Sexual Offenses

At an SMU Student's Rape Trial, Glimpses of the School's Secretive Justice System

Last fall, 20-year-old SMU junior Donald Cuba was indicted on charges of raping a fellow student in a dorm room. He was one of two SMU students charged with sexual assault that year (both in the same month, in fact). The other student, J.D. Mahaffey, saw his charges dropped by the state back in Marc ... More >>

The Girl Who Accused Highland Park Baseball Star Ryan Romo of Rape is Now Suing Him

The 16-year-old girl who accused a former Highland Park baseball star of rape is now countersuing him in civil court. In March, after a grand jury declined to indict Ryan Romo on rape charges, the Romo family sued his accuser and her family, claiming, among other things, defamation and negligent ... More >>

Meet Patrick Welsh, the Dallas PD Sergeant Who's Devoted His Career to Solving Rape Cases Gone Cold

It was the middle of the night when the girl, 12, peeked her head around her bedroom door and saw the man coming up the stairs. He was a stranger, tall and with a gap between his teeth. He made her take off her shirt before he tied her up and raped her at knifepoint amongst her stuffed animals. Then ... More >>

Prosecutors Drop Case Against John David Mahaffey, SMU Student Accused of Rape

The Dallas County District Attorney's office has dismissed its case against John David Mahaffey, the SMU student arrested in September and accused of forcing another male student to perform oral sex. Prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the case on March 14. The one-page request says, simply: "U ... More >>

Grand Jury Declines to Indict Highland Park Student After Rape Accusation

A Dallas County grand jury has declined to indict a prominent Highland Park High School student who was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl after a concert last fall. Ryan Romo, 18, was arrested in October, accused of raping a younger female acquaintance in the back of his Chevy Tahoe after a Ghos ... More >>

Police Say a 5-Year-Old Boy Raped His 4-Year-Old Classmate at Their Elementary School

Yesterday at 11 a.m., Dallas police were called to Forest Lane Academy, a Richardson ISD elementary school, to investigate a sexual assault. They made no arrests, but they did classify the incident as an aggravated sexual assault and completed a report noting that the "susp[ect] penetrated juvenile ... More >>

Chief Brown's Increasingly Hollow Response to DPD's Glaring Problems

On Sunday, the Morning News' Tanya Eiserer took a lengthy peek at DPD staffing trends; what she found can best be described as alarming. Over the past two years, the number of detectives assigned to work the city's most pressing crimes has plummeted by 46 percent. The number of homicide detectives ... More >>

Dueling Sex-Assault Claims Killed a Satanic Church; Now its Pastor Wants to Open in Dallas

The Church of the IV Majesties imploded two years ago in a very public way. The self-described Satanic church had been planning a staged exorcism at the Oklahoma City Civic Center. Then, a month before the event, the church's co-founders had a falling out. One of the founders, James Hale, outed the ... More >>

Three More Dallas Cops Were Fired Yesterday

Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown, who's made a habit of announcing department firings on the DPD Facebook page, announced three more firings late yesterday, including one officer accused of molesting a relative in Rains County. Here's the rundown: Officer Zenae Humphries of the South Cen ... More >>

The Myth of the All-Girl, Pimp-Controlled Trafficking Trade

Lost Boys: New child-sex-trafficking research demolishes the stereotype of the underage sex worker.

Big Shoes to Fill

Small-Town Muckraker Joey Dauben Will Run the World Some Day. Just Ask Him.

In the little towns outside of Dallas, publisher and aspiring politician Joey Dauben is on a crusade to expose abuses of power, civic mischief and -- most of all -- himself.

Tomorrow, Dallas County Will Clear Name of Man Imprisoned For Assault He Didn't Commit

​Speaking of the innocent spending time behind bars ...Meet Hilliard Fields. On August 27, 1997, Fields, who was then in his mid-20s, told prosecutors he was guilty of sexually assaulting a minor. Fields was also facing an unrelated drug charge, and authorities told him: Look, just plead guilty to ... More >>

Downtown Last Weekend, SlutWalk Urges End to Victim-Blaming Culture Surrounding Rape

Photos by Patrick Michels About a hundred women and men rallied up at the JFK Memorial Plaza over the weekend for Dallas's very own SlutWalk, a stroll through downtown to fight the popular notion that it's fair to blame a woman for anything from cat-calls to sexual assault based on how she's dressed ... More >>

iWatch So You Don't Have To: Liveblogging Today's Public Safety Committee Meeting

​Afternoon, Friends of Unfair Park. Here I am in bristly cold City Hall prepared to bring you the latest in how Dallas is going to keep you safe. Or, how you're going to keep your damn selves safe with iWatch. Between that and Dwaine Caraway's magic crime-reducing cameras, we should be set. See so ... More >>

Judge Who Had Chance to Free Stephen Brodie in '94 Gets Another Chance This Morning

Mark GrahamJudge Lena Levario​Jeff Carlton at the Associated Press was the one who, in July, first offered the story of Stephen Brodie -- the deaf man who, in 1991, was detained by Richardson police for stealing quarters out of a soda machine and ended up pleading guilty to the unsolved sexual ass ... More >>

