BND claims they forced reopening of Baldwin girl's case
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Belleville News-Democrat reported Sunday that the Randolph County Sheriff's Department has reopened a rape case as a result of the newspaper's investigation.
Capt. Janice Barbour, of the sheriff's department led the investigation and had recently officially closed the case.
Sheriff Fred Frederking told the Herald Tribune Monday, "There's no physical evidence that anything happened. A rape didn't take place. We don't let rapists go."
Frederking said the case has been reopened and turned over to another agency. He disputed a number of things in the story which appeared in the News-Democrat on Sunday.
Last August, a 14-year old Baldwin girl came home during the evening hours and tearfully told her grand- parent-guardians, Tim and Sandra Clossen, that while bike riding at the Kaskaskia River State Fish and Wildlife Area, she'd been led to a remote duck blind, where she was raped by a man, while four other men watched.
Alan Young, Baldwin police chief and a deputy sheriff, were called. Accompanied by other deputies and Illinois State Police troopers, Young interviewed the girl outside the mobile home of a neighbor, Peggy Minemann.
Young and other officers took the girl, escorted by her grandfather, back to the duck blind to walk through what had happened. According to Minemann, an hour and 20 minutes had passed before the girl was taken to Red Bud Regional Hospital. She was subsequently transferred to a hospital in St. Louis with rape kit capability.
The News-Democrat said that, according to Barbour, one of the reasons the case was closed was due to the girl's continual changing of the description of the events. Barbour, according to the News-Democrat, was unaware the girl's medical record indicated she has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, a condition which reportedly makes recalling details difficult.
Frederking said, "Everything she's told us has been found to be not true. She keeps giving us different suspects. She's had other issues besides this."
Barbour also told the newspaper that officers curtailed their investigation at the duck blind due to the presence of spider webs encountered while walking past bushes to the duck blind, indicating no one had been down the path for hours.
More than three months after the alleged rape, in November, a deputy went to the St. Louis hospital to obtain the results of the medical examination and social worker interview and take them to the state police laboratory in Fairview Heights for analysis.
The newspaper reported that, according to Barbour, the deputy mistakenly thought a warrant was needed to obtain the hospital reports.
In December the test results came back negative, indicating that no semen was present, which, according to the News-Democrat, Barbour said also influenced her to close the case.
However, the News-Democrat cited Polly Poskin, who the paper reported as executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, who said a negative rape kit result does not mean a rape did not occur.
Poskin criticized the initial handling of the case as "absolutely hideous." The first priority for police, the paper noted Poskin saying, in any rape case is to immediately get the victim to a hospital.
A social worker at the hospital interviewed the Baldwin girl and concluded in a three page report, "…this social worker believes the patient was sexually assaulted."
Barbour reportedly saw the social worker's report for the first time last week, one day after she'd closed the case.
Belleville reporters were allowed to interview the girl in the presence of her grandparents. The girl said she knew the man who raped her and provided his name and a description.
He was found and told the reporters he didn't know the girl, but he contradicted himself when he said he knew the girl though her mother. He admitted he was at the area fishing with a friend. The girl also identified the friend, who had previously done prison time on a burglary conviction, according to the News-Democrat.
Frederking said, "We interviewed the alleged suspects."
The girl didn't know the other three men and could only give vague descriptions of them. However, she claimed to have seen one of them at a Casey's store in Baldwin. Sandra Clossen asked the sheriff's office to check the surveillance video at the store, but said they later told her they'd not done so.
Frederking said that's not true. "We pulled the tape and there's nothing there."