Couple claims officer raped wife after domestic violence call, suing NYPD
theGrio REPORT - A $15 million lawsuit filed Monday, claims An NYPD officer courted a woman he met on a domestic violence call, before taking her out on a date and raping her.
A $15 million lawsuit filed Monday, claims An NYPD officer initiated an inappropriate relationship with a woman he met on a domestic violence call before taking her out on a date and raping her.
The internal investigations unit started looking into Queens cop Harold Avalos in March, after the woman’s husband complained about the officer’s relationship with his wife.
The woman, only identified as RA, later came forward and reported the 36-year-old cop raped her and for months held photographic and video evidence of the assault over her head as blackmail.
Avalos took a plea deal with NYPD lawyers on disciplinary charges. He admitted to lying three times to internal investigators about having an inappropriate relationship with a member of the public and improperly downgrading a police report for no legitimate purpose.
This isn’t the first time Avalos has been accused of having a relationship with a woman he met on duty. In 2012, the city settled a similar case against him for $105,000.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is now faced with the task of deciding whether to fire the 10-year veteran.
‘This guy (Avalos) is a predator and he uses his job like a dating service,” Steven Hoffner, the lawyer representing the woman’s husband in the suit, told the New York Daily News.
Avalos first met the alleged victim in September 2011, when her husband called 911 to have her removed from their Woodside house. According to the claim, he appeared sympathetic, asking her “why a beautiful woman is with a guy like him [her husband]?”
For weeks afterwards, he continued to call and text her under the premise of checking up on the case. In November 2012, he asked to meet privately at a motel because “he was not supposed to be talking to her.”
It was there that he tried to kiss her for the first time. She says she denied his advances. When they met again a month later, Avalos got her “very drunk” by ordering her about five tequila shots. According to the complaint, the last thing she remembers is getting into a taxi with Avalos.
She later woke up disoriented in a motel room where the officer told her they had sex. When she found her vomit all over the bathroom floor, signaling how sick she must have been the night before, she began to freak out. That’s when she says Avalos allegedly snapped and told her, “You need to shut up,” threatening, “If you say anything to anybody about this I will put your naked pictures and video on the internet and I will make you very famous.’
The victim says she did not tell anyone because she was “deeply ashamed, embarrassed and scared.” For months, she tried to convince the officer to delete the footage, to no avail. At one point she says he informed her, “If you tell this to anyone, I know where you live, you have a mother, a sister, and you have kids. I always carry a gun and I will kill everyone and kill myself before I get arrested. You don’t know how crazy I am.”
Ultimately, her husband found out about the affair when their 9-year-old son told him that he saw Avalos over at the house drinking a beer.
He initially complained about Avalos to the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, unaware of the rape allegations.
When Avalos got wind that he might be under investigation, he allegedly threatened the man as well, stating, “Nothing is going to happen to me. My PBA union is going to protect me. I feel like putting every bullet in your head… By the way, I’m not f****** her anymore.”
Afraid of what he might do to her family, the woman did not initially tell authorities about the rape, until her lawyer advised her to come forward in October 2013.
According to the lawsuit, the couple is seeking compensatory damages of $5 million dollars and punitive damages of $10 million dollars.
