An officer sexually abused a teen in his police car.How will he be punished?
Story by Jenn Abelson, Jessica Contrera and John D. Harden
Photos by Carolyn Van Houten
June 12, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.
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.
A Post investigation has found that hundreds of law enforcement officers accused of child sexual abuse have evaded serious consequences in the criminal justice system, even after they admitted to wrongdoing.
The Post identified at least 1,200 officers convicted of charges stemming from child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2020. Nearly 40 percent of those convicted officers avoided prison sentences.
In cases across the country, prosecutors offered generous plea deals to officers who admitted to raping, groping and exploiting minors, citing the need to bring cases to a close or spare victims from testifying. Prosecutors sometimes did so despite the objections of victims and their families. Then, judges approved those agreements — or made sentencing determinations of their own — that allowed abusive officers to walk out of courtrooms without any prison time.
In Missouri, a cop pleaded guilty to statutory sodomy after he was accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl at a police shooting range. In 2022, he was sentenced to five years of probation.
In Tennessee, a deputy charged with raping a 14-year-old girl faced up to 90 years in prison. When he pleaded guilty in 2022 to aggravated assault, he received three years of probation. The victim, according to the sentencing transcript, called the plea deal “comical.”
In Texas, a school police officer accused of having a 14-year-old student perform oral sex at a middle school pleaded guilty in 2017 to an “improper relationship.” After five years of probation, his record was cleared.
This is a long read, but fascinating, if not infuriating. Please continue reading on The Washington Post at:
In Indiana, Anne was determined to see Barber led out of the courtroom in handcuffs
