Corrected Tuesday, Feb. 7, for a typo in the paragraph on the number of cases that resulted in prison convictions in 2021.
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
For victims of sexual violence seeking justice, the wheels of the court system grind slowly.
Sexual violence cases can take up to two years to resolve, according to Ellis County Attorney Robert Anderson.
Among those few cases that make it all the way to a conclusion within court system, many result in plea deals and few result in incarceration.
Based on correlating multiple data sources, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates that for every 1,000 rapes, 384 are reported to police, 57 result in an arrest, 11 are referred for prosecution, seven result in a felony conviction, and six result in incarceration.
“I once had it referred to as the leaky pipeline,” said Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence. “The cases just fall away. At the end, I think there are a lot of victims who feel they did not get justice because there wasn’t a conviction in their case.”
SEE RELATED STORY: Rape reports increase in Ellis County; majority of victims remain in shadows
Backlog of cases
Anderson said when he took over the Ellis County Attorney's Office in January 2021, he had a backlog of unfiled cases — some of these included sexual violence cases.
Anderson has filed some of the cases that were left to him by the previous Ellis County Attorney Tom Drees, who is now a district court judge, but he said the county attorney's office will never have enough attorneys to keep up with the county's caseload.
“We get 1,500 reports a year, and we are capable of getting to approximately 1,000 of them,” he said. “There are always going to be that number of reports that we just can’t get to."
Anderson said in his opinion, there's a clear hierarchy of case types.
“Generally, that hierarchy goes dead bodies, child victims, victims of sexual assault, victims of serious person crimes," he said, "and then we start branching out into this area of drug distribution, property crimes underneath that is drug possession. We’ve also got traffic that we deal with.
“The challenge is there is no one area that we can completely ignore. If you leave any one area untouched, then that sort of behavior is going to fester in the community.”
Even within the realm of sexual violence cases, he said there's a hierarchy.
“Sexual assault covers a lot of different behavior,” Anderson said. “It covers suspects and defendants and victims who are a lot of different ages.”
Anderson said each incident is handled on a case-by-case basis.
“Objectively, a rape that occurs at gunpoint is a lot more serious than a rape that occurs between two college-age kids who are heavily under the influence and there’s some question about whether or not it's consensual,” he said. “Those are both rape. They are both the same crime and the same punishment, but they are very different circumstances.”
Hecker said from a victim's perspective, sexual crimes are all violent.
"All sexual assault is serious and violent whether they use a gun as a weapon or they use alcohol as a weapon," she said.
Anderson said even if he had more staff, he did not think the judicial district had enough judges, courtrooms and court staff to try all cases.
Anderson said he has been looking at some of the sexual violence cases in the county attorney's backlog and trying to file those.
"I feel I have made sexual assault cases more of a priority in my time as county attorney. I have filed a number of cases predating my time here," Anderson said.
“I would say a quarter to half of the sexual assault cases that I have filed predate that Jan. 11, 2021, date,” he said.
This story was updated Monday, Feb. 6 for the number of cases filed in 2022 and 2023.
In 2022, the county attorney's office filed 18 sexual assault cases. Four cases have been filed through Feb. 3 of this year. He filed 19 in 2021, his first year in office.
In 2020, Drees, as the Ellis County Attorney, filed 14 sexual assault cases. Anderson worked as a special prosecutor for a short time that year and filed three other cases.
Anderson reported the following number of cases filed by the county attorney's office under Drees from 2014 to 2019.
• 2019: 6 sexual assault cases filed
• 2018: 8 sexual assault cases filed
• 2017: 3 sexual assault cases filed
• 2016: 14 sexual assault cases filed
• 2015: 13 sexual assault cases filed
• 2014: 12 sexual assault cases filed
“I do work through old reports and look at what still can be filed and what is important enough to be filed,” Anderson said.
The office has to consider statute of limitations issues and factors such as the death of parties in the case or lack of access to investigating officers or medical professionals. A suspect also might be in prison serving a lengthy sentence for another crime.
Hecker claimed its a double standard to urge victims to report sex crimes, but not file the cases in court.
“When our police departments and sheriff’s departments, county attorneys — everyone in that system is saying 'go report, go report, go report,' how disheartening is it for a victim to go and make that report and then have nothing happen to it after the case is filed," she said.
"Nothing happens. It just fades into the distance. What does that say about how much we value perpetrator accountability for the worst person crimes," Hecker said. "They are rape, domestic violence, child abuse. These are the worst crimes against people, and they’re not even getting filed.
"That’s shocking and shameful. That’s as shameful as not testing a rape kit. And we’re still scratching our heads asking,'Why don’t people report?' ”
Pleas are the norm
Tracking conviction rates in Ellis County is near to impossible and Anderson explained why.
