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

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

Reporting highlights

A national outlier: Most states enable no longer no longer up to some frail rape conditions to be prosecuted, but attempts to elongate the statute of barriers in Massachusetts agree with failed every 300 and sixty five days since 2011.

A immediate window: Massachusetts laws prevents prosecution of rape suspects after 15 years, even when investigators think new evidence, together with DNA, might well perhaps result in a conviction.

A uncommon gaze: Police experiences of rape conditions are secret beneath an irregular voice laws. But one Boston-internet page case supplies a uncommon gaze into the affect of the immediate statute of barriers.

The suspect used to be now a father of two, a that that you just can imagine serial rapist and gallop previous the attain of the laws, investigators told her. Police had taken so long to identify him that they uncared for the voice’s lower-off date to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the laws says prosecutors agree with finest 15 years to file costs after an alleged rape. Previous that statute of barriers, it’s almost no longer doubtless to raise costs. Silent, prosecutors thought they’ll be ready to transfer this dispute case forward on a technicality.

Louise used to be apprehensive. She had spent years reliving the phobia of that evening and combating drug train that spun out of assist a watch on after the attack. At conditions she failed out of rehab programs or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR would no longer identify victims of sexual assault with out their permission and agreed to identify Louise finest by her center title.)

By 2022, she used to be 42, sober, residing in her have condo and elevating two faculty-age sons. She might well perhaps no longer roam again into her frail concepts.

But, as the daughter of a Marine inclined, Louise believed she wanted to strive against: She felt her neighborhood would no longer be safe till her rapist used to be in penitentiary.

“You’ve obtained to stand for something,” Louise talked about.

Previous the 15-300 and sixty five days lower-off date in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony and even confession can give a rape sufferer a probability at going thru an attacker in court docket.

This statute of barriers locations Massachusetts within the again of nearly every diversified voice within the country.

This article used to be a collaboration with ProPublica. Be part of WBUR On the present time to get the native and national data that is affecting you, and for ProPublica’s email to get their finest tales in your inbox appropriate away.

A overview of felony codes by WBUR and ProPublica chanced on that as many as 47 states enable more time to payment rapes or a related assaults of adults than Massachusetts. As an illustration, Vermont and Maryland are among a preference of states that invent no longer agree with any lower-off date to file costs for rape. Other states admire Montana and Texas extend their time time limits when there’s DNA evidence.

In many states, Louise’s case will be decided in court docket on the strength of its evidence. But right here, evidence would no longer topic. The case might well perhaps be nearly no longer doubtless to fetch.

Misplaced possibilities

Regulation enforcement and rape crisis workers across Massachusetts talked about in interviews that they robotically stumble upon conditions the build no costs were filed prior to the voice’s strict lower-off date. How typically rape suspects cease far from prosecution as a result’s unclear.

Massachusetts is irregular in that voice sufferer privateness prison pointers bar police from releasing incident experiences of rape to the public. Until a suspect is charged in court docket, it’s typically subtle to bag any first fee files just a few rape. And even when any individual is charged, police can composed assist knowledge about what they did — or did no longer originate — to identify and clutch a suspected rapist.

This makes it all but no longer doubtless for any individual out of doorways laws enforcement to examine rapes which might well perhaps be previous the lower-off date to prosecute.

In repeat to trace the extent of conditions misplaced to the statute of barriers, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.

Rape crisis center leaders deliver survivors of sexual assaults that came just a few long time within the past on a customary foundation interrogate whether the felony accurate gadget will assist them. The Suffolk County district attorney’s space of job, one of basically the most populous jurisdictions within the voice, is primarily based fully in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime sex crimes prosecutor there talked about his space of job experiences several conditions every 300 and sixty five days that it could really maybe’t pursue attributable to the statute of barriers.

“These are serious costs. Girls are being raped.”

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn

About two years within the past, the Bristol County district attorney’s space of job identified 21 rapes that it could well perhaps agree with prosecuted were it no longer for the statute of barriers. They came to gentle when the company dilapidated a federal grant to analyze DNA evidence in rape conditions that had no longer been fully tested when it used to be first restful.

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn is probably going one of many voice’s few prosecutors who has spoken in desire of allowing costs after the lower-off date in conditions with DNA evidence.

“Right here’s to rectify a irascible, when you occur to will, or a route of that didn’t work,” Quinn told WBUR. “These are serious costs. Girls are being raped.”

Miniature print of Louise’s case finest became public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the irregular step of filing costs even supposing they had uncared for the voice’s charging lower-off date. This resulted in the unencumber of some files about the rape that will otherwise were shielded by the voice’s privateness prison pointers.

Those files model that years prior to the lower-off date handed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered lots of the clues they would later train to identify a suspect, but did no longer resolve the case.

Louise: His title is Ivan

When she used to be 25, Louise’s lifestyles used to be initiating to descend aside. She labored as a waitress and switchboard operator, and she used to be experimenting with remedy.

