Hundreds of US police officers sexually abused minors and got away with it

A new WashingtonPost An investigation found that over the past 20 years, hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually abused children, while authorities at all levels of the criminal justice system failed to protect children, punish offenders, and prevent further crimes.

Botched background checks, ignoring red flags, and poor handling of investigations have contributed to the problem. Accused police officers have used their legal skills to avoid prosecution, reduce charges, or avoid conviction. Prosecutors have offered favorable settlements to police officers who confessed to raping and molesting minors, and judges have allowed several guilty officers to avoid prison time.

In every state and the District of Columbia, children are targeted, manipulated and abused by police officers who are supposed to protect them.

What makes matters worse is that these incidents are apparently not isolated cases. Between 2005 and 2022 the post identified at least 1,800 state and local police officers who have been charged with crimes related to child sexual abuse.

Reporters spent more than a year combing through hundreds of court filings, police records and other documents to find out who these police officers are, how they gain access to minors and what is being done – and isn’t being done – to stop them.

The post also analyzed the nation’s largest database of police arrests, maintained by Bowling Green State University, which collects news reports of police arrests. Of the hundreds of thousands of sworn police officers in the country, only a small percentage are ever charged with a crime, and not all of them are mentioned in the media.

From 2005 to 2022, approximately 17,700 state and local police officers in Bowling Green were charged with crimes such as assault, drunk driving and drug possession. According to The postOne in ten police officers was charged with a crime related to child sexual abuse.

This form of police misconduct usually went unnoticed by the public and not reported in the criminal justice system. Some police officers admitted The post that more could have been done to ensure accountability.

Children have “nobody else to protect them”

US Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who heads the Justice Department’s division, called the “abhorrent behavior” intolerable. She said officials who abused their authority left the young victims “with no chance of protection and no one else to protect them.”

The majority of the victims were female, with an average age of 14. Almost three quarters of them were young people with whom the officers had little contact.

Police and court records show that violent police officers regularly befriended and abused children for months at a time, many of them exploiting fear of arrest or physical violence to pressure their victims.

After police officers were charged with sexual offenses against children, several agencies attempted to distance themselves in media coverage by claiming that the alleged misconduct occurred off-duty.

In Lake Wales, Florida, where three police officers have been charged with child sexual abuse since 2005, Police Chief Chris Velasquez said such allegations must be taken seriously, regardless of when and where the alleged misconduct occurred.

He claimed that the public views the police as law enforcement officers, “regardless of whether we are on duty or not.”

However, The post found that there were cases across the country in which police officers often encountered their victims during working hours, even when the attacks occurred outside of duty hours.

When The post The results of a study of around 1,500 police officers accused of crimes related to child sexual abuse between 2005 and 2020 showed that almost 40% of the officers avoided prison sentences.

Seventeen percent of police officers were not convicted but were acquitted by the jury, the cases against them were dropped or, in some cases, a plea agreement was reached.

Sixty-one percent of convicted police officers were sentenced to prison in state or federal prisons, while 15 percent were sentenced to incarceration in local jails. Twenty-four percent received probation, fines, or community service. Fifty-two percent of those sentenced to prison received sentences of five years or less.

Only 26% of prisoners were sentenced to terms of between 5 and 15 years, while 21% were sentenced to terms of more than 15 years.

Often the officers did not serve their entire prison sentence. The post Hundreds of police officers were sentenced to prison, serving on average about 63% of their sentence before being released.