On May 10, 2017, Washington State Patrol Captain Brian D. Johnson received a call from a resident of Olympia, Washington who reported seeing a man with a “large amount of blood on his face.”
The resident told Johnson that she was walking to her car when she was attacked and that she had “blood all over my face,” according to a report from WSP.
The woman told Johnson he should get to the scene immediately.
Johnson told the Daily Beast he responded with the “standard response” to a reported sexual assault: “Let me get my shirt off, let me get a towel and I’m going to get you to a hospital,” Johnson told the outlet.
The next morning, Johnson found the woman unconscious on the sidewalk and told her to lie down.
She had multiple lacerations to her face and “multiple injuries on her head and face,” Johnson said.
“I went in and checked to make sure she was breathing, and she was not breathing,” Johnson recounted.
“Then I walked over to her and took her shirt off and put her on the bed and put my head in the pillow and she started breathing.”
Johnson was able to get to her hands and feet before police arrived.
He said the woman was able take a breath before being taken to a local hospital.
Johnson, a 27-year veteran of the department, said he was told by the department’s sexual assault prevention team that the woman had been sexually assaulted in her apartment and that he had “no idea” what had happened.
“I told them it was an act of violence,” Johnson explained.
“It’s an act that’s so violent that you can’t explain.
The officers said it was assault.”
He said he also received an email from a woman who had been assaulted at the same location, in the same apartment complex.
“The first thing I said to her is ‘You’re lucky I’m here, I was able [to] take you to the hospital,'” Johnson said, referring to the incident in Olympia.
Johnson was called in to handle a sexual assault report after he received a phone call from the woman on May 10.
Johnson was not able to respond to the victim’s complaint, but said he “had to talk to her about it.”
He continued: “I’m going in and get her, I’m trying to make the best of it, and I told her ‘I don’t know what happened to you, but I know what I’m doing.'”
After the attack, Johnson said he tried to figure out what was going on.
“She had a large amount of bleeding on her face,” he said.
“So I said ‘Let me grab your arm and I’ll call an ambulance.'”
Johnson said he went back to his office and checked on the victim to make certain she was alive and that the officers had returned to her apartment.
When he asked why she hadn’t called 911, she said “She was lying there on the ground,” Johnson recalled.
The woman told him she was raped by a man who had “grabbed her,” Johnson continued.
“He tried to get her onto the bed, she was on the floor and he grabbed her.
He started to put his penis inside her.
She just started screaming, ‘No, no, no.'”
Johnson asked if the woman needed medical attention.
“No, I told him ‘She’s unconscious, she’s not breathing,’ and he said ‘No I don’t need to do anything,'” Johnson recounted, adding that the victim “suddenly woke up and she said ‘I was raped.'”
The woman continued to complain about being raped.
She said the man “took her underwear off,” Johnson alleged.
Johnson then called 911.
The man was taken to the King County Jail and arrested.
Johnson said his team of officers had not investigated the incident further and was unaware of the assault.
“If we had done a report, I think the officers would have investigated it and then the investigation would have gone forward,” Johnson added.
“That was the moment when I thought, ‘I’m not going to take this anymore,'” Johnson added, “because I knew they were going to do nothing.”
Johnson, who retired in 2016 after nearly 25 years with the department and has worked as a security guard at the Capitol, said it took him months to understand what had occurred.
“When you’re a police officer, you can make mistakes,” Johnson stated.
“But I just kept hearing it wasn’t right, and it wasn’s a shame because we are going on to make changes. “