In the in a single day hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a person she had been mates with demanded fee for remedy he had given her, in step with a court docket narrative, then coerced her into having sex with a stranger at a hotel to repay the debt.

When you or any individual you know has skilled sexual violence, that you just can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or trek to RAINN’s online internet page.

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

It used to be raining no longer easy, the trains had stopped running and she wanted a crawl to a first fee friend’s house. That’s when she thought she seen a nice face.

The man who drove up to her in a Lexus SUV supplied himself as Ivan and talked about he knew her from UMass Boston, the build she had taken courses, she recalled. He talked about he used to be on a watch destroy, and he looked the part. He had a younger face and wore a baseball cap with a college title on it.

She talked about the man supplied to pay for sex and she refused, court docket files model. He drove her to a secluded internet page in Everett, and raped and stabbed her, she told police. When Louise escaped his automobile, he chased her down with a knife and she fell.

“He saved stabbing me,” she talked about in an interview. “I endure in mind my head jerking again since the knife used to be in my head.”

The man fled to his automobile after the battle. Louise sought assist at a nearby house.

On the hospital, it took more than 100 stitches to stop the stab wounds that lined her body. Medical doctors told her the knife barely uncared for her predominant organs.

Louise let a specialist swab her body for the man’s DNA. While she talked about she did no longer deliver on the time that she had been coerced into sex work earlier that evening, she told investigators all the pieces else she knew: Police files talked about she gave the title her attacker dilapidated, his walk, which she talked about used to be both white or Asian, and a top level conception of his automobile. On the time, she told police that he talked about he had attended UMass Boston and used to be now at Tufts. She hoped this data would result in an arrest.

Had police checked with UMass Boston, they would agree with chanced on that 18 men named Ivan attended the faculty within the years surrounding the attack, in step with pupil files reviewed by WBUR. The man who police within the destroy related to DNA evidence in Louise’s case used to be among them.

Everett police interviewed Louise several conditions and reviewed surveillance digicam photos, she talked about, however the calls and visits from police waned over the arriving months.

Louise stopped calling the police to envision on her case as the years went by. She talked about she had moved on from the usage of painkillers to relying on heroin, cocaine and diversified remedy to assemble it thru the day. She feared that her rapist would return to abolish her, and the remedy were her scheme of coping with severe sorrowful and submit-annoying stress dysfunction, she talked about.

In 2008, Boston police received new evidence suggesting that whoever attacked Louise in overall is a serial rapist, a detective later talked about in court docket files. The division’s crime lab chanced on that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 attack. That sufferer used to be picked up in Boston’s North Discontinue, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.

It’s unclear how police spoke back to this new knowledge. With the assist of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise dilapidated an exception for survivors within the voice’s privateness laws to get her Everett police narrative. However the 2-internet page narrative crucial capabilities nothing of the investigation previous the predominant 24 hours after the attack.

Everett police declined to stammer on the case. The Middlesex County district attorney’s space of job, which had jurisdiction on the time of the attack, did no longer stammer. The Suffolk County district attorney’s space of job, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction identified a suspect, talked about it did no longer agree with crucial capabilities about how prior agencies handled the case. Boston police did no longer present a response to just a few requests for an interview.

Louise talked about she would no longer recall whether police or prosecutors told her that DNA tests showed her unknown assailant might well perhaps also simply agree with attacked one other girl.

Years later, when police at closing identified a suspect, it’d be too late to protect any individual responsible. The lower-off date to payment a suspect with attempted destroy 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, the suitable states which agree with shorter time time limits than Massachusetts and don’t assemble exceptions for DNA evidence are North Dakota and Fresh Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica overview of voice prison pointers chanced on. The most restrictive is Fresh Hampshire’s six-300 and sixty five days lower-off date.

Decades of evaluate into how rape is reported and investigated has pushed lawmakers out of doorways of Massachusetts to extend their statutes of barriers.

At some level of the 2000s, several states handed exceptions for conditions with DNA as it became obvious that this roughly forensic evidence might well perhaps assist resolve even very frail conditions.

Other states adopted as police departments began to deliver within the 2010s that they systemically didn’t test DNA evidence in rape conditions. Meanwhile, a rising body of evaluate chanced on that police on a customary foundation completed insufficient rape investigations, deciding experiences were untrue prior to interviewing witnesses, collecting evidence or trying out DNA. Across the country, most experiences of rape originate no longer result in prosecution, evaluate reveals.

“They pick the sufferer,” talked about Michigan Train University professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored just a few reviews on how police conduct rape investigations. “That’s what I chanced on in my evaluate, and it’s been replicated by diversified evaluate teams and diversified jurisdictions all the scheme in which thru the US.”

The frequent issues caused national reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Division of Justice launched its National Sexual Assault Package deal Initiative to commit a whole bunch of tens of millions of greenbacks to trying out previously uncared for DNA. This effort produced ample evidence to at closing raise costs in every person of these conditions, and lawmakers in diversified states revised their time time limits so prosecutions might well perhaps transfer forward.

