Judge Ignores Pleas of Woman Arrested for Protesting Sexual Assault
From the "Videos That Will Give You Nightmares" department: KLAS in Las Vegas has obtained tape of family court marshals illegally arresting a woman accusing one of them of sexual assault—as the presiding officer ignores her pleas for help or explanation.
Monica Contreras was in Las Vegas family court with her two-year-old daughter as part of a hearing in a routine divorce case when family court marshal Ron Fox told her he needed to perform a drug search on her in a waiting room:
Contreras said Fox touched her buttocks, breast, and ordered her to lift up her shirt. A later internal investigation by Clark County courts validated her claims. Contreras went back into the same courtroom and told hearing master Patricia Donninger that her requests to have a female marshal handle the search were ignored.
"I think I'd rather have a female in here and he went anyway. I was just offended by it. I'm just offended that he asked me," an upset Contreras told Donninger, who did not respond to her.
In the video, you can watch another marshal, James Kenyon, arrest Contreras as she pleads for an explanation. Fox, her assaulter, tells her it was "[b]ecause of false allegations made against a police officer"—a nonexistent charge—and after an attempt to get Contreras to retract her accusation, the officers bundle her off to jail.
Throughout the video, Donninger ignores her, playing with Contreras' daughter and barely looking up.
Contreras later filed a complaint with Court Marshal Internal Affairs, which hadn't heard of her sexual assault accusation at all. Fox was fired, and KLAS reports that an the investigation has broadened into other, unreported incidences of assault.