#MeToo

MeToo is a social movement originating among women, advocating for survivors of sexual harassment or violence to speak out about their experiences in order to expose and combat various forms of sexual misconduct. Despite having spoken up about what happened to me law enforcement has covered up that it happened. Two agencies are and have been keeping evidence from a third, not that the third agency will even interview me. I was a judicial officer. My colleagues in law enforcement have covered up my sexual assault that happened when I was involved in litigation to protect their jobs. At every turn law enforcement has granted me no rights. In fact, I have been attacked by the Mayor of Brookhaven for merely trying to get him to follow up what he said he would do. I have not even been allowed to make a statement to law enforcement because their Deputy Chief Brandon Gurley, told me to have the press call him. A white college educated former juvenile probation officers has less rights then a tow truck driver. Even the press has covered up the fact the Pooler PD and Chatham County Sheriff's department have been in possession of illegally obtained evidence (by their theft of my electronics and car) for over two years. The fact, Brookhaven PD will not interview a victim in a sexual assault is cause enough for the press to look into the matter. The fact, my ex boyfriend used his patrol buddies to take the evidence knowingly that has prevented the investigation of the sexual assault and the documents in a wrongful termination that was done to protect the employment rights of police officers and prevented the Ga Supreme Court from being made aware is itself enough. Yet I am still being threatened by the department covering up the sexual assault and they have tampered with the evidence to the point that it is unlikely it could be used in Court. There exists hard copies and electronic copies of this evidence with I can not access because they were put in a safe deposit box. A Court order could be issued for the contents of the safe deposit box, but even the a AUSUA has been aware of the situation for almost two years now and refuses to do anything. He didn't think I was crazy he just didn't and doesn't care. That would be AUSA Karl Knoche in Savannah, Ga.

Georgia Code Title 16. Crimes and Offenses § 16-6-1. The terms “forcibly” and “against her will” are two separate elements of proving rape. The term “forcibly” means acts of physical force, threats of death or physical bodily harm, or mental coercion, such as intimidation. The term “against her will” means without consent. Pollard v. State, 260 Ga. App. 540, (2003). Therefore, force does not have to be exerted by the use of physical violence, but can also be asserted through threats of which cause the female to give in against her will. Any consent that is induced through fear or intimidation does not amount to consent in law and does not prevent the intercourse from being considered rape. Thomas v. State, 159 Ga. App. 249, (1981).

(a) A person commits the offense of rape when he has carnal knowledge of: (1) A female forcibly and against her will;  or

Carnal knowledge in rape occurs when there is any penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ.  The fact that the person allegedly raped is the wife of the defendant shall not be a defense to a charge of rape.

(b) A person convicted of the offense of rape shall be punished by death, by imprisonment for life without parole, by imprisonment for life, or by a split sentence that is a term of imprisonment for not less than 25 years and not exceeding life imprisonment, followed by probation for life.  Any person convicted under this Code section shall, in addition, be subject to the sentencing and punishment provisions of Code Sections 17-10-6.1 and 17-10-7 .

(c) When evidence relating to an allegation of rape is collected in the course of a medical examination of the person who is the victim of the alleged crime, the Georgia Crime Victims Emergency Fund, as provided for in Chapter 15 of Title 17, shall be responsible for the cost of the medical examination to the extent that expense is incurred for the limited purpose of collecting evidence.

When it can be tied to the official misconduct of county employees, covered up by law enforcement in four departments- Pooler PD, Chatham County Sheriff's Department, Savannah PD and Brookhaven PD that was committed against a former judicial officer trying to protect the public employment rights of these very officers and their Chiefs, and public employees in an entire judicial circuit, linked to a MAAC, Colonial Grands at Godley Lake in Savannah, and their falsification of financial documents impacting my credit and it involves other offenses prosecutable under a Federal, State criminal and civil RICO statutes and police officers actively obstructed the investigation as well as hid evidence illegally obtained from the victim, the municipality itself can be considered a defendant.

O.C.G.A. § 16-6-22.1 (Sexual battery) – a person commits this offense when he or she intentionally makes physical contact with another person’s intimate body parts without that person’s consent

When a Savannah Police officer, Nicole Lantano rather than arrest a black man living in Stillwell Towers for sexual battery against a white female former juvenile probation officer who then threatens to arrest her for merely being outside of the building for Criminal Trespass and despite EMS responding both leave the victim in the street in a medically compromised state, and her police chief, Roy Minter will block the email of a victim who merely looked at his LinkedIn Profile, and Savannah Police department Internal Affairs will not return an email requesting an Internal Affairs investigation into the incident there is a problem. The problem is not the victim, the problem is the Police Chief and the police officer.

