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False rape case rejected (Editor’s note: The Sandusky Register did the bulk of the reporting on this case and if you Google search the case you can find the same articles on other news sites that share stories – part of Ogden Newspapers. Read it on the Register website, if you can, to support their fine work on this issue)
Former Put-in-Bay police officer acquitted of making false rape charge
Prosecutor Gets Rape Complaint
Police Chief, Self-Proclaimed “God of Put-in-Bay,” Accused of Covering Up Police Rapes
Put-in-Bay police chief on leave, 2 officers resign after controversial arrests
Republican David Yost Grandstands And Uses Food Stamps To Raise Campaign Money
Anti-mask parents not constitutionally allowed to change school rules, says federal judge
The Dangerous Legal Illusion of ‘Parental Rights’
Show Transcript
Transcript is also available for offline reading
Doug Berger 0:00
In this episode, we wonder why, at the request of no one, Ohio Attorney General David Yost inserted the state into a local case and tried to prosecute a rape victim instead of the rapist. And a federal judge tells parents they don’t have a constitutional right to avoid school mask mandates. I’m Doug Berger. And this is Secular Left.
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Doug Berger 0:44
One of my favorite movies is Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch came out in 1986, I believe. And in that movie, it starts out with the character played by Kyle McLaughlin, sitting in a diner across from the female lead, Laura Dern. And he says, I’ve got a tale to tell you that you will not believe. And that’s how that movie starts. And he tells the tale, that she will not believe when she starts out not believing it. And that’s the kind of that’s kind of what I felt like when I read this story. Concerning the police department in Put-In-Bay Ohio. Put-In-Bay is a tourist trap. Well, I won’t say a tourist trap, but their main business is tourism. It’s an on an island. It’s on South bass Island, in the middle of Lake Erie, a few miles south of the Canadian border, about 30 miles from Toledo. There’s a rough approximation where that red flag is. Anyway, so there was this story about a woman who had been charged with making a false rape allegation against a man who is being tried in Ottawa County Court. Ottawa County is the county that Put-In-Bay is located. The county seat is port Clinton, which is just south of Put-In-Bay and its woman. Her name is Arica Waters, Arica Waters was charged with making false alarms and making a knowingly making a false rape report. And she was charged with a felony. And, you know, you read these stories and you’re like, Okay, you know, must be pretty pretty damning evidence and, and so, you know, they know what they’re doing. But as you get into the story, you find out that Ms Waters had accused let me back up. Waters worked for the put in Bay police department. She had been hired in July of 2020, shortly after graduating from college get and she got a certification to become a A peace officer certification in the state of Ohio, so she could be a police officer hold a gun, that sort of thing. And she got hired by the Put-In-Bay Police Department. Now the Put-In-Bay police, I gotta back up some more. Put-In-Bay is a touristy area, they normally have around 100 year round residents. During the summers, before the pandemic, they could get up to three quarters of a million visitors in a year in in the summer months, April to October. And so when you have when you go from about 100 residents to three quarters of a million you need a sizable Police Department. And they have seasonal officers. These are volunteers supposedly volunteers that they hire to work the summer months. Now I have no idea how this works. I mean, if you have a peace officer certificate, you can work in any police department in the state of Ohio. Why you would volunteer? I’m sure they get paid but I’m sure why would you work three months? Well. Part of it is because it’s a party island. Its tourism, bars, hotels, the main mode of transportation is a golf cart. They frown on cars and what cars that people drive on the island. At least they used to they used to have push button starts because where if somebody stole a car, where would they go? They’d have to get on a ferry and by that time you could catch them. You know it’s real small in insular town village. Everybody knows the regular residents know everybody. The stories I’ve heard too is that some of the houses didn’t even have locks on them.
Doug Berger 5:14
I’m sure that’s changed as well. As we get, you know, a lot of the they have a lot of vacation rentals. Anyway, so they hire the seasonal officers. Not sure if Waters was going to be a seasonal but most likely would be. So she was hired as a detective as a matter of fact. And she went to this party this pool party that another Put-In-Bay police officer gave, or was hosting and ended up having sex with this other coworker. And but she felt like she did not consent that she was too inebriated to give consent. She never said the word rape. When she filed a report. She just filed a report that she felt like she was taken advantage of. You know, she wanted to point out something was wrong, but she didn’t want to make a big stink about it put it that way. Well, they investigated her complaint. And the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department, who did the investigation determined that she lied, that there was no rape. And she filed a false report. The Ottawa County prosecutor, this was in 2020 declined to prosecute her for the false report and declined to take it to the grand jury. Now normally, in most cases. That’s it, it’s over. If because, because, you know, the way that the way the justice system works is, if a prosecutor refuses to prosecute someone, they’re fully in their right to not prosecute someone, there is no requirement. There’s no law, there’s no constitutional requirement that a prosecutor has to prosecute somebody. And we see that all the time. We see that right now with the January 6 people. You know, there’s some people that aren’t getting prosecuted, and there’s some people that are getting prosecuted anyway, so the Ottawa County prosecutor declined to bring charges against her. I think she was fired from her job as well as an outcome of it. And they were just gonna wash their hands of it and move along. Well, after that, after that. Attorney General David Yost joined the fray. He’s the Attorney General of the State of Ohio. And he appointed one of his deputies as a special prosecutor, who took it to a grand jury in Ottawa County, and got an indictment against a Arica Waters for making a false report. And this was just unusual. Everybody was like, what, that almost never happens, it almost never happens. And they decided to take it to trial. Now, the problem comes from the fact that the man who was accused had been accused by two other women in 2008. And those investigations didn’t do anything either. And one of the women was concerned, because she decided not to press charges, that she was going to get charged with making a false report. And the other point to make about this, too, that these other cases were brought up, was that when they got a comment from David Yost, he said that the previous allegations were not a priority for his office. And so it’s almost never the case that the Ohio Attorney General gets involved in a local case, a local rape case. murder cases, sure, when a county needs help, they tend to get involved, but never with a rape case. And they were hell bent on convicting this woman of making a false report. And nobody knows why. This the reporters from the Sandusky Register who did a great job, I read some of their reporting, of trying to nail down why Yost’s office was going after this woman and they would never answer the questions they would not comment on the case. The case filings didn’t indicate what was going on why it was such a priority for his office to prosecute this case.
