A cry for help that went unheeded

In 1996, a girl, 8, said she was raped at her baby-sitter's. Only now is a city man charged in that case and another.

Samuel Cohen failed to post $300,000 bail and is being held in a city prison.

By Craig R. McCoy
and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Prosecutors say the Kensington man repeatedly raped and sodomized two girls whom his wife was baby-sitting at their rowhouse. He allegedly employed a plastic baseball bat on one occasion.

But the ugliness of the details is not all that makes the case stand out.

Philadelphia police were called in four years ago, when the attacks allegedly began. One of the girls, then 8, described the assaults in graphic detail.

But the sex-crimes unit closed the case after a cursory investigation. Investigators did not interview the man, Samuel Cohen, or inform child-welfare authorities of the allegations against him, The Inquirer has learned.

Cohen continued assaulting one of the girls, then 7, for five more months, police now say. One of the assaults was so brutal that the child was taken to a hospital with vaginal injuries, records show.

Police finally arrested Cohen this year, after reopening more than 2,000 sexual-assault cases that had been buried by the sex-crimes unit.

The Public Defender's Office says Cohen, 39, will plead not guilty.

At a recent court hearing, detectives testified that Cohen confessed under questioning, saying: "I was drunk and high. I need help."

The case illustrates the risk to the public when police dismiss sexual-assault allegations and lose an opportunity to get an alleged offender off the street.

Police say Cohen and his girlfriend recently implicated several other people. Records show that the two, in separate interviews, identified several of Cohen's friends who they said had regularly raped children at his Kensington home.

Police say they are investigating these new allegations.

On March 15, a Family Court judge ordered Cohen to stand trial on charges of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, false imprisonment, and other offenses. He is being held in a city prison, having failed to post $300,000 bail.

Cohen, a short, balding man with a salt-and-pepper beard, is unemployed and lives on disability payments. At the time of the alleged assaults, he and his then-wife, Dorothea Snyder, lived in a tiny rowhouse on F Street near Allegheny Avenue.

Snyder regularly took in neighborhood children for baby-sitting, often for overnight and weekend stays.

On Sept. 10, 1996, the parents of an 8-year-old girl called 911 to report that Cohen had sexually assaulted their daughter at his rowhouse. That night, the girl and her parents were interviewed at the headquarters of the sex-crimes unit, in the former Frankford Arsenal.

The girl told investigators that "Sam pulled down my pants" and raped her, according to police records.

"He told me not to tell," the girl said. "That if I keep the secret, I will get a treat. He said he would give me a pony."

The family members differed in their recollections of when the assault occurred. The child said it happened a few days earlier. Her mother placed it at least three weeks earlier.

Officer Cheryl A. Monzo of the sex-crimes unit closed the investigation on Nov. 1, 1996, with the comment: "Numerous inconsistencies."

Her detailed, confidential summary of her investigation gives no indication that she interviewed Cohen or Snyder.

In the report, Monzo said the girl "gave several conflicting accounts of this incident."

Monzo stamped the file "inactive" and gave it the designation "investigation of person," an administrative label that Philadelphia police applied to thousands of sexual assaults over the last two decades.

Two supervisors approved Monzo's handling of the case and the coding.

Monzo, 43, a 16-year veteran still serving in the unit, did not respond to a request for comment.

The girl's mother, in an interview in her Fairhill home, said the sex-crimes unit promised to stay in touch but did not.

"They didn't do their job," said the woman, whose name is being withheld by The Inquirer to protect her daughter's identity. "They didn't get back to me. They say they will - and then nothing."

The woman said she never let her daughter return to Cohen's house.

For more than three years, the case was dead.

Then, on Dec. 23, two detectives knocked on the Fairhill woman's door.

Michael E. Wisnieski and Jo-Anne H. Garvey were among 45 detectives who had been assigned to reinvestigate more than 2,000 cases that had been improperly shelved by the sex-crimes unit since 1995.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney ordered the massive review in early December, after The Inquirer reported that the unit had dumped thousands of sexual-assault cases since it was founded in 1981.

Complaints were rejected as "unfounded" or were mothballed with the label "investigation of person" - the designation used for the allegations against Cohen.

Wisnieski, 32, and Garvey, 31, both 10-year veterans of the Police Department, quickly won the Fairhill girl's confidence. Garvey gave her a Mickey Mouse pen. The detectives flashed their gold shields, letting the youngsters in the house hold them.

The girl, now 11, again accused Cohen of raping her.

The detectives moved on to other witnesses.

They soon learned of a second victim.

On Dec. 28, the detectives spoke with Snyder, 27, Cohen's ex-wife.

Police say Snyder told detectives that in March 1997, Cohen raped a 7-year-girl with a plastic baseball bat while two boys watched in the couple's F Street rowhouse.

Snyder, who had been baby-sitting the children at the time, said she tried to stop Cohen and afterward hit him with the bat.

Within hours, Garvey and Wisnieski had located the girl, now 10, at her home in Feltonville. Records on file in Common Pleas Court show that the detectives obtained statements from the girl, her mother, and one of the boys that corroborated Snyder's allegation.

"Sam is the kind of guy who likes to pick on kids," the boy, now 12, told police. "He likes to touch kids."

On March 6, 1997, the day of the alleged assault, the girl was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children with vaginal bleeding, court records show.

Next, the detectives interviewed Cohen's girlfriend, Karen Peak, 27. Peak told the officers she had watched Cohen have sex with children in the F Street house in 1995 or 1996.

Peak also said that she saw three of Cohen's male friends rape several girls in the house, police say.

Peak and Snyder could not be reached for comment by The Inquirer. Both women told investigators that they had upbraided Cohen and warned others about him.

Finally, on Jan. 21, the detectives confronted Cohen.

According to court records, detectives said that Cohen told them he had been sexually abused as a child and admitted to raping and sodomizing the two girls at the F Street house in 1996 and 1997. They said he also admitted using the plastic bat in one of the attacks.

The court records say that Cohen also implicated five male friends in other sexual assaults.

"They were pigs," Cohen told the investigators.

Did all five have sex with the children? he was asked.

"Yes," Cohen said. "Just about every time they came over."

How often was that?

"Every weekend."

The detectives arrested Cohen on the spot.

Prosecutors filed charges in court. Their complaint began: "Very High bail request!!!"

The detectives also alerted the city Department of Human Services. The agency has broad authority to remove children from dangerous situations - even when police have not made an arrest.

Human Services Commissioner Alba Martinez, asked about the Cohen case by The Inquirer, said a search of department files found no evidence that police had informed officials of the allegations in 1996 or 1997.

"We received no report of either of the rapes," she said. "Obviously, we are going to follow up on this."

Martinez said the Department of Human Services would reach out "to any child that may have been contacted" by Cohen to see if counseling was needed.

In the years after the assaults, while the police file on Cohen gathered dust, the Fairhill girl continued to suffer, troubled by shame and depression, her mother said.

After confronting Cohen in court last month, the girl said to her mother: "I'm bad." The woman said she replied: "No, he's bad."

The mother said she was pleased that police had made an arrest, but angry that it took so long.

"Look how many years later it is," she said. "I think it was about time."