Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged]

SOUTH BEND, IND. — She’d been told her words would make a difference, so the teenager stood before the judge and leaned toward the microphone.

She tried not to look at the man who was pleading guilty to sexually abusing her.

“You were a police officer, and you were in uniform,” she said, reading from the victim impact statement she’d spent weeks writing. “You were on duty.”

She was 16 years old when South Bend police officer Timothy Barber showed up at the Chick-fil-A where she worked in the summer of 2021. Barber, who was 20 years older, knew the girl wanted to be a police officer. He offered to give her rides home in his patrol car.

Instead, what Barber did to her in that patrol car led to him being charged with child seduction, official misconduct, public indecency and public nudity.

“My whole life I had been taught to trust police officers. I looked up to you. I listened to you. I obeyed you,” the girl said.

With the permission of the girl and her parents, The Washington Post is identifying her by her middle name, Anne.

Anne had to miss a day of high school to be at this September 2022 hearing, where a judge would decide what punishment the police officer deserved.

The investigator and prosecutor had assured Anne and her parents that Barber would be held accountable for his actions.

Anne understood what that could look like. A week earlier, when a local softball coach was convicted of molesting one of his teenage players, he’d been sentenced to 30 years in prison for abusing his power and betraying his community.

But Barber was a police officer, and his hearing was in a different courtroom with a different judge. Those details mattered, and not just in South Bend............


https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...e7e8a6816fb1940/8/54/666b1e71f769e8755d5213aa