A South Carolina deputy is facing ten years in prison after he was accused of forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him, threatening to arrest her boyfriend if she did not comply.
The woman said she complied after Orangeburg County sheriff’s deputy Dereck Johnson threatened to arrest her too.
The sexual assault lasted four minutes while the woman’s 16-year-old daughter slept in a bedroom nearby. When it was over, Johnson left the woman inside the mobile home, walked up to her boyfriend with a smirk on his face and shook his hand.
“He looked me in the eye and shook my hand,” the boyfriend told the Associated Press. “Who does that?”
Johnson, who was arrested Wednesday, was given a personal recognizance bond, which means he got out of jail for free.
Johnson was one of two deputies that responded to the couple’s home after an argument over something posted on social media resulted in the boyfriend calling the cops to their home.
The couple was separated and questioned.
While a sworn deputy waited outside with the boyfriend, Johnson, a trainee at the time, stepped inside of the single-wide mobile home.
Once alone with the woman, deputy Johnson threatened to arrest her boyfriend.
Unless she performed oral sex on him.
When she began crying and begging him he said, “If you don’t do it, you’re going to jail, too.”
After the deputies left, the woman was dejected and visibly upset.
Upon learning what took place, her boyfriend convinced her to call the police again, and a third deputy arrived to take her statement.
But that deputy never offered or suggested the woman seek immediate medical care in order to collect evidence or address health concerns, which is standard protocol.
He also never offered to call a victim advocate to provide the woman with counseling options, which is also standard.
“If it wasn’t an officer, I believe that things would have been handled differently,” said state Rep. Justin Bamberg, the woman’s attorney. “She was not treated as the victim that she was.”
“What this is about is the powerful taking advantage of the powerless. You’ve got a badge, a set of handcuffs,” said Bamberg. “You are extremely powerful. Who do you call for help when the police are the ones that terrorize you?”
Johnson was a sworn deputy who never completed the 12-week training course at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy that is required in South Carolina.
Sheriff Leroy Ravenell fired Johnson a day after learning of the assault and turned the case over to state police who investigated for over a month before issuing a warrant for Johnson.
According to Bamberg, his client feared nobody would believe she was assaulted by a law enforcement officer, but Johnson’s arrest provided some relief.
“We’re looking forward to a conviction,” said Bamberg. “Because it sends a very important message that these things are not OK.”
“If these things aren’t fixed, it could one day be your daughter.”
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