Massachusetts’ Statute of Limitations for Rape Is One of many Shortest within the Nation — ProPublica

Seventeen years had handed by the point Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to say they’d recognized the person who allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005.

The suspect was now a father of two, a potential serial rapist and sure past the attain of the legislation, investigators advised her. Police had taken so lengthy to determine him that they missed the state’s deadline to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the legislation says prosecutors have solely 15 years to file fees after an alleged rape. Previous that statute of limitations, it’s almost unimaginable to convey fees. Nonetheless, prosecutors thought they could have the ability to transfer this specific case ahead on a technicality.

Louise was afraid. She had spent years reliving the phobia of that night time and battling drug use that spun uncontrolled after the assault. At occasions she failed out of rehab applications or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR doesn’t determine victims of sexual assault with out their permission and agreed to determine Louise solely by her center identify.)

By 2022, she was 42, sober, residing in her personal residence and elevating two school-age sons. She couldn’t slip again into her outdated methods.

However, because the daughter of a Marine veteran, Louise believed she wanted to battle: She felt her group wouldn’t be secure till her rapist was in jail.

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

Previous the 15-year deadline in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony and even confession may give a rape sufferer an opportunity at going through an attacker in courtroom.

This statute of limitations locations Massachusetts behind nearly each different state within the nation.

A evaluate of felony codes by WBUR and ProPublica discovered that as many as 47 states enable extra time to cost rapes or comparable assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For instance, Vermont and Maryland are amongst numerous states that haven’t any deadline to file fees for rape. Different states like Montana and Texas lengthen their deadlines when there’s DNA proof.

In lots of states, Louise’s case might be determined in courtroom on the power of its proof. However right here, proof wouldn’t matter. The case can be nearly unimaginable to win.

Misplaced Possibilities

Regulation enforcement and rape disaster employees throughout Massachusetts mentioned in interviews that they routinely encounter circumstances the place no fees had been filed earlier than the state’s strict deadline. How usually rape suspects keep away from prosecution in consequence is unclear.

Massachusetts is uncommon in that state sufferer privateness legal guidelines bar police from releasing incident studies of rape to the general public. Except a suspect is charged in courtroom, it’s usually troublesome to seek out any official data a couple of rape. And even when somebody is charged, police can nonetheless withhold details about what they did — or didn’t do — to determine and seize a suspected rapist.

This makes all of it however unimaginable for anybody outdoors legislation enforcement to scrutinize rapes which might be previous the deadline to prosecute.

With the intention to perceive the extent of circumstances misplaced to the statute of limitations, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.

Rape disaster heart leaders say survivors of sexual assaults that occurred a few years in the past usually ask whether or not the felony authorized system will help them. The Suffolk County district legal professional’s workplace, one of the populous jurisdictions within the state, is predicated in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime intercourse crimes prosecutor there mentioned his workplace opinions a number of circumstances every year that it can’t pursue due to the statute of limitations.

About two years in the past, the Bristol County district legal professional’s workplace recognized 21 rapes that it may have prosecuted had been it not for the statute of limitations. They got here to gentle when the company used a federal grant to investigate DNA proof in rape circumstances that had not been absolutely examined when it was first collected.

Bristol County District Legal professional Thomas Quinn is without doubt one of the state’s few prosecutors who has spoken in favor of permitting fees after the deadline in circumstances with DNA proof.

“That is to rectify a mistaken, if you’ll, or a course of that didn’t work,” Quinn advised WBUR. “These are severe fees. Girls are being raped.”

Particulars of Louise’s case solely turned public as a result of Suffolk County prosecutors took the weird step of submitting fees regardless that they’d missed the state’s charging deadline. This led to the discharge of some data concerning the rape that may in any other case have been shielded by the state’s privateness legal guidelines.

These data present that years earlier than the deadline handed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered most of the clues they’d later use to determine a suspect, however didn’t resolve the case.

Louise: His Title Is Ivan

When she was 25, Louise’s life was beginning to disintegrate. She labored as a waitress and switchboard operator, and she or he was experimenting with medication.

Within the in a single day hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a person she had been mates with demanded cost for medication he had given her, in accordance with a courtroom file, then coerced her into having intercourse with a stranger at a resort to repay the debt.

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

It was raining arduous, the trains had stopped operating and she or he needed a experience to a buddy’s home. That’s when she thought she noticed a pleasant face.

The person who drove as much as her in a Lexus SUV launched himself as Ivan and mentioned he knew her from UMass Boston, the place she had taken courses, she recalled. He mentioned he was on a examine break, and he appeared the half. He had a younger face and wore a baseball cap with a school identify on it.

