Season three of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives debuted on November 13, and among the routine infighting, there’s a heavier topic that has consumed the season’s conversations: the incremental revelations that most of the women in the cast have been sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. (Hulu didn’t include any trigger warnings in front of these episodes.) This isn’t surprising, given the self-reported rates of sexual violence. Similarly disturbing and unsurprising, though, is the fact that for one of those women, the cast and the audience have decided that she’s lying.  Demi Engemann shared this season that Marciano Brunette groped her without her consent while she visited the Vanderpump Villa, a different Hulu original reality show. Brunette, the lead server at the Villa, claims they shared a consensual kiss and denies assaulting Engemann. Vanderpump Villa producers released a statement that they had reviewed their footage and found her claims to be “unsubstantiated.” In early December, Brunette filed a lawsuit against Engemann, claiming she defamed him by lying that she had been assaulted. For those who haven’t watched SLOMW, it follows a group of young women who grew up in the Mormon church, have large social media followings, and started their own “MomTok” group, infamous for a swinging scandal years ago. The group often discusses how they want to modernize the Mormon church and change its stance on traditional gender roles and LGBTQ+ acceptance.  > I found that many of the police investigations hinged on the victim’s behavior > instead of hard evidence: were they sad enough, did they try to fight back, > were they flirting beforehand, and had their story been consistent through and > through?  However, their treatment of Engemann’s allegation looks all too familiar to me, as a reporter who has read through dozens of police reports that labeled sexual assault claims as false. My reporting was featured in the Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect, which shows police interrogation videos and first-hand interviews with alleged victims who were accused of lying and charged with crimes. I found that many of the police investigations hinged on the victim’s behavior instead of hard evidence: were they sad enough, did they try to fight back, were they flirting beforehand, and had their story been consistent through and through?  Now, for Engemann’s part, and separate from her allegation of sexual assault, she has been incredibly insensitive to others’ pain and discomfort. She chastised and mocked another wife, Jessi Draper, for having a consensual affair with Brunette (yes, the same Brunette). She orchestrated a very awkward and public Chippendales-like dance with a different cast member, Jen Affleck, who said she was uncomfortable and didn’t give consent.  As happens with a reality TV scandal, Engemann’s accusations turned the audience into pseudo-detectives. On camera at least, she is friendly with Brunette, hugs him, and doesn’t say outright that she’s uncomfortable with anything. Perhaps most suspicious to the online detectives and cast is that she kept in touch with her alleged assailant, sending him messages that included some sexual innuendos. But to be clear, none of these publicized messages mentions anything physical happening between the two of them, consensually otherwise. This vigorous analysis of Engemann’s behavior hasn’t been applied to Brunette, whose character isn’t spotless. In a previous season of Vanderpump Villa, Brunette bragged that he had slept with an “extraordinary” number of his coworkers at an old job. In the Vanderpump Villa episode when Brunette meets the wives, he comments on their looks soon after meeting them, calling them “so f*cking hot”. And after he asks Engemann for a“therapy session”, she is the one who ends the conversation, and Brunette pulls her in for a hug, kissing the side of her head.  Instead, all the shame bore down on the two women involved with Brunette. Draper was excoriated by her husband, who said his own bad behavior toward her was excused because she cheated on him. And Engemann has been called a liar and a master manipulator who made up sexual assault allegations to cover up a consensual affair.  > Reporting a sexual assault has always been fraught because these crimes > usually have no witnesses, leave no physical injuries, and worst of all, > credibility can be made or broken by a victim’s behavior before and after the > alleged assault.  I want to be very clear that I don’t know if Engemann was actually assaulted — and neither do you.  Claire Fallon and her co-host summed up my feelings pretty perfectly on a podcast episode of Rich Text: “We both feel very uncomfortable about the fact that this is a half-season of a reality show about whether a group of women believe another woman’s claim that she was sexually assaulted.” The way that the group of wives has characterized their doubt has been in service of other “real” victims. In a hotel room, Draper, Mickaela Matthews, and Miranda Hope discuss their feelings about the accusation. Miranda says while pinching her fingers together: “You’re taking a situation that’s this big, and using your position as a woman to make it this big, which is actually so much worse for actual assault victims.”  Draper: “Yes, and it makes women not be believed when other women do shit like this.” Reporting a sexual assault has always been fraught because these crimes usually have no witnesses, leave no physical injuries, and worst of all, credibility can be made or broken by a victim’s behavior before and after the alleged assault.  My reporting found that family, friends, and police all come up with remarkable excuses for why they think someone made up an allegation of assault. For a 12-year-old, police said she lied about her adoptive dad abusing her to get back at him for taking her phone away. For a college student, it was so she could get help with her grades. For a restaurant server, it was so she could extort money from her boss. All three of these people – even the child – were charged with crimes for lying. And all three saw their charges later dropped or were fully exonerated. The season’s reunion aired last week, and during it, Engemann again said and did things to others which have no excuse — while pointing to her head, she asked Affleck what was wrong with her brain (after Affleck came out publicly that she recovered from prenatal depression and suicidal ideations). She assumed Affleck wasn’t a victim of sexual assault, which was quickly corrected, and to which Engemann responded, “OK, that’s great.” But something else struck me while watching the reunion that was true for so many of the young women I’ve interviewed. While crying during a break, Engemann said, “It’s more painful to not be believed […]  or to have to go over it over and over and over and feel the pain of past things than to just say ‘F*ck yeah, we kissed.’”  For so many victims, it is easier to dismiss the truth, push down their memories, and say that they weren’t assaulted – especially when there is a culture so ready to accept their admission of fault.  I have no idea where Brunette was that night during the reunion, but for certain, he wasn’t on national TV in front of narrowing and skeptical eyes, facing intense and repetitive questions. 

Ghislaine Maxwell has delighted MAGA loyalists by asserting that she never saw the man she is hoping will spring her from a 20-year prison sentence “in any inappropriate setting” throughout the years he spent hanging out with the late convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking minors and conspiracy, among other charges, whom Trump has already rewarded with a move to a minimum-security prison camp, went further than that, according to transcripts of her interviews with Justice Department officials released Friday. “I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age,” she said, referring to her years of interactions with men who socialized with Epstein, her former companion. “I never saw inappropriate habits.” “That would be a flat no to any man,” she added. Maxwell was interviewed over two days by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose past work as Trump’s personal attorney appears to create a sizeable conflict of interest. The former socialite continues to deny her own guilt in lining up sexual partners for Epstein, many of them underage, and is appealing her conviction. In her sessions with Blanche, conducted in July, she offered similarly worded exonerations of many of the prominent men whose relationships with Epstein have prompted accusations of wrongdoing. Nor, she said, was there any kind of a client list or instances of Epstein recording the men for whom he arranged sexual encounters. Maxwell was bipartisan with her exonerations, claiming former president Bill Clinton, contrary to widespread speculation, was not close to Epstein, and did not visit Epstein’s notorious private island in the Caribbean. “Absolutely never went,” she said. “And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would’ve gone—I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island, had I not been there. Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein.” “President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend,” Maxwell said. Maxwell disputed claims by Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre—who died by suicide in 2025—that Prince Andrew, the brother of Britain’s King Charles, raped Giuffre during visits to an Epstein property, claiming the two never even met. (Andrew settled a lawsuit filed by Giuffre without admitting liability.) What about the famous defense attorney and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein? Giuffre had leveled and then later retracted accusations against him that involved massages and a bathrobe. Did he, Blanche asked, ever do “anything inappropriate?” “Absolutely not,” Maxwell said. “I don’t remember anything about him ever getting massaged. I don’t ever have any recall, I don’t believe I ever even saw him in a bathrobe. I have no knowledge of that.” Nor did Maxwell recall if former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who socialized with Epstein while Summers was the president of Harvard University and Epstein was a donor, traveled on Epstein’s plane. Blanche pressed Maxwell on a host of other famous men, including brothers Andrew and Chris Cuomo, the late Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Despite speculation, Maxwell said Epstein knew none of them. Blanche even asked about George Soros, the billionaire financier, who features in a variety of far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theories, including some involving Epstein. “I don’t think [Epstein] knew him,” Maxwell said. One exception, however, is Robert Kennedy Jr., now the Health and Human Services Secretary. Maxwell said that Kennedy had joined Epstein on a “dinosaur bone hunting trip in the Dakotas in the 1980s. But, as with all the others: “I never saw anything inappropriate with Mr. Kennedy.” Maxwell also said that she does not recall a suggestive birthday note that the Wall Street Journal reported Trump sent Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denies sending the letter and has sued the paper over its report. Maxwell does remember creating the “birthday book” for Epstein, which was reportedly filled with notes and testimonials from such luminaries as Clinton, Dershowitz, and financier Leon Black. The idea, Maxwell said, came from her mother. But she asserted that she could not remember whether Trump, or anyone specific, contributed. “It’s been so long,” Maxwell said when asked to recall the names of contributors to the book. “I want to tell you, but I don’t remember.” The trade here is obvious. Memory lapses that assist the pardon-happy president try to move past speculation about his own involvement with late pedophile is Maxwell’s best bet for getting out of prison. Indeed, federal prosecutors said Maxwell lied “brazenly” under oath during her 2021 trial, has every reason to fib about Trump now. But laying it on so thick, in such a nakedly transactional exchange, may have the opposite of its intended outcome.

On the House floor Monday night—in a speech that was jarring, graphic, and nearly an hour long—Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) made disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against four men from her home state, one of whom is her ex-fiancé. Mace was emotional throughout: She prayed at the start, and paused to take deep breaths a few times. Mace’s former fiancé and another accused man denied the allegations, and the other men do not appear to have spoken out. The allegations have not been independently corroborated and the men have not been charged. South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state police agency, said in a statement that it had opened an investigation into Mace’s ex-fiancé in December 2023 after being contacted by Capitol Police about allegations of “assault, harassment, and voyeurism,” and that the investigation remains ongoing and will be sent to a prosecutor for review upon completion. Mace also alleged in the speech that South Carolina’s Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson—whom she would likely face in a primary for governor, a race she has said she is “seriously considering” entering—failed to properly investigate the allegations after she brought forth evidence, which allegedly included nonconsensual sexual images of her and others. In a lengthy statement, Wilson’s office rejected Mace’s claims that it did not properly respond. All of this has, unsurprisingly, attracted ample news coverage. But one aspect of the explosive speech has gone unexamined: A so-called hotline that Mace said she set up to encourage victims to come forward—which nobody actually answers, and which leading domestic and sexual violence advocates in Mace’s home state of South Carolina say they don’t want victims to call. Mother Jones is the first to report these details. Mace began her speech on the House floor standing next to a giant pink poster with a South Carolina phone number advertising a “victim hotline.” The purpose of the number—whether it was for any victims of domestic or sexual violence, or only meant for people to share information related to her allegations—was unclear, and Mace’s spokesperson didn’t clarify when I asked. Nonetheless, Mace has continued to promote the number, sharing it across her social media channels and urging people to call (some of her posts suggest that many of the callers are from her district, and that they’re sharing information related to her case). Some of Mace’s followers on social media joked about calling the number to report President Trump, who, in 2023, was found liable by a jury in a civil case for sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll (Mace has since defended him); Trump has also famously bragged on tape about committing sexual assault. But others on social media seemed to earnestly praise Mace for setting up the phone line and said they had already used it to report allegations of abuse; one even offered to “field calls” as a volunteer in another state. (I reached out to multiple people who said on social media that they reached out to the hotline, seemingly to report allegations of abuse, but did not hear back.) But when I called Mace’s hotline three different times—each time at least one hour apart—on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed to essentially be a glorified voicemail. Every time, the line rang repeatedly before ending with an automated message from Mace herself: “Hi, this is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and you’ve reached our office victim hotline. Please note your information is confidential. Please leave a detailed message and we will contact you as soon as possible. You may also text us at this number.” Beep. (I did not leave a message, instead corresponding with her spokesperson through email.) My text to the number—”Hi is this Nancy Mace’s victim hotline?”—went unanswered for 45 minutes. When they finally did respond, it was with little effort: “Yes, it is.” Deborah Freel, executive director of Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S., a sexual assault center in Charleston—part of Mace’s district—that operates its own 24/7 hotline, said her staff spent Tuesday testing out the number only to reach the voicemail whenever they called; they also fielded calls from community members concerned that Mace’s number was going unanswered, she said. “It isn’t a hotline,” Freel told me. “It’s not connecting a survivor or someone with a concern to the resources that they need in that moment, which is really challenging. If the intention was to get them those resources, then it would be better for them to be directed to either a local or national resource.” Just before I spoke to Freel by phone late Tuesday afternoon, Freel said she spoke to Mace’s staff by phone and advised them to remove the word “hotline” from the description and to direct people to local and national trauma-informed victim services organizations instead. (Mace’s office did publish some resources, including information about Freel’s organization—two minutes after I reached out via email with details of the local advocates’ allegations, according to the web page’s metadata.) Freel said her impression was that they had received an “enormous” number of calls in the less than 24 hours the number has existed, and that they were overwhelmed. Laura Hudson, executive director of the nonprofit South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said she felt that Mace “set us back about 25 years” by not directing survivors of abuse to proper resources—whether it be law enforcement or hotlines with specially-trained, trauma-informed staff. Victim service providers who answer domestic and sexual violence hotlines, whether paid staff or volunteers, go through hours of professional training and often get certified through their states; Hudson’s staff who answer calls, she said, are all certified by a program for victim service providers at the South Carolina attorney general’s office—the same office Mace lambasted in her speech on the House floor. Hudson—who last year was honored in the state legislature for several years of work in supporting victims and lobbying to pass legislation on their behalf—described Mace’s effort as “giving false hope to a very vulnerable population, instead of publishing national and, most importantly, state resources.” Some of those resources include nearly two dozen hotlines throughout Mace’s state, included on a directory maintained by the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault; the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which can also be reached via text or online chat; and RAINN, the national sexual assault hotline, which is also available via phone or online chat. Freel’s paid staff are certified by the same program as Hudson’s—the one administered by the attorney general’s office—and her organization’s 25 hotline volunteers have to go through 25 hours of training and a day of in-person training, and spend time shadowing staff, before they can start taking calls, she said. “If you’re working on our hotline, not only are you receiving calls, but you have to be ready to go to the emergency room at our local hospital and accompany a survivor through sexual assault forensic evidence collection exam,” Freel said. “So you really have to know your stuff and be very experienced.” Last year, she said, the Tri-County S.P.E.AK.S. hotline received 1,400 calls. Asking people to potentially disclose abuse or private information on a voicemail message, as Mace’s line does, “seems risky,” Hudson said. Mace’s office says that the information people leave on the voicemail would be “confidential,” and a spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that outreach was monitored by staffers in the office. The spokesperson added that “per federal congressional office policy, we will get consent from constituents to provide their information to law enforcement as needed.” Despite these assurances, Mace’s office is not bound by the same federal confidentiality requirements the Violence Against Women Act imposes on domestic and sexual violence treatment and prevention organizations that receive federal funding, as Sara Barber, executive director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, which oversees the state’s 22 member organizations, pointed out. Besides the confidentiality concerns, having specially-trained advocates available to answer phones on the spot is important because survivors may not call back again, or may need immediate emotional support, the advocates pointed out. “There is potential harm,” Freel said, “in a survivor calling with an expectation that they will be connected to someone who gets it and who is a trauma-informed individual.” “When they call and get an answering machine,” she added, “that can immediately be disheartening and hurtful and can create a barrier for them to even want to even want to take another step forward in a process.” So why did Mace introduce the so-called hotline in the first place? I asked her office and didn’t immediately hear back—on that question, or on the local advocates’ criticisms of the hotline. But it does align with Mace’s attempts to portray herself as a protector of women and girls (though, as she has made clear, that doesn’t include trans women). Mace’s spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that the line will stay active “as long as necessary.” When I asked Hudson whether Mace’s office had reached out to her or the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network to ask for assistance or guidance in setting up the hotline, Hudson replied, “No. But I would be delighted to help her in any way.”

