2 OF NEW YORK’S FINEST NOT EXACTLY NEW YORK’S FINEST

Woman who claimed she was raped by two NYPD cops in the back of police van accuses their lawyers 'slut-shaming' her with provocative photos from social media and says there is 'no justice' after they avoided jail on lesser charges

By Ralph R. Ortega

Daily Mail
September 14, 2019

A woman who alleged she was raped when she was 18 by two NYPD cops in the back of a police van while handcuffed and under arrest for drugs says her credibility was smeared, and that helped the accused get off on lesser charges.

Going by the alias Anna Chambers, the woman claimed that attorneys for Eddie Martins and Richard Hall dug up provocative selfies of her from social media posts, which they claimed in a letter to prosecutors were 'unprecedented' for a victim of a 'vicious rape.'

To that she now says, 'They were trying to slut-shame' her, Chambers told Inside Edition.

Chambers adds that attorneys John Arlia and Mark Bederow at the time were trying to make her feel like she was asking for it, based on what she was wearing.

Bederow declined comment on Chambers' remarks when reached by DailyMail.com.

Arlia was not immediately available when DailyMail.com reached out for comment.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office had also raised questions about the woman's credibility, when Chambers could not recall what she wore on September 15, 2017 - the night she alleged she was attacked in the back of a police van in Brooklyn's Coney Island section.

'Those inconsistencies that they were claiming, our position is that they were unrelated, they were irrelevant and immaterial to what took place in that van,' Chambers' attorney Michael David tolf Inside Edition.

Rape and kidnapping charges against Martins and Hall were dropped when the now-former undercover narcotics detectives plead guilty to 11 counts of felony bribery and misdemeanor conduct last month. They each will be required to serve 5 years probation and avoided jail time.

The deal was kept quiet when the plea was kept off an official court calendar, at the request of the ex-cops' lawyers, and their appearance before a judge was not mentioned to the media by the district attorney's office.

Even Chambers wasn't alerted, reports the New York Post.

'This is not justice for me. I'm sorry. It's really not,' she told Inside Edition.

Prosecutors had sought one to three years prison time for the disgraced officers, but the request was denied, according to the Post.

Martins and Hall had quit their jobs a month after the alleged rape. Both were accused of offering to let Chambers go after she was arrested for drug possession if she had sex with them.

The two officers then admitted they had sex with Chambers, but claimed it was consensual and that she was not handcuffed.

At the time, it was a crime for corrections and parole officers to have sex with suspects in custody, but not for police.

The district attorney's office argued that rape would not have been an appropriate charge and that securing a conviction would have been too challenging.

The state legislature has since closed the loophole.

'We believe – as a newly-created statute recognizes – that any sexual contact between police officers and a person in their custody should constitute a crime,' a spokesperson from the Brooklyn DA's office said in March, when the rape charges were dropped.

'However that was not the law at the time of the incident. Because of this and because of unforeseen and serious credibility issues that arose over the past year and our ethical obligations under the rules of professional conduct, we are precluded from proceeding with the rape charges.'

The 'credibility issues' prosecutors referenced were raised by Martins and Hall's defense attorneys who previously requested Chambers be charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath about the details of her encounter.