Chicago to Pay $415,000 to Woman Who Reported Police Raped Her in 2011

By Joanna Walters, Guardian UK

07 May 15

Former officers Paul Clavijo and Juan Vasquez claim sex was consensual. Separate lawsuit pending from woman with same accusations against men.

hicago is due to give $415,000 on Wednesday to a woman who reported she was raped by two uniformed police officers after they drove her home in their squad car when they found her drunk on the street.

She sued the city in federal court.

A separate lawsuit is pending from another woman who came forward to report that she was assaulted by one of the same officers after they also offered her a ride home in an incident three weeks earlier.

The finance committee of the city council approved the settlement on Tuesday and the $415,000 payment is set to be ratified by the full council on Wednesday, just over three years after the event, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The two officers involved, Paul Clavijo and Juan Vasquez, both 41, left the Chicago police department following the alleged rape in March 2011.

They were indicted on 26 criminal charges but in January 2014 they were sentenced to two years’ probation after pleading guilty to one felony count each of official misconduct, involving battery, in a deal that involved no admission of sexual wrongdoing.

The victim’s lawyer told the Guardian that her client was pleased with the settlement.

“The reason she brought this suit is not for money it is because she reported that she was raped, she reported it immediately and her neighbor called the police. She wanted to make sure this did not happen again,” said Roshna Bala Keen, of Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy.

Her client, who has not been identified other than by the legal moniker “Jane Doe” during the legal case, felt it was “important to shed light on an ugly pattern of allegations against these officers,” she said.

Bala Keen also added that, contrary to reports, her client has “always been consistent that she did not play strip poker with the officers at her apartment. She did not play any games. She hammered on the wall and called for help.”

The woman’s lawsuit accused the department of protecting such conduct by officers with a “code of silence”.

In March 2011 the two officers were on duty at 2am in their police cruiser near Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, when they saw the woman, who was 22 at the time, standing near a Chicago Transit Authority train station crying and apparently intoxicated, according to court records.

They offered to take her home but when she attempted to get into the back seat of the vehicle, Clavijo beckoned her into the front and sat her on his lap. He then allegedly sexually assaulted her while his partner stopped at a liquor store to buy vodka, prosecutors said during the original case.

After reaching her home, the officers and the woman played strip poker, prosecutors had said. Both officers allegedly raped the woman, prompting her to scream and bang on the walls of her apartment.

City council members, known in Chicago as aldermen, heard on Tuesday that the women fled from her apartment and started banging on neighbors’ doors, allegedly saying: “The cops raped me.”

When other officers arrived, they found the woman “hysterical” and also found one of the officers’ cellphones and part of his uniform in the apartment.

The woman, who has not been identified, has since moved out of the city and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

She got married and recently had a baby and has “improved in some respects”, Chicago assistant corporation counsel Leslie Darling told the finance committee on Tuesday. But if the city declined to settle and went to trial, a jury would be likely to consider the victim “extremely sympathetic” and find that the officers abused their status in order to coerce her, she said.

The original lawsuit claimed $2.7m.

Clavijo and Vasquez maintained that the woman consented to sex.

After the allegations became public in March 2011, another woman came forward and alleged that Clavijo and Vasquez approached her while she was waiting for a bus three weeks earlier and offered her a ride home in their squad car. There, Clavijo allegedly sexually assaulted her while Vasquez was in the bathroom.

Clavijo was charged with sexual assault in that incident, but the charge was dropped as a result of his guilty plea in the other case. A federal lawsuit in that incident is still underway, according to records. That woman did not immediately report the crime because she was reportedly intimidated.