Rape suspect arrested in a case police botched

In 1996, an officer classified a 7-year-old as a "lost child." A card left at the suspect's house got no response.

By Mark Fazlollah,
Michael Matza
and Craig R. McCoy
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Previous coverage of this case: A 7-year-old knew who did it (12/19/99)
The police report listing incident as 'lost child'
City police reopen case in 1996 rape of girl, 7 (12/29/99)

Police have arrested and charged a suspect in the rape of a 7-year-old North Philadelphia girl - a case that the sex-crimes unit closed four years ago after a series of blunders.

In December, police reopened their investigation into the 1996 rape after an Inquirer article detailed the department's bungling.

A patrol officer responding to a 911 call about the rape disregarded the victim's account and classified the incident as a "lost child." Then, a sex-crimes officer ended his investigation without questioning the prime suspect.

After the Inquirer article, the sex-crimes unit launched a search for the man, Jasper Washington, 33, of North Philadelphia. Detectives arrested him this month, after a 10-week hunt, and charged him with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, unlawful restraint, and other offenses.

The arrest is one of several to result from Inquirer reports documenting the mishandling of sexual-assault complaints by Philadelphia police.

Late last year, the department reopened more than 2,000 sexual-assault cases, dating back five years, that had been deliberately misclassified and that had received inadequate or no investigation.

Washington's arrest gratified the victim's mother, Mary Williams. "When they got him," she said at her home yesterday, "I was just so thrilled."

At the same time, Williams said, she was worried that her daughter would have to relive the attack in court, and she was upset that the case had languished so long.

"This should have been done a long time ago," she said. Years passed, "and they weren't looking for the guy that did my daughter."

Washington is accused of snatching the 7-year-old girl off a Fairhill street in January 1996, driving her to Fairmount Park, and raping her. Washington did not post $50,000 bail and was being held at the city prison complex in Northeast Philadelphia.

Police made the arrest after reinterviewing the victim, now 11, and showing her a photo array that included a picture of Washington as he looked in 1996. She identified Washington as her attacker, according to a police affidavit.

The girl was abducted Jan. 12, 1996, while playing on a snowy street outside her aunt's house in the Fairhill section. Her mother had left her there while she and the aunt went grocery shopping. A teenage cousin was babysitting.

Several hours later, the girl was found wandering, dazed and alone, two miles from the aunt's house. She told a passerby she had been raped. A neighborhood woman called 911.

The responding patrol officer questioned the girl harshly, wrote up the incident as a "lost child," and made no mention of the kidnapping and rape, according to an internal police inquiry launched after the victim's mother filed a complaint.

The child was only taken to a hospital after her mother called police supervisors. There, an exam confirmed that she had been raped. A sex-crimes investigator was belatedly assigned.

The girl and her family told him that the rapist was a mechanic who had dated the girl's aunt and who, they said, had stopped by the aunt's house that day. They also told the investigator where the man lived.

The officer left his card at the suspect's house, heard nothing, and made no further efforts to find him.

The patrol officer was suspended without pay for six days based on the internal inquiry. But the investigator's work was never subjected to departmental scrutiny.

The case lay dormant for four years until the Inquirer article was published Dec. 19. It said that reporters had easily located the suspect, who denied raping the girl.

Police then began searching for Washington and obtained a search warrant compelling him to provide a blood sample for DNA analysis.

Washington was taken into custody March 3. Police confirmed the arrest yesterday.

Capt. Joseph M. Mooney, commander of the Special Victims Unit since late 1998, said yesterday that Washington offered no resistance.

A preliminary hearing before a Family Court judge is scheduled for next Wednesday. By then, prosecutors hope to have results of a DNA test comparing Washington's blood sample to semen recovered from the child after the rape.

Mooney said that police, who originally sought only to serve the search warrant on Washington and obtain a blood sample, "had a hard time locating him." Meanwhile, investigators accumulated new information.

Prosecutors then obtained an arrest warrant, charging Washington with rape.

In its request for high bail, the District Attorney's Office cited Washington's failure to respond to the search warrant.

Washington's lawyer, Terry McCallum, said yesterday that his client had not been hiding.

"Mr. Washington was not, of his own volition, eluding the police," McCallum said. He declined to elaborate, citing his ethical obligations to Washington.

McCallum said the four-year delay in making an arrest would weaken the case against Washington.

On Dec. 29 of last year, Detective Harry Young of the Special Victims Unit reinterviewed the child. Young, in an affidavit, said the girl told police that "a man known to the child as Jasper or Dino, the boyfriend of her aunt, lifted her off the ground and placed her into a car."

The girl said the man drove her to the park, stripped her, raped her, and then shoved her out of the car, the affidavit said.

In 1996, the girl was shown a selection of photographs that included Washington. She picked out someone else - a man in prison at the time of the rape.

In December, Young showed her a new photo array, and she identified Washington as her attacker, the affidavit said.