NEW ORLEANS-It was 5:06 a.m. on a Tuesday in September 2013 when sex crimes Detective Derrick Williams caught the call. It came from the hospital. It was a distraught woman. She was saying she had been raped.
She told Williams a familiar story of French Quarter trespass: She'd hit the clubs the night before, she said. Drank a lot. Met a man. Went to his house. And awoke the next morning to find him on top of her, naked. But she told Williams she had never said yes to sex.
Williams typed up a brief report. He labeled the incident a rape. But Case No. I-31494-13 wasn't quite ordinary. The accuser was a former cheerleader for the New Orleans Saints. And the alleged rapist was Darren Sharper, a hero of the Saints' 2009 Super Bowl team, former Pro Bowl player and broadcast analyst for the league's television network.
News of the Sept. 23, 2013 incident quickly shot up the ranks. New Orleans' police superintendent and top prosecutor were briefed. In the weeks that followed, police records show that Williams gathered evidence. He got a warrant to collect a sample of Sharper's DNA. It matched a swab taken from the woman's body. Witnesses told of seeing Sharper with the intoxicated woman at a club, and later at his condo. Video footage confirmed Sharper and the woman had been together.
It wasn't enough for the district attorney's office. This was a "heater" - police shorthand for a high profile case. Prosecutors were hesitant to move too quickly on a local football hero with deep pockets and savvy lawyers, according to two individuals with knowledge of the investigation. They held off on an arrest warrant.
"If his name was John Brown, he would have been in jail," one criminal justice official with knowledge of the case said. "If a woman says, 'He's the guy that raped me,' and you have corroborating evidence to show they were together and she went to the hospital and she can identify him, that guy goes to jail."
Sharper did not - and continued an unchecked crime spree that ended only with his arrest in Los Angeles last year after sexually assaulting four women in 24 hours. In March, Sharper owned up to his savagery. He agreed to plead guilty or no contest to raping or attempting to rape nine women in four states. The pending deal allows his possible release after serving half of a 20-year sentence - a strikingly light punishment that has drawn widespread criticism.
Sharper's rampage of druggings and rapes could have been prevented, according to a two-month investigation by ProPublica and The New Orleans Advocate based on police records in five states, hundreds of pages of court documents and dozens of interviews across the country.
Nine women reported being raped or drugged by Sharper to four different agencies before his January 2014 capture. But police and prosecutors along the way failed to investigate fully the women's allegations. They made no arrests. Some victims and eyewitnesses felt their claims were downplayed. Corroborating evidence, including DNA matches and video surveillance, was minimized or put on hold.
Perhaps most critically, police did not inquire into Sharper's history. Had they done so, they would have detected a chilling predatory pattern that strongly bolstered the women's accounts.
Sharper typically chose victims who were white women in their early 20s, records show. He picked them up in pairs at nightclubs, and took them home to his hotel or residence. Sharper had drinks with them, sometimes lacing drinks he gave the women with drugs that rendered them unconscious.
The ProPublica and Advocate investigation thus reveals wider problems in the prosecution of sexual assaults in America. More than 20 years after Congress and state legislatures reformed laws to put more rapists in prison, police and prosecutors do not take full advantage of the tools at their disposal.
One key part of the change was to make it easier to use a suspect's history of sexual assaults at trial. But prosecutors and police often do not seek out other possible victims. One recent assessment called the reform effort "a failure."
The FBI also created a database to contain detailed case descriptions to help police capture serial rapists who operate across state lines. But it is seldom used. Of 79,770 rapes reported to police in 2013, only 240 cases were entered into the database - 0.3 percent.
Today, studies show that only about one in three victims report sexual assaults in the first place. Of those reports, Department of Justice statistics show, less than 40 percent result in an arrest, a far lower figure than for other major crimes such as murder or aggravated assault.
"We do an abysmal job of investigating and prosecuting rape," said Kim Lonsway, the research director for End Violence Against Women International, a leading police training organization. "There are failures at all levels."
To be sure, deep-seated societal attitudes make rape uniquely difficult to prosecute. Victims are ashamed or afraid to report it. Police and prosecutors can be reluctant to pursue it. Cases involving drugs and alcohol can turn on whether victims consented to sex, adding to the complexity.
And each of the cases involving Sharper, taken in isolation, presented prosecutors with hurdles. In secretly recorded phone calls with his victims, Sharper didn't make incriminating statements. He moved fast, in one city one day and in another the next. He drugged many of his victims with powerful amnesiacs, resulting in cloudy or even non-existent memories.
