I use to do Children and Youth, not the criminal aspect but more the neglect and abuse aspects. Something like 90-95% of all abuse cases, including sex abuse, involves male relatives of the victims, often their father. I had cases where an older brother did the sex attack, but in the hearing it was determined he had been attack by other relatives earlier in his life. Most sexual abuse runs in certain families.
Given this background I can see the Officer asking the Child questions and the child saying it was NOT someone she knew. At that point what is the officer to do? The child can give a description, but it was probably on the line of an adult taller than her, may say that the person was white or black, may say the color of the perpetrator's hair but that is about all. DNA evidence was probably collected and if it shows it was NOT a blood relative, that confirmed the child's statement.
Contrary to Police on TV, most perpetrators do NOT have their DNA on record AND researching those records are much more complicated then finger print searches. Furthermore most Data in the existing DNA National Data base only include people who have been convicted or charged with a crime, if never charged no DNA in the National Data Base. Fingerprint evidence only shows that someone was in the room the incident occurred, but that could be days or even weeks before. In most physical assaults you rarely get fingerprints on items that clearly could only have that print during the assault (Belt buckle, shoes other hard surfaces etc, but NOT cloth). Worse, most rapes do NOT involve ejaculation, thus they may be NO DNA evidence to collect (That does NOT mean women can NOT get pregnant during a rape, men leak thus a sperm can enter her system even without him ejaculating and making her pregnant).
Please also remember your body does eject foreign matter, including sperm not needed to get a woman pregnant. Given her age, all of the sperm was ejected from her body within a few days. Thus by the time she was examined and tested for such evidence, it was long gone. NO DNA evidence, who do you charge? Who do you look for?
Sorry, this is a problem with dealing with children this young. They can give you straight facts, such as a man entered her with his penis, but no perspective such as how did he end up alone with her (through often that does come out but no idea where he took her and maybe not even where the incident occurred). Two year olds can not say, "He took me to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and in the second door to the right after entered the house he raped me" (I am using 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as a well known address nothing more). She will say "We drove to a house and entered it and he put his penis into me". Notice no address, "house" can be anything from a barn, to a warehouse to shack to mansion, the two year does NOT have the experience to know the differences.
That is the problem with these cases, the victims rarely has the background (life experience) to provide much good data. They can give facts, but no context for those facts. Was it a Mansion, a Warehouse, a shack, a shed, a doghouse or a house? The two year old can NOT answer that question for they have yet to develop the context to know what a Mansion, a Warehouse, a shack, a shed, a doghouse or a house is. Grade School age children (1st through 3rd grades) have difficulty with those concepts (But middle School Kids, Fourth through Eighth grades, clearly understand those differences).
This was a problem when I was doing CYS, we looked at other evidence of abuse and neglect NOT what the children said. Most of my cases involved neglect and neglect was easy to determined by just examining the home the children were in and the children themselves. The same with abuse, including if the child was sexually abused. In most cases we could determined who did the sexual abuse by looking at the family dynamics (I practiced CYS as DNA was just coming in, it was clearly a game changer when it came to evidence of sexual abuse but in the cases I handled not much changed for it was rare NOT to know the perpetrator).
Sorry, what the officer did may be all that could have been done, If this is a serial child rapist (a case I did NOT do for I did NOT do criminal child abuse cases) they are known to strike quickly and leave quickly. The Victim is dazed and confused and may take days for parents to even think the victim had been molested and that is why she is acting "strangely". By then any DNA evidence is long gone, as is the perpetrator. This is how such perpetrators can get so many victims (When they are caught they often confess to all of the cases they had done, this is why we know most victims of such perpetrators do NOT report their attacks).
Sorry, if this was done by a serial rapists and the victim took 2-3 days to get to a hospital for an examination, there is only her eye witness report and nothing else. You may know where she was found after the attack, you may know where she was (and who she was with) during the attack, but nothing else. If she was taken off the street and no license plate was taking down, or even a description of the car, you have absolutely nothing to go on. Sad state of events but unfortunately happens more often then we would like to see (and much more often then it is shown on TV).
= new reply since forum marked as read
