And leave it to New York City's sleaziest daily tabloid to misreport the story.
While we're on the unfortunate subject of bad reporting (please see the previous post), the New York Post has an awful report on a new lawsuit filed by two of the four Crown Heights non-Jewish men who allegedly raped and pimped a local Chabad hasidic girl beginning when she was 13-years-old.
Like many abused women and trafficked girls, the girl filed a police complaint but later (weakly) retracted it because she had strong feelings for one of the four men.
The Brooklyn DA's office under former DA Charles Hynes failed to share the girl's recantation – which itself was later retracted by the girl – with the defense.
The prosecutor in charge, Lauren Hersh, resigned when that became public and Hynes dropped the case against the four men.
When the Post reports this it fails to note what abused women and children often do after being pimped and trafficked by men who groom them.
The medical literature that deals with abuse shows this Stockholm Syndrome-like reaction by victims is common, and this is taught in criminal justice classes cops now take in college and in police academies. TV news magazine reports and documentaries on sex abuse and sex trafficking also have reported extensively on this.
In other words, it's no secret. But the Post fails to report it.
Do the two men who are suing have a case?
Likely they do, but not because the girl briefly (and weakly) recanted.
They have a case because Hersh did not disclose it as required by law.
The girl's father claims he reported to police when his daughter was well under the age of consent that his daughter was being abused by these men, but police did nothing.
(Police seem to have viewed the sex as consensual, even though illegal, and viewed the father as odd – mistakes police departments across the country sometimes make in cases like this. Pimps and abusers target weak kids and vulnerable adults – especially when they dysfunctional families or odd parents. But cops sometimes look at these situations, say the father or mother is nuts and view the relationship between the underage child and the adult abuser as consensual and as better than what the kid is experiencing at home. But often, too often, cops are wrong.)
But this is the New York Post, after all, and worrying about facts isn't something it does well – or, often, at all.