Doug Berger 10:07
And they said, however, state Prosecutors allege based on water his own words and actions and communicating about the relationship to others, both verbally and text messages, that the sex was consensual, and that waters knew no rape had occurred when she made the report. But again, she never used the word rape in any of her reports. And like I said in the man that she accused was a known alcoholic who had prepared mixed drinks that had too much alcohol. And a witness testified that he warned Waters about extremely strong drinks. And so she believes that she was probably drugged and ended up having sexual intercourse with this man. Now this also, case also gets a little bit murky murkier, because the current Ottawa County Sheriff Steve Levorchick, was also the investigating officer one of the previous rape cases from 2008. And so now there is a special prosecutor that’s been appointed to take a look in how he handled those cases in 2008. Because it either the women were pressured not to file charges, or he just failed to investigate it properly. And this is not the first time that Put-In-Bay has been in in the spotlight for their policing. There was a string of the same type of rapes in 2015 or, or well came to a head in 2015 when the previous police chief of Put-In-Bay police department was fired. After one of the things was that he was covering up previous rape charges and I think guess why they’ve been one the 2008 and from this article from 2015 says policing problems that plagued the village in recent years after Lampenella the previous chief was fired in 2015 after waving a gun while questioning an officer about the Second Amendment. In the fall 2013 Three Island employees were charged with obstructing official business. By put Bay Resort owner Mark Mathis said the officers had targeted his business and refused to investigate theft cases. His business reported. And then he was also cited. The chief was also cited for lack of adequate training of officers within the department by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which in this case was Mike DeWine at the time. And and then the other thing was in 2020 or 2019. There was a big hubbub Put-In-Bay Police Department tased and arrested six men, six black men because they charged them with rioting after an altercation over too many people riding in a in a golf cart. Yeah, it was a traffic thing. And it escalated into tasers and arrests. And it was during a an event called Christmas in July, where people from Sandusky go to a party and Put-In-Bay as Christmas in July. And the cops got in trouble for that. But again, no one in the media knows why. David Yost took such an interest in this case. Especially it’s it’s a minor case. But anyway, so it went this case went to trial. But finally the judge in the case acquitted Arica Walters of making a false charge. And a lot of it was had to do with how the state focused on some evidence and ignored other evidence describing key elements to the case as a mystery and a puzzle judge Janet Burnside ultimately pieced together enough evidence to acquit Arica Waters, who had been accused by state prosecutors of knowingly making false rape report of the two charges ahead stem from the allegations. She had been charged with making false alarms and
Doug Berger 14:54
two counts of making false alarms and 1/4 degree felony and one was a first degree misdemeanor I’m not going to name the officer that she the the other police out there volunteer police officer that she accused, you could go ahead and search I put up some links for some of the stories. They are on under a behind paywalls. But they have like four or five articles you can read. The reason why I’m not naming the the accused is because he has never He has not been charged with a crime yet, even though his name is mentioned in some of these news reports. And so again, nobody knows why David Yost was so interested in this. It’s not the first time that he’s dove headfirst into something that he really shouldn’t be getting involved at. And I was looking through some of my past blog posts, various blog posts, and I took him to task in 2016 when he was the Ohio auditor. And I should give a short history. David Yost is a former county prosecutor from the Delaware County, which is north of Columbus, and his first State Office was auditor because that was the easiest one to get into. Because the way this works is you choose what office is easiest to get into. Then once you’re in office, then you can move up higher. And at the time, Mike DeWine was running for reelection in Attorney General, you know, as before he was governor. And so he decided to take the auditors but once dewine moved up to Governor then Yost moved to Attorney General. But when in 2016, when he was still the auditor, he wrote this big report about all this massive fraud and the food stamp program in Ohio, and even went to Congress and had it and testified at a hearing it to point out all this fraud and, and his plans for addressing the fraud and, and many of his plans. Many of his plans were stuff that states could already do to address fraud. And also the fact that he found all this fraud, but he had no evidence that it was fraud. He just assumed it was fraud, because it looked funny to him. And so my guess is that he got involved with this false rape case, to protect, I guess, the first responder that police departments, you know, get involved, you know, and try to raise money off of this, that I’m protecting the cops. I I don’t know. It just doesn’t make any sense. And the Sandusky Register reporters, they it doesn’t make any sense to them, you know, because this, because like I said, the county prosecutor decided not to prosecute the case and Yost comes jumping in, I really think it was because it was a false rape report. And he wanted to make an example of Arica Waters. And what and he probably thought it was a slam dunk, because that’s another thing this guy does is he only really fights stuff that he knows he’s going to win or, or make it look good that he can raise money off of like food stamps and, and dunking on women making false reports. To make examples of them, and he’s just not, you know, in any and then these other two allegations of rape against the same man was not a priority. It wasn’t a priority to investigate this man. But it was a priority to investigate and criminally charged this woman who supposedly made a false statement. So, you know, leave it, leave it up to your own imagination about why he got involved. I have a few of my own. And they’re not good, because David Yost is at base. He’s a politician, a very bad politician. And that’s how he rolls
Doug Berger 19:13
Hello, this is Doug host of secular left reminding you that I like to be validated. If you like this podcast and want to thank me, feel free to buy me a coffee. Go to buymeacoffee.com/secularleft and donate some cash to help make this a better show and validate me as a person. You’ll feel better in the morning.
