Anna Chambers, 19, walks in a park near the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Anna Chambers at a park most the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, Due north.Y., on January. 27, 2018.

Photograph: Nicole Craine

The young woman who goes by Anna Chambers on social media had simply a few brusque words for the public on Thursday evening. "Fuck the criminal justice system," she tweeted. Earlier that day, through a call from her lawyer, Chambers learned that the two old New York Police Department officers who had raped her while on duty would serve no jail time.

Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, the cops who resigned after the incident involving the and so-18-yr-erstwhile Chambers, were sentenced to v years of probation later on they pleaded guilty to 11 charges, including bribery and misconduct. Both men admitted to having sex with the teenage girl while she was held in their custody in 2017, an act that, cheers to Chambers's case, now constitutes rape under the law (and always constituted rape under any moral reading of the word).

"They admitted on the record to having sex with her in their van. No jail time is just outrageous. Anna is hysterical."

The pleas and the low-cal sentences — handed downward in a secretive court hearing — come at the same moment that NYPD officers and their belligerent union are protesting the long-overdue firing of Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who choked Eric Garner to death. Together with the closure of the criminal case surrounding Chambers'due south ordeal, it could not be more clear the extent to which police impunity continues to rein.

"It's completely outrageous," Chambers's attorney, Michael David, told me on the phone Thursday dark. "They admitted on the tape to having sex with her in their van. No jail fourth dimension is just outrageous. Anna is hysterical."

Chambers's case should have been lucent from the moment in September 2017 that a hospital rape kit institute semen matching Martins's and Hall's Dna inside the teenager'southward body. The young woman had been detained, handcuffed, and taken into the officers' unmarked van, having been found in possession of a small-scale amount of drugs. Chambers performed oral sex on both officers and had vaginal sexual practice with Martins. And so the cops left her on a corner.

At the time, state law did not assert the about obvious of facts: that a person in police force custody cannot consent to sex activity. The egregious legal loophole has since been closed, simply information technology was too tardily to benefit Chambers — or to stop Martins and Hall from getting away with rape. All rape charges against the officers were dropped in March as prosecutors questioned Chambers's credibility — an issue that should have had no begetting in a instance with such articulate-cut facts.

Chambers'southward attorney told me that he and his customer had non been made enlightened in advance of Th's hearing, having expected the officers' side by side court date to be on September ix. Indeed, Chambers tweeted x days ago, "I'll be in court Sept 9th!" David, the attorney, said, "They did it secretly, it wasn't even on the courtroom calendar." David only learned about the officers' plea deals when he was chosen by a New York Postal service court reporter, who in turn had been tipped off past a courtroom clerk. The secretive hearing was the latest insult poured upon Chambers'due south injurious criminal justice ordeal.

What's more, Kings County Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun handed downwardly a judgement more lenient than even the prosecution recommended.

"For the record, your honor, we do oppose a non-jail sentence," Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Frank DeGaetano stated during Thursday's brief hearing, according to the court transcript. The district chaser'southward office recommended one to three years in jail on a plea, for charges that could bear a seven-year sentence.

The judge laid culpability at Chambers's feet for her role in the and so-chosen bribery — that is, her rape at the hands of armed, uniformed police officers.

In response, the estimate accounted for his leniency in an abrupt monologue, brindled with victim-blaming. "The credibility of the victim, or the complainant," said Chun, in a notable replacement of words, "was seriously, seriously questionable, at all-time." Chun, proceeding to refer to the victim only equally "the complainant," added that "there are criminal activities on both sides." He thereby laid culpability at Chambers's feet for her function in the so-called bribery — that is, her rape at the easily of armed, uniformed police officers.

This was not Chun's kickoff high-profile plow at enforcing NYPD impunity. In 2016, in a rare instance of a criminal conviction for a killer cop, onetime Officer Peter Liang was found guilty by a jury for the manslaughter of an unarmed black human being, Akai Gurley. Liang had his gun fatigued, finger on trigger, while carrying out a vertical patrol in a darkened stairwell in Brooklyn's Pink Houses. The cop heard a racket and fired, his bullet ricocheted off a wall and struck Gurley in the eye. Neither Liang nor his partner carried out CPR. Chun deemed a sentence of five-years' probation as advisable in that case as well.

Chambers's chaser told me that he volition be writing over again to the U.Due south. Chaser's Office, seeking to pursue a federal ceremonious rights violation against Hall and Martins. His showtime letter, sent earlier this year, was non answered, and he is pessimistic about the possibility of justice on a federal level. "With this president? They won't go afterwards constabulary," said David. "When it comes to police sexual misconduct, there is no 'Me Besides.'"

Correction: Baronial 30, 2019, 1:07 p.m.
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of the story said the two officers involved in Anna Chambers's ordeal were fired afterwards the incident. The story has been updated to reflect that they resigned. The story has also been updated to reflect that the charges the officers pleaded to could conduct seven-twelvemonth, not xi-year, sentences.