I never though I would be writing a #MeToo article. I never though it would go the way it has or that as a former judicial officer and law enforcement officer I would ever have to call out my brothers and sisters in blue for covering up the rape of one of their own that happened protecting their right to file a grievance. I never thought I would have to expose Mayors, Police Chiefs, sheriff's , Detectives and my own friends for assisting in keeping a rapist on the street and giving him more rights then I have been given. I refuse to ever believe the things I have been told by case managers and random people like "God wanted you raped, molested and your animals taken", "You just need to pretend that you were not raped" and "You are too damaged to ever have any man love you or even to speak to them."

I have been raped twice in my life. The first time it was not reported to law enforcement because I knew their would be a huge he said/she said issue because he was an Immigration Customs Enforcement Supervisor and we had dated. He was an ex Marine, who is now the father of a child and works as an insurance agent in California. Even when asked under oath in a court of law in a juvenile delinquency hearing when I was asked "Have you ever been raped?" by a child's lawyer my answer after I shook off the sheer stun of the question and the Juvenile District Attorney, Diane McCloed's failure to even object was " No." How can I say I was raped and say I didn't commit perjury- very simply because while it was not consensual in my mind all those years later I still doubted my truth because I blamed myself and it had never been addressed by law enforcement. Even with the Office of Professional Responsibility having flown an investigator out to question me, not because of the rape but because of what they were looking into him and his best friend for that included some form of financial theft from the federal government I did not feel heard. I was not told that I should go to local law enforcement, I was not told that the incident warranted their investigation and despite telling them the truth if ICE investigators did not look at as rape why should I.

I knew what it was, I did SARS volunteer work and responded to hospitals to liasion with victims and law enforcement just out of college. I could still tell you those victims stories. Like that of a young Airforce wife raped when her husband went to work and about being on call and going out to those calls in the middle of night.I have had 13 year old girls sit in my office as a juvenile probation officer and tell me they are pregnant because their mother took them to an adult party and was using drugs and their child was raped by an adult male and battling with law enforcement to even get them to come out to interview the child who thought she had to marry the asshole who raped her. You never expect it to happen to you. You never expect it to happen to you twice and be ignored by law enforcement, or prevented by law enforcement from reporting it, or have everyone you ever loved pretend they don't know you and trying to protect their children from it happening to them. I have been asked why I waited to report it, well having the evidence of it stolen by law enforcement, your colleagues and friends ignoring you when you reached out to them for help and having no one respond when you reach out for kinda prevents justice from being brought.

The fact that the Pooler, Ga PD stole my car in July 2019, that they knew contained evidence not only in the wrongful termination case that was in the Georgia Supreme Court preventing me from even now still having access to the documents needed to give to an agency that might hold them accountable, documents including the hotel receipt from the night it happened that had his name on it despite that I paid for the room because my driver's license had been taken out my apartment and I just needed someone to put the room in their name, That Chatham County Sheriff's deputies illegally seized my Mac, my Ipad (both of them) , my Iphone and I have have not been able to get into my icloud to retrieve the photos of the bruises, the hotel receipt and even the tow truck driver who raped me admitting he raped me when i simply asked him "Why did you rape me?" and he responded " I know I raped you, I know what I did and it was wrong. Please don't go to the police because I will lose my kids."

Despite my former boyfriend, an FBI agent in Florida having a copy of all of the evidence, despite hard copies of that evidence being in a safe deposit box I paid for four years up front so there was always a copy of the evidence, that I just can't get to what has happened since November 2018 when I was raped was this: I took myself to my OB/GyN and had a rape kit done. I tried to go to the only police officer I trusted in Ga- Steve Collins with the Dalton PD because he was my best friend despite that we were no longer dating. He didn't and still doesn't care. That is the man Judge Johns Beam wanted me to marry. The man who wanted me to go to work for the GBI, and to go to law school. His father was a GBI and GSP officer but I would not bother him at work when I found out he was working at the high school because I hadn't seen him in years but I needed his advice. I went back to Savannah to be beaten up by my former boyfriend a Pooler PD Police Officer for going out of town. I went to the FBI in ATL about my electronics being altered both the serial number on my MAC and documents being altered, and Jennifer Davenport somehow filing documents with the local Superior Court naming her paralegal Donna Myers as being represented by her when the only allegations I had made concerning her were in unsubmitted documents in my Pages documents.

