A woman and a teenage girl who falsely told police they were raped in the upscale Sugar Creek subdivision near the Brighton Police Department in April will not face criminal charges.
Adams County District Attorney Don Quick said Friday that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute the two females for false reporting – a misdemeanor – because their statements recanting the rapes cannot be used in court.
Before the two victims recanted to police, officers promised them they would not face prosecution. Under statute, that assurance from investigators made the statements neither voluntary nor admissable at trial, Quick said.
Quick said he understands police were trying to quell public fear about the rapes by trying to get the two alleged victims to be more truthful.
“I understand your policy decision that it was more important to get the truth out and calm the community than charge the two misdemeanors,” Quick said in a letter to Brighton Police Chief Clint Blackhurst.
The two women admitted they lied to police in late July, ending four months of unease in the Sugar Creek subdivision in east Brighton. The city and local businesses offered a total of $13,000 for the capture and successful prosecution of the rapists, who seemed brazen and dangerous.
A 13-year-old Jefferson County girl selling newspaper subscriptions told police she was grabbed by three Latino males, dragged to a nearby field and raped.
Then, five days later, a 34-year-old Brighton female alleged she was raped, having been pulled from a sidewalk by two Latino men about two blocks from where the first assault supposedly occurred.
The news stunned residents who found themselves looking over their shoulders at neighbors and any strangers in the neighborhood.
“It was a bad time. The whole community was in a state of alarm,” Quick said.
Latinos felt especially targeted, said Sugar Creek resident Steve Gonzales. He said he was stopped by a detective so he could take Gonzales’s picture to eliminate him as a suspect.
“It was simply a case of racial profiling,” Gonzales said earlier this summer.
But investigators found more discrepancies over the descriptions and timelines the alleged victims gave police.
When confronted in late July, the two women told police they had lied. The alleged victims didn’t know each other, police said.
Authorities have declined to release the names of the teenager and the woman.
Both had different reasons why they gave the false reports, said Quick, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Blackhurst couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
Gonzales said Friday he is still puzzled by the whole string of events. “With the secrecy and lack of information from this case, a lot of people have wondered what else happens in Brighton that we don’t know about,” Gonzales said.
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or at mwhaley@denverpost.com.
