BuzzFeed’s Jessica Testa captured the testimony of the 13 black women (identified to the public only by their initials) who came forward after a police investigation alleged Holtzclaw assaulted them between December 2013 and June 2014. Their testimonies, given in court last year and unreported in full until Testa’s December 9 article, show several disturbing patterns of stalking, coercion, and abuse of power between citizens in minority communities and police officers.
Holtzclaw preyed upon their distrust in the system
The most striking common thread in the testimony was the hopelessness of the victims, many of whom were low-income with criminal records. Because of this, most of the 13 women said they assumed they wouldn’t be believed if they reported him. So they didn’t.
With the exception of 17-year-old A., who was discouraged by a friend from reporting her rape to avoid looking like a “snitch,” nearly all of the women who testified against the officer said they did not report their assaults because they did not think the police would believe them.
“… Who are they going to believe?” said C.J. “It’s my word against his because I’m a woman and, you know, like I said, he’s a police officer. So I just left it alone and just prayed that I never saw this man again, run into him again, you know.”
Another woman, T.M., said, “I didn’t think nobody was going to believe me anyway. And I’m a drug addict, so the only way I knew to handle it was to go and get high to try to block it out, to make it seem like it didn’t happen.”
And T.B. said, “I didn’t think anything would be done. I mean, it was nobody there but just me and him, so to me I just took it as my word against his, so I just blew it off — as best as I could just walked away from it.”
The earliest documented encounter between Holtzclaw and one of the women was December 2013. It wasn’t until June 2014 when a woman identified as J., with the encouragement of her daughter, reported being sexually assaulted by Holtzclaw to police. Her allegations spurred the investigation into Holtzclaw’s interactions with women.