Can You Be Charged With a Sex Crime Based Only on Allegations? Combs Waterkotte attorneys Christopher Combs and Joshua Boardman discuss everything you need to know about Illinois sex crime charges, including sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape, and more.
Combs Waterkotte is a leading criminal defense law firm serving Illinois and Missouri. Our Illinois defense attorneys will fight for your freedom and rights. If you are facing charges in Chicago, Cook County, or anywhere across Illinois, we can help. Call us at (312) 500-HELP 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Interview Transcript
Scott Michael Dunn: Can you be charged with a sex crimes solely on an allegation?
Christopher Combs: 100 percent.
Joshua Boardman: Absolutely, yes. And that’s often when people call the firm. And oftentimes whenever we get our initial disclosures or initial discovery, the only thing that is going to be in that is some version of an alleged victim talking to a law enforcement officer, mandated reporter and that’s it. I mean, there’s no physical evidence. It may be that the time frames are not well remembered or the specific locations are not well remembered or well researched and the only thing that’s presented to law enforcement or mandated reporter is that they’re alleging that some sort of unlawful conduct like that occurred.
Combs: And that, in all honesty, that is the best time to contact our firm, is if you get a call from law enforcement that says, “Look, we just had this allegation or someone just made a report, get in contact with us.” Because what we do is try to shut that down. And what I mean by shut that down is you do not want to be talking to law enforcement. You always want to put an attorney between you and law enforcement. Always. You can’t get into trouble for something your attorney says. So, you want the attorney to reach out to law enforcement on your behalf. You want that attorney to do everything they can to try to get some idea of the specifics of the allegation. And then we have some very highly recognized polygraph examiners that are extremely well respected. We us a gentleman who’s an ex-sex crimes detective and sits on every board. And again, while they’re not admissible in court, you sit for a polygraph, you answer the questions, you pass the polygraph, we can present that to the state’s attorney or assistant state’s attorney. And a lot of times that goes a long way in potentially shutting down a weak case or a case that’s based solely on allegations. So that is the best time to be hiring a lawyer.
Dunn: So you usually have to arraign it, right? To decide whether or not it should even go before a jury or a judge?
Combs: No, that’s not true. So the way that this works and this is, from my understanding likely in every state, is some type of report or allegation is made. the veracity and truthfulness of that statement is obviously decided by law enforcement and then ultimately a prosecutor or in Illinois a state’s attorney, assistant state’s attorney, who’s going to then make a charging decision. So this happens awfully quickly and things start to snowball very quickly. So that’s why you want to put a lawyer in between you, law enforcement, state’s attorney, so that again there’s ways to try to shut this down. Whether you want to go in and give an audio-video statement, prepare for that, whether you want to try to control the narrative, give a written statement, but the days of just kind of asserting the fifth and saying, “Look, I’m out,” doesn’t play anymore. I mean, you’ve got an allegation of some type of sex crime, you’re going to want to give your response to that because, if not, guess what’s going to the state’s attorney or assistant state’s attorney? The alleged victim’s allegation and that’s it. And without you saying something, the only thing that they’re going to be reviewing to make a charging decision is the alleged victim’s statement. So, the days of just asserting the fifth and saying, “I’m not saying anything…” Now, there are certain situations where if the evidence is overwhelming or we’re talking about DNA and things like that, you may not want to make a statement. But, more often than not, you want your statement to be included. Would you agree, Josh?
Boardman: Yes, I would. And some of the advice that I give folks when they call in and say, “Well, I don’t want to have the state’s attorney only see one of the story.” But sometimes that is unavoidable and then our job is to create that doubt and discredit that report because I think a lot of times it is a natural inclination to go in and try to rid yourself of the allegations because most of the time when people are calling in regarding allegations, they’re probably on the verge of losing their job. They probably have some form of reputational harm within their family or their community. So, the first divorce you see DCFS coming in and pulling kids out of homes or orders of protections, all of those types of things can certainly occur contemporaneously with these allegations. And that is before the criminal case even gets filed. And so all of these negative impacts on your everyday life can occur just purely based on allegations. A lot of times individuals will want to run straight to the sheriff’s department or straight to the state’s attorney’s office and try to rid themselves of these allegations. But these folks are trained in tripping you up and creating the narrative that they need to file their case or pursue their case.
Combs: Yes. Law enforcement is looking to build a case. Law enforcement is not looking to help you. They’re looking to build their case. Like Josh said, they’re trained to ask certain questions that don’t have any good answers. Like he said, trip you up, things of that nature. So, when you’ve got a sex crimes detective who’s been doing this for decades and they know how to ask questions that don’t have any good answers or they ask the same questions in slight variations, things like that, that’s where things can go south real quick.