She mentioned the person provided to pay for intercourse and she or he refused, courtroom data present. He drove her to a secluded space in Everett, simply north of town, and raped and stabbed her, she advised police. When Louise escaped his automotive, he chased her down with a knife and she or he fell.

“He stored stabbing me,” she mentioned in an interview. “I keep in mind my head jerking again as a result of the knife was in my head.”

The person fled to his automotive after the wrestle. Louise sought assist at a close-by home.

On the hospital, it took greater than 100 stitches to shut the stab wounds that lined her physique. Docs advised her the knife barely missed her main organs.

Louise let a specialist swab her physique for the person’s DNA. Whereas she mentioned she didn’t disclose on the time that she had been coerced into intercourse work earlier that night time, she advised investigators every little thing else she knew: Police data mentioned she gave the identify her attacker used, his race, which she mentioned was both white or Asian, and an outline of his automotive. On the time, she advised police that he mentioned he had attended UMass Boston and was now at Tufts. She hoped this data would result in an arrest.

Had police checked with UMass Boston, they’d have found that 18 males named Ivan attended the varsity within the years surrounding the assault, in accordance with pupil data reviewed by WBUR. The person who police in the end related to DNA proof in Louise’s case was amongst them.

Everett police interviewed Louise a number of occasions and reviewed surveillance digital camera footage, she mentioned, however the calls and visits from police waned over the approaching months.

Louise stopped calling the police to examine on her case because the years glided by. She mentioned she had moved on from utilizing painkillers to counting on heroin, cocaine and different medication to make it by the day. She feared that her rapist would return to kill her, and the medication had been her approach of dealing with extreme despair and post-traumatic stress dysfunction, she mentioned.

In 2008, Boston police acquired new proof suggesting that whoever attacked Louise might be a serial rapist, a detective later mentioned in courtroom data. The division’s crime lab discovered that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 assault. That sufferer was picked up in Boston’s North Finish, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.

It’s unclear how police responded to this new data. With the assistance of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise used an exception for survivors within the state’s privateness legislation to acquire her Everett police report. However the two-page file particulars nothing of the investigation past the primary 24 hours after the assault.

Everett police declined to touch upon the case. The Middlesex County district legal professional’s workplace, which had jurisdiction on the time of the assault, didn’t remark. The Suffolk County district legal professional’s workplace, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction recognized a suspect, mentioned it didn’t have particulars about how prior companies dealt with the case. Boston police didn’t present a response to a number of requests for an interview.

Louise mentioned she doesn’t recall whether or not police or prosecutors advised her that DNA exams confirmed her unknown assailant might have attacked one other girl.

Years later, when police lastly recognized a suspect, it could be too late to carry anybody accountable. The deadline to cost a suspect with tried homicide in Louise’s case had handed after 10 years and the deadline for rape had handed at 15 years.

Extending the Statute of Limitations

At present, the one states which have shorter deadlines than Massachusetts and don’t make exceptions for DNA proof are North Dakota and New Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica evaluate of state legal guidelines discovered. Probably the most restrictive is New Hampshire’s six-year deadline.

Many years of analysis into how rape is reported and investigated has pushed lawmakers outdoors of Massachusetts to increase their statutes of limitations.

In the course of the 2000s, a number of states handed exceptions for circumstances with DNA because it turned clear that this sort of forensic proof may assist resolve even very outdated circumstances.

Different states adopted as police departments started to reveal within the 2010s that they systemically failed to check DNA proof in rape circumstances. In the meantime, a rising physique of analysis discovered that police usually carried out insufficient rape investigations, deciding studies had been unfounded earlier than interviewing witnesses, amassing proof or testing DNA. Throughout the nation, most studies of rape don’t end in prosecution, analysis reveals.

 ”They decide the sufferer,” mentioned Michigan State College professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored a number of research on how police conduct rape investigations. “That’s what I discovered in my analysis, and it’s been replicated by different analysis groups and different jurisdictions all through america.”

The widespread issues prompted nationwide reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Division of Justice launched its Nationwide Sexual Assault Package Initiative to commit a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} to testing beforehand ignored DNA. This effort produced sufficient proof to lastly convey fees in a few of these circumstances, and lawmakers in different states revised their deadlines so prosecutions may transfer ahead.

The transfer to increase the deadline has been a bipartisan trigger in lots of states. Simply final 12 months in Oklahoma, former state Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a profitable effort to eradicate the state’s statute of limitations in circumstances the place there’s a confession or DNA proof. The invoice handed unanimously.

“ We had been in a position to accomplish that final session with actually little or no, if any, pushback,” Garvin mentioned. “It’s not a Republican problem. It’s not a Democratic problem.”

