After a jury found a former Oklahoma City police officer guilty of multiple charges of raping black women, two of those women spoke out about the pain and suffering they endured at the hands of a man who was supposed to protect them from criminals. Instead, he was the very man from whom they needed to escape.
On Thursday the officer, Daniel Holtzclaw, 29, was found guilty of 18 of the 36 counts against him that included rape and sexual assaults of 13 women. He faces up to 263 years in prison.
Janie Liggons was one of his victims who stepped forward Friday to tell her story. She said that he pulled her over, threatened her and forced her to perform sexual acts on him, according to Reuters.
"All I could think of was he was going to shoot me, he was going to kill me," Liggons said at the news conference, according to the news outlet. "I kept pleading, 'Don't make me do this, sir. Are you going to shoot me?' I was so afraid, so helpless."
She later filed a police report about the incident and went to the media with her story, which marked the first complaint against Holtzclaw, she said. Investigators later found a total of 13 victims, all African American. Holtzclaw is Asian and white, notes news outlet.
Shardarion Hill was another one of his victims. She recounted how she slipped into "survival mode with Holtzclaw and was forced into doing what the man with the badge and gun wanted," the report says.
Liggons has also filed a federal civil lawsuit against Holtzclaw and the city of Oklahoma City, filed on behalf of several victims, the report says. In the suit, she accuses Holtzclaw of sexual assault and violating her state constitutional rights and accuses the city of negligence, notes the report.
Read more at Yahoo! News.