When Donald Trump was president the first time, his Department of Education promulgated a set of rules under Title IX that made it harder for sexual assault survivors on school campuses to seek justice—limiting the definition of sexual harassment, for example, and forcing victims into complaint processes that magnified their trauma. Then the Biden Administration set about undoing the Trump-era regulations—part of a broader rewrite of Title IX rules that also added protections for transgender and pregnant students. Incoming Trump officials—led by his nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon—were expected to revert to the old Title IX rules soon after the inauguration. Instead, a federal judge has done their work for them. Just days before Biden is set to leave office, Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the US District Court of Eastern Kentucky rejected the administration’s Title IX protections for trans students, siding with a handful of Republican state attorneys general who argued that harassment on the basis of gender identity doesn’t constitute sex discrimination. But Reeves didn’t stop there. In refusing to uphold protections for queer and trans students, he vacated the Biden administration’s entire Title IX rewrite, including provisions aimed at making it easier for sexual assault survivors to hold their assailants accountable and for pregnant students to stay in school.  Passed in 1972 , Title IX—which applies to schools and colleges that receive federal funds—asserted that no person shall be denied access to any educational program or activity “on the basis of sex.” Reeves said the Biden administration’s inclusion of gender identity in definitions of sex-based discrimination exceeded the Department of Education’s authority and Title IX’s original text. According to Reeves, the expanded definition of sex discrimination permeated the Biden rule to such an extent that the entire rewrite ought to be scrapped—even the parts that have nothing to do with trans students or gender identity. > “This court ruling turns longstanding legal precedent on its head in a direct, > disproportionate attack on trans students.” “When Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female,” Reeves wrote, siding with attorneys general from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Virginia. “Expanding the meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ turns Title IX on its head.” The Biden rule’s gender-identity language relied on reasoning laid out in Bostock v. Clayton County, a 2020 US Supreme Court decision that expanded protections against sex discrimination in employment to cover gay and transgender workers. But the new Biden rules were “life-changing” for non-LGBTQ students as well, Brandon Wolf, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, said last April, when the rules were finalized. For example, the updated regulations explicitly stated that pregnant and postpartum students were protected under Title IX, meaning they were entitled to lactation rooms on university campuses and academic accommodations throughout pregnancy. And the Biden rules undid many of the Trump provisions that had weakened protections for victims of sexual misconduct. “For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free from sex discrimination,” Biden’s secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, said last April. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.” The rules were supposed to take effect nationwide last August. > At universities, the Trump rules required live hearings for sexual misconduct > cases and allowed the admission of evidence about victims’ prior sexual > history with the accused to “prove consent.” But the Biden regulations were quickly challenged in court by multiple states and the Christian Educators Association International, represented by ultra-conservative legal firm the Alliance Defending Freedom, and never went into effect in more than half of the states. The plaintiffs argued that the rule was unconstitutionally vague, overly broad, and violated teachers’ freedom of speech by requiring them to use transgender students’ preferred names and pronouns. Reeves sided with the states. “The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” he wrote, referring to sections of the new rule that define misgendering of students as harassment.  “We are thrilled that the judge saw these rules exactly for what they are: a contradiction of Title IX’s text and purpose,” David Schmus, executive director of Christian Educators, said in a news release. “Our members and other educators are free from any attempt by the federal government to use Title IX to force them to say things about sex and gender identity that aren’t true and that violate their deeply held convictions.” In vacating the Biden regulations, Reeves reverted Title IX policy back to the rule promulgated in 2020 by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary during his first term.  Those Trump-era rules were sweeping. Most significantly, they changed the way schools handled sexual misconduct claims at every stage of an investigation, putting in place some rules that protected the rights of alleged attackers but numerous other rules that discouraged victims from coming forward. For example, the Trump regulations raised the evidentiary standard needed to prove sexual misconduct; they precluded schools from investigating incidents that occurred off campus or on study-abroad trips, even if the perpetrator was a school employee; and they narrowed the definition of sexual harassment. At universities, the Trump rules required live hearings for sexual misconduct cases—forcing victims to undergo cross-examination by the accused’s adviser—and allowed the admission of evidence about victims’ prior sexual history with the accused to “prove consent.” Biden’s rules returned the evidentiary standard to prove misconduct to the pre-Trump threshold, required schools to investigate harassment that occurred off campus or online, and no longer required live hearings or live cross-examination. Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy and programs at the student- and survivor-led Know Your IX, called the Reeves ruling disappointing—and dangerous—for marginalized students, particularly survivors of sexual violence. “President Biden’s Title IX guidance defends survivors against retaliation,” Levine said in a news release. “With this ruling, the District Court imperils countless young people’s right to a safe, inclusive education.”

This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter. A Navy submariner who said she was sexually assaulted multiple times. An Army major who chose to never report her assault. A Marine Corps sexual assault response coordinator who worries she is being discriminated against because she’s a woman. A former Defense Department sexual assault victim advocate of the year. Over the past several weeks, The War Horse spoke with a dozen current service members across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines about their experiences with sexual assault in uniform—as survivors, advocates, and allies.  “I want to have faith in the system because I think a lot of progress has been made,” one Army sexual assault survivor who works in Army medicine told The War Horse. “But for me, it’s unknown.” As the military continues to grapple with its past treatment of female members and considers its future leadership under President-elect Donald Trump, their voices are critical. But having a say isn’t part of the deal when you’re in the military. Service members are restricted in how they can weigh in on a debate now roiling Washington over the nomination of Pete Hegseth as the nation’s next secretary of defense. He is defending himself from allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive alcohol use. > “We need leaders who reflect our highest ideals, not ones who undermine them > with a lack of accountability.” The War Horse wanted to capture their sentiments at this critical juncture—about what they’ve experienced during their service, their thoughts about the future, and why they continue to serve their country. Our interviews included officers and enlisted ranks, as well as men and women, and represent a range of geographic locations and military specialties.  We’ve agreed not to name them to protect those who are survivors of sexual assault and to allow others to freely share their views on the military’s treatment of women and their hopes and worries about the next four years.  “If we start to turn away from being inclusive and if we start to treat people without dignity and respect…I can see the culture changing,” said the Army survivor, who worries about “a cancerous effect.” “We’re a stronger service because of our differences.” A POSITIVE TREND?  The military has struggled for decades to stem its problem with sexual assault, regardless of which party has held the White House. Some estimates suggest that as many as 1 in 4 military women are assaulted. But only a fraction choose to report their assaults. Nearly two-thirds of all women who report sexual misconduct say they experience retaliation, according to Pentagon data, and a 2020 GAO report found that women are nearly 30 percent more likely than men to leave military service. Last year, the Pentagon released data it hailed as “cautiously optimistic,” showing that the number of sexual assaults in the military decreased for the first time since 2015. But 11 of the 12 service members we interviewed said they were worried about the future: If Hegseth is confirmed as secretary of defense, the top two positions in the military chain of command will be filled by men who have been accused of sexual assault. Pete Hegseth at the 2018 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA.Gage Skidmore “It’s disheartening to see the mechanisms of power appear indifferent to these serious accusations,” an Army infantry sergeant told The War Horse. “We need leaders who reflect our highest ideals, not ones who undermine them with a lack of accountability.” Half of the service members we spoke with identified as sexual assault survivors. Two other service members said they have experienced sexual harassment or gender discrimination. Three work or have worked in sexual assault prevention and response in the military. Some say they reported their assaults formally, others did not. Some have watched fellow service members struggle with stigma and the aftereffects of assault. Hegseth’s path to defense secretary is in question as allegations of heavy drinking and past misconduct emerge. But most of the service members who spoke with The War Horse said the very fact of his nomination, whether or not it survives, shows a disregard from the very top for their service and the barriers that women—and men—still face in expecting a workplace free from sexual violence.  “It doesn’t matter if Pete Hegseth is never confirmed,” said one officer, who has been recognized by the Pentagon as a victim advocate of the year. “The fact that he was even nominated is setting back where we are in the DOD culturally by an amount that is personally terrifying and professionally, having worked so hard to get us to a different place, infuriating.”  MILITARY’S DRINKING CULTURE Sexual assault rates have remained high and convictions stubbornly low across the military branches, despite more than 150 congressional requirements and 50 different initiatives from secretaries of defense aimed at stemming the problem over the past 15 years. Last year, only 16 percent of reported sexual assaults went to court-martial, according to Pentagon data. About 40 percent of those cases were then dismissed or the alleged perpetrator was released from the military in lieu of completing the court-martial. The number of sexual misconduct cases had long been on the rise when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took charge at the Pentagon. He has made addressing sexual harassment and assault and improving military culture a priority during his tenure. In 2021, he commissioned an independent review board to study the problem and in 2023 oversaw the implementation of one of its primary recommendations: transferring the decision on whether to prosecute sexual assault cases from the military command to an independent office, a move long sought by victim advocates.  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin participates in a sexual assault survivor and advocate virtual roundtable from the Pentagon in Washington in 2021.US Air Force Staff Sergeant Jack Sanders/Department of Defense Austin has also signed off on the board’s 81 other recommendations, which range from increasing survivors’ access to civilian care to improving Pentagon oversight of alcohol policies. Advocates for sexual assault survivors have frequently pointed to the military’s heavy drinking culture as a factor in its difficulty stemming sexual abuse in uniform.  The New Yorker and other news outlets have reported that Hegseth’s alleged history of alcohol use caused problems for him in previous jobs, a concern that has been at the center of Hegseth’s recent conversations with lawmakers whose support he will need to be confirmed as defense secretary. Hegseth—a Fox News host and former Army National Guardsman—has promised to stop drinking if he gets the job.  The New Yorker also detailed a whistleblower report that described a history of personal misconduct and sexual impropriety, including allegations that Hegseth sexually pursued female employees at Concerned Veterans for America, the nonprofit he ran from 2013 to 2016, and that he brought his team to a strip club, where he had to be stopped from joining the dancers onstage. > “You are now being given permission by the uppermost leadership to degrade > your fellow service members.” “I’ve been kind of floored by how culturally accepted and culturally propagated toxic masculinity is within the services,” a female Air Force pilot who deployed to Afghanistan told The War Horse. “I think that it’ll only be made even more palatable.” In 2017, a woman accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her at a conference in a report to police in Monterey, California, though no charges were filed. He maintains the encounter was consensual. Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s lawyer, has acknowledged in media reports that Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed settlement in 2020 in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement.  “The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared,” Hegseth told reporters in November.  A US Navy poster from Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month US Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class David Danals A US Navy poster from Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention MonthU.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class David Danals Don Christensen, the former chief prosecutor of the Air Force and former president of Protect Our Defenders, which works to end sexual assault in the military, said that type of accusation at the top of the military chain of command may make it harder for survivors to find justice.  “Here you have a guy who has a police report that looks like hundreds of police reports I’ve read on sexual assault, where there’s alcohol involved, where the victim has a spotty memory,” he said.  “Those are the kinds of allegations we see day in and day out in the military.” “OOMPH THAT WE NEED” As Hegseth works to shore up support on Capitol Hill, he is facing a Congress with the highest-ever number of female veterans. Sen. Joni Ernst—Republican of Iowa, a retired Iowa National Guard lieutenant colonel, and herself a survivor of sexual assault—has publicly expressed reservations about Hegseth’s nomination. After two meetings with Hegseth, Ernst said she is committed to seeing him through the confirmation process, though she has not indicated whether she will vote to confirm him. She told reporters in December that Hegseth has promised to select a senior official who will work toward preventing sexual assault in the military. > “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.” The War Horse reached out to Hegseth and his lawyer for comment about the concerns raised by the service members with whom we spoke. We did not receive a response. Trump has also been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. In 2023, he was found liable in a civil court for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in 1996 and ordered to pay her $5 million.  At the beginning of his first term in office, Trump enjoyed support within the military, according to polling from Military Times, though that support fell off as the 2020 election approached. A GOVX poll in June found that 66 percent of active duty service members intended to vote for Trump. Donald Trump visits Osan Air Base in South Korea during his first presidential term.1st Lieutenant Daniel de La Fé/US Air Force One Navy officer, who transferred to the reserves after her sexual assault, told The War Horse that she did not know much about Hegseth but that she does not believe the allegations against Trump. “I am very excited for President Trump to be our commander-in-chief again,” she said.  Like other service members who spoke with The War Horse, she was frustrated with the way the Navy handled her assault report. But she worried the military is too focused on things that take away from core skills, and she said she hoped that under Trump, the military would focus on higher-quality, but fewer and more efficient, training for things like preventing sexual assault. “I feel like we have lost a lot of our tactical mindset,” the Navy officer said. “And I feel like he [Trump] will have that oomph that we need to be war fighters again.” But other service members who spoke with The War Horse said they worried that dismissing the value of diverse contributions will undermine unit cohesion and mission readiness, arguing that the two men’s histories could signal a tacit acceptance of similar behavior in the ranks. “You are now being given permission by the uppermost leadership to degrade your fellow service members,” an Air Force officer said.  “I think that if people try to push back against that, they have a very easy argument to say, ‘Well, that’s what the president says or thinks,’ or ‘That’s what the SECDEF says or thinks.’” “LIFE-GIVERS, NOT LIFE-TAKERS” Hegseth has repeatedly said the military’s commitment to diversity undermines its lethality, lamenting in his book, The War on Warriors, what he called “a more empathetic and effeminate military.” He has said women should not serve in combat. “[Women are] life-givers, not life-takers,” Hegseth told conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro last summer. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote in his book. “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”  Pete Hegseth speaks with service members during New York’s Fleet Week in 2019 for the program “Fox and Friends in the Morning.” Mass Communication Spc. Seaman Apprentice Brianna Thompson/US Navy Last month, Hegseth appeared to roll back his comments, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that women are “some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors.” > “Why should I serve in a military that doesn’t value me and that I don’t think > has my back?” “I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military,” he said. Women made up about 18 percent of active duty service members in 2022, the most recent data available, ranging from 9 percent of the Marine Corps, which has the lowest percentage of women, to nearly 22 percent of the Air Force. Almost a decade after the defense secretary at the time Ash Carter removed the ban on women in combat, about 4,500 women have served in combat roles in the Army and Marines. More than 150 women have completed the grueling Army Ranger course. Women who spoke with The War Horse said they were worried that Hegseth’s view on women in the military could directly affect their careers. “I am very happy I was selected to serve in a combat role,” a Marine who has also worked as a sexual assault response coordinator told The War Horse. “I want to deploy. I want to do my job. I want to do the things I’ve been trained to do.” But Hegseth’s views could affect women’s decisions to join the military, says Rachel Van Landingham, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and a professor at Southwestern Law School. “Why should I serve in a military that doesn’t value me and that I don’t think has my back?” she said. Most of the service members who spoke with The War Horse said they would hesitate to recommend the military to young women today, or would only recommend it with extreme caution. “The military,” Van Landingham said, “needs to be doubling down and being able to maximize the potential of everyone that’s actually willing to raise their hand and serve, which is still a tiny, tiny percentage of our overall country.” This War Horse story was reported by Sonner Kehrt, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. 

Melissa Turnage approached the 12-year-old girl with the imposing affect of a cop: arms crossed, lips pursed, badge visible, tone skeptical. “So, you don’t know how many times this has happened this week?” Taylor Cadle slouched on a couch, staring at her lap and picking at her nails. That morning, in the summer of 2016, she had gotten into a fight with her adoptive parents when they took away her phone on the ride to church, on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida. A minister’s wife, noticing Taylor’s tear-stained face, pulled her into an office to ask what was going on. Taylor hadn’t been planning to tell her everything, but it all came spilling out. The minister called the police, and now Turnage, a detective with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, was standing before her. Taylor spoke tentatively, in barely more than a whisper, as she told Turnage in a recorded interview that her adoptive father, Henry Cadle, had been sexually assaulting her for years. The inappropriate touching had started when she was 9 years old, shortly after Henry and Lisa, Taylor’s great uncle and his wife, had adopted her. Over time, the abuse escalated. Now, he assaulted her “anytime he gets the chance,” she said. She didn’t like going with him on errands because it happened then, on the side of a quiet road that cut through a swamp. Standing outside the car, he would put his privates inside of her privates, she told Turnage. Taylor couldn’t say how many times he had raped her, but it had happened just the night before. He did it whenever they drove to get milk, too, which was three times a week. “That’s a lot of driving,” Turnage said. Taylor said nothing.  Turnage was embarking on the type of investigation that her boss, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, had made a core mission of his agency. Judd is a beloved figure in Polk County, where he has served as sheriff for the past two decades and was just reelected to his sixth term. Known for his tough-on-crime rhetoric and social media presence, Judd gives a near-daily “morning briefing” to his 700,000 TikTok followers, holding up mugshots of suspects, telling the stories of crimes they allegedly committed—from stealing baby formula to driving drunk—and welcoming them to jail, which he calls “Grady Judd’s Bed & Breakfast.” Fans buy Grady Judd bobbleheads, Grady Judd mugs, and sweatshirts reading “God Guns and Grady Judd.” An old joke that has been repeated by Judd himself is that the most dangerous place in Polk County is between Judd and a camera. He’s a regular guest on Fox News, where he shares his outspoken views about subjects ranging from the dangers of undocumented immigrants to the peril of looters after hurricanes, and where the stories in Judd’s TikTok posts often find a national audience.  Sheriff Grady Judd is a beloved figure in Polk County, where he was just reelected to his sixth term.Melanie Metz But he claims his top priority is protecting children from sexual predators. The county’s deputies have traveled to faraway places—from Colorado to Guatemala—to extradite men accused of victimizing children in Polk County. “If you think that you’re going to physically, sexually, or emotionally abuse a child and I’m not going to get in there and protect them, you’re making a big mistake,” he told MSNBC in 2015. In 2020, President Donald Trump appointed Judd to a federal council overseeing all programs related to juvenile delinquency, and missing and exploited children. One might think that someone accused of the crimes Henry Cadle was accused of would be a prime target for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. But when Turnage spoke with him, on a patio outside the church, she kept the interview brief and light. Henry, who was 57, spoke about his relationship with Taylor with a breezy confidence. She had anger issues and could be difficult—traits he attributed to her rocky upbringing—but he loved her to death. “Does she have dad wrapped around her finger? Yes. Everybody will tell you that,” Henry said. Rather than asking him if he had sexually abused Taylor, Turnage floated a theory: “Basically, Taylor, I guess, has made up these allegations, okay? That you have been sexually abusing her.”  Henry brimmed with righteous indignation. “Why in the heck she would conjure up something like this about me, I don’t know. Only thing I’ve ever did with that kid is loved her.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Henry Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Henry_made-up-allegations.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisa Cadle was also dumbfounded by the allegations against her husband. Taylor adored Henry, Lisa told Turnage, and always begged to go with him on errands. She was quick to point out that Taylor was “mouthy” and “has been known to say things.” Turnage assured Lisa that kids had a way of making unfounded accusations “when things don’t go the way that they want it to.”  “Back when we were younger, it was, you know, ‘We’ll call [the Department of Children and Families] and say you abused me,’” Turnage said. “Now it’s, ‘We get sexually abused.’” By the time Turnage spoke to Taylor again, later that afternoon, her skepticism sounded palpable. Turnage focused on one particular inconsistency: whether Taylor actually liked going for rides with Henry. “If you’re mad because you got your phone taken away, let’s say that now and be done with it,” she said in the recorded interview. “Because I have three stories that say you like to be with your dad, you’re daddy’s little girl, you love to go with him because you like to get out of the house.” Taylor went silent. By necessity, she had developed a keen sense of the unsaid moods and whims of the adults around her. She had done the mental math when she joined Henry on the car ride the night before to visit his sister in the hospital. Taylor thought the somber occasion would keep her safe. But after the hospital and a quick stop at Taco Bell, Henry pulled into the Handy gas station and came out with a box of condoms stuffed into his front pocket, and she knew she had miscalculated.  Now, faced with an irritated deputy, Taylor realized she miscalculated again: She assumed the police would believe her. > “They’re going to pull you from your mom and your brother, and you’re going to > have to go back into foster care.” “What’s going on, Taylor?” Turnage asked. “Because you understand, if your dad goes to jail, he doesn’t come back.” There would be other consequences too, Turnage said. Her dad’s mower repair business would shut down. Her mom would lose the car while police checked it for DNA. She wouldn’t get the shoes she wanted, or the braces she needed. “They’re going to pull you from your mom and your brother, and you’re going to have to go back into foster care,” Turnage said.  A moment passed, and then another. Finally, in a small, strained voice, Taylor said, “Everything I told you earlier is not a lie.” With that, Turnage told Taylor that she was going to the regional hospital “to have a sexual assault kit done.” Taylor didn’t know what that was.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Taylor Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Taylor.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Later that night, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of a too-big hospital gown and gingerly placed her feet into the stirrups. She shivered under the bright, fluorescent lights, nauseated from hunger and exhaustion. Although a doctor had walked her through what the examination would entail, Taylor was still shocked by the cold, hard metal thing that she later learned was called a speculum. As the doctor took one swab, and then another, and then another, Taylor clenched the side of the hospital bed, knuckles white, tears streaming down her cheeks. Now 21 years old, Taylor has the same long hair and slight frame that she had when she was 12, but she no longer holds herself like she’s trying to make herself small. When we first met her in person, at an Airbnb for an interview in front of cameras and lights, she walked in as if she did this all the time, deftly setting her then-8-month-old daughter up for a nap in the bedroom before speaking, for nearly five hours straight, with the self-assurance and confidence of someone much older. She has a tattoo of the birthday of her son, who is 3 years old, in roman numerals on her left forearm, a nose ring, and dyed black hair—all decisions, she notes with a trace of pride, that she made despite Lisa’s disapproval soon after she turned 18. Taylor at home with her two children. Melanie Metz But perhaps the biggest act of defiance is that she has decided to speak publicly about what happened to her when she was 12. Asked if she wanted to use a pseudonym or just part of her name, she said no—she wants to use her full name, and she wants to share her whole story.  The way Taylor was treated—as a victim, but also as a suspect—flies in the face of best practices in handling sexual assault investigations. Her case isn’t an isolated one. In a multiyear investigation, the Center for Investigative Reporting identified hundreds of similar cases across the country in which police criminalized the very people reporting sexual assault.  > “I think from the beginning—from our first interview—she had already had her > mind made up about me. She made me feel like the monster.” Armed with hours of recorded interviews, police reports and state records stemming from her report eight years ago, Taylor simmers with fury about how Turnage handled her allegation. “I think from the beginning—from our first interview—she had already had her mind made up about me,” she says. “She made me feel like the monster.” But when she thinks about herself that night on the hospital bed, Taylor crumples. In court records from her case is a photo from the sexual assault exam, her 12-year-old self looking up at the camera from the hospital bed. “Little me,” she said recently, her voice catching as she stared into her own eyes. “Broken inside. With a look of ‘Are you listening yet? Do you believe me yet?’” Taylor’s earliest memories are of parenting her younger siblings. As a child, she gave them baths, made them food, and tucked them into bed. She was her mom’s “best friend,” she says. Taylor served as a lookout when her mom would steal drugs from her boyfriend, and she knew to pee in a cup and leave it under the bathroom sink when the probation officer came by. “I worried about everything,” she says. “I stressed about everything that, quite honestly, a child should never have to worry about.” When she was 7, amid drug use and violence at home, DCF placed Taylor into foster care, according to agency records. “I wasn’t relieved as much as I probably should’ve,” Taylor says. “It was still hard because being a child, and all you ever want is your mom.”  