Police did not investigate alleged sex assault case at doctor’s office, lawsuit says – NJ.com

In the latest twist in a decade-long attempt to get authorities to investigate her claim she was sexually assaulted during a gynecological exam, a Montclair woman is suing the South Orange Police Department over its handling of her case.

The township seeks to have the civil suit dismissed on the grounds it was filed nearly eight years past the statute of limitations. A ruling is scheduled for August 6.

Schela Hall, a 54-year-old married mother of three, says she went to her gynecologist in neighboring South Orange in 2011 for a follow-up appointment to get a prescription for an infection.

Told her regular doctor was unavailable, she saw his associate. She claims the pelvic exam was inappropriate and violated her. That was followed by a breast exam that concluded with the doctor giving her nipple a quick tug, according to the initial police report.

After complaining to the staffer at the front desk and complaining anonymously to the N.J. Board of Medical Examiners, she said, she reported the incident to South Orange police four days later.

Their response is the basis for a lawsuit she filed earlier this year against the department and two former police chiefs. The civil suit alleges they failed to provide her with a rape victim advocate, didn’t take her to the hospital, and didn’t suggest or provide a rape kit. She was still within the five-day time frame to collect any DNA evidence had she been offered a rape kit, the lawsuit alleges.

Instead, the police report states “Ms. Hall was advised that if she wished to pursue a complaint that she could contact the South Orange Municipal Court. She was also advised to contact her regular doctor and explain her concerns to him.”

“The worse thing that I did was to file a police report,” she said in a recent TikTok video, her latest attempt to draw attention to her claim. “They never investigated. They didn’t question the nurse. They didn’t question the front desk attendant to whom I had reported the crime.”

The municipality’s attorney, Kristen Jones, said she could not comment on ongoing litigation.

Hall is hoping a temporary change in the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims, which went into effect in 2019, will allow her suit to go forward. That law waives the normal statute of limitations for a two-year window to allow victims – particularly children – file civil suits against their abusers.

Any police department that failed to investigate a complaint of rape or sexual assault would be running afoul of longstanding standards issued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, said Jenny-Brooke Condon, director of the Equal Justice Clinic of Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice. While municipal courts do handle some criminal matters, they are typically limited to minor offenses such as simple assault, trespassing and shoplifting, she said.

The statute of limitations for a criminal charge of sexual assault is five years.

Hall’s lawsuit against the town does not name the doctor, but he is identified in her original police report. NJ Advance Media is not identifying him because he has neither been charged nor disciplined.

In a telephone interview, the doctor adamantly denied the accusation.

“This woman doesn’t seem to be correct in many ways,” he said. The doctor noted he has been in practice for decades, and said, “I’ve never, ever, ever had a complaint like this before.”

Over the years, Hall has also complained to the governor’s office, Essex County prosecutors, and filed a complaint in municipal court against the nursing aide who was in the room during her exam. That aide, now retired, said in a recent interview at her home that “nothing happened” during the exam in question.

She also indicated she has never been contacted by anyone from the South Orange police, Essex County prosecutor’s office, or the Board of Medical Examiners.

When Hall complained again to the N.J. Board of Medical Examiners in 2015, the board informed the doctor of the complaint. In response, he sent along her medical records and denied “this patient’s misguided accusations and interpretation of my examination.”

The board concluded “the issues which were identified were distressing to the complaintant but do not provide any basis to initiate disciplinary action,” according to a copy of the letter provided by the doctor.

“They cleared me of all thoughts of anything that was wrong,” he said. “I guess she didn’t want to accept that.”

A spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed investigators from its Special Victims Unit met with Hall in 2017 but decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue a case.

Sexual assault cases against gynecologists are inherently difficult to prosecute because such doctors are licensed to touch people in private areas of the body, said Katherine Carter, the spokeswoman.

In Hall’s case, her lawsuit says she was told she needed to find other victims to make her case “worth it.” That advice served only to diminish the importance of her distress, her lawsuit claims.

During the exam, she wrote in a later complaint against the aide, the doctor used “unknown physical means“ to violate her. The original police report written up by the South Orange department stated “Ms. Hall had the feeling that the exam was done in an inappropriate way and that she was violated.”

Her lawsuit says that after she reported the details of the encounter, the chief of police told the officer to instruct her to “come back to pick up the report and take it to Newark,” the location of the county prosecutor’s office.

Hall has pursued her quest in fits and starts over the years, acting as her own attorney because she could not find one who would take the case without a retainer. At one point she withdrew from a municipal case against the aide, citing the emotional strain of recounting that day.

“My sleep is interrupted every night with the thoughts of what I should have done that day, and what I did not do,” she explained to the court clerk in an email she provided to NJ Advance Media.

In her lawsuit, she said the township’s failure to investigate her claims has left her hyper-vigilant about being assaulted again.

Trying to put the incident behind her hasn’t worked, she said in an interview. “Whenever I try to forget it, or pretend it didn’t happen, it’s still there,” she said.

Kathleen O’Brien is a former health care reporter for NJ Advance Media. She can be reached at ksobksob@gmail.com