Doug Berger 19:47
There was some good news last week, right before Christmas, on December 23. As a matter of fact, when a federal judge in law in Las Vegas ruled that anti mask parents aren’t constitutionally allowed to change school rules. Some parents in the Las Vegas school district filed a lawsuit against the mask mandates that the school district had, and some other COVID protocols that they had instituted. And there was a couple of things that they had mentioned that they that they disagreed with was the mass mandates and the vaccine mandates and COVID protocols and, and things like that says in their lawsuit filed in August two Nevada parents claimed that the masked mandate as well as their exclusion from the decision making process regarding it violated their constitutional rights as parents. However, US District Court Judge Jennifer Dorsey wrote that these perceived wrongs were not constitutional violations, says the Constitution does not require an opportunity to participate in the decision making process for such broadly applicable policies. And the fundamental right to parent does not include the prerogative to dictate school health and safety policies. Now, the report from the Hill, which is normally a kind of a conservative website, they did note that the Clark County School District did offer parents the option of enrolling their children in the online learning program, if they were not able, or unwilling to wear, wear masks. And so then the judge also had this really nice other comment that I really enjoyed. In her ruling, Dorsey stated that the fundamental right of a parent to make decisions for their children does not override a public school mask policy in the midst of a pandemic. So is like to the point. And that’s how a lot of these judges should be ruling instead of getting involved in the bushes with with religious beliefs and, and things like that. It’s like, you can’t you know, you can’t change the rules for health and safety issues. parents aren’t don’t have a constitutional right to do that. See, that’s one of the things is that, you know, we had this in my area where parents were complaining about CRT, which Imagine, imagine that after the election, you don’t hear about it anymore. Anyway. That’s another story. But they were complaining about CRT and mask mandates and and doing the schooling from home and complain about that, and why weren’t they allowed to get involved? See, that’s why you elect a school board. The school board is supposed to take care of those issues. That that is your participation to vote for the school board. You know, that’s how a representative democracy works. You elect representatives to represent you in doing the day to day business. That’s why you elect people to Congress and the Senate. That’s why you like people to the state legislature to do that work for you. The other thing too, is that these health and safety policies are developed, not out of whole cloth, but after consultation with people who are expert at that job at health and safety.
Doug Berger 23:38
And then the Politico website, which is also not a liberal website, had this real nice opinion piece back in September, when the school board the school board arguments were ramping up. And so I wanted to share that as well. When it comes to society’s interest in protecting children. The legal precedent is unambiguous the rights of their parents come second. Parents do have the freedom to direct the health care and education of their children. But these rights are not unlimited. As a free as the Supreme Court said in Prince V. Massachusetts, parents are not free to, quote, make martyrs of their children unquote. By putting them in harm’s way. Governments can and do limit parents discretion with the goal of protecting the health and safety and welfare of children. One example is car seat requirements, which exist in all 50 states. Every state also has a law authorizing the government to intervene when parents abuse or neglect their children. And then political article also goes on it says that that schools and daycare facilities are heavy, heavily regulated. And so you know They’re making it making that argument that that parents just can’t come in change the rules because they disagree with it. Now, especially in the middle of the pandemic so like I said, I wanted to share share that court case because I thought it was very, very interesting.
Doug Berger 25:25
Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used in our show notes on our website at secular left.us. Secular left is hosted, written and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note at comments at secular left.us Our theme music is dank and nasty composed using ampify studio See you next time.
Transcript is machine generated and approximate to what was recorded
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Produced, written, and edited by Doug Berger
Our theme music is “Dank & Nasty” Composed using Ampify Studio