For the next year and a half, she bounced from foster home to foster home. It was a “scary, confusing” time, Taylor says. She desperately wanted to be reconnected with her parents and siblings, who had been placed in other homes. Her birth father had been a source of normalcy and stability before she was taken into state custody, but his drug use, too, precluded him from being cleared by DCF.  Cows graze in a field near the Cadles’ Polk County home.Melanie Metz Taylor’s tendency to assert control, key to her survival as a young child, became a liability that was pathologized in reports and case notes. Foster parents and case workers labeled her “defiant” and “bossy.” She had tantrums often and was accused of lying about little things, like stealing peanuts from the grocery store and taking another child’s phone. “Lying seems to have been a defense mechanism that has worked in the past to keep her safe,” noted one social worker in an assessment.   When Taylor was 8, Lisa and Henry “surfaced,” as it was described in a case manager’s notes. They were relatives of her birth father—Taylor didn’t really remember them—and were excited about adopting Taylor. They said their 6-year-old adoptive son wanted a big sister.   Taylor soon began making regular visits to the Cadles’ home in Polk City, partway between Tampa and Orlando. The family lived in a small mobile home surrounded by pastures and swamps, 45 minutes from the nearest Walmart. Taylor had reservations, telling staffers on her case that she was wary of moving again and scared of being rejected.  But she had little say in the matter: Two days before Taylor’s ninth birthday, her adoption was finalized. The Cadles had taken Taylor on shopping sprees and trips to SeaWorld during her weekend visits, but after the adoption, the family dynamic shifted. Discipline was harsh: Lisa was quick to smack Taylor across the mouth if she talked back, Taylor says, “but when Henry got ahold of us, it was a whole different story.” She still remembers having to wear jeans to school one sweltering day because his beating with a cooking spoon on her calves had left welts.  She felt claustrophobic in the cramped home, and begged Henry and Lisa to let her get out of the house. Lisa and her adoptive brother were homebodies, but Henry also liked to go for drives, so she went along.  It was on these long drives that he would assault Taylor, sometimes several times in a week, she says. A turnoff on an isolated backroad became his go-to spot. Across from a wilderness preserve, next to a cell tower access road, he would pull over. Taylor tried to predict and avoid situations where he would see opportunity for abuse. “If I knew we were taking a back road or anything of the sort, I didn’t want to go because I knew what would happen,” she says. “I had to be on all 10 toes, 24-7.” Fearful of going back to foster care, Taylor didn’t tell any authority figures—until that Sunday morning in July 2016, when she met Detective Melissa Turnage. A statue of a Polk County sheriff’s deputy outside the sheriff’s departmentMelanie Metz Turnage was in her ninth year with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and considered a model deputy, according to her performance reviews. Turnage’s “integrity is above reproach,” wrote her supervisor in the spring of 2015. But mistakes quickly followed. In November 2015, during an interview with a man suspected of sexually assaulting a child, Turnage failed to read the suspect a key part of his Miranda rights—an omission that resulted in the suppression of the suspect’s confession. Turnage was suspended for eight hours, according to department records.  The following month, Turnage interviewed children who alleged their father was raping them, and then left for Christmas vacation without bringing the suspect in for questioning or updating her supervisors on the status of the case. While she was away, her colleagues found out about the seriousness of the accusations and immediately arrested the suspect. “Your decision to not complete this investigation or advise me of the interview results is inexcusable,” her supervisor wrote in a letter that year. “Disclosures made by children in this case must be acted upon immediately if the investigation allows for it.”  By August 2016, Turnage was in the middle of her investigation into Taylor’s case, and she wanted to do a “clarification interview” with Taylor—at a noisy truck stop parking lot. As cars whizzed by on the highway, Taylor thought it was an odd location to meet. Perhaps, she thought, it was out of convenience—the midpoint between the sheriff’s office and Tampa, where Taylor had been crashing with Henry’s adult daughter ever since that day in church.  Leaning against her car, Turnage said she’d gone through Taylor’s phone records, and saw that she was texting continuously at the time she said she was raped. Taylor explained that she used her phone as a barrier so Henry wouldn’t talk to her during the abuse. If that was the case, asked Turnage, why didn’t Taylor alert someone to the abuse while it was occurring? Taylor said she didn’t know.  Turnage looked for Henry on surveillance footage from the gas station where he supposedly bought condoms, she told Taylor, but he wasn’t there. Taylor had been quiet, if skeptical, in her interactions with Turnage up to this point, but now her temper flared. Henry was there, Taylor said, and it wasn’t her fault if Turnage couldn’t find evidence. “I am telling the truth,” she insisted. She stormed to her sister’s car and locked herself inside. The Polk County Courthouse in Bartow, FloridaMelanie Metz Turnage concluded that there wasn’t evidence to support a criminal charge against Henry. The surveillance footage turned up nothing. The car hadn’t shown any evidence of bodily fluids. The hospital exam hadn’t found evidence of trauma. Taylor had said the abuse happened near a pile of tires on a quiet road near the Cadles’ home, but Turnage only found a busy road with no tire pile in sight. Sexual assault investigations involve sensitive gathering of information by trained professionals who understand the dynamics of abuse—ideally in neutral, safe, quiet settings with no distractions, said Jerri Sites, an expert in child abuse investigations who facilitates trainings on best practices. After listening to recordings of Turnage’s interviews, Sites concluded that they sounded like interrogations by a biased detective. “It seemed as though she was trying to pressure the child to recant,” she said. “It was really, really hard to listen to.”  Turnage didn’t bring the same skepticism to her interviews with Lisa and Henry. Her interview with Henry outside the church—the only time he was officially questioned—lasted just 20 minutes. During this time, he made a troubling admission. When asked if he would take a polygraph test, Henry declined. “I’ve had sex with a lot of people in the shower with my eyes closed, if you know what I mean,” he explained. “I’m a man.”  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Henry Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Henry_daydreaming.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If Turnage was concerned about Henry acknowledging he had sexual thoughts about his adoptive daughter, she didn’t show it. “Daydreaming about it and answering questions in reference to the allegations are two totally different things,” she told him. There were other missed opportunities during the investigation. There is no indication that Turnage asked for Henry to be forensically examined, even though the suspect’s body sometimes provides more evidence than the victim’s. When Turnage went looking for the remote road with the pile of tires, a location that Taylor described with the uncertainty of a 12-year-old who doesn’t drive, she never asked Taylor to join her to show her where it was.  Finally, Turnage erred in gathering a key piece of evidence: video of Henry buying condoms at a gas station. Surveillance footage from Henry and Taylor’s previous stop, Taco Bell, showed them leaving at 7:43 p.m. They should have arrived at the gas station about a half hour later, but confoundingly, Turnage requested footage starting 45 minutes later. In those missing 15 minutes, Henry likely would have already come and gone.  Turnage’s investigation came to a head after five months, in December 2016. She spoke with Taylor on the porch outside the Cadles’ home to deliver the news: The final results from the rape kit had come back, and there was no evidence of Henry’s DNA. “I’m not saying you’re lying,” Turnage told Taylor. “I just want to know why, if everything you said is true, why am I not finding anything?” Taylor’s voice came out as a whimper. “I don’t know,” she said. “I swear on my life it happened.” In fact, rape kits often don’t show evidence of abusers’ DNA, especially when more than 24 hours have passed since the abuse occurred, or when a condom was used—both of which applied in Taylor’s case.  “If it happened, there would be—there would be DNA found,” Turnage said. “And we didn’t find anything.”  If Taylor lived in another county, perhaps her case would have ended there: allegations made, no corroborating evidence found, no charge against the alleged abuser. But in Polk County, no wrongdoing is too small for a consequence. Sheriff Judd often quotes a phrase he learned from his late father: “Right is right, and wrong is never right.” “Polk County has a very pro-arrest outlook,” said Joel Dempsey, a detective with the office until 2018. “If charges are deemed justifiable, then [suspects] are likely going to be charged.” Inside the house, Turnage told Lisa that the sheriff’s office planned to move forward with a criminal charge against Taylor for lying to a law enforcement officer about a felony. Lisa was on board. “We know she’s mouthy, and she tries to act older than what she is,” she said. Afterward, Turnage spoke with Taylor’s adoptive sister about what Taylor’s life would look like if she were sent to the juvenile detention center. “You’re in your pretty little blue jumpsuit, with your little flip flops, and you’re housed with everybody else,” said Turnage. “She would come in and look like the pretty girl.” Hearing bits and pieces of the conversation through the sliding porch door, Taylor had the distinct feeling that she was drowning. Two days after meeting with Taylor at the Cadles’ home, Turnage filed an affidavit. The real crime wasn’t the alleged sexual abuse—it was that Taylor had given false information to a law enforcement officer, a first-degree misdemeanor. The victim of this crime, according to the affidavit, was the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Taylor Cadle, 21, wrote records requests to obtain documents and recordings from her 2016 and 2017 cases.Melanie Metz Taylor is one of hundreds of victims alleging sexual assault who have been charged with false reporting nationwide. No federal agency tracks the prevalence of false-reporting charges, but over a multiyear investigation, documented in the Emmy Award–winning film Victim/Suspect, the Center for Investigative Reporting (which produces Mother Jones and Reveal) identified more than 230 cases of reporting victims charged with crimes, originating from nearly every state. Most criminal justice experts estimate that 2 to 8 percent of sexual assault allegations are actually false. But law enforcement officers tend to assume the rate of false reporting is much higher—in part because police officers don’t always receive training on how trauma can affect memory or behavior. Through dozens of freedom of information requests, we amassed a first-of-its-kind trove of audio and video evidence documenting the police practice of criminalizing those who report sexual assault. We found examples of police officers lying, deploying interrogation techniques meant for criminal suspects that, when used on unsuspecting, traumatized people, can undercut their credibility and even cause them to recant. Of 52 cases analyzed closely, nearly two-thirds resulted in the alleged victim recanting. In nine cases, the recantation was the only evidence cited by police. Most cases centered on adults accusing other adults, largely because juvenile arrests are not usually matters of public record. But a few examples emerged of children being charged. In 2008, after an 11-year-old girl in Washington, DC, twice reported being sexually assaulted, she was charged with making a false report. But, as a Washington Post investigation detailed, detectives didn’t follow basic guidelines for how to treat victims of sexual assault. They lied to her, saying there was evidence contradicting her account, despite two medical reports confirming that she suffered genital injuries. Still, police and prosecutors wanted her punished for fabricating her report. After a plea deal, she was taken in as a ward of the District of Columbia, and spent more than two years in residential mental health facilities. In 2014, a 12-year-old Indiana girl told police that a boy forced her to have sex with him. Phone records revealed that the boy apologized to her after the incident. Still, a detective challenged her use of the word “force”—she told the boy no, she said in a recorded police interview, but he didn’t hold her down. The detective sent the case to prosecutors, who charged her with lying. We also learned of a 12-year-old girl in Polk County, Florida: Taylor. Last year, we sent Taylor a message on Facebook, explaining our investigation into police turning the tables on victims and asking if she’d like to talk about what happened to her. She immediately responded: “I’m sorry I’m shocked,” she wrote. “Is this real?” Within an hour, she called to talk. There were few public records tied to the case due to confidentiality laws meant to protect children. So Taylor wrote records requests, signed release forms, and notarized documents to obtain case files and recordings from the sheriff’s office, the juvenile court, the circuit court, the Department of Children and Families, and the Department of Juvenile Justice. Then she shared them with us. The culture of consequences that permeates the Polk County Sheriff’s Office applies to kids as well as adults. The same year as Taylor’s case, for example, the sheriff’s office accused an 11-year-old girl of lying about an attempted abduction. She, too, was charged with filing a false police report, which the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook would “help re-enforce the lesson” after she wasted police resources.  Between 2019 and 2023, more children in Polk County were charged with misdemeanor obstruction of justice—an umbrella category that includes false reporting—than in any other Florida county. Children in Polk were twice as likely to face the charge than children in the state overall, according to an analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice. Such charges may be intended to make the community safer, but they can do the opposite, said Sites, the child abuse expert. “It’s hard enough to come forward in the first place,” she said, “and if the community feels that someone might be charged, people aren’t going to come forward.” Even in cases when a child isn’t telling the truth, she said, the response should be support services to help a child understand that it’s not okay to lie—but also efforts to understand why they did so in the first place. “Something is not right if somebody’s going to go to those lengths to falsely accuse somebody,” she said. Turnage’s conclusion that Taylor was lying had bigger ramifications: DCF was supposed to conduct its own investigation, but it closed the case on the grounds that Turnage hadn’t found evidence of abuse.  