According to NBC 5 Investigates – NBC Chicago, thousands of sexual assault cases die in Chicago’s justice system every year

Trigger warning: The following investigative reports address issues of sexual violence.

After it was over, she had a rape kit picked up but waited to tell the police.

Her loved ones and friends encouraged her to come forward.

“I was terrified of the possibility that he might do this to someone else,” she said. “I had no idea he had done this before.”

“Jane” — that’s not her real name — told NBC 5 Investigates that she met a man on Tinder at the start of the pandemic.

They drank a few beers on his couch and watched a movie. According to a police report, she rejected his first advances. Their encounter ended in a sexual assault, court records showed.

What “Jane” didn’t know at the time of her sexual assault – the man, Christian Valcich, was already out on bail, accused of four counts of aggravated sexual assault in a separate 2019 criminal case in Chicago.

“I was stunned when I found out,” Jane told NBC 5 Investigates.

At the time of the sexual assault on Jane in May 2020, court records showed that Valcich had already been banned by the court from using dating apps while his 2019 case was pending.

According to the police report, the victim claimed she also met Valcich on Tinder and was sexually assaulted and choked until she almost lost consciousness.

But in court, the cases had two very different outcomes.

In the 2019 case, Valcich’s four sexual assault charges were dismissed and reduced to a single count of aggravated assault. At the time of our reporting, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office had not disclosed why the case was revised downward.

In the “Jane” case, the charges of aggravated sexual assault were also dropped.

Valcich pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse – a felony conviction that requires registration as a sex offender. He was sentenced to 24 months probation.

Reached by phone, Valcich told NBC 5 Investigates he would consider an interview and would call back. He did not. And he did not respond to two other voicemails requesting comment.

NBC 5 Investigates discovered he lives in Massachusetts and is registered as a sex offender.

His criminal cases are a typical example of highly reported sexual harassment in Chicago, NBC 5 Investigates found: They rarely result in an arrest and almost never result in a conviction for a sex crime that carries a prison sentence.

A six-month investigation by NBC 5 Investigates found that of more than 21,000 suspected sex crimes reported to Chicago police between 2018 and 2023, police made arrests in fewer than 1,600 cases – just 7 percent.

From there, NBC 5 Investigates discovered that hundreds of sexual assault cases died on the spot between reporting to police and being convicted in court:

1. Records show 317 cases were dropped before they even went to trial.
2. 276 cases were dismissed after the criminal cases were filed in court.
3. An additional 216 cases resulted in defendants being convicted of something other than a sex crime – including charges of non-sex crimes such as aggravated assault.

In nearly half of the convictions we reviewed (49 percent), the conviction did not require the suspect to register as a sex offender.

All told, over a six-year period, only 1.5 percent of reported sexual assaults and other sex crimes in Chicago resulted in a sex crime conviction that resulted in a prison sentence.

“This is a nationwide problem. It’s called “case attrition,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern University who wrote a book about the difficulties sexual assault victims face when seeking justice.

In an interview with NBC 5 Investigates, Tuerkheimer, a former prosecutor in New York City, said a variety of factors account for why rape cases fail in court – including how thoroughly the cases are investigated and prosecuted.

“And basically there are cases where dropouts happen at every stage, and it’s largely because people aren’t doing their jobs well, right?” she said.

NBC 5 Investigates interviewed Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx about our findings.

When asked if Foxx wished her office had done better in prosecuting these cases, she replied: “You know…we have a vertical prosecution method where our prosecutors prosecute the case from start to finish, to know their cases.” They know the strengths as they are, the shortcomings that can arise and the credibility of our witnesses and accompany them through the situation. So it’s hard to question it because, again, it’s human effort – but we’re always striving to do better.”

According to Foxx, sexual assault cases can often be difficult to prosecute for a variety of reasons, from a lack of witnesses to prosecutors weighing the evidence before deciding whether they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a sexual assault occurred.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all. “I think research and data shows us that sex crimes are some of the most underreported crimes of all,” Foxx said. “In such cases there are often no witnesses, but a survivor and a defendant. There are cases where you may have DNA evidence. Sometimes that’s not the case. It’s often one person’s word against another.”

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office provided NBC 5 Investigates its own data – which differed from our findings in terms of how convictions were categorized – but still showed that most sex crimes had their charges changed to other categories.

According to Foxx’s office, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has reviewed and made charging decisions in 6,445 sex crime cases in Cook County since taking office in 2016. Of these, 3,573 cases were prosecuted.

When it comes to sex crime convictions, according to Foxx’s office, 39 percent of cases are convicted on the most common charges; 65 percent are convicted of a charge equivalent to the highest charge.

NBC 5 Investigates’ own analysis found that most of the cases we reviewed resulted in a change to the original charge.