The transfer to extend the lower-off date has been a bipartisan region off in lots of states. Appropriate closing 300 and sixty five days in Oklahoma, earlier voice Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a a success effort to save away with the voice’s statute of barriers in conditions the build there is a confession or DNA evidence. The invoice handed unanimously.

“We were ready to originate that closing session with in actuality very dinky, if any, pushback,” Garvin talked about. “It’s no longer a Republican field. It’s no longer a Democratic field.”

In Massachusetts, laws that will extend the lower-off date has been supplied all the scheme in which thru every session since no longer no longer up to 2011. But every time, it has didn’t attain steam.

Defense attorneys agree with opposed any adjustments, announcing that making the lower-off date longer risks violating the rights of the accused.

Witnesses, surveillance photos and diversified evidence that will obvious a suspect turns into more subtle to bag as time passes, talked about Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Affiliation of Felony Defense Attorneys.

“The extra and extra you get far from the alleged fee of the crime, the more difficult it is miles for any individual to ever mount a protection,” she talked about.

The closing time voice lawmakers changed the statute used to be in 1996 after victims came forward to stammer they had delayed reporting their rapes attributable to neighborhood backlash or uncomfortable cure by police.

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

Connecting the dots

In late 2021, the Division of Justice initiative awarded Boston $2.5 million to reexamine up to 100 of town’s most serious unsolved rapes. The funds paid a dinky community of investigators to comb thru frail case files to survey clues.

The brand new personnel revisited Louise’s rape within months. This time they obvious that her case and the North Discontinue rape were reminiscent of earlier assaults, court docket files model.

Most were unsolved, but a person named Ivan Cheung used to be arrested in a single of them. Boston University police took him into custody in 2003 after they chanced on him in possession of a knife and the belongings of a girl who used to be allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Division, which took over the case, talked about in court docket files that they suspected the sufferer used to be covering up her ties to the sex work enterprise. Prosecutors dropped the costs several weeks later.

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

This address Cheung resulted in a breakthrough. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall automobile car car parking zone 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 Discontinue attack.

By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s attack, the North Discontinue rape and two diversified open conditions spicy teenage women. He used to be residing within the Boston internet page and dealing as a financial services executive.

The arrest used to be that that you just can imagine because investigators received the time and sources to take a new stare upon frail conditions, talked about Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.

A detective showed Cheung a characterize of Louise and requested if he had raped her and others. Cheung told police that he did no longer acknowledge the ladies folk and that there used to be no scheme his DNA will were chanced on on any of them, court docket files model.

“I’m telling you no f—ing scheme. I don’t even know her title. I don’t even know her face,” he talked about all the scheme in which thru the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his attorney declined an interview with WBUR.

The finest scheme Suffolk County prosecutors might well perhaps transfer forward with Louise’s case and the North Discontinue attack used to be on a technicality: A voice laws suspends the lower-off date if a suspect lives out of voice. Prosecutors talked about Cheung traveled continually, but they couldn’t show he had relocated. In October 2023, costs against Cheung for the assaults on Louise and the North Discontinue sufferer were dropped.

Alongside with her case over, Louise talked about she pinned her hopes on the 2 final conditions related to the suspect. Police talked about in court docket files the alleged victims were 13 and 14 and being trafficked for sex on the time of their assaults. Because they were so younger, the voice’s statute of barriers did no longer block their conditions from transferring forward, and there used to be a probability a pick would enable Louise to testify within the event that they went to trial.

But those two conditions had diversified issues: They had no DNA evidence, and prosecutors acknowledged that the evidence tying those conditions to Cheung used to be no longer as solid. In a single of the conditions, Boston police had no longer interviewed the alleged sufferer till almost two decades after her attack, and she used to be unwilling to testify, court docket filings model. In the diversified, a pick principal in a ruling that police completed no forensic scientific exam of the sufferer and perceived to assemble no strive at finding a criminal offense scene.

“The police response used to be severely uncomfortable,” Suffolk Superior Court docket Resolve Christopher Belezos wrote within the December 2024 ruling.

The district attorney told the pick they wanted Louise’s testimony to model the rapes were so a related that Cheung used to be the suitable that that you just can imagine assailant. But Belezos barred Louise from testifying, announcing her case used to be too diversified: The assaults had came about in diversified locations and their descriptions of their assailants’ walk and vehicles did no longer match.

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s final costs in January.

“ It used to be frustrating, but at that level, legally we had no preference,” talked about Polumbaum. In court docket files, 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 remedy and toughen groups, and she fills her condo partitions with symbols of renewal, trade and faith. A red foil decal with the word “Mediate” hangs among prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.

When WBUR interviewed Louise, it used to be the predominant time she had discussed her rape publicly. She talked about those interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her trace she wanted to originate more.

In June she testified prior to the voice Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to induce them to pass Dwelling Bill 1987, which is pending. It could maybe most likely well perhaps enable prosecutors to payment suspects after the lower-off date in some rape conditions with DNA evidence.

“ It in actuality needs to be changed for the safety of all, for the public at immense,” she testified. “That’s why I’m talking.”

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