The agency also appears to have used Taylor’s years of records against her. DCF records reference two allegations of sexual abuse before 2016. When Taylor was 5, her mother’s friend was arrested for sexually assaulting Taylor. And when Taylor was 11, DCF investigated a report made by her school that her gym teacher had touched her inappropriately. Taylor didn’t report the incident herself—rather, it was a rumor started by a group of girls. Taylor denied the rumor, and the case was closed with no indicators of abuse, according to the report.  > “It’s hard enough to come forward in the first place, and if the community > feels that someone might be charged, people aren’t going to come forward.” But by 2016, the details didn’t seem to matter to DCF. In its report closing the investigation into Henry’s alleged abuse, the agency noted, “There is a pattern of...reports involving Taylor with allegations of sexual abuse and being touched by other males.” Richard Wexler, who leads the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said that child protective services agencies often give adoptive families the benefit of the doubt. “Whenever a child welfare agency investigates abuse in foster care or in an adoptive home it is, in effect, investigating itself—because they put the child there in the first place,” he said. “That creates an enormous incentive to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and write no evil in the casefile.” Remarkably, the same day Turnage filed the affidavit accusing Taylor of lying, she received a disciplinary letter from a lieutenant regarding another case. After investigating the sexual assault of a minor, Turnage had arrested the wrong person. A video of the assault showed the suspect had visible tattoos, but the man she detained had none. “It is imperative that as a detective you look at the totality of the circumstances and all evidence present in developing probable cause to make an arrest,” the letter read. It concluded, “You are a valued member of this agency and I am confident this will not recur.” After four months with her adoptive sister, Taylor moved back in with the Cadles. Henry was friendly with her, full of smiles. “It was like a sticky sweet,” she says. He didn’t ask about the past four months or comment on the investigation—instead, he acted as if nothing had happened. Taylor kept to herself, holing up in her room. She wrote about her dreams in her journal, like the one where she was trapped with an alligator in a locked room. Sometimes, she’d get so upset that she’d crouch on the floor, rocking back and forth, pulling out fistfuls of hair.  She vacillated between depression, fury, and exhaustion. She worried that if she stuck to her story in the face of her criminal charge, she would be sent to juvie. “I was basically like, I have no other choice,” she says. “I have to recant my story.” In a meeting in February 2017 with Lisa, Henry, and her probation officer, Taylor said that she lied about being raped because she was mad about her cellphone being taken away. A report from the meeting reads, “Father extremely hurt by youth’s actions but forgives her.”  Three months later, on the way to the Polk County Courthouse for her arraignment, Lisa told her to “take it on the chin,” Taylor remembers. The state had offered Taylor a deal: If she pleaded guilty to her charge and completed the terms of her probation, the charge would be dismissed. Lisa and Taylor both signed a document agreeing for Taylor to “freely and voluntarily” waive her right to a lawyer and represent herself. She pleaded guilty to giving false information to a law enforcement officer.  Judge Mark Hofstad ordered probation, and signed an order for the terms: 15 hours of community service, a 7 p.m. curfew, and limits on leaving a tri-county area without permission from Taylor’s probation officer.  Taylor also had to write two apology letters: one to an unspecified officer, and the second to Henry. Without giving the words any thought, she scribbled in her journal and tore the pages out.   “Dear dad, im sorry for what i did. I didn’t stop and think of my consequences of these actions. This will not happen again + im sorry.” One evening in July 2017, a month after writing the apology letters, Taylor accompanied Henry to pick up a mower that needed repairs.  The sun was setting as they made their way home, and Henry pulled into a Dollar General to get something to drink. Taylor waited in the truck—now that she was 13, she could finally sit in front. As Henry walked out of the store, she saw that he was empty-handed, but his front pocket was bulging.  She realized several things simultaneously. The first was that he had bought condoms—which was confirmed when he got into the car and tossed a Lifestyles box in her lap. The second: She had thought that Henry would be too scared to abuse her again after all the scrutiny, but he had been emboldened. The third: She didn’t have anyone to call for help. The adults in her life—and the police—thought she was a liar.  Finally: She had to document what he did to her that night, so there would be no question about what had happened. “I had to find the evidence for them,” she says. “Because if I didn’t find the evidence for them, I wasn’t too sure they would find it.” As Henry drove, she made sure he could see that she was playing a game called Piano Tiles, tapping black piano keys as they floated across the screen. About 15 minutes into their drive, Taylor tilted the screen away from Henry for a moment and snapped a photo of the condom box.  Henry drove to the same spot as he had a year before, on the turnout of the quiet road that cut through the swamp. It was dusk outside, the road empty, the night quiet other than the chirping crickets and cows bellowing in a nearby pasture. As Henry walked around the back of the truck, Taylor recorded a six-second video panning to four crucial visuals: the radio clock reading 8:29 p.m., the back of Henry’s head, the condoms on the dashboard, and the view outside her window. Then, she says, Henry unzipped his pants and ordered her to pull down hers. “You know what to do,” he said. Taylor’s Android allowed her to take photos by swiping up anywhere on the screen. When Henry told her to hurry up with her phone, she told him to wait a second—she was just closing applications. She swiped up again and again, silently snapping photos. After it was all over, when he turned around to check for cars, she shoved the empty condom box under the seat. They began the drive home—AC pumping, pop music playing on the radio—and Taylor mentally collected more evidence: the white smear on the seat, the bushes where he threw a used tissue, the stretch of grass where he tossed unused condoms out the window as they drove. Once home, Taylor told Lisa she was taking the dogs for a walk. Standing in the yard in the dark, she deliberated. She was terrified of calling the cops. If she wasn’t believed again, surely she’d face an even harsher punishment than the first time. But if she didn’t call the cops, nothing would change. The thought, on repeat: Am I going to do it?  She dialed 911. Taylor describes the next few hours like scenes in a movie: the cars driving up, no lights or sirens, as Taylor had instructed, since Henry was sleeping. A cop’s flashlight through the backdoor. Taylor standing outside with an officer, showing the photos and video on her phone. The lights of cop cars bouncing off Henry’s vacant face as he was escorted through the yard in handcuffs. Taylor bawling after an officer asked her to go back to the godforsaken, freezing hospital in the middle of the night for another rape kit exam. > “I was fighting for my life, in a very quiet scream.” At first, Henry denied any wrongdoing. “I don’t know what the hell—why is she doing this again?” he told Polk County Detective Joel Dempsey in a recorded interview. It was only when Dempsey showed Henry the photos that Henry admitted that the photos were, in fact, of him. Henry continued to deflect blame in recorded calls from jail, insisting that he had been set up. “I was dealing with a venomous snake,” he told his sister. In another call, he insisted, “It’s not all my fault neither. Yes, I’m the adult, but it’s not all my fault.” Two days after the assault, Taylor sat through a videotaped forensic interview at a child advocacy center—the same child advocacy center and the same case worker she spoke to the year before. She spoke with urgency as she explained the evidence she had collected, still convinced that, somehow, Henry would work his way out of this.  “I mean, I really hope that they actually, like, take the time to, like, actually investigate and to listen to my side of the story before they just want to accuse me of giving false information,” Taylor told the case worker. “I tried everything. I did everything I could do.” Video TAYLOR CADLE’S 2017 FORENSIC INTERVIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBHPFQgLfSM Today, Taylor remembers this moment in vivid detail. “I was fighting for my life,” she says, “in a very quiet scream.” The next day, Henry Cadle was charged with sexually assaulting Taylor. “I don't remember any other case where the victim had the forethought or the intelligence to collect their own evidence and to be so thorough,” Dempsey said recently. “Just, unbelievable amount of presence of mind that she showed.” Assistant State Attorney Joni Batie-McGrew, who approved the original false-reporting charge against Taylor, filed a motion to vacate Taylor’s probation and guilty plea. The information Taylor had provided to the police, the motion said, “has since been determined to be true.”  The Department of Juvenile Justice sent Taylor a letter terminating her supervision, adding that it was the department’s hope that the experience was beneficial to her. In February 2019, Henry pleaded no contest to the sexual battery of a child. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Taylor still lives in Polk County, just a half hour away from where she once lived with Lisa and Henry. She stays at home with her two kids—a 3-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl—and the family’s massive pitbull mastiff while her fiancé works at an auto glass repair shop.  Motherhood comes naturally to Taylor. In the moments of chaos—when she’s trying to feed her baby and her toddler is climbing on her back and the dog is barking—she laughs. When her baby cries, she coos, “What’s wrong, girlie?” In her free time, Taylor vlogs about beauty and parenting in a way that’s refreshingly real, talking, for example, about how to wax your armpits or how dinner that night will be subs because the Walmart bread is getting stale. In October, our interview with Taylor aired on PBS NewsHour. “Why punish me?” she said on camera, with an unflinching gaze. “What did I do for you to punish me?” The video got millions of views on TikTok, and local and national publications picked up the story. Viewers flooded the comments sections of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office’s social media pages to demand justice for Taylor. But some of those comments mysteriously disappeared from view, prompting more outrage. Taylor decided to send Judd an email directly. She admired his work overall, she wrote, but she was outraged. “I thought you guys were supposed to help? Not silence a victim.” Judd has often said that the key to being a good sheriff is transparency with the public. One of his often-repeated phrases is: “If you mess up, then dress up, fess up, and fix it up.” But records show Henry Cadle’s arrest didn’t prompt any disciplinary action at the time. Judd has not responded to questions about the case publicly, or to Taylor.    Turnage didn’t respond to our attempts to reach her, and Judd’s office declined an interview. When we showed up at the sheriff’s office in August and asked to speak with Judd, we were told that a public information officer would come down to talk. Minutes later, we were told, she had been pulled into a meeting and didn’t know when she would be available. (A spokesperson told the Lakeland Ledger that the sheriff’s office wouldn’t speak to us because it “became clear they were not interested in accurately reporting an investigation that occurred in 2016.”) Florida Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, however, had more luck. A Democrat from Broward County, Book sponsored recent legislation requiring law enforcement to receive training in trauma-informed sexual assault investigations. After listening to audio of Turnage’s interviews that we shared with her, an incensed Book asked Judd for information about Taylor’s 2016 case. A life-size display of Donald Trump and Grady Judd in Polk County, constructed by a resident before the 2020 electionMelanie Metz In a letter to Book last month, Polk County Captain Dina Russell defended Turnage’s "thorough investigation” and doubled down on the same concerns with Taylor that Turnage had back in 2016: Taylor had said she didn’t like going on rides with Henry, but family members said otherwise. Henry wasn’t on the surveillance video buying condoms. Taylor was texting during the abuse, but, Russell wrote, “made no mention in her texts she was being abused.”  But after listening to a recording of an interview from the case, Russell acknowledged that Turnage’s approach didn’t meet the department’s standards. She sent Turnage a “letter of retraining” last month.  “Several of your questions and comments were inappropriate,” Russell wrote. “While your intent may have been to elicit the truth and gather essential information, referencing personal circumstances such as foster care or financial hardships can create an environment of discomfort, fear, mistrust is simply unacceptable.” The letter made no mention of the ramifications of these failures for Taylor, or the fact that Taylor was later deemed to be telling the truth. The captain’s demands of Turnage were minimal: Within a week, she was required to complete an online course on interview and interrogation techniques. The captain’s conclusion echoed the disciplinary letter Turnage received in 2016, when she arrested the wrong suspect: “I am confident you will take the appropriate steps to prevent any similar events in the future.”  Turnage is still a detective, though she’s no longer in the special victims unit. Her latest performance review noted that she’s on track to become a sergeant. Batie-McGrew, who prosecuted Taylor’s first case, also didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. But the state attorney’s office said in an email that after Taylor was proven to be telling the truth, they made a policy change: They now require that the office be consulted before charging a juvenile who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse, according to Jacob Orr, the chief assistant state attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit.  Since Taylor’s case, Orr said, the office has charged three other juveniles with falsely reporting sexual abuse. He said those cases included “irrefutable evidence proving the falsehood” of their claims, but he didn’t elaborate on how police were able to irrefutably prove that the children were not sexually abused.  For Taylor, three more children is far too many. “It should have stopped with me,” she says. “It shouldn’t have even gotten to me, but it should have stopped with me.” Once in a while, Taylor drives on the quiet road through the swamp, past the spot where Henry abused her. It’s still hard, but having her kids in the backseat makes clear how much things have changed over the past seven years. She’s no longer a child being driven there against her will, bracing herself for the worst, preparing to crouch on the floorboard if anyone drives by.  Now, she is in the driver’s seat. “It’s a sense of relief, in a way,” she says. “I’m going past this spot because this is the route I chose to take.” Melissa Lewis contributed data analysis.

