Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn filed the suit in U.S. District
Court for Eastern California, in Sacramento, against the city of
Vallejo and police officers, including department spokesman
Lieutenant Kenny Park, who referred to the kidnapping last March as
a "wild goose chase."
The 30-page complaint said that instead of investigating the crime,
police "created a destructive nationwide media frenzy through public
statements accusing Plaintiffs of faking Denise's kidnapping and
rape, and rubbed salt in Plaintiffs' fresh wounds in the days and
weeks following the attacks."
Calls to the Vallejo Police Department and Vallejo City Attorney's
Office for comment on the lawsuit were not immediately returned.
Quinn and Huskins are both physical therapists who lived together in
Vallejo, a city some 35 miles north of San Francisco, when their
home was broken into early on March 23, 2015.
The complaint says Huskins and Quinn were blindfolded, drugged and
bound, and Quinn was told that if he did not truthfully provide his
financial information or if he went to law enforcement, Huskins
would be harmed. Huskins was abducted, and when Quinn went to
police, the complaint said, authorities treated him like a suspect
and interrogated him for hours.
Huskins, meanwhile, was forced into the trunk of a car and driven to
a home where she was raped twice while blindfolded and held for
ransom. She was told by her rapist that the acts were filmed and
would be used against her if she went to police, according to the
complaint.
"While (the Vallejo Police Department) focused on unsubstantiated
theories and ignored evidence, Huskins endured unimaginable terror
and a violent assault," the complaint said.
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Two days after her abduction, Huskins was released in the Southern
California city of Huntington Beach. That evening, the Vallejo
Police Department released a statement saying, "This event appears
to be an orchestrated event and not a kidnapping."
Park, the police lieutenant, at a news conference that night said
Huskins and Quinn owed the city an apology for having them waste
resources on a "wild goose chase."
Last June, a man named Matthew Muller was charged in the kidnapping.
According to the complaint, Muller was suspected in at least three
other home invasions in the Bay Area similar to Huskins' around that
time.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie
Adler)
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