Youngstown police handling of 2011 attack criticized
By JOE GORMAN
YOUNGSTOWN
Brittany Young and her family say they are frustrated with how police handled an investigation into an attack on her in 2011.
Police Chief Rod Foley, in turn, said if the family or its supporters have any evidence that someone in his department is sabotaging the case, they should bring the proof forward.
“If they have proof of that, I’d like to see it,” Foley said.
Young and her parents, Christopher and Cheryl Young, spoke outside the police department on West Boardman Street on Thursday along with Maggy Lorenzi, a resident who has been critical of Foley. Lorenzi and the family say that the police are not prosecuting the four juvenile suspects because they are informants for police.
“This is the Youngstown Police Department protecting gang members. That’s the bottom line,” Lorenzi said.
Young said she feels robbed of justice and still wants those who attacked her to be held accountable.
“I did not receive my rights,” Young said. “I was denied that numerous times, and it was a pattern of behavior.”
Foley said his department would never protect an informant and if any new evidence shows up, the case can be looked into again. He said the detective assigned to the case presented his findings at the time to a prosecutor in Mahoning County Juvenile Court, who chose not to prosecute.
Young, 25, filed a police report on July 2, 2011. She told an officer that she was kidnapped from a home on East Boston Avenue. Young said in her report that four males, one of them a brother of an ex-boyfriend, came to her house about 12:10 a.m. and were yelling at her because she was filing charges against the ex-boyfriend for domestic violence.
She said one of the men then told her to get in a car, asked her for money to buy a cigar and forced her to drive to a gas station. Young told police she was forced to go inside the station by herself and buy the cigar and tried to get the attention of an employee but could not, the report said. She was forced to drive to a house near Rush or Southern boulevards and then behind Cardinal Mooney High School. She said in the report she was punched and groped as she drove, and drove into a wooded area and crashed, running away from her attackers.
The officer who took her report at St. Elizabeth Health Center, where she was being treated for her injuries, had her clothes collected for evidence and called a supervisor to take photographs of her injuries. The report does not mention Young’s saying she was raped, but Young said she told the officer and a nurse she was raped, but nothing was done for her.
Young and her mother also said they called 911 several times over the holiday to say she was raped, but when they asked for the recordings they did not exist because the recording system and its back up were both broken.
Staff inspector Lt. Brian Butler, head of Internal Affairs, said Ohio Edison had cut the power to the center that June for repairs and the recorders malfunctioned because of that power outage. They were repaired, but not until after Young’s incident, Butler said.
Young was interviewed by a detective July 6, 2011, and she said she told the detective while in the interview room she was raped. Young said the detective turned off a video recorder left the room, and when he came back, did not turn the recorder on, which is when she told him she was raped.
However, the detective said in his case notes that Young did not say she was raped until the interview was over and they were about to get on an elevator. Foley said the detective told her to go to the hospital and have a rape kit done, while Young said the detective told her he would call the hospital himself and be in touch with her. Young said she never spoke to him again.
The family also said someone left a confession to raping Young on a voice message, but Foley said there was not enough incriminating evidence on the tape for investigators to make an arrest.
Young never did get a rape kit. When asked why, she said, “I’m just a victim.”
The case notes indicate the suspects were interviewed and the detective went to the gas station in the report, although Lorenzi said it is the wrong gas station, before the evidence was given to the juvenile prosecutor, who declined to pursue charges.
An internal-affairs investigation cleared the officer who took the initial report, noting that he followed departmental procedure in collecting evidence and calling a supervisor. During that investigation, that officer said Young never told her she was raped.
Foley also had Chief of Detectives Capt. Mark Milstead review the case and see if anything was done wrong. Foley said that review also showed no wrongdoing in the initial investigation.
Young and her family claimed they asked for records for her case for more than 20 months and were refused. Lorenzi said she asked Mayor Charles Sammarone for the records in April, and he instructed the Law Department to get them to her. That took about two weeks, Lorenzi said.