Still no one cares. Juvenile Court Judges, high powered friends, former law enforcement friends, Department of Juvenile Justice Judges, the media, any local, state or federal law enforcement agency there is a problem and it is not the victim for wanting justice.

Not people who had no knowledge of anything that was going on, not one of my friends in law enforcement from GA Gang Investigator's, detectives, not one of my colleagues or friends even in other states will speak to me. The most support I have gotten is officers from other states telling me Georgia law enforcement is wrong for covering it up, that the Press is wrong for covering it up. That everyone is wrong but me. To those people thank you, it doesn't unrape a woman, cause any less pain at knowing no one cares about you because you expected law enforcement and the people who are supposed to investigate crime to cover it. I never expected the Mayor of Brookhaven to tell me in writing he would look into Deputy Brandon Gurley covering up that the Brookhaven PD would not even have a conversation about what the tow truck driver looked like who raped me or allowing me to even make a statement about being raped after 7 months of them ignoring 2 phone calls, and being told by a Deputy Police Chief to have the press call him. No one in the State of Ga law enforcement has cared I was raped except one investigator Albert Brazazon with the Richmond County Sheriff's office.

Instead every one of my personal friends in law enforcement have refused to even speak to me, have helped put a weight so heavy that it will never be okay because the trauma is not having been raped, it is that no one who could do anything has spoken to me and left me to carry the emotional trauma not only of the sexual assault but of what police officers in the state of Georgia haven't done- had their sisters 6. Not one, not even a sex offender therapists who know nothing about it but was my friend, not a single person I have told will talk to me. How do you get through a trauma when the people who are supposed to protect victims and investigate crime think silence is the answer. How do you ever look at those people the same and think they are good, when they care absolutely nothing about one of their own, being raped protecting their rights as public employees and no one of them has thought it was important enough to even return an email, phone call or text message from Assistant Chief Public Defenders and FCC Attorneys who was your best friend and wanted you to go to law school but no one in law enforcement in the entire state will even speak to you? My colleagues and friends are just as responsible for everything that has happened to me as the law enforcement officers who have made themselves a party to the crime by refusing to investigate it. No one has spoken up for me, in over two years, done anything but redact themselves from my life to the point that even trying to make a fresh start feels like a prison every day because I have to live with that they by their refusal to even be the friends they always were have contributed to the emotional distress that I have been through.

How can I believe I am safe in a State that even the Ga Attorney General won't look into what was done to me by law enforcement? How can anyone believe their daughter could be safe in state that will bury every crime in the OCGA committed by law enforcement officers, and that their bosses refuse to investigate? How can I ever believe that law enforcement officers help victims and not create them? This child will never know the hell it's mother went through, but it will not be killed by police officers protecting themselves, the criminals and the politicians who refuse to do anything but attack the victim and prevent her from recovering property and evidence illegally taken for over 2 years including electronics. The cover up needs to stop. The people of the State of Georgia need to know this won't happen to them when they make police report. That a former judicial officer has more credibility than law enforcement covering up crimes. That you can't seize assets and animals without cause, a warrant and explanation and it is not on the victim to prove it happened. Victims have rights and law enforcement doesn't have the right to violate anyone's rights, and prevent them from having access to their finances and cutting off their ability to own property. Criminals have to be held accountable, especially when it is law enforcement covering up their crime and the crimes of law enforcement officers. The press has to stop covering up what these officers did and hold them accountable because hiding evidence and committing felonies while on duty is more criminal than the criminals themselves. It is time that they have to answer to everyone for what they have done. It is time that not only are the offenders held accountable, but that covering it up for over two years and in fact threatening the victim of their actions stops.

To the good ones of you, I am sorry they have dishonored you. I want to be your voice. I don't hold it against all of you. You are the ones who I have been through hell protecting, even the life of a Sheriff, a department full of deputies, and entire police department. I could use some of you in my corner. To those of you that have, thank you. I remember that when no one will help me..even now.