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Amanda Bynes, Troubled Young Celebrity; 400,000 Rape Kits Unopened, Untested Across the U.S.
Aired May 29, 2013 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: She was once a teen actress with a squeaky clean girl-next-door image. And now this is Amanda Bynes. Quite the opposite of the original image. Now she's 27 and she seems headed down an all too familiar road. Troubled young celebrity with a rap sheet that just keeps growing.
Here's HLN's A.J. Hammer.
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A.J. HAMMER, HLN HOST, "SHOWBIZ TONIGHT" (voice-over): The images of Amanda Bynes hiding behind a blond wig and under arrest by New York City police have left many people asking, what happened to this Amanda?
(SHOUTING)
HAMMER: A successful young actress with a once clean-cut reputation, Bynes first road rose to fame as a child on Nickelodeon's "All That" and "The Amanda Show."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANDA BYNES, ACTRESS: I just dropped in to be Amanda's number one fan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAMMER: Her television work led to several movie roles, most recently playing a virtuous team opposite Emma Stone in 2010's "Easy A."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BYNES: I'm not the one you have to answer to for your creep behavior. Will is a higher power that you will judge you for your indecency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAMMER: After that, she stepped away from acting and into legal problems. She is fighting a 2012 DUI case pending in California. Late last year, two separate hit-and-run charges against here were dismissed. Earlier this month, the actress was sentenced to three years probation for driving on a suspended license. UNIDENTIFIED JUDGE: Do you live here? Are you planning on paying the debt?
BYNES: Yes.
HAMMER: Now, Bynes is answering to a U.S. city judge for allegedly tossing a bong out of the window of her 36th-floor New York City apartment last week. Appear in a long, blond, disheveled wig, she was charged with reckless endangerment, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of marijuana.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you ever thrown a drug out the window?
HAMMER: Bynes denies the charges and has subsequently made allegations of her own against the NYPD in a series of strange tweets. "He slapped my vagina. Sexual harassment. Big deal." Adding, "The cops sexually harassed me. They found no pot on me or bong outside my window. That's why the judge let me go."
A spokesperson for NYPD Internet Affairs tells CNN they found no evidence to support her claims.
In spite of her troubles, Bynes sounds upbeat and optimistic about her future, tweeting, "I'm getting in shape and getting a nose job. I'm looking forward to a long and wonderful career as a singer/rapper."
Perhaps. But for now, Bynes is getting attention for her rap sheet and tweets.
A.J. Hammer, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: So I just wanted to show you a couple of things that I woke up to this weekend with regard to this young woman, Amanda Bynes. "The New York Post" on Saturday showed her in court with a blond wig. On Monday, another front-page story. Here she is right here, and she's attacking Rihanna. This time, with a series of very nasty, nasty tweets. Here it is again on "New York Post." That was the "Daily News." Here's "The New York Post," "Ranting Amanda ripping RiRi. And the photograph, Amanda Bynes with what appears to be a rolled-up cigarette of some kind.
Let me tell you of the tweets she has been sending out in particular Rihanna. This is why it caught so much attention. She tweeted out to Rihanna, "Chris Brown beat you because you are not pretty enough." Bynes is now denying she sent that tweet. She says it was mocked up by somebody else. There is a photo we have of her in better times back in 2006 when they were at an awards show together. It's a little unclear as to why all of a sudden everything went south between at least Amanda and Rihanna. Rihanna sent some tweets back that weren't friendly.
But I'll tell you something, Rihanna is not the only person who Amanda has a Twitter feud with. Courtney Love told Bynes to pull it together. Then Bynes tweeted back that "Courtney Love is the ugliest woman I've ever seen. To be mentioned by her at all makes me and all my friends laugh."
When she got unsolicited advice from a model named Christie Tieggen (ph), she said, "You are not a pretty model compared to me. I signed to Ford Models at age 13. I don't respect you. You are no beauty queen. I'm a beauty queen." Amanda Bynes' tweet to the model.
