Daniel Holtzclaw, former Oklahoma City police officer

“This case is certainly horrific”, she said.

— Jannie Ligons, a grandmother in her 50s, whose complaint was instrumental in the case against former Oklahoma City Police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw, convicted of sex crimes against eight women while on duty.

Ligons explained why she mustered the courage to come forward: “I didn’t want to see this happen to no one else”.

Other accusers told similar accounts of Holtzclaw forcing sex upon them on the threat of arresting them for outstanding warrants or drug possession.

She immediately reported him to the police. 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.

Numerous women did not report the assaults because they feared repercussions. The victims ranged from 17 to 57 years of age. “It’s so underreported, and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them”. His emotional outburst prompted his jailers to keep him under special protection and 24-hour surveillance, a sheriff’s spokesman said Friday. He questioned several girls at length about whether they were high in the time, and noted that most did not come forward until they were identified by investigators. Knowing that he’s in control, he’s the police. Based on the recommended sentences by the jury, Holtzclaw is possibly facing more than 260 years in prison. “It matters just as if this were a group of 13 white women”, Crump said.

At the time of the alleged assaults, Holtzclaw, who has denied any wrongdoing in the alleged sexual assaults, was reportedly in a “committed” relationship with an adult women.

At Friday’s news conference, Ligons told reporters that she was “violated” after she was pulled over “for no reason whatsoever”.

The accused officer typically has no criminal background, passionate supporters often show up in the gallery, and juries may believe an officer’s firing is punishment enough, Marquis said.

His ruthless scheme started to unravel after one woman told authorities he had assaulted her during a traffic stop in June 2014.

When the Daniel Holtzclaw case first broke previous year I remember thinking that the coverage of this story will speak volumes about the American media’s capacity for nuanced reporting.

Holtzclaw, whose father is white and mother is Japanese, is identified as “Asian or Pacific Islander” by court records. He usually asked them to lift their shirts so he could “search” them for drugs, and then groped them, forced them to perform oral sex on him, or raped them.

Holtzclaw’s conviction largely stems from his one “mistake”, as prosecutors put it – the mistake of stopping J.L. The majority of those who said they’d been abused by Holtzclaw were middle-aged women with criminal records, though the youngest was just 17.

“I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I’m a black female”. “There is a tendency not to value black women the way other women are valued”. While Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater wanted a jury of a “good cross-section of our community”, defense attorneys sent home every potential black juror. Other police departments did not take action against police officers accused of sexual misconduct.

All of that explains why Oklahoma City activists felt pessimistic about the case, even after Holtzclaw was prosecuted on 36 charges.

“We are satisfied with the jury’s decision”, it read “and firmly believe justice was served”.