But taken as a whole, the Sharper case underscores American law enforcement's trouble with solving rape cases: Investigations are often cursory, sometimes incompetent, frequently done in ignorance of the suspect's past sex assault history.
Sharper's victims suffered the failures most. With Sharper, they encountered a man practiced in defense and deception. With police and prosecutors, they found deference toward the accused, and what often felt like disbelief concerning their claims.
ProPublica and The New Orleans Advocate contacted five of Sharper's alleged victims. Except for brief interviews with two women, none wanted to discuss the allegations. And none wanted their names used.
"It's pretty black and white," one woman said about the police. "They didn't do their job."
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He played his last game for the Saints on January 8, 2011.
Two months later, at 10:12 a.m. on March 18, 2011, Miami Beach police got a call from the rape crisis unit in Miami's sprawling Jackson Memorial Hospital. Two women had arrived that morning asking for rape examinations. Officer Alejandro Fernandez was dispatched to interview them.
Fernandez was new to the job: he'd been sworn in as a probationary police officer a month earlier. When he arrived, Fernandez interviewed two college students from the University of Georgia in Athens. They told the following story, according to police records...
Allegations and Charges Against Darren Sharper
- Jan. 8, 2011: Darren Sharper plays in his final NFL game as a member of the New Orleans Saints, a playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks. He would officially retire at the end of 2011 after 14 seasons, finishing with 63 career interceptions and 13 defensive touchdowns.
- March 18, 2011: Two women file a report with the Miami Beach Police Department alleging sexual assault at Sharper's condo.
- March 23, 2011: Miami Beach police close the investigation, classifying it as "miscellaneous/non criminal." They later destroy the rape kits.
- Feb. 2, 2013: Sharper allegedly helps to drug a woman the night of a pre-Super Bowl party in New Orleans. The woman is allegedly sexually assaulted by Brandon Licciardi, Sharper's friend and a St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's deputy.
- Aug. 31, 2013: Sharper allegedly rapes a woman in New Orleans.
- Sept. 23, 2013: Sharper and Licciardi allegedly drug two women in New Orleans. Sharper and accomplice Erik Nunez then rape the women, authorities say. One victim files a report with the New Orleans Police Department.
- Oct. 30, 2013: Sharper meets two women at a West Hollywood nightclub, takes them to his hotel room, drugs them and rapes one of the women.
- Nov. 7, 2013: One of Sharper's victims from West Hollywood reports the assault to the Los Angeles Police Department. Detective John Macchiarella opens an investigation.
- Nov. 20, 2013: Sharper drugs three Arizona State University female students in Tempe, Ariz., and rapes two of them. Victims get sexual assault examinations within 12 hours and file report with Tempe Police Department.
- Jan. 14, 2014: Sharper picks up two women at same West Hollywood nightclub, drugs both and rapes one at his hotel. Victims report the incident to Los Angeles police and receive rape examinations.
- Jan. 15, 2014: Sharper meets two women and a man in a Las Vegas club, drugs all three. With the women back in his hotel room and unconscious, Sharper sexually assaults both.
- Jan. 17, 2014: Los Angeles police arrest Sharper on two counts of sexual assault.
- Feb. 27, 2014: New Orleans police issue arrest warrant for Sharper on two rape counts.
- March 11, 2014: Grand jury in Arizona files criminal charges against Sharper in Tempe case with two counts of administering dangerous drugs and two counts of sex assault.
- Dec. 12, 2014: U.S. Attorney announces six count indictment against Sharper and Licciardi in New Orleans drugging and rape cases. That same day, the New Orleans District Attorney's office files similar charges against Licciardi, Nunez and Sharper.
- March 20, 2015: Prosecutors in Las Vegas file two sex assault charges against Sharper.
- March 23, 2015: Sharper strikes "global" plea deal to settle criminal cases in California, Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada.
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On the morning of March 23, Darren Sharper walked into a windowless courtroom in downtown Los Angeles in a gray, pinstripe suit. Judge Michael Pastor reviewed the deal with Sharper.
Looking down, Pastor asked: "Are you entering each plea freely and voluntarily?"
"Yes sir," Sharper responded.
"Do you realize that this is a final answer?" Pastor asked.
"Yes sir," Sharper answered.
Suddenly, it was easy to see.
The women had been right.
Sharper was a rapist.