With Oklahoma officer sentenced to life, victims can finally begin to heal

Daniel Holtzclaw, the ex-Oklahoma City cop accused of raping at least 13 black women while on patrol, has been handed a sentence. Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, was convicted of raping and sexually victi…

Holtzclaw will serve his terms consecutively and will never be free for the rest of his life.

Jurors last month convicted Holtzclaw on 18 counts, including four first-degree rape counts as well as forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery, procuring lewd exhibition and second-degree rape. The jury also recommended Holtzclaw serve 263 years in prison.

During the trial, Holtzclaw’s lawyer insisted his client had been attempting to help the drug addicts and prostitutes he encountered in his work. Daniel Holtzclaw, who was arrested in June 2014, preyed specifically on low-income black women.

But several victims did choose to come forward, and their statements about how being attacked by a police officer changed their lives and their perceptions of the police likely played a significant part in the length of Hotzclaw’s sentence. At the sentencing hearing Thursday he glared at the three victims as they read statements, but they did not look at him. “My daughter and sisters are frightful when a police vehicle pulls up behind them”, Ligons said.

The Associated Press does not identify victims of sex crimes without their consent and is not naming the teenager, but Ligons spoke publicly about the case and agreed to be identified. “I just didn’t know what to think”. “There was nothing that I could do”, she testified.

News 9 Reporter Adrianna Iwasinski said the courtroom is already packed with spectators, including Holtzclaw’s family members and supporters of his victims.

Several of Holtzclaw’s victims have filed civil lawsuits against Holtzclaw and the city in state and federal court.

The judge hearing the case recently denied a new trial motion posed by the attorney for the former Oklahoma cop, Scott Adams.