A civil rights lawsuit against the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida overcame a tricky and nuanced legal hurdle this week in federal court.
As Mother Jones originally reported, Taylor Cadle was 12 years old in 2016 when she told a sheriff’s deputy that she had been sexually abused by her adoptive father, Henry Cadle. Instead of arresting the abuser, Deputy Melissa Turnage charged Taylor with filing a false police report. According to Taylor, her adoptive mother pushed her to plead guilty. As part of her probation, she was required to write apology letters to a sheriff’s deputy and her abuser.
After returning to her adoptive father’s care, Taylor was raped again. But this time, she recorded the assault with her phone and collected key physical evidence.
After reporting the abuse for a second time, Taylor’s adoptive father was arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison for sexual battery of a child.
Taylor had never shared her story publicly until Mother Jones reporters connected with her in late 2023. After the story was published and was picked up by other outlets, including Rolling Stone and People, Taylor said no one from the Sheriff’s Office ever reached out to apologize. The absence of a reaction didn’t seem to align with a sheriff who has said that he would “go to the ends of the Earth” to arrest child sex abusers and that if his office makes a mistake, he would “dress up, ’fess up, and fix it up.”
Now 22, Taylor filed the suit last fall alleging that the sheriff and his deputies violated her civil rights by conducting a biased investigation, falsely arresting her, and leaving her abuser free to rape her again. The suit was filed against Sheriff Grady Judd in his individual and official capacity, two detectives involved in the investigation, and her adoptive father.
Judd’s office directly responded to Taylor’s claims, calling her lawsuit “frivolous.”
What this poor girl has gone through is heinous enough, all statutes of limitation should be suspended indefinitely in her case. Honestly, hearing how many victims of child sexual abuse escape Stockholm syndrome years later, maybe child sexual abuse should not come with a statute of limitations, at all. I guess child abuse in general, not just sexual.
I know that lawyer try out every single tactic in the playbook, hoping that something sticks, but the sheriff trying to hide behind, “She waited too long,” is abhorrent.
Why does “child rape,” or any rape, have a statute of limitations at all?
You know, I was wondering that, too. I think it might have something to do with the limitations of technology back in the ancient days (of 50 years ago), when it made little sense to prosecute someone for something heinous, but essentially unprovable.
Tech has made huge strides and we can Bones the shit out of any case, even if 100 years old.
I think the general idea of the Statute of Limitations was that if you got away with it long enough, it was presumably because you had changed your wicked ways, and stayed out of trouble, and had earned a second chance.
Okay, maybe that’s true for the guy who robbed a bank to pay his mortgage and keep his house 15 years ago, but rape? And CHILD rape?
I don’t care how much you’ve changed, and come to regret your actions, you need to go to jail, I don’t care if you are 100 years old. Every rapist needs to live their life knowing that their ugly secret could catch up to him at any moment.
Like the Golden State Killer, going through life thinking he got away with his youthful hobby.
I think you are onto something. It does sound like they didn’t take rape, even child rape, all that seriously until relatively recently.