Nicole (right) and her mother filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of New Orleans in 2021. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten / The Washington Post
Nicole (right) and her mother filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of New Orleans in 2021. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten / The Washington Post
A US federal jury has ordered the city of New Orleans to pay US$1 million to a teen sexually assaulted by Officer Rodney Vicknair.
Vicknair groomed and assaulted the teen, Nicole, while on duty, leading to lasting trauma.
The jury found the New Orleans Police Department failed to properly vet and supervise Vicknair.
The city of New Orleans was ordered by a federal jury to pay US$1 million ($1.6m) to a teen who was sexually assaulted by one of its police officers. The verdict was delivered after three hours of deliberation in a civil rights trial where the jury found the New Orleans Police Department failed to properly vet and supervise Officer Rodney Vicknair.
Vicknair, who died in prison earlier this year, spent months grooming the teen after being dispatched to her home for a sexual assault investigation when she was 14.
The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent. With her permission, the Post is referring to the teen by her middle name, Nicole.
“We hope that the New Orleans Police Department takes this verdict as a wake-up call and ensures that no other officer uses the privilege of their badge and uniform to sexually abuse members of our community,” said Nicole’s attorney, William Most.
In emotional testimony this week, Nicole, now 19, described the lasting impact of the abuse she endured in 2020: disdain for the parts of her body Vicknair told her he liked, nightmares in which the officer’s arms wrap around her and fear of even seeing a police cruiser drive by. When she had a serious kidney infection, she said, she avoided going to the hospital because that was where Vicknair began grooming her. Though she once wanted children of her own, she no longer feels equipped to be a parent because she is afraid she won’t be able to keep her kids safe.
“Growing up, you’re taught in schools ‘officers are always there to help’,” Nicole testified. “The trust that I had has been taken away from me.”
Much of the three-day trial centred on the steps police leaders took – and didn’t take – after learning of concerns about Vicknair’s behaviour.
Though Judge Carl J. Barbier initially dismissed the teen’s claims that the city improperly supervised Vicknair, he reversed his decision after a Post investigation revealed that NOPD’s top official at the time, Shaun Ferguson, had been texted about “potential sexual abuse of a minor by an officer” five days before Vicknair locked Nicole in his truck and sexually assaulted her.
Ferguson, who declined to comment to the Post after his testimony on Thursday, told jurors he did not recall relaying the message to his staff after receiving it on a Friday. He claimed the sender of the text, Susan Hutson, told him she had already been in touch with the police department’s internal affairs department.
But both Hutson, who served as the city’s independent police monitor at the time, and Arlinda Westbrook, the head of the NOPD internal affairs department, testified that they never spoke over that weekend. Hutson was expecting Ferguson to take action; Westbrook said Ferguson never contacted her about the text.
The city’s current police monitor, Stella Cziment, testified that hours before the final assault occurred, she was told by NOPD’s internal affairs department an arrest warrant had already been issued for Vicknair. However, officials did not arrest, monitor or take action to remove Vicknair from duty until two days later.
“Nothing was done to keep him away from [the victim],” Most, Nicole’s attorney, said in his closing statement. He asked the jury to award Nicole US$8m in damages.
The jury found the city violated Nicole’s civil rights by hiring Vicknair in the first place. NOPD’s current police chief testified she would not hire someone with Vicknair’s background today.
A 2017 photo of New Orleans police officer Rodney Vicknair. Photo / New Orleans Police Department
Nicole’s lawyers showed jurors a poster board that chronicled seven arrests of Vicknair, unveiling them one at a time.
The year before he applied to the department in 2006, deputies in another parish charged him with aggravated assault and confiscated his knife and gun. The charges were later dropped. Vicknair had also been convicted of simple battery on a juvenile – a conviction that three of his family members told the Post was the result of previous sexual contact with a minor.
The verdict against the city comes as NOPD is working to end more than a decade of federal monitoring and reforms under a Justice Department consent decree.
City attorney Corwin St Raymond referenced those reforms in his closing argument, saying NOPD had spent millions of dollars to improve its policing.
Calling Vicknair a “piece of trash”, St Raymond said there was nothing the department could have done to predict his behaviour.
“On behalf of the city, I am truly sorry this happened to you,” he said, turning toward Nicole.
While saying he wasn’t blaming the victim, St Raymond then recounted all the instances when he said Nicole and her mother could have come forward about Vicknair sooner.
“Tracking him or surveilling wouldn’t have prevented an assault,” the city attorney said.
After the verdict, Cziment said in a statement: “This case demonstrates the danger of failing to recognise and respond to red flags warning of potential sexual misconduct within a police department. When leadership stated that grooming is not illegal, it signalled a leadership and culture failure on the part of the NOPD.”
Last year, Vicknair was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with a fast-growing brain tumour. He served less than six months behind bars before his death.
When he pleaded guilty, he admitted that when he first met Nicole, he offered to be her friend and mentor.
But on the first day he encountered her, and spent hours with her in the hospital while she waited for a rape examination, the officer showed her multiple photos of a young woman dressed only in lingerie, took a picture of the teen without her consent and gave her his personal cellphone number. His actions were recorded by his body camera and observed by another officer. No action was taken.
In the months that followed, Nicole testified, the 53-year-old officer began visiting and groping her while on duty. She said he exposed himself to her on FaceTime and hit her with his department-issued baton.
After Nicole’s therapist made a complaint to the city’s independent police monitor, who sent the text to Ferguson warning of “potential sexual abuse of a minor by an officer”, NOPD waited three days to begin looking into the matter.
During the investigation, Vicknair was not removed from duty, even after a detective saw a photo of Vicknair, in uniform, pressing Nicole into his body and texts in which the officer called the 15-year-old sweetie, honey, buttercup, baby girl and boo.
In one text reviewed by the detective, Nicole called Vicknair a “stalker”.
Five more days passed before Nicole was questioned by a trained forensic interviewer. During that week, Vicknair later admitted, he visited Nicole on duty, then returned after work and assaulted her in his locked truck. He also admitted to groping her on other occasions and requesting and receiving sexually explicit photos of her.
In its investigation published earlier this year, the Post found that sexual abuse of children by predatory law enforcement officers is a nationwide problem. The Post identified at least 1800 state and local law enforcement officers who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005-22.
Teenage girls like Nicole were the children most frequently targeted by officers. Police and court documents show abusive officers often spent months befriending and grooming kids. Many used the threat of arrest or physical harm to make their victims comply.
Vicknair was the sixth New Orleans officer convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse since 2011. Earlier this year, another NOPD officer was arrested for alleged actions with a teenager he met while responding to a car accident. According to local media reports, he returned to the 17-year-old’s home and ordered him to strip.
For Nicole, the verdict on Thursday may not be the end of her legal battle with the police department. The city can still appeal the jury’s findings.