Melissa Turnage approached the 12-year-old girl with the imposing affect of a cop: arms crossed, lips pursed, badge visible, tone skeptical. “So, you don’t know how many times this has happened this week?” Taylor Cadle slouched on a couch, staring at her lap and picking at her nails. That morning, in the summer of 2016, she had gotten into a fight with her adoptive parents when they took away her phone on the ride to church, on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida. A minister’s wife, noticing Taylor’s tear-stained face, pulled her into an office to ask what was going on. Taylor hadn’t been planning to tell her everything, but it all came spilling out. The minister called the police, and now Turnage, a detective with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, was standing before her. Taylor spoke tentatively, in barely more than a whisper, as she told Turnage in a recorded interview that her adoptive father, Henry Cadle, had been sexually assaulting her for years. The inappropriate touching had started when she was 9 years old, shortly after Henry and Lisa, Taylor’s great uncle and his wife, had adopted her. Over time, the abuse escalated. Now, he assaulted her “anytime he gets the chance,” she said. She didn’t like going with him on errands because it happened then, on the side of a quiet road that cut through a swamp. Standing outside the car, he would put his privates inside of her privates, she told Turnage. Taylor couldn’t say how many times he had raped her, but it had happened just the night before. He did it whenever they drove to get milk, too, which was three times a week. “That’s a lot of driving,” Turnage said. Taylor said nothing.  Turnage was embarking on the type of investigation that her boss, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, had made a core mission of his agency. Judd is a beloved figure in Polk County, where he has served as sheriff for the past two decades and was just reelected to his sixth term. Known for his tough-on-crime rhetoric and social media presence, Judd gives a near-daily “morning briefing” to his 700,000 TikTok followers, holding up mugshots of suspects, telling the stories of crimes they allegedly committed—from stealing baby formula to driving drunk—and welcoming them to jail, which he calls “Grady Judd’s Bed & Breakfast.” Fans buy Grady Judd bobbleheads, Grady Judd mugs, and sweatshirts reading “God Guns and Grady Judd.” An old joke that has been repeated by Judd himself is that the most dangerous place in Polk County is between Judd and a camera. He’s a regular guest on Fox News, where he shares his outspoken views about subjects ranging from the dangers of undocumented immigrants to the peril of looters after hurricanes, and where the stories in Judd’s TikTok posts often find a national audience.  Sheriff Grady Judd is a beloved figure in Polk County, where he was just reelected to his sixth term.Melanie Metz But he claims his top priority is protecting children from sexual predators. The county’s deputies have traveled to faraway places—from Colorado to Guatemala—to extradite men accused of victimizing children in Polk County. “If you think that you’re going to physically, sexually, or emotionally abuse a child and I’m not going to get in there and protect them, you’re making a big mistake,” he told MSNBC in 2015. In 2020, President Donald Trump appointed Judd to a federal council overseeing all programs related to juvenile delinquency, and missing and exploited children. One might think that someone accused of the crimes Henry Cadle was accused of would be a prime target for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. But when Turnage spoke with him, on a patio outside the church, she kept the interview brief and light. Henry, who was 57, spoke about his relationship with Taylor with a breezy confidence. She had anger issues and could be difficult—traits he attributed to her rocky upbringing—but he loved her to death. “Does she have dad wrapped around her finger? Yes. Everybody will tell you that,” Henry said. Rather than asking him if he had sexually abused Taylor, Turnage floated a theory: “Basically, Taylor, I guess, has made up these allegations, okay? That you have been sexually abusing her.”  Henry brimmed with righteous indignation. “Why in the heck she would conjure up something like this about me, I don’t know. Only thing I’ve ever did with that kid is loved her.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Henry Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Henry_made-up-allegations.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisa Cadle was also dumbfounded by the allegations against her husband. Taylor adored Henry, Lisa told Turnage, and always begged to go with him on errands. She was quick to point out that Taylor was “mouthy” and “has been known to say things.” Turnage assured Lisa that kids had a way of making unfounded accusations “when things don’t go the way that they want it to.”  “Back when we were younger, it was, you know, ‘We’ll call [the Department of Children and Families] and say you abused me,’” Turnage said. “Now it’s, ‘We get sexually abused.’” By the time Turnage spoke to Taylor again, later that afternoon, her skepticism sounded palpable. Turnage focused on one particular inconsistency: whether Taylor actually liked going for rides with Henry. “If you’re mad because you got your phone taken away, let’s say that now and be done with it,” she said in the recorded interview. “Because I have three stories that say you like to be with your dad, you’re daddy’s little girl, you love to go with him because you like to get out of the house.” Taylor went silent. By necessity, she had developed a keen sense of the unsaid moods and whims of the adults around her. She had done the mental math when she joined Henry on the car ride the night before to visit his sister in the hospital. Taylor thought the somber occasion would keep her safe. But after the hospital and a quick stop at Taco Bell, Henry pulled into the Handy gas station and came out with a box of condoms stuffed into his front pocket, and she knew she had miscalculated.  Now, faced with an irritated deputy, Taylor realized she miscalculated again: She assumed the police would believe her. > “They’re going to pull you from your mom and your brother, and you’re going to > have to go back into foster care.” “What’s going on, Taylor?” Turnage asked. “Because you understand, if your dad goes to jail, he doesn’t come back.” There would be other consequences too, Turnage said. Her dad’s mower repair business would shut down. Her mom would lose the car while police checked it for DNA. She wouldn’t get the shoes she wanted, or the braces she needed. “They’re going to pull you from your mom and your brother, and you’re going to have to go back into foster care,” Turnage said.  A moment passed, and then another. Finally, in a small, strained voice, Taylor said, “Everything I told you earlier is not a lie.” With that, Turnage told Taylor that she was going to the regional hospital “to have a sexual assault kit done.” Taylor didn’t know what that was.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Taylor Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Taylor.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Later that night, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of a too-big hospital gown and gingerly placed her feet into the stirrups. She shivered under the bright, fluorescent lights, nauseated from hunger and exhaustion. Although a doctor had walked her through what the examination would entail, Taylor was still shocked by the cold, hard metal thing that she later learned was called a speculum. As the doctor took one swab, and then another, and then another, Taylor clenched the side of the hospital bed, knuckles white, tears streaming down her cheeks. Now 21 years old, Taylor has the same long hair and slight frame that she had when she was 12, but she no longer holds herself like she’s trying to make herself small. When we first met her in person, at an Airbnb for an interview in front of cameras and lights, she walked in as if she did this all the time, deftly setting her then-8-month-old daughter up for a nap in the bedroom before speaking, for nearly five hours straight, with the self-assurance and confidence of someone much older. She has a tattoo of the birthday of her son, who is 3 years old, in roman numerals on her left forearm, a nose ring, and dyed black hair—all decisions, she notes with a trace of pride, that she made despite Lisa’s disapproval soon after she turned 18. Taylor at home with her two childrenMelanie Metz But perhaps the biggest act of defiance is that she has decided to speak publicly about what happened to her when she was 12. Asked if she wanted to use a pseudonym or just part of her name, she said no—she wants to use her full name, and she wants to share her whole story.  The way Taylor was treated—as a victim, but also as a suspect—flies in the face of best practices in handling sexual assault investigations. Her case isn’t an isolated one. In a multiyear investigation, the Center for Investigative Reporting identified hundreds of similar cases across the country in which police criminalized the very people reporting sexual assault.  > “I think from the beginning—from our first interview—she had already had her > mind made up about me. She made me feel like the monster.” Armed with hours of recorded interviews, police reports and state records stemming from her report eight years ago, Taylor simmers with fury about how Turnage handled her allegation. “I think from the beginning—from our first interview—she had already had her mind made up about me,” she says. “She made me feel like the monster.” But when she thinks about herself that night on the hospital bed, Taylor crumples. In court records from her case is a photo from the sexual assault exam, her 12-year-old self looking up at the camera from the hospital bed. “Little me,” she said recently, her voice catching as she stared into her own eyes. “Broken inside. With a look of ‘Are you listening yet? Do you believe me yet?’” Taylor’s earliest memories are of parenting her younger siblings. As a child, she gave them baths, made them food, and tucked them into bed. She was her mom’s “best friend,” she says. Taylor served as a lookout when her mom would steal drugs from her boyfriend, and she knew to pee in a cup and leave it under the bathroom sink when the probation officer came by. “I worried about everything,” she says. “I stressed about everything that, quite honestly, a child should never have to worry about.” When she was 7, amid drug use and violence at home, the Department of Children and Families placed Taylor into foster care, according to agency records. “I wasn’t relieved as much as I probably should’ve,” Taylor says. “It was still hard because being a child, and all you ever want is your mom.”  For the next year and a half, she bounced from foster home to foster home. It was a “scary, confusing” time, Taylor says. She desperately wanted to be reconnected with her parents and siblings, who had been placed in other homes. Her birth father had been a source of normalcy and stability before she was taken into state custody, but his drug use, too, precluded him from being cleared by DCF.  Cows graze in a field near the Cadles’ Polk County home.Melanie Metz Taylor’s tendency to assert control, key to her survival as a young child, became a liability that was pathologized in reports and case notes. Foster parents and case workers labeled her “defiant” and “bossy.” She had tantrums often and was accused of lying about little things, like stealing peanuts from the grocery store and taking another child’s phone. “Lying seems to have been a defense mechanism that has worked in the past to keep her safe,” noted one social worker in an assessment.   When Taylor was 8, Lisa and Henry “surfaced,” as it was described in a case manager’s notes. They were relatives of her birth father—Taylor didn’t really remember them—and were excited about adopting Taylor. They said their 6-year-old adoptive son wanted a big sister.   Taylor soon began making regular visits to the Cadles’ home in Polk City, partway between Tampa and Orlando. The family lived in a small mobile home surrounded by pastures and swamps, 45 minutes from the nearest Walmart. Taylor had reservations, telling staffers on her case that she was wary of moving again and scared of being rejected.  But she had little say in the matter: Two days before Taylor’s ninth birthday, her adoption was finalized. The Cadles had taken Taylor on shopping sprees and trips to SeaWorld during her weekend visits, but after the adoption, the family dynamic shifted. Discipline was harsh: Lisa was quick to smack Taylor across the mouth if she talked back, Taylor says, “but when Henry got ahold of us, it was a whole different story.” She still remembers having to wear jeans to school one sweltering day because his beating with a cooking spoon on her calves had left welts.  She felt claustrophobic in the cramped home, and begged Henry and Lisa to let her get out of the house. Lisa and her adoptive brother were homebodies, but Henry also liked to go for drives, so she went along.  It was on these long drives that he would assault Taylor, sometimes several times in a week, she says. A turnoff on an isolated backroad became his go-to spot. Across from a wilderness preserve, next to a cell tower access road, he would pull over. Taylor tried to predict and avoid situations where he would see opportunity for abuse. “If I knew we were taking a back road or anything of the sort, I didn’t want to go because I knew what would happen,” she says. “I had to be on all 10 toes, 24-7.” Fearful of going back to foster care, Taylor didn’t tell any authority figures—until that Sunday morning in July 2016, when she met Detective Melissa Turnage. A statue of a Polk County sheriff’s deputy outside the sheriff’s departmentMelanie Metz Turnage was in her ninth year with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and considered a model deputy, according to her performance reviews. Turnage’s “integrity is above reproach,” wrote her supervisor in the spring of 2015. But mistakes quickly followed. In November 2015, during an interview with a man suspected of sexually assaulting a child, Turnage failed to read the suspect a key part of his Miranda rights—an omission that resulted in the suppression of the suspect’s confession. Turnage was suspended for eight hours, according to department records.  The following month, Turnage interviewed children who alleged their father was raping them, and then left for Christmas vacation without bringing the suspect in for questioning or updating her supervisors on the status of the case. While she was away, her colleagues found out about the seriousness of the accusations and immediately arrested the suspect. “Your decision to not complete this investigation or advise me of the interview results is inexcusable,” her supervisor wrote in a letter that year. “Disclosures made by children in this case must be acted upon immediately if the investigation allows for it.”  By August 2016, Turnage was in the middle of her investigation into Taylor’s case, and she wanted to do a “clarification interview” with Taylor—at a noisy truck stop parking lot. As cars whizzed by on the highway, Taylor thought it was an odd location to meet. Perhaps, she thought, it was out of convenience—the midpoint between the sheriff’s office and Tampa, where Taylor had been crashing with Henry’s adult daughter ever since that day in church.  Leaning against her car, Turnage said she’d gone through Taylor’s phone records, and saw that she was texting continuously at the time she said she was raped. Taylor explained that she used her phone as a barrier so Henry wouldn’t talk to her during the abuse. If that was the case, asked Turnage, why didn’t Taylor alert someone to the abuse while it was occurring? Taylor said she didn’t know.  Turnage looked for Henry on surveillance footage from the gas station where he supposedly bought condoms, she told Taylor, but he wasn’t there. Taylor had been quiet, if skeptical, in her interactions with Turnage up to this point, but now her temper flared. Henry was there, Taylor said, and it wasn’t her fault if Turnage couldn’t find evidence. “I am telling the truth,” she insisted. She stormed to her sister’s car and locked herself inside. The Polk County Courthouse in Bartow, FloridaMelanie Metz Turnage concluded that there wasn’t evidence to support a criminal charge against Henry. The surveillance footage turned up nothing. The car hadn’t shown any evidence of bodily fluids. The hospital exam hadn’t found evidence of trauma. Taylor had said the abuse happened near a pile of tires on a quiet road near the Cadles’ home, but Turnage only found a busy road with no tire pile in sight. Sexual assault investigations involve sensitive gathering of information by trained professionals who understand the dynamics of abuse—ideally in neutral, safe, quiet settings with no distractions, said Jerri Sites, an expert in child abuse investigations who facilitates trainings on best practices. After listening to recordings of Turnage’s interviews, Sites concluded that they sounded like interrogations by a biased detective. “It seemed as though she was trying to pressure the child to recant,” she said. “It was really, really hard to listen to.”  