Police Say Attention Seeking Young Woman Lied About Highly Publicized Sex Attack But Refuse To Lay Charges!
South Asians-Indo-Canadians in Abbotsford should take police to task for wrongfully putting the community through bad publicity all over BC, nationally and internationally and now want to forget everything. It’s important for police to inquire why the 19-year-old woman described the suspects as South Asian specifically and the ramifications of such racial description in a city with large South Asian-Punjabi population. At minimum, the police should do is apologize to the South Asian community and get the fake sex attack victim to do the same, including getting some diversity training as well as doing community service at an Abbotsford Gurdwara or community organization.
By R. Paul Dhillon With News Files
ABBOTSFORD – A highly publicized sex attack story involving two South Asian men from Abbotsford, which made the rounds with police sketches of the imaginary suspects, was all a lie told by a attention seeking teen, Police say – but they are not going to lay charges.
South Asians-Indo-Canadians in Abbotsford should take police to task for wrongfully putting the community through bad publicity all over BC, nationally and internationally and now want to forget everything.
At minimum, the police should do is apologize to the South Asian community and get the fake sex attack victim to do the same, including getting some diversity training as well as doing community service at an Abbotsford Gurdwara or community organization.
Abbotsford police put out several releases, including sketches of the South Asian suspects, about a sex attack involving a 19-year-old woman who claimed to have been forced into a car in the city’s downtown core and sexually assaulted by two South Asian men.
It’s important for police to inquire why she described the suspects as South Asian specifically and the ramifications of such racial description in a city with large South Asian-Punjabi population, which obviously brought negative publicity to the community and could have possibly lead to or did lead to racist attacks from the extreme fringes of the White community.
There is ample proof that possibly racist and non-racist White folks were flooding the city police with sighting of South Asian men who fitted the police descriptions and sketches highlighted in media reports.
And police put in a lot of resources into the case, including unnecessarily putting members of the South Asian community through the ringer. They interviewed several possible South Asian men and the police should apologize to them for making them out to be criminals. This is quite serious matter and could have led to racial tensions in the diversely populated city.
Const. Ian MacDonald said police first became suspicious about two weeks ago, when portions of the teen’s story began changing.
Up until then, she had been a credible witness who appeared traumatized and offered specific details about the crime, reported Abby News.
“There was no reason for us to doubt the victim,” MacDonald said.
The woman told investigators that she had been walking in the area of Pauline and Homeview streets on the evening of Feb. 2, when two South Asian men in a white pickup truck pulled up beside her.
She said the passenger grabbed her and pushed her into the back seat. The driver then parked the vehicle a short distance away, and both men sexually assaulted her before pushing her out of the truck in a parking lot in the 34000 block of Gladys Avenue, the woman said.
She went to Abbotsford Police with her story the following day.
Constable Ian MacDonald told the media the force dedicated a lot of resources to the five-month case, gathering tips, creating composite sketches and issuing two media releases, reported 1130 News.
Officers went door-to-door for information, extra patrols were added in the downtown core, and investigators combed police records searching for potential links to similar incidents in other communities.
MacDonald said tips from the public came in “by the bucketload,” including one that a South Asian man wearing a military-style dog tag had been seen frequenting the area of the assault.
Several “people of interest” were interviewed as the potential perpetrators.
“This was a major, major investigation,” he said, adding that the report on the incident grew to 600 pages in the five months since the woman first came to police.
He added the police report alone is more than 600 pages.
But earlier this month, MacDonald says officers determined the woman’s story was a lie.
“We were receiving legitimate tips from concerned citizens and witnesses about a white pickup truck and about two South Asian males who were allegedly cruising around the downtown core and certainly, that ended up expanding the investigation… ultimately to come to this conclusion that the entire thing was bogus,” he explains.
MacDonald didn’t get into the South Asian angle to the story but gave this explanation for the girl’s actions: “I would suggest that there probably is a mental health component at play here.”
“In addition, I think the things that we commonly see in incidents like this, which are thankfully rare, are a little bit of a desire to seek attention, and then the realization that once the fabrication, and in this case a rather elaborate fabrication, is laid out it’s difficult to turn that ship around,” he added.
MacDonald notes police have had “minimal amounts of interaction” with the young woman. He says he doubts police will recoup any of the money spent on their investigation or be able to have a charge laid against her.
“We share this information not to cause shame or embarrassment for the woman but to provide this important conclusion to the citizens of Abbotsford who were undoubtedly impacted. Incidents such as this are obviously a tremendous waste of police resources but they also create concern and fear for people,” he said.
He says they still want people to call them and “and we commend the courage that it takes for legitimate victims to come forward.”
This isn’t the first time Abbotsford Police have handled a sex assault file that has resulted in the “victim” admitting she lied.
In July 2009, a 23-year-old woman reported that she had been sexually assaulted by a man who forced his way into her apartment from the balcony. Police issued a press release about the “balcony rapist” and described the assailant as a heavy-set Caucasian man.
The woman admitted she had lied about two weeks later, when police questioned details of her account.
Tammi Zall was charged with public mischief. She pleaded guilty the following year and received a four-month conditional sentence (house arrest).
