Roger Golubski (via Shawnee County Detention Center).
Five Black women have filed a federal lawsuit against a twice-indicted ex-police officer in Kansas, alleging he and others raped and intimidated them under the guise of the law.
Roger Golubski, a former detective with the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, was indicted by the Department of Justice two different times last year for sexual assault and forcing young women in to sexual servitude back in the late 1990s. The lawsuit filed Friday includes much of the same allegations in last year’s indictments. The 138-page lawsuit also names fellow detectives, former police chiefs and the unified government of Kanas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County.
Plaintiffs allege that the lawsuit goes further than just actions by individuals.
“The monumental issue concerns the responsibility public officials must bear for enabling and fostering a well-known, decades-long terrorization of the Black community. These public officials, including Chiefs of Police, though warned, informed, and aware of these unconstitutional and criminal acts, permitted a terror that lasted decades, destroying lives and families,” the lawsuit states.
The allegations included in the lawsuit are jarring. Two women were victims of “particularly vicious rapes.” Another was stalked and propositioned by detectives supposedly investigating her son’s murder. Yet another was “sadistically tortured, senselessly forced to view her father’s unidentifiably charred corpse, and then falsely arrested while repeatedly and groundlessly accused of incest and complicity in her father’s murder” before being subjected to a 19-hour interrogation, the lawsuit states.
When one victim said she’d file a complaint against him, Golubski allegedly said “Report me to who, the police? I am the police.” Golubski and the other defendants also ran what’s described in the lawsuit as a “protection racket,” which worked closely with murderers and drug kingpins to protect their interests, the lawsuit stated.
“In exchange for money, sex, or drugs, Detective Defendants fixed investigations, including making cases and witnesses disappear while framing innocent people for crimes committed by drug gangs. The drug kingpins also provided Defendants with successful drug busts to keep up appearances that KCK was aggressively pursuing illegal drugs. In reality, these were pre-arranged raids and netted minimal money, drugs, or guns,” the lawsuit said.
Government officials knew about the conduct of Golubski and others, yet did nothing about it, the plaintiffs allege.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Golubski and three other men — Cecil Brooks, LeMark Roberson and Richard Robinson — were indicted in November 2022 on allegations that they conspired to force women into sexual slavery.
Brooks, Roberson and Robinson, who are not named in the lawsuit, allegedly “used physical beatings, sexual assaults and threats to compel young women to provide sexual services to men,” according to the DOJ. Golubski, a detective at the time, is alleged to have accepted money from Brooks and provided protection from law enforcement for the criminal activity, including sex trafficking. He also allegedly “forcibly raped the young woman identified as Person 2,” the DOJ says.
Brooks, Roberson, and Robinson allegedly set up “units” at what is referred to as the “working house” where the victims would be held.
“One of those units was a ‘relaxed’ area, where young girls used alcohol and drugs with the defendants, and another was ‘working house,’ where some girls were compelled to perform sexual services for adult men who visited Delevan,” the indictment says.
According to the indictment, Brooks, Roberson, and Robinson “provided drugs to the girls in the ‘working house,’ who were addicts.” They also allegedly “beat and threatened to beat girls who did not agree to provide sexual services in exchange for shelter, drugs, or clothes.”
Golubski, according to the indictment, visited the “working house” and repeatedly targeted Black girls in particular.
“At Delevan, Defendant ROGER GOLUBSKI primarily chose young Black girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17 years old, to submit to sex and to provide sexual services to him,” the indictment says.
Roberson is alleged to have intimidated one of the victims by “telling her that the defendants had murdered a woman by burning her alive and watching her dance around like a chicken with no head,” according to the indictment.
Brooks allegedly “paid off law enforcement so that officers would provide warnings when police were about to ‘hit’ the house.”
The indictment references a fourth person who allegedly conspired with the defendants, but that person is deceased and their identity was not revealed.
If convicted, each man faces a maximum life sentence in prison.
Golubski had been previously charged in September 2022 in a separate indictment with civil rights violations for allegedly acting under color of law to commit aggravated sexual assaults, according to the DOJ.
The Kansas City Star reports Golubski is on house arrest awaiting trial.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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