Turnage didn’t bring the same skepticism to her interviews with Lisa and Henry. Her interview with Henry outside the church—the only time he was officially questioned—lasted just 20 minutes. During this time, he made a troubling admission. When asked if he would take a polygraph test, Henry declined. “I’ve had sex with a lot of people in the shower with my eyes closed, if you know what I mean,” he explained. “I’m a man.”  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To hear a clip from Detective Melissa Turnage’s interview with Henry Cadle, listen below. A transcript for this audio can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Turnage-interviewing-Henry_daydreaming.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If Turnage was concerned about Henry acknowledging he had sexual thoughts about his adoptive daughter, she didn’t show it. “Daydreaming about it and answering questions in reference to the allegations are two totally different things,” she told him. There were other missed opportunities during the investigation. There is no indication that Turnage asked for Henry to be forensically examined, even though the suspect’s body sometimes provides more evidence than the victim’s. When Turnage went looking for the remote road with the pile of tires, a location that Taylor described with the uncertainty of a 12-year-old who doesn’t drive, she never asked Taylor to join her to show her where it was.  Finally, Turnage erred in gathering a key piece of evidence: video of Henry buying condoms at a gas station. Surveillance footage from Henry and Taylor’s previous stop, Taco Bell, showed them leaving at 7:43 p.m. They should have arrived at the gas station about a half hour later, but confoundingly, Turnage requested footage starting 45 minutes later. In those missing 15 minutes, Henry likely would have already come and gone.  Turnage’s investigation came to a head after five months, in December 2016. She spoke with Taylor on the porch outside the Cadles’ home to deliver the news: The final results from the rape kit had come back, and there was no evidence of Henry’s DNA. “I’m not saying you’re lying,” Turnage told Taylor. “I just want to know why, if everything you said is true, why am I not finding anything?” Taylor’s voice came out as a whimper. “I don’t know,” she said. “I swear on my life it happened.” In fact, rape kits often don’t show evidence of abusers’ DNA, especially when more than 24 hours have passed since the abuse occurred, or when a condom was used—both of which applied in Taylor’s case.  “If it happened, there would be—there would be DNA found,” Turnage said. “And we didn’t find anything.”  If Taylor lived in another county, perhaps her case would have ended there: allegations made, no corroborating evidence found, no charge against the alleged abuser. But in Polk County, no wrongdoing is too small for a consequence. Sheriff Judd often quotes a phrase he learned from his late father: “Right is right, and wrong is never right.” “Polk County has a very pro-arrest outlook,” said Joel Dempsey, a detective with the office until 2018. “If charges are deemed justifiable, then [suspects] are likely going to be charged.” Inside the house, Turnage told Lisa that the sheriff’s office planned to move forward with a criminal charge against Taylor for lying to a law enforcement officer about a felony. Lisa was on board. “We know she’s mouthy, and she tries to act older than what she is,” she said. Afterward, Turnage spoke with Taylor’s adoptive sister about what Taylor’s life would look like if she were sent to the juvenile detention center. “You’re in your pretty little blue jumpsuit, with your little flip flops, and you’re housed with everybody else,” said Turnage. “She would come in and look like the pretty girl.” Hearing bits and pieces of the conversation through the sliding porch door, Taylor had the distinct feeling that she was drowning. Two days after meeting with Taylor at the Cadles’ home, Turnage filed an affidavit. The real crime wasn’t the alleged sexual abuse—it was that Taylor had given false information to a law enforcement officer, a first-degree misdemeanor. The victim of this crime, according to the affidavit, was the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Taylor Cadle, 21, wrote records requests to obtain documents and recordings from her 2016 and 2017 cases.Melanie Metz Taylor is one of hundreds of victims alleging sexual assault who have been charged with false reporting nationwide. No federal agency tracks the prevalence of false-reporting charges, but over a multiyear investigation, documented in the Emmy Award–winning film Victim/Suspect, the Center for Investigative Reporting (which produces Mother Jones and Reveal) identified more than 230 cases of reporting victims charged with crimes, originating from nearly every state. Most criminal justice experts estimate that 2 to 8 percent of sexual assault allegations are actually false. But law enforcement officers tend to assume the rate of false reporting is much higher—in part because police officers don’t always receive training on how trauma can affect memory or behavior. Through dozens of freedom of information requests, we amassed a first-of-its-kind trove of audio and video evidence documenting the police practice of criminalizing those who report sexual assault. We found examples of police officers lying, deploying interrogation techniques meant for criminal suspects that, when used on unsuspecting, traumatized people, can undercut their credibility and even cause them to recant. Of 52 cases analyzed closely, nearly two-thirds resulted in the alleged victim recanting. In nine cases, the recantation was the only evidence cited by police. Most cases centered on adults accusing other adults, largely because juvenile arrests are not usually matters of public record. But a few examples emerged of children being charged. In 2008, after an 11-year-old girl in Washington, DC, twice reported being sexually assaulted, she was charged with making a false report. But, as a Washington Post investigation detailed, detectives didn’t follow basic guidelines for how to treat victims of sexual assault. They lied to her, saying there was evidence contradicting her account, despite two medical reports confirming that she suffered genital injuries. Still, police and prosecutors wanted her punished for fabricating her report. After a plea deal, she was taken in as a ward of the District of Columbia, and spent more than two years in residential mental health facilities. In 2014, a 12-year-old Indiana girl told police that a boy forced her to have sex with him. Phone records revealed that the boy apologized to her after the incident. Still, a detective challenged her use of the word “force”—she told the boy no, she said in a recorded police interview, but he didn’t hold her down. The detective sent the case to prosecutors, who charged her with lying. We also learned of a 12-year-old girl in Polk County, Florida: Taylor. Last year, we sent Taylor a message on Facebook, explaining our investigation into police turning the tables on victims and asking if she’d like to talk about what happened to her. She immediately responded: “I’m sorry I’m shocked,” she wrote. “Is this real?” Within an hour, she called to talk. There were few public records tied to the case due to confidentiality laws meant to protect children. So Taylor wrote records requests, signed release forms, and notarized documents to obtain case files and recordings from the sheriff’s office, the juvenile court, the circuit court, the Department of Children and Families, and the Department of Juvenile Justice. Then she shared them with us. The culture of consequences that permeates the Polk County Sheriff’s Office applies to kids as well as adults. The same year as Taylor’s case, for example, the sheriff’s office accused an 11-year-old girl of lying about an attempted abduction. She, too, was charged with filing a false police report, which the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook would “help re-enforce the lesson” after she wasted police resources.  Between 2019 and 2023, more children in Polk County were charged with misdemeanor obstruction of justice—an umbrella category that includes false reporting—than in any other Florida county. Children in Polk were twice as likely to face the charge than children in the state overall, according to an analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice. Such charges may be intended to make the community safer, but they can do the opposite, said Sites, the child abuse expert. “It’s hard enough to come forward in the first place,” she said, “and if the community feels that someone might be charged, people aren’t going to come forward.” Even in cases when a child isn’t telling the truth, she said, the response should be support services to help a child understand that it’s not okay to lie—but also efforts to understand why they did so in the first place. “Something is not right if somebody’s going to go to those lengths to falsely accuse somebody,” she said. Turnage’s conclusion that Taylor was lying had bigger ramifications: DCF was supposed to conduct its own investigation, but it closed the case on the grounds that Turnage hadn’t found evidence of abuse.  The agency also appears to have used Taylor’s years of records against her. DCF records reference two allegations of sexual abuse before 2016. When Taylor was 5, her mother’s friend was arrested for sexually assaulting Taylor. And when Taylor was 11, DCF investigated a report made by her school that her gym teacher had touched her inappropriately. Taylor didn’t report the incident herself—rather, it was a rumor started by a group of girls. Taylor denied the rumor, and the case was closed with no indicators of abuse, according to the report.  > “It’s hard enough to come forward in the first place, and if the community > feels that someone might be charged, people aren’t going to come forward.” But by 2016, the details didn’t seem to matter to DCF. In its report closing the investigation into Henry’s alleged abuse, the agency noted, “There is a pattern of...reports involving Taylor with allegations of sexual abuse and being touched by other males.” Richard Wexler, who leads the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said that child protective services agencies often give adoptive families the benefit of the doubt. “Whenever a child welfare agency investigates abuse in foster care or in an adoptive home it is, in effect, investigating itself—because they put the child there in the first place,” he said. “That creates an enormous incentive to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and write no evil in the casefile.” Remarkably, the same day Turnage filed the affidavit accusing Taylor of lying, she received a disciplinary letter from a lieutenant regarding another case. After investigating the sexual assault of a minor, Turnage had arrested the wrong person. A video of the assault showed the suspect had visible tattoos, but the man she detained had none. “It is imperative that as a detective you look at the totality of the circumstances and all evidence present in developing probable cause to make an arrest,” the letter read. It concluded, “You are a valued member of this agency and I am confident this will not recur.” After four months with her adoptive sister, Taylor moved back in with the Cadles. Henry was friendly with her, full of smiles. “It was like a sticky sweet,” she says. He didn’t ask about the past four months or comment on the investigation—instead, he acted as if nothing had happened. Taylor kept to herself, holing up in her room. She wrote about her dreams in her journal, like the one where she was trapped with an alligator in a locked room. Sometimes, she’d get so upset that she’d crouch on the floor, rocking back and forth, pulling out fistfuls of hair.  She vacillated between depression, fury, and exhaustion. She worried that if she stuck to her story in the face of her criminal charge, she would be sent to juvie. “I was basically like, I have no other choice,” she says. “I have to recant my story.” In a meeting in February 2017 with Lisa, Henry, and her probation officer, Taylor said that she lied about being raped because she was mad about her cellphone being taken away. A report from the meeting reads, “Father extremely hurt by youth’s actions but forgives her.”  Three months later, on the way to the Polk County Courthouse for her arraignment, Lisa told her to “take it on the chin,” Taylor remembers. The state had offered Taylor a deal: If she pleaded guilty to her charge and completed the terms of her probation, the charge would be dismissed. Lisa and Taylor both signed a document agreeing for Taylor to “freely and voluntarily” waive her right to a lawyer and represent herself. She pleaded guilty to giving false information to a law enforcement officer.  Judge Mark Hofstad ordered probation, and signed an order for the terms: 15 hours of community service, a 7 p.m. curfew, and limits on leaving a tri-county area without permission from Taylor’s probation officer.  Taylor also had to write two apology letters: one to an unspecified officer, and the second to Henry. Without giving the words any thought, she scribbled in her journal and tore the pages out.   “Dear dad, im sorry for what i did. I didn’t stop and think of my consequences of these actions. This will not happen again + im sorry.” One evening in July 2017, a month after writing the apology letters, Taylor accompanied Henry to pick up a mower that needed repairs.  The sun was setting as they made their way home, and Henry pulled into a Dollar General to get something to drink. Taylor waited in the truck—now that she was 13, she could finally sit in front. As Henry walked out of the store, she saw that he was empty-handed, but his front pocket was bulging.  She realized several things simultaneously. The first was that he had bought condoms—which was confirmed when he got into the car and tossed a Lifestyles box in her lap. The second: She had thought that Henry would be too scared to abuse her again after all the scrutiny, but he had been emboldened. The third: She didn’t have anyone to call for help. The adults in her life—and the police—thought she was a liar.  Finally: She had to document what he did to her that night, so there would be no question about what had happened. “I had to find the evidence for them,” she says. “Because if I didn’t find the evidence for them, I wasn’t too sure they would find it.” As Henry drove, she made sure he could see that she was playing a game called Piano Tiles, tapping black piano keys as they floated across the screen. About 15 minutes into their drive, Taylor tilted the screen away from Henry for a moment and snapped a photo of the condom box.  Henry drove to the same spot as he had a year before, on the turnout of the quiet road that cut through the swamp. It was dusk outside, the road empty, the night quiet other than the chirping crickets and cows bellowing in a nearby pasture. As Henry walked around the back of the truck, Taylor recorded a six-second video panning to four crucial visuals: the radio clock reading 8:29 p.m., the back of Henry’s head, the condoms on the dashboard, and the view outside her window. Then, she says, Henry unzipped his pants and ordered her to pull down hers. “You know what to do,” he said. Taylor’s Android allowed her to take photos by swiping up anywhere on the screen. When Henry told her to hurry up with her phone, she told him to wait a second—she was just closing applications. She swiped up again and again, silently snapping photos. After it was all over, when he turned around to check for cars, she shoved the empty condom box under the seat. They began the drive home—AC pumping, pop music playing on the radio—and Taylor mentally collected more evidence: the white smear on the seat, the bushes where he threw a used tissue, the stretch of grass where he tossed unused condoms out the window as they drove. Once home, Taylor told Lisa she was taking the dogs for a walk. Standing in the yard in the dark, she deliberated. She was terrified of calling the cops. If she wasn’t believed again, surely she’d face an even harsher punishment than the first time. But if she didn’t call the cops, nothing would change. The thought, on repeat: Am I going to do it?  