Earlier complaints disclosed

Over a decade, women have accused Philadelphia police of all varieties of sexual misconduct: everything from fondling a woman's breast during a frisk, to demanding oral sex from a woman who was drunk, to raping a woman whose car had broken down.

Such accusations are normally kept secret - until last month, when 56 internal investigations into charges of police sexual misconduct became public in a court case.

In nine, the department affirmed that the attacks took place; 19 were dismissed as false.

The majority, 28 cases, could not be proven true or false, investigators said. With these, they said they often faced unresolvable he-said, she-said conflicts.

In some of the investigations, the department's tactics raise questions.

In one 2002 complaint, investigators rejected a woman's report that she had been raped by an officer at gunpoint, in part because she described his shirt as navy blue when standard uniform shirts are light blue.

Internal Affairs also faulted the woman for describing the car's backseat as "leather or vinyl" when they usually are molded plastic.

The woman ultimately recanted after investigators warned her about "the importance of being truthful," the report said.

Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project in Philadelphia, said the department bullied the woman and undermined her with "frivolous" doubts.

"The color of the officer's uniform?" she said. "The woman's getting raped, for god's sake."

The department would not comment on the case.

Tracy reviewed the investigative summary after The Inquirer provided her with copies of the reports.

Her nonprofit is among a group of advocates who now review case files from the police rape squad. This unusual scrutiny began six years ago after The Inquirer disclosed that the department had for two decades written off hundreds of rape cases without investigating them.

Tracy said that if she had reviewed the 2002 complaint, she would have flagged it. But she said the review team had never been shown any reports leveling accusations against police - and said she would push to start seeing them.

"They are sex crimes," she said. "The public trust is so much at stake here."

The reports have escaped oversight because they are completed by Internal Affairs. Tracy and the other advocates see reports only from the rape squad, now known as the Special Victims Unit.

The Inquirer was unable to identify the woman who figured in the 2002 complaint. Victims' names were removed before the reports were filed in court, as part of a suit filed by a woman who was sexually assaulted by two officers in 2002.

To build evidence for a lawsuit, her lawyers with the Philadelphia firm of Kline & Specter sought records of all sex-related investigations involving officers from the decade before the woman was attacked, 1992 to 2002. More recent files are to be turned over in coming weeks, though it was not clear whether they would become public.

City lawyers say that the files prove that sexual-abuse complaints against officers are rare, and that the department is quick to punish offenders.

Although a judge ordered the department to disclose all sex-related cases, it failed to turn over at least five - ranging from voyeurism to attempted rape. The Inquirer found references to the cases in documents and news accounts.

Most of the 56 investigations appear diligent, as described in the summaries. Investigators obtained DNA results, scrutinized time sheets and other records, and conducted numerous interviews.

But, in only one case did investigators examine other records of accused officers to look for a pattern of abuse. Nor did they ask whether supervisors knew that the accused officers might pose a threat.

In most cases, the department would not affirm that an assault took place when an accusation could not be corroborated.

However, police sustained the complaint of a 33-year-old woman who said an officer forced her to perform oral sex. She said the officer accosted her while she was walking home after being picked up for public drunkenness.

In that 2002 case, investigators believed her on no other evidence besides a semen stain on her shirt and their sense that she was telling the truth.

But investigators could not figure out who did it. She identified an officer in a photo array, but his DNA did not match.

Other complaints clearly had no merit.

In one such unfounded case from 1995, investigators learned that the alleged victim had mental problems and a history of filing false rape charges.

The woman said she was raped by an officer who climbed through her bedroom window. When police arrived to investigate, they found the window nailed shut.