Not even her own parents have been safe from her tweets. Bynes send them this, "Never trust or listen to a word any person from my family says to the press. I am suing them for money laundering, unethical manager work. We are no longer on speaking terms. I would rather them be homeless than live off my money."
So, obviously, a frantic series of troubling tweets from a young woman who appears to be having a lot of difficulty.
I want to bring in our legal analysts. Lisa Bloom is with AVVO.com. Christine Grillo is a prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York. And HLN's Dr. Drew is still with us.
Drew, first of all, I want to get your reaction to the tenor of those tweets, the frantic nature of them and who many of those tweets blame everyone else, blaming everyone else for whatever is being accused of her. Then there is this insistence she has done nothing wrong, has nothing going on in her life and she is pretty imperfect.
DR. DREW PINSKY, HOST, DR. DREW: Well, one of the hallmark features of psychiatric illness oftentimes is a lack of insight or a loss of insight. And she clearly has none. She does not understand how she is being perceived. She blames circumstances for everything happening in her life. It's interesting, you used the word frantic. I would use the word manic. Particularly, I have done with a series of young women that impulsively run out and shave their head. That's what Amanda did, Britney Spears did. Those people, in my experience, have been bipolar in a hypo manic or manic episode. So it sounds like this is a young woman in trouble.
BANFIELD: Christine Grillo, as a prosecutor, do you have insight as to how another grown adult can gain control over an adult? What does it take when you have someone, who is clearly the age of majority, for another person to take control of them and help them?
CHRISTINE GRILLO, PROSECUTOR, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: It takes more of a criminal act. It would take, in other words, another adult to take control of the 27-year-old at this point for what Amanda has done. I don't see that happening. If she had done something more like committed some kind of a felony, then we could bring that in front of a judge. We could have that into the mental hygiene part. A judge could mandate treatment. That's not what's happening here. Her crimes haven't risen to the level -- she has driving -- a DUI, a hit- and-run and marijuana. Those are drugs -- those are crimes, rather, that are so low level they're not rising to the potent where a civil commitment -- it would mandate a civil commitment, which is a whole separate ball game from going and having criminal charges brought before a criminal judge and asking, as a prosecutor, for the judge to mandate some kind of treatment. Clearly, this young girl is having trouble and difficulty. But as far as having her committed criminally, I don't see that happening. Civilly, I don't know she's risen quite to the level that they would do that.
BANFIELD: When Britney Spears went through her host of issues, there were the issues of being a danger to herself or others. That was prominently played.
I know, Lisa, you have a lot of interest in this. When Lindsay Lohan was struggling, you represented her father, Michael Lohan. He tried to gain a conservatorship over her. Can you give me the insight on how that went?
LISA BLOOM, LEGAL ANALYST, AVVO.COM: He didn't get a conservativeship over her. We talked at great length. Michael Lohan, my client and I, about what we could do when Lindsey Lohan was in a similar situation, facing a host of problems, acting impulsively, acting erratically. Question is, what can you do? Michael Lohan was no different than my other law clients, except for the fact that he was a celebrity. When you have a young adult who is clearly making bad choice, it's gut wrenching for the family, the parents. What can you do?
To get a conservatorship over somebody is very difficult. You have to show they are completely unable to care for themselves. Somebody like Amanda Bynes, acting erratically, acting strangely, that is probably not going to be enough. What the family can do in this case, as we did in the Lohan case, is to get the criminal court to exercise more control over her. The criminal court has a lot of discretion. For example, she can be subjected to random drug tests. She can be subjected to police randomly coming in, searching her home when she's been convicted and is on probation. So those are the kind of things can you do to tighten the controls over a young person, and hopefully get them some help they need.
BANFIELD: Dr. Drew, I want you to jump in for a second, that is, we don't know what might be at play with Amanda Bynes. We don't know if there is a drug issue, a psychiatric issue, or somebody acting in an unusual way. But with your insight, is it hard to pinpoint someone who might need help, hard to pinpoint whether there are psychiatric issues? Would it make a difference if you were going the route that Lisa Bloom was discussing?
