Massachusetts’ Statute of Limitations for Rape Is One of the Shortest in 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 doable serial rapist and certain past the attain of the legislation, investigators instructed her. Police had taken so lengthy to establish him that they missed the state’s deadline to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the legislation says prosecutors have solely 15 years to file expenses after an alleged rape. Previous that statute of limitations, it’s almost inconceivable to deliver expenses. Nonetheless, prosecutors thought they could be capable 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 instances she failed out of rehab packages or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR doesn’t establish victims of sexual assault with out their permission and agreed to establish Louise solely by her center title.)

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

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

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

Previous the 15-year deadline in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony and even confession can provide a rape sufferer an opportunity at dealing with an attacker in courtroom.

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

A evaluate of legal 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 expenses 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 energy of its proof. However right here, proof wouldn’t matter. The case can be nearly inconceivable to win.

Misplaced Probabilities

Regulation enforcement and rape disaster staff throughout Massachusetts mentioned in interviews that they routinely encounter instances the place no expenses had been filed earlier than the state’s strict deadline. How typically 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 reviews of rape to the general public. Until a suspect is charged in courtroom, it’s typically tough 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 establish and seize a suspected rapist.

This makes all of it however inconceivable for anybody exterior legislation enforcement to scrutinize rapes which can be previous the deadline to prosecute.

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

Rape disaster middle leaders say survivors of sexual assaults that occurred a few years in the past recurrently ask whether or not the legal authorized system can assist them. The Suffolk County district legal professional’s workplace, probably the most populous jurisdictions within the state, is predicated in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime intercourse crimes prosecutor there mentioned his workplace evaluations a number of instances 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 might have prosecuted had been it not for the statute of limitations. They got here to mild when the company used a federal grant to research DNA proof in rape instances that had not been absolutely examined when it was first collected.

Bristol County District Legal professional Thomas Quinn is likely one of the state’s few prosecutors who has spoken in favor of permitting expenses after the deadline in instances with DNA proof.

“That is to rectify a flawed, if you’ll, or a course of that didn’t work,” Quinn instructed WBUR. “These are severe expenses. Ladies are being raped.”

Particulars of Louise’s case solely turned public as a result of Suffolk County prosecutors took the bizarre step of submitting expenses although they’d missed the state’s charging deadline. This led to the discharge of some data in regards to 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 establish a suspect, however didn’t clear up the case.

Louise: His Identify Is Ivan

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

Within the in a single day hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a person she had been buddies with demanded cost for medicine he had given her, in keeping with a courtroom report, 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 working and he or she wished a trip 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 seemed the half. He had a younger face and wore a baseball cap with a school title on it.

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

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

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

On the hospital, it took greater than 100 stitches to shut the stab wounds that coated her physique. Docs instructed 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 instructed investigators every part else she knew: Police data mentioned she gave the title her attacker used, his race, which she mentioned was both white or Asian, and an outline of his automobile. On the time, she instructed 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 college within the years surrounding the assault, in keeping with pupil data reviewed by WBUR. The person who police in the end linked to DNA proof in Louise’s case was amongst them.

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

Louise stopped calling the police to verify on her case because the years glided by. She mentioned she had moved on from utilizing painkillers to counting on heroin, cocaine and different medicine to make it by the day. She feared that her rapist would return to kill her, and the medicine had been her method of dealing with extreme melancholy 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 report 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 businesses 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 instructed her that DNA checks confirmed her unknown assailant could have attacked one other lady.

Years later, when police lastly recognized a suspect, it might 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 exterior of Massachusetts to increase their statutes of limitations.

Throughout the 2000s, a number of states handed exceptions for instances with DNA because it turned clear that this sort of forensic proof might assist clear up even very previous instances.

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

 ”They choose 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 the US.”

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

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

“ We had been capable of 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 realize steam.

Protection attorneys have opposed any modifications, 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 Legal Protection Legal professionals.

“The additional and additional you get away from the alleged fee of the crime, the tougher 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 neighborhood backlash or poor therapy 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 previous case information 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 much like earlier assaults, courtroom data present.

Most had been unsolved, however a person named Ivan Cheung was arrested in one among them. Boston College police took him into custody in 2003 after they discovered him in possession of a knife and the belongings of a lady 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 trade. 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 concentrate on 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 instances involving teenage women. He was dwelling within the Boston space and dealing as a monetary providers govt.

The arrest was doable as a result of investigators acquired the time and sources to take a recent take a look at previous instances, 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 instructed police that he didn’t acknowledge the ladies and that there was no method his DNA might have been discovered on any of them, courtroom data present.

“I’m telling you no fucking method. I don’t even know her title. 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 method Suffolk County prosecutors might 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 incessantly, however they couldn’t show he had relocated. In October 2023, expenses in opposition to Cheung for the assaults on Louise and the North Finish sufferer had been dropped.

Together with her case over, Louise mentioned she pinned her hopes on the 2 remaining instances linked 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 instances from transferring ahead, and there was an opportunity a choose would enable Louise to testify in the event that they went to trial.

However these two instances had different issues: That they had no DNA proof, and prosecutors acknowledged that the proof tying these instances to Cheung was not as robust. In one of many instances, Boston police had not interviewed the alleged sufferer till almost twenty years after her assault, and he or she was unwilling to testify, courtroom filings present. Within the different, a choose 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 Choose Christopher Belezos wrote within the December 2024 ruling.

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

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s remaining expenses 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 assist teams, and he or she fills her condo 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 notice she wished to do extra.

In June she testified earlier than the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to induce them to move Home Invoice 1987, which is pending. It will enable prosecutors to cost suspects after the deadline in some rape instances 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.”