In July, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson defended her treatment of victims. "First of all, I want everyone to know that this office will always put victims first, and seeking justice for crime victims is what this office is all about," the chief prosecutor of Houston said in a video statement.
It was a pretty unconvincing claim coming from Anderson. In fact, the only reason she was releasing this video statement was because of her office's depraved treatment of a victim. Anderson, a Republican, had been widely criticized after her office jailed a mentally ill rape victim for 28 days to force her to testify against her rapist. The story was so horrifying it made national news, and we covered it here in July.
Quick recap: the victim, identified by much of the press as “Jenny” in order to protect her identity, is a 25-year-old woman who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In 2013, she was assaulted by Keith Hendricks, a serial rapist who typically attacked homeless women.
During Hendricks’ trial, Jenny was called to the stand and forced to recount violent and disturbing details about her rape. It was more than she could handle given her struggles with mental illness. From The Washington Post:
According to court documents obtained by KPRC, the victim became disoriented and began babbling incoherently. She started crying, stood up from the witness stand and ran through the court to the outside world, screaming behind her that she’d never come back. Eventually, she wandered into traffic in front of the Harris County Criminal Courthouse.
Jenny was admitted into a psychiatric ward for ten days. Afterward, prosecutors forced her to spend 28 days in the Harris County jail to ensure that she would testify.
She was accused of no crime, was severely mentally ill, and was a rape victim. Yet, prosecutors forced her to sit in jail for almost a month.
It gets worse.
While imprisoned, Jenny was assaulted and beaten, according to the lawsuit she filed against Harris County law enforcement. From the Post:
[Jenny] suffered a number of indignities. Most distressing among them was physical assault from the other inmates, after she was placed in the general population — a fact her lawyer found especially distressing.
“They put her into the general population of the jail, even though the jail has a mental health unit,” [her lawyer, Sean] Buckley said.
During her time in jail, the complaint stated that she was attacked by another inmate, who “repeatedly slammed her head into the concrete floor[," causing a] “superficial brain injury.”
The complaint also stated she “was forced to drink from a spigot attached to a dirty metal toilet.”
According to the Sherriff's statement, Anderson's office didn't even request for Jenny to be placed in the mental health unit—even though Anderson herself said that she had a “life-threatening” mental condition.
Jenny had a particularly tough time in jail, because everyone thought she was a sexual predator instead of a victim. That's because she "was mistakenly booked as the defendant in a sexual assault case," according to the Post:
“Whenever jailers or management of the jail would interface with her, they would see her as a defendant in an aggravated sexual assault case,” Buckley said. [...]
She also had trouble with the guards.
On January 8, Jane Doe allegedly suffered an “acute psychiatric episode and began loudly pleading with God to come to her rescue.” Guards were summoned, and Jane Doe hit one of them, who responded in kind by punching her across the face.
Jenny's case is particularly awful, but she's not the only rape victim that Harris County has kept in jail just so they would testify. From the Houston Press:
[After Jenny’s case] the DA's office discovered a sex assault victim who had been held in the jail on a bench warrant two months longer than she should have. Anderson said the woman had been convicted of felony drug possession in another county, then was extradited to Harris County to testify against her rapist. Her sentence for the drug possession was only supposed to last six months — but once it expired, Harris County prosecutors apparently forgot to let her out, and she spent two extra months in the jail on no legal grounds.
“This should not have happened,” Anderson said. “We are looking into why it happened and what went wrong in this case…It was our fault.”
Although Anderson apologized for the other victim’s incarceration, she has repeatedly defended the prosecution's decisions in Jenny's case. In July, her office issued a statement saying, "Witness bonds are a common tool used by prosecutors and defense attorneys.” The following day, she justified Jenny's imprisonment again, while also implying that her office rarely used witness bonds or writs of attachments. “We rarely do this, but when a case calls for it to be done we are willing to make that hard decision,” she stated.
Later that month, she re-emphasized her support for Jenny’s jail sentence in her video statement. From the Post:
Anderson [said] that the state’s actions were in the best interest for both Jane Doe and the public at large.
“If nothing was done to prevent the victim from leaving Harris County in the middle of trial, a serial rapist would have gone free, and her life would have been at risk, while homeless on the street,” Anderson, adding that she “fully support[s] the prosecutor’s actions.”
At least one of these claims is blatantly false. Buckley says Jenny wasn't homeless at the time— and that Anderson’s office knew it.
“[Anderson] has to know that is [a] false statement because her investigators were the ones who went there to pick Jenny up at her apartment and bring her to Houston to testify,” he said.
(It’s also worth nothing that if the prosecution's case couldn't succeed without Jenny's testimony, it must not have been a very strong case.)
As the election draws nearer, the district attorney has become a little more sheepish. During a debate between Anderson and her opponent, Democrat Kim Ogg, Anderson stated that she "regret[s] very much what that victim went through," saying, "If there is any silver lining to any of this, and there is just one, it's that this monster, this serial rapist, received two life sentences thanks to her courageous testimony."
Yet she continues to say that her office made the right decision.
Anderson has repeatedly claimed that she had no other options. "This was an extraordinarily difficult and unusual situation. There were no apparent alternatives that would insure both the victims safety and her appearance at trial," she stated.
But many in Harris County—including Ogg—believe otherwise. “Putting a witness in jail on a material witness bond is highly irregular and reserved for the worst of the worst witnesses, maybe gang cases,” Ogg said. “They can be protected by placing them in a hotel, you can place them with family, you can keep in contact.”
Ogg reemphasized this point during the debate. "Revictimizing a victim never justifies the end," she said. "There were so many other options that could have been taken."
She's right—Anderson had other options. But the truth is that Anderson only cares about convictions, not victims.
Anderson seems to be personally offended by the public disapproval of her decision. “This office has a long history of supporting victims of crime. To claim otherwise is outrageous,” she said in her July video statement.
This self-congratulatory description of the Harris County District Attorney's office as a place that provides attentive victim assistance is especially ironic in context. After all, just a few seconds before she touted her “long history of supporting victims,” Anderson made what may have been her least self-aware statement ever. From KPRC:
“How were we to assume that a homeless, mentally ill victim of an aggravated sex assault would return to testify at the trial of her rapist when that victim was going through a life-threatening mental health crisis and had expressed her intention not to testify?” Anderson asked.
In a single rhetorical question she identifies Jenny as a victim twice, and acknowledges her severe mental illness twice. Yet, she continues to claim with indignation that jailing her was appropriate when she committed no crime at all.
”At the end of the day she received less due process, less protection than the rapist did,” stated legal analyst Brian Wice.
Is this is how Devon Anderson takes care of victims?
Ogg and Anderson are on the ballot for Harris County District Attorney on Nov. 8.