DREW: At a distance, of course, it's essentially impossible. We are speculating for conversation. In a room, evaluating a person, no, it's quite rudimentary. It is no problem at all. In fact, to pile on to what your legal experts are saying, not only are there the legal difficulties -- and I'll remind everybody, the physicians have a lot of pull here. We can step in and say this person needs a conservatorship. Even if there hasn't been a legal standard of if she hasn't committed a felony yet, we can see trouble coming. Things like Aurora, Colorado, can be avoided if people do the right thing, which is jump in and get a conservatorship. The problem is, I've recommended that hundreds of times to patients. In addition to it being legally cumbersome, parents don't want to disrupt their relationship with their child. They are reluctant to do it. Of the hundreds of times I've recommended it, I've had people do it a handful of times. Every time, it has saved the patient's life.
BANFIELD: We really wish her the best. It's always difficult to see this downward spiral, no matter the cause.
Dr. Drew, thank you. Lisa Bloom, Christine Grillo, thank you. Stay with us, if you would, please.
Just ahead, some crimes that could have been prevented if only the evidence hadn't been shelved, just shelved and stored, 400,000 rape kits unopened and untested across this country. Our Randi Kaye has an examination of the problem and talks to the victims whose rapists were free to rape again.
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BANFIELD: This story seems really inconceivable. Hundreds of thousands of rape cases never even processed, not even looked at. More terrifying, though, perhaps, rapists out on the loose, some of them serial rapists, raping again, putting other people at serious risk because that evidence is sitting on a shelf somewhere. The problem is happening all over the United States.
Our Randi Kaye is zeroing in on it from Dallas, Texas.
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RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In June, 1984, Carol Bart endured the most terrifying experience of her life. She was only 24.
(on camera): Did you think you were going to die that night?
CAROL BART, RAPE VICTIM: I did think I was going to die that night. I believed he was going to kill me.
KAYE: It was around 1:30 in the morning. Carol was returning home from a night out from friends. She was feet from her door here in this Dallas apartment complex when a man grabbed her and forced her back into her car. He then pulled the car around beside a dumpster and spent the next three-and-a-half hours raping her.
BART: If I screamed or cried, he threatened me, that he'd kill me.
KAYE (voice-over): When it was over, Carol drove herself to the hospital, where doctors took swabs from her skin, hairs and fibers from her clothes. All a part of what's called a rape kit. It was humiliating, but Carol endured it because she thought the material collected would help police catch her attacker. More than two decades later, Carol's rapist still hadn't been identified.
But a routine call in 2008 to check in on the case revealed something shocking. Carol's attacker was still on the loose because police had not exhausted every lead. He was still out there because the most crucial piece of evidence, that rape kit, had never been processed.
(on camera): How did you feel about the fact that your kit had been sitting on the shelf for so many years? BART: They had just let them stack up, stack up, and stack up. That's just unacceptable.
KAYE (voice-over): You heard right. Carol wasn't the only one. Years earlier, Dallas police sergeant, Patrick Welsh, discovered a huge backlog of rape kits and started a sexual assault cold-case program.
(on camera): How critical would you say the rape kits are in helping you solve these cases?
SGT. PATRICK WELSH, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT: They're vital to our investigations. No question about that.
KAYE: Sergeant Welsh turned to the team here at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science. He asked them to test every single untested swab sitting in their freezer. There were thousands of them dating back to 1970. Not a single one had ever been processed.
(voice-over): The sergeant says decades ago, law enforcement just didn't have the tools to solve these cases. DNA technology wasn't available to them until the 1990s.
WELSH: We solved well over 80 cases from the early ''80s and early '90s.
KAYE (on camera): From the rape kits?
WELSH: From the rape kits.
KAYE (voice-over): And Carol's case was one of them. Just four months, four months after Carol's kit was located and analyzed, the man who raped her was identified. Adding insult to injury, Joseph Houston couldn't be charged in Carol's case because the statute of limitations had run out.
It turns out, after Carol's rape, he kidnapped another woman and exposed himself to a child.
Carol believes if her rape kit had been analyzed years ago, her attacker might have been picked up and others wouldn't have been harmed.
