A woman who says she was forced into sex with a New York police officer is suing after the officer avoided rape charges and received what amounts to a slap on the wrist.
Maleatra Montanez, 40, says last February, Syracuse police officer Chester Thompson, 47, responded to a call that her teenage daughter was missing and then forced her to have sex in her living room.
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“When I opened the door, he told me that I was pretty,” Montanez told the New York Daily News. According to her deposition, Thompson also told her she had a big butt and that her “lips looked like it can hold…a penis.”
“And he asked me do I love my son,” Montanez later testified. “So I had an idea of maybe what was getting ready to happen.”
Montanez says she begged through tears, “We don’t have to do this.”
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She says that Thompson first forced her to perform oral sex and then had her get a condom from the room next door. He also told her to face her newborn son while he raped her.
After the incident, Thompson pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of official misconduct for having sex with Montanez as well as another woman in three unrelated incidents while he was on duty. Under the agreement, Thompson was kicked off of the force and sentenced to three years of probation.
According to The Post Standard, Prosecutor Jeremy Cali says Montanez likely felt intimidated in the situation but an officer can not be charged with rape if a victim does not explicitly say “no,” is not in custody, or is not threatened or physically restrained.
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Montanez filed a $7 million suit on Thursday against Thompson as well as several of his superiors in the police department.
“We’ve had information from several sources that this is not the first time that Chester Thompson has engaged in this type of malfeasance,” her lawyer, Ed Sivin, said. “And it appears that this may have been going on for a period of years. And that people high up in the Syracuse Police Department knew about it and didn’t take prompt remedial measures against him.”