Woman Sues After Police Officer Avoids Rape Charges

Maleatra Montanez says that Syracuse police officer Chester Thompson forced her to have sex with him when he responded to a call that her teenage daughter was missing in February of 2015.
“When I opened the door, he told me that I was pretty,” Montanez told New York Daily News. According to her deposition, Thompson also told her that she had a big butt and that her “lips looked like it can hold… a penis.”

“And he asked me do I love my son,” said Montanez, “so, I had an idea of maybe what was getting ready to happen.”

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Montanez detailed that Thompson first forced her to perform oral sex before telling her to get a condom from the room next door. When she returned, Thompson demanded she faced her newborn son while he raped her from behind.

Thompson was arrested and criminally charged in March, and in December 2015, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of official misconduct for having sex with Montanez as well as another woman in three unrelated incidents while on duty.

Thompson was removed from the force and sentenced to three years probation.

An apparent oversight in New York State law protects police officers from being charged with rape unless the alleged victim explicitly says ‘no.’

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Montanez filed a $7 million suit on Thursday against both Thompson and his superiors that alleges Thompson had a known history of abuses that went ignored by the police department.

“We’ve had information from several sources that this is not the first time that Chester Thompson has engaged in this type of malfeasance,” said Ed Sivin, Montanez’s lawyer. “And it appears that this may have been going on for a period of years. And that people high up in the Syracuse Police Department knew about it and didn’t take prompt remedial measures against him.”

Montanez’s story is yet another example of heinous police brutality, abuse of power and a neglect of accountability within a police department sworn to protect and serve. Read here for further details.

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