Montana County Attorney Quoted Religious Passages To Sexual Assault Victim, DOJ Investigation Finds

By Alex Leichenger on February 18, 2014 at 5:44 pm

The County Attorney’s Office in Missoula, Montana has institutionally failed sexual assault victims by “re-victimizing” them and often refusing to press charges, an investigation from the Department of Justice determined. The 20-page letter to decries gender discrimination in the office of Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg for minimizing, degrading, and failing to pursue allegations of sexual asssault.

“The County Attorney’s Office routinely fails to engage in the most basic communication about its cases of sexual assault with law enforcement and advocacy partners,” reads part of a DOJ statement released Feb. 14.

Among the accusations in the letter are that a Deputy County Attorney opted to recite religious passages to a sexual assault victim. The report states that Missoula offers some of the most extensive mental health resources in Montana, yet prosecutors repeatedly declined to seek charges when mentally ill women had been assaulted.

Sexual assault cases are routinely minimized or simply ignored by the Missoula County Attorney’s Office, the letter argues. It cites a comment from Van Valkenburg that prosecutors handled such cases in their “spare time” and a pattern in his department of dismissing them due to “insufficient evidence” or “insufficient corroboration.” One of these cases included a woman who was raped while unconscious, but prosecutors did not pursue charges despite a confession from the accused man.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/18/3304361/missoula-sexual-assault/#

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/February/14-crt-166.html