Rape Claim Twisted, Officer Says : Litigation: The LAPD investigated her, not the fellow officer she claims assaulted her, her lawsuit alleges.

A Los Angeles police officer said Thursday that she was raped by a fellow officer, but the department launched an investigation of her private life rather than probe of her assailant’s actions.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Officer Teresa Wallin said Officer James Joy, assigned to the elite Metropolitan Division, raped her last May 30 after driving her home from a bar on the Police Academy’s grounds. Joy later threatened Wallin with “physical harm” if she reported the assault to department investigators, the suit said.

Wallin, 25, did not report the alleged assault, but investigators from the department’s Internal Affairs Division approached her after they received an anonymous letter saying Joy, a 14-year veteran, had assaulted her, the suit said.

She initially denied that an assault had taken place, she said, because the department repeatedly failed “to respond adequately to allegations of sexual assault and harassment by female members of the department against male officers.” She also said she believed “reporting the rape would end her career as a police officer.”

A department spokesman declined comment on the suit, citing a policy “not to comment on any ongoing litigation.” Joy could not be reached for comment.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, names the city of Los Angeles, Chief Daryl F. Gates, Assistant Chief David Dotson and several department supervisors as defendants along with Joy.

Wallin’s suit also asks the court to declare that the department’s policies discriminate against female officers, and to stop the department from “processing” female officers’ claims of sexual assault by male officers any differently from investigations of similar complaints against civilians.

The department has “embarked upon a deliberate course of conduct to investigate plaintiff’s life, rather than the allegations of assault against defendant Joy,” the suit said.

Her friends were interviewed and asked whether they had been sexually involved with her, the suit said. Investigators also used numbers listed on her telephone bill to call individuals and ask them about her sex life, according to the suit.

Nude photos of Wallin, taken by police to show her bruises from the assault, were “shown around the LAPD,” and Joy “bragged around the department about the assault,” the suit said.

When Wallin applied to the Victim’s Assistance Fund to pay for rape counseling, a detective told her that she could not name Joy as her assailant, the suit said. She was told to list her assailant as “unapprehended,” Wallin said in the suit.

In September, Wallin contends in the suit, she learned that the LAPD had issued no crime report number on her case. In October, Wallin was ordered not to discuss the case and threatened with termination if she did so, the suit said.

Wallin also learned around Oct. 11 that Internal Affairs investigators had not questioned witnesses in her case, the suit said. She then contacted the district attorney’s office and was told it had no information on her case, the suit said.

Wallin’s case is not isolated, said her attorney, Carol A. Sobel of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. “These cases share one common denominator,” Sobel said. “They’re viewed as discipline problems--not crimes.”