When a case does not receive a complete and competent law enforcement investigation, it is truly devastating. I have worked with many co-victims across the country, and sadly, this happens everywhere.
Sometimes it is due to a lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes it is because mistakes were made early in the investigation, and officials try to cover up that incompetence. Sometimes it is done to keep crime statistics down. Sometimes—yes, this really does happen—it is to protect someone who has connections to law enforcement. There are many reasons.
Even when mistakes occur, they are sometimes hidden to avoid accountability. Then the cover-up of the mistake becomes another problem, and the cover-up of the cover-up grows even worse.
Go figure. I guess the victims don’t matter, and the fact that these failures can leave a murderer walking the streets is somehow considered acceptable.
https://aequitasresource.org/ – AEquitas advances justice in cases of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, and human trafficking by equipping prosecutors and their multidisciplinary partners with the training, expertise, and strategies to hold offenders accountable and deliver fair, effective justice for survivors. We’re a team of former prosecutors and multidisciplinary experts who have decades of experience and specialized expertise, working globally to hold offenders accountable and promote victim safety.
AEquitas explains it this way:
“Typically, the perpetrator harasses and attacks the victims and the victim’s family. Often, the offender’s family members and friends attack as well (they say, ‘Don’t snitch to others’). When members of the criminal justice system do not respond appropriately to intimidation and fail to correct system deficiencies that enable opportunities to intimidate, they become inadvertent accomplices to the intimidators. The victim, victim’s or witness’s immediate family, including spouses, children, and pets, become targets.”
This is exactly what happened during the stalking. A detective attempted to speak with the main suspect, but he moved out of the house where he was living to avoid the sheriff’s department. When the detective went to the suspect’s workplace, the suspect’s father threatened the deputies.
The deputies asked the father to bring his son in for questioning. Although the suspect was over 18, his father eventually brought him in. They insisted he was innocent and threatened to sue. The sheriff’s department backed off.
After our daughter was killed, the second suspect and her father even took us to court because of my blog, morgansstalking.com. They were able to obtain free legal assistance to continue harassing us, while we were forced to spend thousands of dollars on an attorney we could not afford.
Of course, they lost—but we were still left paying the price. We already paid the highest price imaginable—we lost our daughter. Yet, we were still forced to defend ourselves simply for speaking the truth and seeking justice for her. That is the reality many victims’ families face.
We grieve, we fight, and we refuse to be silent while failures in the system allow dangerous people to remain free. Silence protects the wrong people. And as long as we have a voice, we will keep using it.