six-365 days lower-off date.

Decades of analysis into how rape is reported and investigated has driven lawmakers exterior of Massachusetts to prolong their statutes of barriers.

All around the 2000s, several states handed exceptions for cases with DNA as it turn out to be positive that this roughly forensic proof might perchance perchance also lend a hand solve even very historical cases.

Various states followed as police departments began to show in the 2010s that they systemically failed to envision DNA proof in rape cases. Meanwhile, a rising physique of analysis stumbled on that police typically conducted inadequate rape investigations, deciding experiences had been deceptive sooner than interviewing witnesses, gathering proof or checking out DNA. All the method through the nation, most experiences of rape enact now not discontinue in prosecution, analysis presentations.

“They settle the sufferer,” mentioned Michigan Mutter University professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored loads of reviews on how police behavior rape investigations. “That’s what I camouflage in my analysis, and it’s been replicated by varied analysis teams and varied jurisdictions throughout the USA.”

The frequent concerns caused national reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice launched its National Sexual Assault Equipment Initiative to devote hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of bucks to checking out beforehand brushed off DNA. This effort produced ample proof to at final bring fees in practically all these cases, and lawmakers in varied states revised their time prick-off dates so prosecutions might perchance perchance also switch forward.

The switch to prolong the lower-off date has been a bipartisan living off in many states. Supreme final 365 days in Oklahoma, mild hiss Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a a success effort to opt up rid of the hiss’s statute of barriers in cases the attach there might be a confession or DNA proof. The bill handed unanimously.

“We had been able to enact that final session with truly very tiny, if any, pushback,” Garvin mentioned. “It’s now not a Republican discipline. It’s now not a Democratic discipline.”

In Massachusetts, laws that might perchance perchance prolong the lower-off date has been launched in the course of every session since no lower than 2011. But at any time when, it has failed to design steam.

Defense attorneys have confidence adverse any changes, announcing that making the lower-off date longer dangers violating the rights of the accused.

Witnesses, surveillance pictures and varied proof that might perchance perchance also positive a suspect turns into extra sophisticated to search out as time passes, mentioned Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Affiliation of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

“The extra and extra you opt up a long way from the alleged price of the crime, the extra difficult it is for any person to ever mount a defense,” she mentioned.

The final time hiss lawmakers modified the statute turn out to be in 1996 after victims came forward to order they had delayed reporting their rapes on account of neighborhood backlash or uncomfortable therapy by police.

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

Connecting the dots

In late 2021, the Department of Justice initiative awarded Boston $2.5 million to reexamine as much as 100 of the metropolis’s most serious unsolved rapes. The funds paid a shrimp community of investigators to brush through historical case files to investigate cross-check clues.

The fresh employees revisited Louise’s rape within months. This time they determined that her case and the North Terminate rape had been equivalent to earlier assaults, court docket records expose.

Most had been unsolved, however a man named Ivan Cheung turn out to be arrested in one amongst them. Boston University police took him into custody in 2003 after they stumbled on him in possession of a knife and the belongings of a girl who turn out to be allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Department, which took over the case, mentioned in court docket records that they suspected the sufferer turn out to be overlaying up her ties to the intercourse work industry. Prosecutors dropped the fees several weeks later.

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

This focal point on Cheung ended in a breakthrough. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall car car car parking space in Dorchester, the attach they watched him smoke and toss away a cigarette.

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

By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s assault, the North Terminate rape and two varied originate cases entertaining teenage girls. He turn out to be living in the Boston home and dealing as a financial companies and products govt.

The arrest turn out to be doable because investigators bought the time and resources to rob a fresh investigate cross-check at historical cases, mentioned Suffolk County Assistant District Licensed legit Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.

A detective showed Cheung a photograph of Louise and asked if he had raped her and others. Cheung commended police that he failed to acknowledge the girls folk and that there turn out to be no formula his DNA might perchance perchance also had been stumbled on on any of them, court docket records expose.

“I’m telling you no f—ing formula. I don’t even know her title. I don’t even know her face,” he mentioned throughout the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his attorney declined an interview with WBUR.

The ideal formula Suffolk County prosecutors might perchance perchance also switch forward with Louise’s case and the North Terminate assault turn out to be on a technicality: A hiss laws suspends the lower-off date if a suspect lives out of hiss. Prosecutors mentioned Cheung traveled typically, however they couldn’t camouflage he had relocated. In October 2023, fees towards Cheung for the assaults on Louise and the North Terminate sufferer had been dropped.

With her case over, Louise mentioned she pinned her hopes on the 2 final cases linked to the suspect. Police mentioned in court docket records the alleged victims had been 13 and 14 and being trafficked for intercourse at the time of their assaults. Because they had been so younger, the hiss’s statute of barriers failed to block their cases from interesting forward, and there turn out to be a giant gamble a settle would allow Louise to testify in the event that they went to trial.

But those two cases had varied concerns: They’d no DNA proof, and prosecutors acknowledged that the proof tying those cases to Cheung turn out to be now not as solid. In one amongst the cases, Boston police had now not interviewed the alleged sufferer till with regards to two decades after her assault, and she turn out to be unwilling to testify, court docket filings expose. In the loads of, a settle essential in a ruling that police conducted no forensic scientific examination of the sufferer and looked to make no strive at finding a crime scene.

“The police response turn out to be severely uncomfortable,” Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Belezos wrote in the December 2024 ruling.

The district attorney commended the settle they wished Louise’s testimony to expose the rapes had been so identical that Cheung turn out to be essentially among the finest doable assailant. But Belezos barred Louise from testifying, announcing her case turn out to be too varied: The assaults had came about in varied areas and their descriptions of their assailants’ dash and cars failed to envision.

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s final fees in January.

“ It turn out to be frustrating, however at that point, legally we had no different,” mentioned Polumbaum. In court docket records, Cheung additionally denied any involvement in these alleged assaults.

Now that the court docket battle is over, Louise is combating to protect her peace of mind. She crowds her spare hours with therapy and make stronger teams, and she fills her home walls with symbols of renewal, change and religion. A red foil decal with the discover “Mediate” hangs amongst prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.

When WBUR interviewed Louise, it turn out to be the first time she had mentioned her rape publicly. She mentioned those interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her realize she desired to enact extra.

In June she testified sooner than the hiss Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to induce them to pass Dwelling Bill 1987, which is pending. It would allow prosecutors to price suspects after the lower-off date in some rape cases with DNA proof.

“ It truly needs to be modified for the protection of all, for the public at big,” she testified. “That’s why I’m talking.”

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