In Massachusetts, laws that may lengthen the deadline has been launched throughout each session since a minimum of 2011. However each time, it has failed to achieve steam.

Protection attorneys have opposed any adjustments, saying that making the deadline longer dangers violating the rights of the accused.

Witnesses, surveillance footage and different proof that will clear a suspect turns into tougher to seek out as time passes, mentioned Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Affiliation of Prison Protection Legal professionals.

“The additional and additional you get away from the alleged fee of the crime, the more durable it’s for somebody to ever mount a protection,” she mentioned.

The final time state lawmakers modified the statute was in 1996 after victims got here ahead to say they’d delayed reporting their rapes due to group backlash or poor remedy by police. Legislators lengthened the state’s deadline 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 as much as 100 of town’s most severe unsolved rapes. The funds paid a small group of investigators to comb by outdated case recordsdata to seek for clues.

The brand new workforce revisited Louise’s rape inside months. This time they decided that her case and the North Finish rape had been just like earlier assaults, courtroom data present.

Most had been unsolved, however a person named Ivan Cheung was arrested in considered one of them. Boston College police took him into custody in 2003 after they discovered him in possession of a knife and the belongings of a girl who was allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Division, which took over the case, mentioned in courtroom data that they suspected the sufferer was protecting up her ties to the intercourse work business. Prosecutors dropped the costs a number of weeks later.

When the brand new workforce of investigators revisited this case in 2022, they observed 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 give attention to Cheung led to a breakthrough. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall parking zone in Dorchester, the place they watched him smoke and toss away a cigarette.

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

By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s assault, the North Finish rape and two different open circumstances involving teenage ladies. He was residing within the Boston space and dealing as a monetary providers government.

The arrest was potential as a result of investigators acquired the time and sources to take a recent take a look at outdated circumstances, mentioned Suffolk County Assistant District Legal professional Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.

A detective confirmed Cheung a photograph of Louise and requested if he had raped her and others.

Cheung advised police that he didn’t acknowledge the ladies and that there was no approach his DNA may have been discovered on any of them, courtroom data present.

“I’m telling you no fucking approach. I don’t even know her identify. I don’t even know her face,” he mentioned in the course of the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his legal professional declined an interview with WBUR.

The one approach Suffolk County prosecutors may transfer ahead with Louise’s case and the North Finish assault was on a technicality: A state legislation suspends the deadline if a suspect lives out of state. Prosecutors mentioned Cheung traveled continuously, however they couldn’t show he had relocated. In October 2023, fees in opposition to Cheung for the assaults on Louise and the North Finish sufferer had been dropped.

Along with her case over, Louise mentioned she pinned her hopes on the 2 remaining circumstances related to the suspect. Police mentioned in courtroom data the alleged victims had been 13 and 14 and being trafficked for intercourse on the time of their assaults. As a result of they had been so younger, the state’s statute of limitations didn’t block their circumstances from transferring ahead, and there was an opportunity a decide would enable Louise to testify in the event that they went to trial.

However these two circumstances had different issues: That they had no DNA proof, and prosecutors acknowledged that the proof tying these circumstances to Cheung was not as sturdy. In one of many circumstances, Boston police had not interviewed the alleged sufferer till almost 20 years after her assault, and she or he was unwilling to testify, courtroom filings present. Within the different, a decide famous in a ruling that police carried out no forensic medical examination of the sufferer and appeared to make no try at finding a criminal offense scene.

“The police response was severely poor,” Suffolk Superior Court docket Decide Christopher Belezos wrote within the December 2024 ruling.

The district legal professional advised the decide they wanted Louise’s testimony to indicate the rapes had been so comparable that Cheung was the one potential assailant. However Belezos barred Louise from testifying, saying her case was too completely different: The assaults had occurred in several areas and their descriptions of their assailants’ race and vehicles didn’t match.

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s remaining fees in January.

“ It was irritating, however at that time, legally we had no selection,” mentioned Polumbaum. In courtroom data, Cheung additionally denied any involvement in these alleged assaults.

Now that the courtroom battle is over, Louise is preventing to maintain her peace of thoughts. She crowds her spare hours with remedy and help teams, and she or he fills her residence partitions with symbols of renewal, change and religion. A pink foil decal with the phrase “Consider” hangs amongst prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.

When WBUR interviewed Louise, it was the primary time she had mentioned her rape publicly. She mentioned these interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her understand she needed to do extra.

In June she testified earlier than the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to induce them to cross Home Invoice 1987, which is pending. It might enable prosecutors to cost suspects after the deadline in some rape circumstances with DNA proof.

“ It actually must be modified for the protection of all, for the general public at giant,” she testified. “That’s why I’m talking.”