Lavinia Masters' case had gone cold, too. She had been raped at 13, back in 1985.
LAVINIA MASTERS, RAPE VICTIM: I woke up with a knife to my throat, someone spreading my legs apart, ripping my underwear from me.
KAYE: Her rape kit sat on the shelf 21 years until Lavinia called Sergeant Welsh.
(on camera): After 21 years, they had unearthed your case. How frustrating was that?
MASTERS: I felt that I was on the shelf and I was forgotten about. KAYE (voice-over): A few months later, he got a hit. He showed Lavinia a photo of a man that raped her all those years ago.
MASTERS: I was like, oh my god, that was him. That was him. It was amazing to me to see what DAN could do and how it changed my life.
KAYE: Too many years had passed for Lavinia to bring charges. It turns out the man was already in prison for raping two other women at knifepoint. He was up for parole, but his parole was denied after a DNA match was finally made in Lavinia's case.
But this isn't just a Texas problem. It's estimated as many as 400,000 rape kits are sitting untested nationwide. 400,000.
Detroit has just started testing their backlog of 11,000 kits. And of the 300 they've tested, they've gotten 119 hits. And of those, 29 have been I.D. as serial rapists.
It's all beyond frustrating for Carol Bart.
BART: I can understand one city maybe being negligent. But a nation being neglect with rape kits? I don't understand it. This is a felony crime.
KAYE: A felony crime that still has police playing catch up.
Randi Kaye, CNN, Dallas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: So Carol and Lavinia, they have no criminal recourse. The statute has run out. What about civil? Could people sue the police over this? Our expert legal panel is standing by for not only that question, but how on earth this happened in the first place.
Coming back right after this.
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BANFIELD: Hundreds of thousands of cases of rape, their evidence shelved, never tested, those rapists free to roam the streets and reoffend and re-offend and re-offend.
Joining us now, our legal analyst from AVVO.com, Lisa Bloom, in Los Angeles, and from the Brooklyn D.A., Prosecutor Christine Grillo.
Christine, let me start with you.
As Randi Kaye reported, officials say they didn't have the tools -- law enforcement, they didn't have the tools. Didn't have DNA testing to them until the '90s. For some reason, that just falls flat. It's been 20 years since the 1990s began. What's the other reason that all these pieces of evidence just sit there?
GRILLO: Well, also it's manpower. But you have to remember that the pool of comparison has been broadened too now, because now they're taking samples from lots of people, so they can compare what they have in these DNA kits. It's been an evolution. And you should know that the laws are changing too. The statute of limitations has been lifted in New York on rape one and other sexual crimes, and other states as well. So there wouldn't be that stopping of the prosecution of that case for a statute of limitations here in New York and in other states --
(CROSSTALK)
BANFIELD: But not all states.
GRILLO: But not all. But the law is changing as it's evolving and things are getting -- and people are improving in finding these defendants, the law is changing to accommodate that.
BANFIELD: Lisa, I just -- I can only follow on another reason that perhaps with all of the different crimes out there, perhaps rape falls down in the priority when it comes to getting those DNA labs to work harder, provide results. I get it. They're backed up. I get that. But why is the crime of rape less important than any other crimes?
BLOOM: You're absolutely right, Ashleigh. I rail about this in my book "Swagger." Our priorities are all out of whack in the criminal justice system. We have hundreds of thousands of people currently incarcerated for minor drug crimes, like possession for marijuana. And we don't fund the labs to process the rape kits? Are you kidding me? This is appalling. This is such an important story, and I applaud you and CNN for running it. There is no excuse for allowing rapists to go free. I think we all have to take a very hard look at ourselves in the mirror as a culture as to how seriously we take the crime of rape if we allow these cases to go unsolved.
BANFIELD: And then one answer, yes or no, Christine Grillo, one answer, can these women sue the police for this?
GRILLO: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
GRILLO: In certain circumstances, yes.
BANFIELD: Maybe money will really start to talk.
Lisa Bloom, Christine Grillo, thank you both.
We're back right after this.
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BANFIELD: Thanks for watching, everyone. AROUND THE WORLD is next.
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