I think this one deserves attention, just as much as all the other stories we have here. Not because there was a false rape/sexual assault allegation, but because she was jailed on the lies of her rapist.
A Queens rape victim who was locked up for robberies she didn’t commit is suing city and Long Island cops for falling for her attacker’s “preposterous hoax” of a revenge plot.
In a federal lawsuit, Seemona Sumasar claims NYPD cops protected her attacker, Jerry Ramrattan, because he was secretly funneling them information about other crimes while working as an informant.
Ramrattan relied on cop connections two years before the Sumasar attack to help him get another rape victim to drop charges against him, the suit claims.
Two weeks ago, a Queens jury found Ramrattan, 39, guilty of raping Sumasar, a former Wall Street analyst, in her Far Rockaway apartment in 2009. The jury also convicted Ramrattan of perjury and conspiracy for concocting the twisted tale that landed Sumasar — a single mom — in a Long Island lockup for seven months.
Cops had said Sumasar, 36, was impersonating a cop when she carried out three gunpoint robberies on the streets of Queens and Long Island.
They were forced to set her free in December 2010 when they discovered the robberies were an elaborate fiction. They grew out of tales spun by Ramrattan — a private eye and cop buff — who talked a ragtag group of criminal friends into helping him carry out his devious plot.
“The scheme was poorly conceived and bumblingly executed,” Sumasar’s lawyer, Nick Brustin, said in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. “Authorities should have exposed it as a preposterous hoax.”
A spokeswoman for the city declined to comment.
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages for Sumasar’s false arrest and malicious prosecution as well as compensation for the emotional damage done to her 12-year-old daughter.
Also named as defendants are the Nassau County Police Department.
The lawsuit claims Sumasar had “rock-solid” alibis for at least two of the alleged robberies. For one, she was home with her daughter in Queens. During the other, she was at a Connecticut casino.
Sumasar tried to persuade cops that Ramrattan was behind her arrest.
“Despite their knowledge of Ramrattan and his history, police ignored the evidence in front of them and steadfastly refused to investigate Ms. Sumasar’s readily verifiable protestions of innocence, including her rock-solid alibi,” the lawsuit says.
While she was being held in a Nassau County jail, Sumasar lost her restaurant business and her home went into foreclosure.
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3 comments:
This is the American, where you are guilty, until you have proven your innocence.
A false accuser is a false accuser.
A false accusation is a false accusation.
In America it is actually quite RARE for a woman to be considered guilty even when she IS, much less when she isn't.
My sympathies to the victim in this case - as to ALL victims of false accusations.
This is, of course, the continuation of the story which appeared on FRS back in July (http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/07/woman-is-victim-of-elaborate-revenge.html & http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/nyregion/a-revenge-plot-so-intricate-the-prosecutors-were-pawns.html).
The guy actually did a rather good job of setting this woman up so that it would appear that she actually had committed armed robbery.
What I found most notable about this case was that there was so much fabricated evidence against her, and yet, in the end the police did manage to unravel the elaborate plot.
That effort, on behalf of a female defendant, stands in stark contrast to the lack of effort made on behalf of one William McCaffery, convicted for a rape that did not occur, and which could have been easily dis-proven (had he but had defense counsel minimally competent enough to bring up the issue of the DNA (anti-)evidence).
For Seemona Sumasar, the investigators never stopped digging beyond the seemingly conclusive evidence. For McCaffrey, they were simply too willing to take the word of a lying woman (Biurny Peguero), and didn't bother digging/investigating at all.
Hum??? I wonder where all that supposed "Male Privilege" is in the New York City area?
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