If having your body taken advantage of by a serial rapist isn’t traumatic enough, then try imagining that the Memphis Police Department doesn’t believe your story and that your rape kit is stacked up in a box collecting dust just waiting to be tested in order to put the rapist in prison. Well, that’s exactly what happened in this Commercial Appeal article found at the link at the bottom of this page. The serial rapist, not worthy of a name, but for clarity we will call him by his given name, Alliano. Alliano is a serial rapist who I believe deserves to be hung for his crimes. Well, we might not perform hangings in our society anymore, but I’m sure we can find the next suitable punishment for this creep. The Memphis Police Department (MPD) failed in this case. They failed to test the rape kits of these girls who were raped. Instead, they let them pile up in dusty cardboard boxes for nearly a decade, along with numerous other rape kits! He has now been arrested and will spend 178 years in prison for his decade long spree of the rape of young women and girls.

The public was in danger for about a decade due to the MPD’s failure to test the 12,000 rape kits and failure to fully investigate these sexual assault cases. They failed to prosecute him multiple times when he was arrested for rapes and then failed to test the victim’s rape kits. This could have kept other victims from facing the horrors that these girls had to face at the hand of this disgusting rapist. This could’ve been done by having Alliano’s DNA profile uploaded into a national FBI database where it could’ve been compared to other DNA from other crime scenes if he would have been convicted. Instead, the detectives of the MPD were skeptical of the girls’ stories, which did not help in solving the crimes and prosecuting Alliano and his DNA was never put into the FBI database.

We should all be aware of this atrocity because it can happen to you or one’s loved one if our city protectors are not doing their job properly like we pay them to do! The MPD allowed a serial rapist out on the prowl for a decade, which is completely unacceptable in my eyes and I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels this way. Meaghan Ybos, a victim of Alliano, stated, “I risked my life to call the police because he had threatened to kill me. And they [MPD] left me out in the cold.” Ybos was the first known victim of Alliano and she came to police with her story, yet the police were skeptical of her.

There is no excuse for this kind of “mistake.” Although the Shelby County District Attorney Chief Deputy Jennifer Nichols, who prosecuted Alliano, excuses this behavior by saying the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation didn’t begin uploading DNA profiles into the FBI’s national Combined DNA Index System database until 2002, which took some police agencies some years to get into the habit of submitting evidence for DNA testing. What kind of excuse is this?! So now victims suffer because it was difficult for police agencies to get into the habit of submitting the evidence?! This is a failure on the part of our police agencies and the people who pay the price are the victims and the public.

So we know WHY the MPD didn’t manage this issue and how they so called, “managed” the issue by not testing the rape kits or taking the victims seriously, but how does this affect the public? The public is left unable to trust their police department when they’re in a situation such as these female victims. If we become victims of rape and muster up enough courage to go to the police, or have a rape kit done will it be taken seriously and will the kit be tested in a timely manner? How many rapist are on the loose roaming our city streets due to these untested rape kits? Can we feel confident in that our local MPD will take our rape charges seriously when we confront them with our horrifying accounts?

Think about these questions and let’s hope that this tragedy doesn’t happen again so we can lock rapists up on their first offense and have them put in the FBI database.

Check out the full story here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/local-news/rape-kit-backlog-cordova-serial-rapist-alliano