Woodrow Wilson English Teacher Charged With Possessing Child Porn Pleads Guilty

​Back in June, the U.S. Attorney's Office sent word: Jon Leslie Lyons, a 44-year-old who'd been teaching English at Woodrow Wilson High School for three years, had been arrested and charged with keeping child pornography, some involving children under the age of 5, on his home computer and iPhone. ... More >>

Trying to Understand What Led to DPD Chief's Comments About Drinking and Date Rape

Illustration by Andrea Grimes​Update at 8:35 p.m.: The Dallas Police Department has sent a statement from Chief David Brown regarding his comments about the increase in the number of reported sexual assaults this year -- and the reaction to them. It reads, in full:Chief Brown wants to emphasize, " ... More >>

Roll Another Number While We Liveblog Today's Public Safety Committee Meeting

​Both Dwaine Caraway and I hope you had a fantastic summer vacation, but it is now time to get down to business at today's Public Safety Committee meeting. First up, Dallas Police Chief David Brown's crime report, wherein he is happy to report that overall crime is down 6.1%, due perhaps to the su ... More >>

Dallas D.A.'s Office Looking Into Whether Richardson PD Put Wrong Man in Prison in '93

​This morning, the Associated Press tells the tale of Stephen Brodie, a deaf inmate serving time in the TDCJ's Estelle Unit till 2012 -- and, quite possibly, yet another innocent man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In 1991, Richardson police detained a 19-year-old Brodie for "stealing qua ... More >>

A Dallas Police Officer Is In Jail After Being Charged With Aggravated Sexual Assault

​Jeffrey Thorn joined the Dallas Police Department in December 2008. During his probationary period, he was assigned to the Southeast Patrol Division. But, at this very moment, Thorn is in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after having been arrested by Dallas police on a sexual assault charge today. ... More >>

Can Virtual Reality Combat Real-Life Sexual Assault? Two SMU Profs Certainly Think So.

When it comes to sexual assault, victim-blaming is rampant on college campuses (and, well, elsewhere -- remember when it was this 15-year-old girl's fault she was gang raped in California last year?). Girls who wear certain clothing, drink too much alcohol or travel alone to parties are often believ ... More >>

Convicted in Cali and On Trial in NYC, Anand Jon's Next Stop Is a Dallas County Courtroom

Anand Jon Alexander with former client Paris Hilton​It's been almost three years since we first told you the sordid story of Anand Jon Alexander, the one-time designer to the stars who came to town promising women, many of them under-age, modeling jobs right before he sexually assaulted them. Wome ... More >>

Geek Squad to the Rescue

​Twenty-nine-year-old Matthew Ruff, a bio-medical engineer, interned last year at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal child pornography charge, which will result in at least a few years in federal prison, lifetime supervision and up to a $250,000 fine shou ... More >>

With Sexual Assault Charges Pending in Dallas, Fashion Designer Gets 59 to Life in L.A.

Anand Jon Alexander with Paula Abdul, who he claimed as a client​Much thanks to the many Friends of Unfair Park who've sent an update concerning the fate of fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander, about whom we first wrote in May 2007 in the paper version of Unfair Park. In that piece, several aspir ... More >>

Doubt

Doubt wags the finger of moral relativism

A Disturbing, But Hopeful, Report on Dallas and Its "Prostituted Youth"

What in the Hell is Going on in Wilmer, and How Do We Get In On It?

For the 16th Time, a Dallas County Prisoner Has Been Exonerated Following DNA Testing

Pentecostal Preacher Sherman Allen Turns Out to Be Reverend Spanky

The Fort Worth preacher is accused of beating, threatening and assaulting women for more than 20 years

Life After DNA Exoneration

After 27 years in prison, DNA exoneree Charles Chatman tries to pick up the pieces and catch up with a world that has left him behind

Two Years Later, Texas Monthly Gets an Answer to a DNA Question

Chains of Evidence

How did Dallas convict so many innocents? With faulty eyewitnesses, sloppy police work and overzealous prosecutors.

DA Watkins: "Justice at Its Best"

The Reverend Freak

Inside the Terry Hornbuckle case

After the Flood

Plus: Still Living, Wrist Slap, We Screwed Up

Oklahoma Railroad

Accused of killing a cop's son, Emily Dowdy learns the hard way that in Oklahoma City justice isn't blind. It works for the prosecution.

Family Portrait

Andrew Jarecki captured the Friedmans, perhaps to free them

Just Jump

Pack your parachute for a good cause

1-Hour Arrest

When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police.

Gale Farce

Kevin isn't the only thing Spacey in this overlong death-penalty drama

Tortured Souls

Horribly abused children of the Hare Krishna movement seek justice--and peace--through a multimillion-dollar lawsuit

The Angel of Juarez

Hundreds of poor Mexican girls have been abducted, raped, and murdered on the streets of Ciudad Juarez. They were forgotten and mostly ignored by authorities until Esther Chavez came along.

Sects and Lies

Did the isolated, unhappy life of an Arlington family of Jehovah's Witnesses breed false charges of sexual abuse? Absolutely, says a family member who never got a chance to tell her side of the story.

Big man, big mouth

Nate Newton holds forth on race, whores, and getting along with reporters

Handle With Care

Sex offender David Rivera was willing to do almost anything to stay out of jail. Except masturbate.

Out of bounds

Youth-soccer coach indicted for sexual assault of one his players

Alicia Comes Home (Part I)

How a determined father found his abducted daughter

BeloWatch