Judge dismisses rape victim's suit against Arlington Heights cop
A visibly drunk girl who was raped shortly after an Arlington Heights police officer saw a man and two teenagers holding her up — but let them go — cannot sue the officer, according to a federal judge's ruling.
The girl, who filed the suit under the name “Jane Doe,” sued officer Mark Del Boccio and Arlington Heights about a year ago after the May 6, 2009, assault at the Mansions of Mountshire apartments on the border of Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect.
U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang dismissed all eight counts of the lawsuit last week, in a decision that presumed the facts of the lawsuit to be true, as follows:
Officer Del Boccio responded to the complex after the building manager saw the victim and three males drinking vodka straight from the bottle and smoking near a Dumpster.
When Del Boccio arrived, he saw that the girl could not stand and one of the males was holding her up. He let the group go after they said they were taking her home.
Del Boccio then told a police dispatcher that the subjects of the 911 call were gone when he arrived and called off an officer who was responding to the scene.
The building manager called 911 again when he saw the males carrying the victim into a laundry room, and Mount Prospect police officers responding observed one of the males raping the girl.
The judge's ruling dismissed the lawsuit because the officer “would not reasonably have known that calling off another officer or falsely relaying to dispatch that the scene was clear could violate the constitutional rights of a victim of third-party violence.”
In July 2010, Christopher Balodimas, 23, of Buffalo Grove was convicted of criminal sexual assault for his role in the rape. He is serving a six-year sentence and is up for parole in September 2014.
Del Boccio never asked for any of the three males' identification when he arrived at the apartment complex, and Balodimas was on probation for a robbery at the time, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also accused Arlington Heights of misconduct in hiring Del Boccio, who struck two children with his squad car as a Chicago police officer, killing one and permanently injuring the other in 2004.
The lawsuit claimed Del Boccio put on his siren and sped the wrong way down the street “because he was in a traffic jam.”
The federal ruling also dismissed those counts in the lawsuit, stating “Doe” “must allege facts” to support the claim that the village failed to perform a proper background check.
In July 2011, the Chicago City Council agreed to pay $6.5 million to the victims who were struck by the squad car.
Lawsuit: Officer hit two kids with squad car in 2004