‘Validation’: That’s what one Pittsburgh police officer wanted from a little-used law meant to curb sexual violence – accusing a fellow officer

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Editor’s note: This story contains references to trauma and sexual violence.

Officer X’s Fitbit congratulated her on her workout.

She hadn’t exercised at all.

Her heart rate had reached 139 beats per minute in the middle of an afternoon mostly spent sitting — but also testifying, in a case against a fellow police officer, in a petition under the Protection of Victims of Sexual Violence or Intimidation Act.

“I remember lying on my back and feeling like my arms and legs were too heavy to move and looking up at light,” she told Allegheny County Senior Judge Kathleen R. Mulligan as Officer Aaron Fetty sat on the other side of the courtroom. “I remember Officer Fetty’s head looming over me and his mouth was moving. I don’t remember him saying anything,” except “you’re so hot … I remember being kissed.”

She’d tried not to look at Fetty as he provided his account.

“So she comes onto me, reaches around and tries to pull me in,” he told the judge. “I say, ‘No, no, no. I’m married.’ … She says okay. She literally rolls back over. … I go to leave. I walk out the front door of her house.”

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