A Florida child rape victim who was forced to retract her initial accusations and write letters apologizing to her rapist and investigators has filed a lawsuit against those investigators and the man who raped her.
The rapist — Henry Cadle, the victim’s uncle and adoptive father — later pleaded no contest to sexual battery and was sentenced to 17 years in prison after his victim secretly recorded a rape in his truck, WFLA reported.
That rape came just a month after Taylor Cadle, then 13, was pressured to plead guilty by her aunt, Henry Cadle’s wife and her adoptive mother, to charges of filing false statements against him and write letters of apology not only to her rapist but to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
Taylor Cadle, now 22, was adopted by her uncle and aunt in 2012, and her uncle began “inappropriately touching her, with the abuse escalating to rape” multiple times over the ensuing years, the lawsuit says.
932536044-Cadle-v-Judd by kc wildmoon
“(Taylor) kept the abuse a secret for years, due to her overwhelming fear of being returned to foster care if she reported the rapes,” according to the lawsuit.
She finally told her church pastor’s wife what was happening, and that woman contacted law enforcement. But after a months-long investigation, a detective decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Henry Cadle and charged his teen victim instead.
“Do you want to go back to foster care? Because more than likely, if he’s arrested, they’re not going to let you stay there. If it’s not the truth, you’re fixing to hurt a lot of people,” Detective Melissa Turnage reportedly said to Cadle in a recorded interview, according to the lawsuit.
Turnage, Detective William Rushing, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, and Henry Cadle are the named defendants in Taylor Cadle’s lawsuit, along with ten unnamed employees of the sheriff’s office.
According to the lawsuit, her aunt pushed her to plead guilty to charges of making false statements “just to get the case over with,” the lawsuit says.
She did, and was put on probation and sent back to live with her rapist, with a curfew, community service, anger management counseling, and orders to write letters of apology to her uncle and the sheriff’s office.
“To have to write those letters and then hand it to him, knowing that he knows what he did, kind of messed with my head, I would say. It was a very confusing and hurtful process,” Taylor Cadle told WFLA.
And then, a month later, Henry Cadle raped the teen again, but this time she turned on her cell phone and later called 911 herself to report the rape.
Deputies showed Henry Cadle the images from his victim’s cell phone, and he admitted it was him but told detectives, “She set me up.”
The sheriff’s office moved to withdraw Taylor Cadle’s guilty plea to false statements and vacate her sentence.
Two years later, Henry Cadle pleaded no contest and was sent to prison, according to WFLA.
The lawsuit accuses Judd of encouraging his detectives to “disregard and violate Constitutional and Fourth Amendment rights of victims, particularly minors with his tough-on-crime rhetoric, and criminalization of minors for making false statements.”
It also says that the detectives weren’t properly trained on how to handle child rape cases and accuses the department of malicious prosecutions.
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office called the lawsuit “frivolous,” saying that attorneys will file such suits “for just about anything, including second guessing nine year old criminal investigations, and then run to the news media attempting to get publicity for their lawsuit,” WKMG reported.
“In this case, our deputies did an extensive investigation and made deliberate and rational decisions based upon the information and evidence we had at the time,” the agency said. “We look forward to vigorously defending against these baseless and fabricated allegations in court.”
According to WFLA, the state’s attorney’s office has a policy requiring it to be consulted before charges can be filed against any juvenile who has made claims of sexual abuse. That policy was instituted in July 2017 — the month Henry Cadle was finally arrested.
Polk County Sheriff’s Office director of communications Scott Wilder told WLFA the two detectives are still employed by the sheriff’s office, Turnage as a detective and Rushing as a lieutenant.
“Both outstanding deputy sheriffs are currently employed by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and they continue to honorably put their lives on the line to protect the citizens of Polk County from harm and hold criminals accountable,” said Wilder.
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[Featured image: The letter Taylor Cadle wrote to her rapist in 2017/lawsuit and Henry Cadle/Florida Department of Corrections]
