When Longmont police told Renee Dulany last year that they had arrested the man they believe raped her a decade ago, it did not bring the closure Dulany had long hoped for.
She was relieved, she said, that the alleged attacker was in jail. But she was also frustrated and angry that the man police finally arrested, 10 years later, was the very man Dulany told them to investigate just minutes after the attack.
Now, she has sent a notice of claim to Longmont’s city attorney, stating that she intends to sue the city to get answers as to why it took police so long to arrest the man, Rudy Gaytan, 45.
“My life would be incredibly different if they had solved it in a timely manner,” Dulany said Sunday. “… I would have known 10 years ago what he looked like, if he was following me, if he was standing there in front of my face.”
In the years since the attack, Dulany has become an advocate for rape victims. Last month she received an award from the group Moving to End Sexual Assault. She asked that her name be used in this article so as to give voice to rape victims.
“Society makes victims feel like they should hide and they should be ashamed,” Dulany said. “… What I have been trying to do since Day One is to show my face and say, ‘Look, I’m human, this person did this to me, they should be ashamed.”‘
The rape happened Oct. 16, 1996, when a man broke into Dulany’s apartment and attacked her, the claim says.
When Dulany, then 19, called 911 to report her rape, she told the dispatcher that she believed the attacker may have been a man who lived in the building next door, according to the claim. Even though she didn’t get a look at the rapist, Dulany said she suspected the man next door – whom officers eventually identified as Gaytan – because she didn’t hear a car drive away after the assault and because she and her grandmother suspected he had been breaking in to steal food.
Longmont police Cmdr. Craig Earhart said detectives questioned Gaytan after the attack but Gaytan did nothing to make officers suspicious of him. Earhart said Dulany told detectives in 1997, nearly a year after the assault, that she believed Gaytan was a suspect. Also that year, detectives compared Gaytan’s fingerprints with ones found at the crime scene but could make no match, Earhart said.
Last summer, Gaytan was arrested and charged with sexual assault in connection with the rape. Earhart said a DNA sample taken from Gaytan when he was booked into prison for a drug conviction matched a sample collected after the rape.
Dulany said she doesn’t want the notice of claim to distract from Gaytan’s criminal trial. She said she isn’t arguing that Longmont detectives did a shoddy job investigating the case, just that they didn’t diligently follow up on her tip. For that reason, she said, she sees the notice as something of an extension of her work for rape victims.
Dulany said Longmont police are conducting an internal review to determine why it took so long to arrest a suspect in the rape. Earhart said he couldn’t comment further.
“Hopefully,” Dulany said, “they will have answers for themselves that will prevent this from ever happening again.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