When Anderson attempted to run a report for sexual violence convictions during the last 10 years, he said the reports came back incomplete.
"The accuracy of those reports relies on the accuracy of data entry over the last 10 years. I know the datasets are not completely accurate because when I run a report that would work for this purpose, I don’t see cases I know should be there," he said in an email to the Hays Post.
Many other factors play into the difficulty in tracking sex cases. Here are some mitigating factors.
• A case might be filed by a prosecutor in 2022, but that incident could have been reported years earlier.
• Juvenile and adult offenders are treated differently in court but lumped together into the same statistics.
• A case may initially be filed as a rape but the charge might be reduced as the result of a plea agreement
Anderson said each case is handled on a case-by-case basis. He meets with each victim before the case begins and discusses with them their visions of justice.
"Based on their perceived idea of what justice would look like for them, that is a driving force on how I handle a case. It doesn’t control it. I’m not bound by it, but it is certainly very important," Anderson said.
However, he said, plea agreements are the norm.
“The reason for that is if every single case we had was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, we would need dozens more courtrooms, hundreds of more attorneys, defense attorneys, judges and court staff. There’s just simply not the time or resources to try cases and prosecute cases to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.
“A defendant is not just going to give up and plead as charged and take the punishment they deserve. They are going to want something in exchange for their plea,” he said. “That usually comes in the form of a lesser charge or less time or a different disposition."
Not as easy as pressing enter
To provide some light on the conviction rate, Anderson hand-pulled cases from 2021 and 2022. Anderson became Ellis County Attorney Jan. 11, 2021.
In 2021, 19 sexual assault cases were filed by the county attorney's office. Sixteen of those resulted in felony convictions or adjudications. Nine of those convictions resulted in prison sentences.
As of October, not all of the 2021 cases had been resolved and others were pending sentencing.
As of October 2022, 13 sexual assault cases had been filed by the county attorney's office. Anderson said at that time the office had several unfiled reports (some of which were from 2022, but some of which were from 2021 or before), but he said he anticipated filing those by the end of the year.
None of the 13 filed cases that were filed in 2022 had been resolved by October.
Anderson reported nine out of 17 (53 percent) sexual assault cases that were filed in 2020 ended with a conviction and prison sentences. Of those cases that did not end up in conviction, there were circumstances beyond local officials' control. One suspect died, one was taken into federal custody and one had an active warrant but had not been located.
Hecker said other counties in northwest Kansas have been even less cooperative in tracking conviction data. Instead of being able to access cumulative county data, court records keepers require agencies to request each record by name of the suspect or case number.
Anderson called the current case management system antiquated. He said would like to be able to provide better statistics to the community.
The Ellis County prosecutor's office is set to launch a new case management system in April.
"I think moving forward these types of inquiries will be a lot easier to answer and we will have a lot more accuracy, but I imagine that Ellis County’s numbers are pretty consistent with nationwide statistics and statewide statistics,” he said.
Anderson made a plea to any victims of sexual violence to come forward and make a report.
“If a victim is seeing those low prosecution, conviction and incarceration rates, I think the message they are probably receiving is no one cares, which is tragic and is obviously going to have a deterrent effect,” he said of reporting sex crimes.
“If I could send out a message to victims or someone who might become a victim, I would say I do care. This office cares. Law enforcement cares. This community cares. The community partners, Options, the Western Kansa Child Advocacy Center, the [Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner] program at HaysMed, we care. We care a lot.”
Grover said victims need advocates, such as the ones provided by Options, to be with them all through the judicial process. She said she did not think the state had the resources to provide that across the board.
“I think that is one of the areas that could really make a difference,” she said, “to have that kind of support for victims from the moment they are assaulted until the case is resolved.”
“I want victims to know there is confidential support for them where they are in the state,” she said. “They can get that support through the statewide hotline, certainly through the local resources at Options.
"They have a variety of ways people can be in touch with them beyond the hotline. I would encourage the victims they are not going to have to be made to tell anybody else. They can just start with that phone call or with that first contact and reach out for support. They’re not alone.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sex crime, you can reach an advocate through Options through its text, chat or phone hotlines. Text the word "Hope" to 847411.
The 24-hour phone helpline is 800-794-4624. The chat and other information can be accessed on the Options website at https://help4abuse.org/ All of the helplines and chats are manned 24/7, 365 days a year. All services are free and confidential.
The agency also has a mobile unit that travels throughout its 18-county catchment area in northwest Kansas. Contact Options through one of the means above to learn more.
Cover photo courtesy of Pixabay