She dialed 911. Taylor describes the next few hours like scenes in a movie: the cars driving up, no lights or sirens, as Taylor had instructed, since Henry was sleeping. A cop’s flashlight through the backdoor. Taylor standing outside with an officer, showing the photos and video on her phone. The lights of cop cars bouncing off Henry’s vacant face as he was escorted through the yard in handcuffs. Taylor bawling after an officer asked her to go back to the godforsaken, freezing hospital in the middle of the night for another rape kit exam. > “I was fighting for my life, in a very quiet scream.” At first, Henry denied any wrongdoing. “I don’t know what the hell—why is she doing this again?” he told Polk County Detective Joel Dempsey in a recorded interview. It was only when Dempsey showed Henry the photos that Henry admitted that the photos were, in fact, of him. Henry continued to deflect blame in recorded calls from jail, insisting that he had been set up. “I was dealing with a venomous snake,” he told his sister. In another call, he insisted, “It’s not all my fault neither. Yes, I’m the adult, but it’s not all my fault.” Two days after the assault, Taylor sat through a videotaped forensic interview at a child advocacy center—the same child advocacy center and the same case worker she spoke to the year before. She spoke with urgency as she explained the evidence she had collected, still convinced that, somehow, Henry would work his way out of this.  “I mean, I really hope that they actually, like, take the time to, like, actually investigate and to listen to my side of the story before they just want to accuse me of giving false information,” Taylor told the case worker. “I tried everything. I did everything I could do.” Video TAYLOR CADLE’S 2017 FORENSIC INTERVIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBHPFQgLfSM Today, Taylor remembers this moment in vivid detail. “I was fighting for my life,” she says, “in a very quiet scream.” The next day, Henry Cadle was charged with sexually assaulting Taylor. “I don't remember any other case where the victim had the forethought or the intelligence to collect their own evidence and to be so thorough,” Dempsey said recently. “Just, unbelievable amount of presence of mind that she showed.” Assistant State Attorney Joni Batie-McGrew, who approved the original false-reporting charge against Taylor, filed a motion to vacate Taylor’s probation and guilty plea. The information Taylor had provided to the police, the motion said, “has since been determined to be true.”  The Department of Juvenile Justice sent Taylor a letter terminating her supervision, adding that it was the department’s hope that the experience was beneficial to her. In February 2019, Henry pleaded no contest to the sexual battery of a child. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Taylor still lives in Polk County, just a half hour away from where she once lived with Lisa and Henry. She stays at home with her two kids—a 3-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl—and the family’s massive pitbull mastiff while her fiancé works at an auto glass repair shop.  Motherhood comes naturally to Taylor. In the moments of chaos—when she’s trying to feed her baby and her toddler is climbing on her back and the dog is barking—she laughs. When her baby cries, she coos, “What’s wrong, girlie?” In her free time, Taylor vlogs about beauty and parenting in a way that’s refreshingly real, talking, for example, about how to wax your armpits or how dinner that night will be subs because the Walmart bread is getting stale. In October, our interview with Taylor aired on PBS NewsHour. “Why punish me?” she said on camera, with an unflinching gaze. “What did I do for you to punish me?” The video got millions of views on TikTok, and local and national publications picked up the story. Viewers flooded the comments sections of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office’s social media pages to demand justice for Taylor. But some of those comments mysteriously disappeared from view, prompting more outrage. Taylor decided to send Judd an email directly. She admired his work overall, she wrote, but she was outraged. “I thought you guys were supposed to help? Not silence a victim.” Judd has often said that the key to being a good sheriff is transparency with the public. One of his often-repeated phrases is: “If you mess up, then dress up, fess up, and fix it up.” But records show Henry Cadle’s arrest didn’t prompt any disciplinary action at the time. Judd has not responded to questions about the case publicly, or to Taylor.    Turnage didn’t respond to our attempts to reach her, and Judd’s office declined an interview. When we showed up at the sheriff’s office in August and asked to speak with Judd, we were told that a public information officer would come down to talk. Minutes later, we were told, she had been pulled into a meeting and didn’t know when she would be available. (A spokesperson told the Lakeland Ledger that the sheriff’s office wouldn’t speak to us because it “became clear they were not interested in accurately reporting an investigation that occurred in 2016.”) Florida Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, however, had more luck. A Democrat from Broward County, Book sponsored recent legislation requiring law enforcement to receive training in trauma-informed sexual assault investigations. After listening to audio of Turnage’s interviews that we shared with her, an incensed Book asked Judd for information about Taylor’s 2016 case. A life-size display of Donald Trump and Grady Judd in Polk County, constructed by a resident before the 2020 electionMelanie Metz In a letter to Book last month, Polk County Captain Dina Russell defended Turnage’s "thorough investigation” and doubled down on the same concerns with Taylor that Turnage had back in 2016: Taylor had said she didn’t like going on rides with Henry, but family members said otherwise. Henry wasn’t on the surveillance video buying condoms. Taylor was texting during the abuse, but, Russell wrote, “made no mention in her texts she was being abused.”  But after listening to a recording of an interview from the case, Russell acknowledged that Turnage’s approach didn’t meet the department’s standards. She sent Turnage a “letter of retraining” last month.  “Several of your questions and comments were inappropriate,” Russell wrote. “While your intent may have been to elicit the truth and gather essential information, referencing personal circumstances such as foster care or financial hardships can create an environment of discomfort, fear, mistrust is simply unacceptable.” The letter made no mention of the ramifications of these failures for Taylor, or the fact that Taylor was later deemed to be telling the truth. The captain’s demands of Turnage were minimal: Within a week, she was required to complete an online course on interview and interrogation techniques. The captain’s conclusion echoed the disciplinary letter Turnage received in 2016, when she arrested the wrong suspect: “I am confident you will take the appropriate steps to prevent any similar events in the future.”  Turnage is still a detective, though she’s no longer in the special victims unit. Her latest performance review noted that she’s on track to become a sergeant. Batie-McGrew, who prosecuted Taylor’s first case, also didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. But the state attorney’s office said in an email that after Taylor was proven to be telling the truth, they made a policy change: They now require that the office be consulted before charging a juvenile who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse, according to Jacob Orr, the chief assistant state attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit.  Since Taylor’s case, Orr said, the office has charged three other juveniles with falsely reporting sexual abuse. He said those cases included “irrefutable evidence proving the falsehood” of their claims, but he didn’t elaborate on how police were able to irrefutably prove that the children were not sexually abused.  For Taylor, three more children is far too many. “It should have stopped with me,” she says. “It shouldn’t have even gotten to me, but it should have stopped with me.” Once in a while, Taylor drives on the quiet road through the swamp, past the spot where Henry abused her. It’s still hard, but having her kids in the backseat makes clear how much things have changed over the past seven years. She’s no longer a child being driven there against her will, bracing herself for the worst, preparing to crouch on the floorboard if anyone drives by.  Now, she is in the driver’s seat. “It’s a sense of relief, in a way,” she says. “I’m going past this spot because this is the route I chose to take.” Melissa Lewis contributed data analysis.

Content warning: The story discusses childhood sexual abuse. In Polk County, Florida, where its sheriff has said his department will “go to the ends of the earth” to arrest child predators, one child victim was left wondering how she ended up on the other side of the law.  Taylor Cadle was 12 years old when she disclosed to a trusted adult that her adoptive father had been sexually abusing her since she was 9. Law enforcement was quick to respond, and almost just as quick to suspect that Taylor had made up the allegations. The lead detective, Melissa Turnage, began to question Taylor aggressively, even threatening her with returning to foster care if she continued with her allegations. “I told her time and time and time and time again that I am not the liar here,” Taylor said of the detective.  Despite Taylor’s pleas, Turnage eventually sought criminal charges against her for lying to police.  For the Emmy-winning Center for Investigative Reporting and Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect, I found hundreds of others who, like Taylor, began as alleged victims reporting sexual assaults to police, and ended up criminal suspects. My reporting uncovered shocking police missteps in several of those investigations. All of those alleged victims remain adamant that their reports were truthful.  In a surprising development in her case, Taylor vindicated herself. With our partner PBS News Hour, I went to Polk County to meet her—and hear how she finally put her abuser in prison.

When Monica Duran, the Democratic majority leader in Colorado’s House of Representatives, was 19 years old, she escaped domestic abuse with her young son and did what many survivors try to do: She fled to a shelter and sought counseling. “For so long, you hear that you are worthless,” Duran told me. The support she received after leaving, she said, helped her realize that “I was worthy, I did have something to offer.” As intimate partner violence continues to rise, such services are critical for helping survivors of domestic and sexual violence heal. But as I learned during my recent investigation for Mother Jones, they are becoming increasingly difficult to access due to a yearslong decline in federal funding from a pot of money created by the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. Colorado is not exempt. The state went from getting $31.3 million in VOCA funds in fiscal year 2017 to about $13.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, when the money was stretched to help support more than 125,000 survivors—mostly women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, Department of Justice data shows. Like most states, Colorado has tried to stave off the worst effects of the funding cuts, with state lawmakers allocating millions of dollars to affected programs. But those providers are still struggling after years of plummeting federal funding. Roshan Kalantar, executive director of Violence Free Colorado, the statewide domestic violence coalition, said some have had to close office space and eliminate legal advocacy services, which help survivors file for divorce or obtain emergency protective orders against abusers. More could soon follow. “We have at least two programs that might close,” Kalantar told me last week, “but many more will essentially limit what they can do.” Duran and Kalantar are trying to avoid those outcomes. They are among the forces behind a ballot measure that, if passed by voters next month, would create a new funding stream for victims’ services in the state by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition as of next April, when it would take effect. The measure, known as Proposition KK, would create an estimated $39 million in annual revenue, the bulk of which—$30 million—would support VOCA-funded services for victims of crime, as well as crime prevention programs in Colorado. The rest of the funds would go toward mental health services for veterans and young people and increasing security in Colorado public schools. The bill that proposed the ballot measure passed in the Colorado General Assembly in May, with most Democrats supporting it and most Republicans in opposition. Should voters support the measure, the tax would not apply to firearms vendors that make less than $20,000 annually, law enforcement agencies, or active-duty military personnel. Supporters—including Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and Everytown for Gun Safety—say Prop KK would bolster desperately needed services in the state and could serve as a model for other states trying to come up with innovative ways to respond to federal VOCA cuts. Accessing support after intimate partner violence, Duran said, “is a matter of life and death—this is how serious this is.” The tax on firearms has resulted in strenuous opposition from the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, the organization’s lobbying arm, said earlier this year that the proposal “should be seen as nothing more than an attack on the Second Amendment and those who exercise their rights under it” and pointed to a similar measure in California, which imposed an 11 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition earlier this year and has faced a court challenge for being unconstitutional. Several Colorado pro-gun groups—including the NRA state chapter, the Colorado State Shooting Association; Rocky Mountain Gun Owners; and Rally for Our Rights—have also opposed Prop KK, noting that firearms and ammunition are already taxed at 11 percent on the federal level. Ian Escalante, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said in a video posted to X: “This is the radical anti-gun left trying to punish gun owners for exercising their rights.” Spokespeople for the three state-level groups did not return requests for comment from Mother Jones. Duran, who said she’s a gun owner, said she’s “disappointed that this has been turned into a Second Amendment issue,” especially because domestic violence and the shortage of resources to support survivors is “a crisis.” Kalantar sees the tax on guns and ammunition in Prop KK as fitting, given the role that firearms often play in intimate partner violence. Research has shown that more than half of domestic violence homicides involve a gun and that access to a firearm makes that outcome more likely. Last year, there were 58 domestic violence fatalities in Colorado, more than three-quarters of which were caused by guns, according to data released this month by the state attorney general’s office. “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors, Kalantar said. > “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in > Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors. If the measure passes, the Blue Bench, a sexual assault prevention and support center in Denver that served about 7,000 survivors last year, is one of the organizations that would benefit from this new source of revenue. Executive Director Megan Carvajal says VOCA funds make up half of its budget, paying for counselors who lead therapy sessions for survivors, the 24-hour hotline they can call in a crisis, and case managers who offer support at hospitals and police stations in the aftermath of assaults. In June, Carvajal learned that the Blue Bench’s latest VOCA award would be less than $650,000—a 40 percent cut compared with the previous year’s budget—which will mean laying off three therapists, two case managers, and a community educator who visits schools to talk about informed consent and healthy relationships. The organization will also have to move out of its Denver office space by the end of the year and transition to being mostly remote, Carvajal said. A therapy room at the Blue Bench in Denver, where survivors meet with counselors. This office will close at the end of the year due to funding cuts.Courtesy of Megan Carvajal If Prop KK does not pass and organizations like the Blue Bench face even further funding cuts, Carvajal’s prediction is grim: “People are going to die.” Research suggests that more than 30 percent of women contemplate suicide after being raped and more than 10 percent attempt it. More than half of all suicides involve a firearm, and suicides by firearm are highest in states with the fewest gun laws, according to a KFF analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. For Carvajal, the work she and other advocates do is essential to reduce those statistics—but is only possible with adequate funding. “If you pick up the phone and someone says, ‘I believe you,’” Carvajal said, “it can change your mindset from wanting to die to wanting to live.” If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788, calling 800-799-SAFE (7233), or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state. If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or go to 988lifeline.org.