Help wanted: One judge, one prosecutor

PORT CLINTON — An upcoming state trial of a woman charged with allegedly falsely claiming she was raped continues to cause reverberations across the justice system. Yost Register photo Ottawa County prosecutor James VanEerten last week asked the court to appoint a special prosecutor to review a 2008 rape investigation that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says is unrelated to his case against Arica Waters, 29, who is charged with felony falsification for allegedly lying about being raped in July 2020. But both women, and a third alleged victim, all have identified the same man as their attacker. He's the man Yost intends to put on the witness stand as the victim of Waters' false story about being raped. Yost wants a judge to exclude the other women from testifying at Waters' trial, and he wants to prohibit Waters' attorney from cross-examining the man about the other rape complaints. VanEerten initially asked Yost to look at the 2008 investigation and determine if it was mishandled. But Yost declined, saying it was not a priority for his office. A special prosecutor who works for Yost later filed a court motion stating the woman in 2008 was a "willing participant" in a threesome with the man and not a rape victim. He asked a judge to exclude the prior rape complaints from being introduced as evidence at Waters' trial, cherrypicking information from the 2008 investigative report. The special prosecutor working for Yost misattributed and took the statement about being a willing participant out of context in the court motion. He also ignored other information that supported the 2008 woman's contention she was raped, including a six-page handwritten statement in the report that she wrote in which she repeats the claim, describing what happened. The judge, who has not seen the note or the investigative report, agreed to exclude the report from the trial. Hush now, keep quiet Yost's felony case against a woman — Waters — for falsely accusing a man of rape could be the first of its kind in Ohio going to trial, and the attorney general refuses to comment on the message he's sending by pursuing it. Yost also refuses to comment about why he's ignoring the other rape complaints. Advocates fear the message he's sending rape victims is a message like this: If you report what happens, and a prosecutor doesn't believe you, he might decide to seek charges against you and send you to prison. If she's convicted, Waters, a former police officer, could be sentenced to upward of 18 months in prison. Advocates say fewer victims will be willing to report sexual assaults as a result of what the attorney general is doing. Yost, they say, is using two of the most common tools that men use to intimidate women to avoid prosecution: threatening to charge them with lying and alleging they "wanted it." Carol O'Brien, Yost's chief counsel, also refuses to respond to inquiries about why the women who say they were raped are being ignored. VanEerten asked the court to appoint a special prosecutor after Yost refused the request to investigate if the 2008 complaint was mishandled. VanEerten had received information that Ottawa County Sheriff Steve Levorchick, who was a captain with the sheriff's office at the time, discouraged the woman from pursuing charges and withheld information about the prior complaint when the man was being investigated last year. He failed to tell the detective investigating the man last year about the prior investigation. Register file photo/ Ottawa County Sheriff Steve Levorchick Levorchick said he took charge of the 2008 rape investigation because he was personal friends with the woman's family. He allegedly told the victim the man she accused "had three lawyers and was going to say she was a willing participant." Levorchick also was teammates with a second man who allegedly participated in having sex with the woman, which Yost described as a consensual threesome in his court filing. Follow along Ottawa County Judge Bruce Winters, who earlier in October recused himself from Waters' trial without explanation after presiding over it for more than a year, also recused himself from making a decision about a special prosecutor to investigate the 2008 rape complaint last week. Winters asked the Ohio Supreme Court to appoint a visiting judge to select a special prosecutor. Meanwhile, a prosecutor in Hancock County won't say whether he is considering a request from a third woman who says the same man raped her. She wants Hancock County prosecutor Phillip Riegle to investigate whether anyone should be charged with making false allegations against her, against Waters and against Sarah Anjum, Waters' defense counsel. An attorney for the man they accused and a private detective hired by his attorney contacted the Hancock County detective investigating the third woman's complaint and said they had evidence that suggested the three women conspired to falsely accuse him. They asked the detective to investigate the claim and phone records of the women were subpoenaed but there no connection was found.