Tinley mayor demands apology from teen who claimed rape
March 22, 2009
BY KIM JANSSEN Staff writer
Alleged rape hoaxer Heather Krueger owes Tinley Park an apology, says Mayor Ed Zabrocki.
As a picture emerged of the eight-hour, alcohol-fueled, underage bender that led to Krueger's arrest, Zabrocki said the 19-year-old should say sorry "to me and to the village board in writing" if she wants to "make things right."
Blond waitress Krueger prompted widespread shock on March 15 when she claimed she'd been sexually assaulted by a man in a ski mask on a grassy area in the Metra parking lot at 18001 S. 80th Ave., as she made her way home from revelry at the South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day parade.
Sympathy and concern for the teen quickly turned to outrage a day later when she admitted her story was a lie. Police charged her with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report. With a recent high-profile Palos Heights rape hoax that wasted more than $200,000 in public money still fresh in Southland taxpayers' memory, a furious Zabrocki warned a day after her confession that he plans to force Krueger to pay for the police investigation.
Tinley Park's efforts on the case are estimated to have cost at least $2,200.
A final police case report, made public last week, states she even led detectives to the dew-covered mound where she claimed she was raped. A day later, she confessed to the tall tale. Krueger didn't want her parents to know she'd been drinking, police said.
According to the report, Krueger started drinking at 9 a.m. on the morning of the parade with underage pals at a home in the 7500 block of W. 163rd St.
"She was drunk before she got on the train" to go to the parade at 10 a.m., one friend told police.
After a day boozing among the revelers on the streets of Chicago's Beverly community, Krueger and her pals headed home shortly before 5 p.m.
By then, according to friends who rode the train with her, she was so drunk she fell down repeatedly in the aisle and shouted a volley of curse words and "vulgar language" in an angry tirade at a conductor.
Later, when she arrived with her boyfriend at her parents' home in the 17800 block of Bishop Avenue, she was "highly emotionally upset, but would not say why," the report states.
According to her boyfriend, she became sullen and withdrawn, but when he asked her whether she'd been raped she eventually said she had, the report states.
Her mother told her to tell the truth and not to worry about being caught drinking, the report states, but not until her grandparents arrived and spoke to her at 11.30 p.m. did she agree to go the Tinley Park police station and report a rape.
Her story crumbled a day later when friends contradicted large parts of her story, the report states.
Confronted by detectives, Krueger replied that she had "begun to doubt she was sexually assaulted," the report said.
She said she had "blacked out" and "freaked out" and that the alcohol had reacted badly with her prescription medication.
Nobody answered the door when the SouthtownStar went to the Krueger family home last week, though three cars were in the drive, the lights were on and people could be seen inside.
None of six underage friends who were drinking with Krueger during the day of the parade returned calls.
"I think they're hunkering down," Zabrocki said.
"I don't think they like the village very much at the moment."
Tinley Park police Cmdr. Pat McCain said, "If there's been any apology, I'm not aware of it.
"People don't normally apologize to the police."
Krueger is due in court April 15.
Link: http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1488937,032209rapehoaxfolo.article
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8 comments:
If she was drinking with underage pals, wasn't she also corrupting minors? (Or is the drinking age 21 vice 18 and so she also is a 'minor' with respect to that?)
I'll bet that her lawyer argues that her giving an apology would be too traumatic for her, and thus an unreasonable punishment.
Maybe we'll even be treated to some spurious argument about how her having to apologize will cause future rape victims to decide not to report.
I think it's great they she might have to pay back taxpayers for the cost of the pointless police investigation. That really should be the norm in these cases as an absolute minimum. they are of course defrauding taxpayers of such funds which should in fact be spent on something useful.
Also demanding an apology is great, I'd go slightly further and ask her to detail exactly why false rape accusations are so horrific and give an account of the tremendous harm those making them casue.
slwerner, your comment prompted me to dip into the archives and post a new story -- right above this one.
Norm,
That is the sad part of this. This girl (I can't really call her a lady or a woman), has broken multiple laws, and likely won't be punished for any of it. My bet is that she will be given probation (at the most). I hope she has to repay the city for all the time and money spent on the investigation.
If I were her parents, I'd kick her out the door, and let her know that she is now on her own. How could you ever trust a thing this woman says again?
”If I were her parents, I'd kick her out the door, and let her know that she is now on her own.”
What this brings to my mind is the fact that her original intention was to keep her parents from finding out that she, as a 19 year-old, had been drinking. Fortunately, she did not single out a specific young man in her self-serving charade. Otherwise, he might well have had his life ripped completely apart for, what? So that she could keep a little thing like her drinking (she’s of legal age) from her parents.
And, just exactly what sanction might she have faced from her parents that would cause her to do this?
Having raised two now adult daughters, I can tell you that they were told on many occasion that while we did not want them to be drinking, we would prefer that they be safe – so, if they did end up drinking, they were absolutely to call us to come pick them up.
Even as juveniles, the worse that they would have been facing might have been being “grounded” for a time. It sickens me to think that some young women (like the ones who accused the Muslim taxi driver in London last year) would willfully put some random man through such horrors just to avoid being grounded (or less).
How amazingly selfish.
Even if it only the (substantial) expense of having to investigate such a claim, the damage done still far outweighs the “penalty” that a girl might be facing if she chose to act like an adult rather than file a false report.
You are absolutely correct. Given what she's done, she needs to be kicked out.
slwerner -- correct, as always. And the reason the girl used rape as her lie? Two reasons: 1) such lies are automatically believed -- they are difficult to verify and Western Civilization has been brainwashed to think women don't lie about rape; and 2) there are not serious repurcussions if she's caught. It's commmon sense. We need to keep beating the drum to let people know that a lot of women lie about rape (they do), and that police, prosecutors and judges are too lenient on rape liars.
Well said Pierce Harlan.
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