Victims Mock Daniel Holtzclaw’s Guilty Verdict By Singing “Happy Birthday”

“We see that pattern for many sexual assault cases”, said Stinson, whose research was cited in the AP investigation. He nervously and hopelessly sobbed as his verdict was delivered.

In Holtzclaw’s case, that imbalance is extreme: He was a member of USA law enforcement at the time of his crimes.

Holtzclaw’s case has drawn national attention to sexual misconduct among police officers, sparking a year-long investigation by the Associated Press which found thousands of police officers and other law enforcement officials across the country had lost their licenses over a six-year period for rape, sexual assault, and sexual misconduct.

That number, the AP concluded, was “unquestionably an undercount” of the real total of officers punished for sexual misconduct. Not every state has a process for banning problem officers from re-entering law enforcement, known as decertification. But the accusations against Holtzclaw were particularly grave, and distinct, involving what prosecutors described as a pattern of preying on poor black women with criminal backgrounds so that any allegations would be less credible. “It’s my word against his because I’m a woman and, you know, like I said, he’s a police officer”, said one of the victims, according to court documents reported on by Buzzfeed.

Gross said the Holtzclaw verdict is still problematic because of the split verdict: The jury did not find that the evidence presented by prosecutors proved the stories of five accusers. That’s not unlike white women who are victims of rape and sexual assault, except that existing racist stereotypes about the virtue of black women stretching back to the USA colonial era made them even less believable among whites, said Kali Gross, professor of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He told her he’d found a warrant for trespassing on her, and told her to deal with it before she turned 18.

Holtzclaw’s attorney, Scott Adams, asked the girl during the trial about perceived inconsistencies in her testimony as well as her use of drugs. “Go with the flow or no telling what could be”, she says.

“I wasn’t a criminal”, Ligons said, adding that she had been in therapy since the assault and had suffered a stroke because of it. “I have no record”. “It is a comfort to us all”.

You may not know his name because his alleged victims are black.

Gayland Gieger, center, Oklahoma County assistant district attorney, takes notes as defendant Daniel Holtzclaw, second from left, cries as the verdicts are read in his trial in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. The victim, who was 17 at the time, recalled Holtzclaw pulling up in his police vehicle as she walked home.

A teenager testified that Holtzclaw raped her inside the enclosed front porch of her mother’s home.

The grandmother was assaulted after Holtzclaw, who is mixed race Asian and white, pulled her over on 18 June 2014.

That woman testified in orange scrubs and handcuffs because she had been jailed on drug charges hours before appearing in court. He then stood over her and ordered her to perform oral sex.

Adams declined to comment after the verdict was read.

Daniel Holtzclaw was an American football star in college, but when his dreams of a pro career didn’t work out he joined the Oklahoma City police. He was sacked before the trial began.

Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, Grace Franklin, co-founder of OKC Artists for Justice, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, East 6th Street Christian Church, gathered around The Oklahoman’s news desk today at noon.