Patrick Kane's Accuser Is Cooperating With Rape Kit Hoax Investigation: Attorney
By Kate Shepherd in News on Sep 28, 2015 8:54PM
After an eventful week in the Patrick Kane sexual assault investigation, the woman who accused the Blackhawks' star of rape last month will cooperate with an investigation into the alleged rape kit hoax, her attorney, Roland Cercone, wrote in a letter to the Tribune.
The rape kit, performed on the woman after a night with Kane that she says involved him sexually assaulting her, serves as a key piece of evidence used in the grand jury investigation into the accusations. The rape kit, which did not show results for Patrick Kane's DNA below the woman's waist, was recently called into question when the accuser's mother claimed the kit's evidence bag had been tampered with and left on her Buffalo, New York doorstep.
Cercone said the accuser has cooperated fully with the Erie County District Attorney's Office.
The rape kit bag incident raised questions of evidence tampering before the mother's story was debunked by District Attorney Frank Sedita at a press conference Friday. The mother claimed to attorneys that the bag that held the rape kit evidence was left by an unknown evidence tamperer outside her door. Attorney Thomas Eoannou, who represented the accuser, stepped down as the family's attorney on Thursday and said he no longer believed the mother's story.
The bizarre events surrounding the rape kit bag won't have an impact on the open case unless authorities determine that the accuser was involved with the hoax, Sedita said at the press conference.
Yet many have speculated that recent developments have hurt the accuser's case and Sedita even said it's not clear if the canceled grand jury proceedings will be rescheduled.
"The question in my mind isn't when this case goes to a grand jury," Sedita told the press Friday. "It's if this case goes to a grand jury."
Cercone, a Buffalo-based personal injury attorney and Baptist deacon who has been involved with the case for several weeks, said he's never seen anything like the events of the last week.
"Not much surprises me after thirty years of practice, including years as the chief prosecutor in the sex offense unit of the Erie County District Attorney's office," he wrote. "However, the misrepresentations this case has generated have reached the point of indeed being a circus."
In another bizarre twist to the case, Cercone lamented the fact that this case took away attention from Pope Francis' visit to the U.S. last week. He also asked the public to pray for the accuser, Kane and his family, "those who spend so much time commenting about this case on social media, instead of examining themselves," including journalists anxious to report stories on this case, the DA's office, people who have leaked information about the case and last but not least, Pope Francis.