October 28, 2009
Logan officers accused of rape
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A woman who alleges she was gang-raped by Logan County police officers has filed suit in federal court.

The woman and two men who were with her that evening allege that three of the four officers raped her and that all threatened to kill the two men.

On Tuesday, Jay Bartholomew, supervisory special agent with the FBI in Charleston, said the FBI's investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The suit alleges that about 3 a.m. on Sept. 7, 2008, the woman and two men left the Glitter Girls bar in Logan County. The woman and one of the men then got into a car and the other man walked across street and under the underpass. There he was threatened by the four police officers - three from the Logan County Sheriff's Department and one from Chapmanville Police Department - all of whom the suit alleges were drunk.

The officers asked about the woman, then frisked the man, emptying his wallet, according to the suit.

The four officers then walked to the car, where they demanded the woman leave the vehicle. They gave her a field sobriety test, which she failed. The officers then "intimidated, assaulted and threatened" the man in the car and then ordered both men to go home or "they would kill both of them," according to the suit.

The four officers drove up W.Va. 44 toward Switzer with the woman, sexually assaulting and forcing her to drink alcohol in the back seat.

"When Jane Doe resisted these advances, she was physically grabbed and held down and told that, 'she was getting off easy because she could have been arrested for driving under the influence,'" according to the suit.

Three of the four officers then forced the woman out of the police car on a dirt road and forced her face down on the hood of the patrol car, according to the lawsuit. There, three of the men raped her while the fourth remained in the car, sick and vomiting.

When they were finished, the officers started to take her home when she saw the two men she had been with previously in a church parking lot. The police officers turned around and dropped her off in that area, according to the suit.

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