Police informant gets raped after being left unmonitored while undercover

A woman was raped while conducting an undercover operation for the police in the US state of Louisiana last year in January.

Officers with the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office (RPSO) had sent her to the house of a drug dealer named Andrew Jones, so she could buy meth from him. The woman had a tiny microphone and a camera on her, but the devices did not give real-time data.

The officers left her unmonitored and alone at the drug dealer's house in Alexandria, Louisiana even though they knew that the man was a dangerous repeat offender.

The suspect allegedly forced the woman to perform oral sex on him twice. Her cries for help and the abuse were all recorded on the microphone but went unnoticed by the officers who were just down the street from the house.

The Associated Press reports that Jones had even stopped once to carry out a drug deal before continuing the attack. The woman had been working as a confidential informant after being arrested around a month before the incident.

Jones was arrested only after the victim left the house and alerted law enforcement. Her ordeal did not end there, as she was charged with drug possession merely weeks after the assault. And these were not new charges, they were related to a previous arrest. She has since been "booked on possession charges at least twice."

"We've always done it this way. She was an addict and we just used her as an informant like we've done a million times before," Lt. Mark Parker, who was the ranking officer in the sting operation, told AP.

He added that the officers tasked with monitoring the victim thought that the woman was safe because another person had entered the house after her. The Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office began using real-time recording equipment during sting operations only after the rape incident.

However, it has not yet forced the RPSO to initiate any internal reviews. The rape charge against Jones was also downgraded to the third-degree following the AP report.

Jones was initially charged with second-degree rape and false imprisonment, in addition to the distribution of meth. The victim's attorney, Harold Murry, said that the audio from the attack was "absolutely horrible."

"She has a drug problem and I don't know if she's going to be able to beat it or not. But when you become a snitch, they keep your drug problem going and then they arrest you for it," added Murry.