MEMPHIS, Tenn. – “It was lightning and storming real bad that night. I woke up with someone over me and I thought it was a dream and apparently it wasn’t. I woke up trying to get out of the bed and fight my way out. He raped me,” said a female rape victim who talked with us about case.
It was a rape that kept her in the dark.
She didn’t even want her family to know the gruesome details.
“He made me lay on my stomach. He tied my hands up and my feet up and put the pillow over my head. I just kept begging him not to shoot me. I thought he was gonna shoot me in the back of the head,” she said.
It was March 2001 when she was viciously attacked.
She went to the Rape Crisis Center the same day and did a sexual assault kit test.
She waited and waited.
There was no word, no suspect, no arrests.
“I wanted whoever did this to me to get caught and serve their time,” she said.
She would later find out that her test kit never got off a shelf.
Since 2001 there was no word from police, until they showed up at her door in 2012.
“They said they did the DNA and I think a few months, three months before,” she said.
They matched DNA to 41-year-old Tony Sea.
He became one in a long line of suspects arrested and charged for rape after untested rape kits were finally tested.
WREG, the first station to uncover the untested kits, has been following what happened to these cases .
Prosecutors were running against statutes of limitations and the legal frustration was evident.
Defense Lawyers like TeShaun Moore represented one of the suspects charged with rape.
“This is not justice. Justice would have been had they taken that evidence 14 years ago and found the right people,” says Moore.
It also has forced judges to speak out.
“It’s unconscionable that the justice system has failed folks like this alleged victim,” says Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee during a court hearing for one of the rape suspects.
Most of the suspects remain locked up, but some tried to get a bond like suspect Eddie Hendrix.
“I need to get this taken care of,” Hendrix told Judge Coffee during a bond hearing.
Instead of lowering his bond, Judge Coffee raised it to $2 million because of Hendrix’s long criminal history.
Victims said they were now forced to fight to hold the city accountable for the untested rape kits.
Attorney Robert Spence filed a class action lawsuit.
“The city is going to have to provide an explanation why these women were treated this way. They have to explain that. It’s not enough just to say we are gonna test the kits now, now that the media ran the story and it’s a big national story, we are gonna test the kits, that’s sufficient. The city has to come forward and explain why they did it. Why were women treated this way? That’s the only way to get past it.” said Spence.
Attorney Daniel Lofton represented three rape victims and said he was fighting for information from the City on procedures that allowed kits to go untested.
“What were they doing? What was the plan? How did you deal with these things? ” asked Lofton.
City attorneys fought back, saying one of Lofton’s clients didn’t even live in Memphis.
“The crime against Ms. Ybos was outside the city’s jurisdiction. Yet he continues to sue the city. The rape kits of the other two named plaintiffs were timely tested immediately and their rapist is in jail. So there is no legal or factual basis for this case and it needs to end. ” says Deputy City Attorney Regina Newman.
Still, some victims refused to give up.
“It makes me mad and upset because after my situation that happened to me, ain’t no telling how many more that he did it to,” the rape victim told us.
Many of these suspects were charged with multiple rapes.
Attorney Robert Spence was initially removed from the class action lawsuit he filed because of his previous job as city attorney.
He told us he appealed and was allowed back on the case.
He said he was suing on behalf of the thousands of women whose rape kits went untested.
