Cops Closed Rape Cases Too Quickly, Threatened Victims
When an Icelandic woman passed out on a sofa in a New York City nightclub in March 2009, a construction worker started kissing the unconscious woman and then dragged her out of the club. The young tourist awoke to find herself inside his apartment, naked underneath him as he raped her in bed.
The man dropped off the woman halfway to her house with $20 for a taxi. She just wanted to go home, but two of her friends convinced her to go to a hospital, which called the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Squad—the police detectives who investigate sex crimes. When a rookie detective with that squad, Rafael Astacio, interviewed the victim, she said she wasn’t sure about moving forward with the case, as she was preparing to return to Iceland.
Astacio closed the case, saying later that the victim was
