A fired Port Royal cop avoided sexual assault charges. What did investigators find?

A woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a former Port Royal police officer in 2015 cried as she reported the incident to town police two days later and said she was afraid the officer would hurt her, according to recently released documents related to the investigation.

The State Law Enforcement Division documents offer more details on the alleged incident now at the center of a lawsuit the woman filed against the town and police in August, contending the Port Royal agency was negligent in its hiring and supervision of the officer. SLED released the file to The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette following an open-records request.

In her statement to SLED investigators, the woman said then-town officer George Rioux forced her to have oral sex in a wooded area behind a grocery store in November 2015. The Packet and Gazette typically does not identify individuals who reported they were sexually assaulted.

Rioux was fired in December 2015 after an internal investigation into the incident and his personnel file said he was accused of "physical or psychological abuses of members of the public and/or prisoners,” the newspapers reported in 2016. He denied assaulting the woman in a statement to SLED investigators.

Rioux was not criminally charged after the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office said the evidence didn’t support a case. The case was closed in March 2016.

“If you receive any additional information please notify me immediately,” Deputy Solicitor Sean Thornton wrote SLED in declining to prosecute the case.

Scared to call for help, and a denial

In her statement to investigators, the woman said Rioux was off duty and texted her one afternoon in November 2015 wanting to talk, and drove her in his truck to Sands Beach in Port Royal. There they talked for about half an hour before Rioux twice took the woman’s hand and tried to place it on his crotch, she told SLED and police.

She told him no, the second time pulling away and slapping Rioux, and asked to be driven back to where she left her car in a grocery store parking lot, she told investigators. Before reaching the parking lot, Rioux turned down a side road behind the grocery store, at which point the woman hit Rioux’s arm and repeated that they weren’t going to have sex, she said in her statement to SLED.

After parking the truck in the woods, Rioux asked the woman to get out and talk on the tailgate, she said. Outside of the truck, Rioux began kissing her and when she said no and tried to walk back to the passenger door, he stopped her, according to her statement.

Rioux then pulled his pants down, grabbed her neck and forced her to have oral sex, she said in her statement.

She told investigators she complied because she knew Rioux had a gun and was scared he would hurt her if she called for help.

Rioux told SLED investigators he was in a months-long, secret sexual relationship with the woman and denied assaulting the woman, saying their sexual relationship was consensual. Rioux, who is married, said he later told his wife about the affair.

“I have no idea why (she) would accuse me of such a crime,” Rioux wrote in his statement to SLED. “I believe (she) feels betrayed by me for continuing our relationship while I am still married.”

The woman’s clothing was sent to SLED’s forensic lab for DNA testing, though the lab said it couldn’t begin testing without a cheek swab or blood sample from both Rioux and the woman. It is unclear from SLED’s documents whether DNA testing occurred.

Previous encounters

Rioux and the woman met in March or April 2015 when Rioux would come to the apartment complex where the woman worked and ask for help identifying a suspect or provide police reports to help with tenants who needed to be evicted, according to a summary of SLED’s investigation.

The woman told investigators she repeatedly rejected Rioux’s sexual advances while they watched television one day that June at the apartment she shares with a family member and that Rioux left. When he texted a couple of weeks later, the woman told him she didn’t like how he had continued after being told no, she said in her statement.

The officer apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again, the woman told SLED.

That July, Rioux offered to show the woman surveillance video of a man who had been arrested at the apartment complex and met her in a grocery store parking lot in his patrol car while on duty, the woman said during a December 2015 interview with SLED. The woman told the investigator she and Rioux kissed and started to have oral sex before the officer received a work call and had to leave.

The woman told a SLED agent she didn’t tell Rioux “no” during that incident, noting it as “the one where I didn’t say no.” A family member later told her that consenting in one instance didn’t “mean it was OK for other things to happen that she wasn’t comfortable doing,” the woman told the agent.

Rioux invited the woman to his house that August, a meeting which included another sex act, according to the woman’s statement. She told SLED she felt used after the encounter and ignored Rioux for the next two weeks, eventually telling him he needed to work on his marriage and continuing contact in a way she viewed only as friendly.

The woman offered excuses not to hang out when Rioux asked, she told investigators, until the day she said he assaulted her.

Town, police deny liability

A work colleague of the woman called Port Royal police on Nov. 4, 2015, two days after the incident and a day after the woman told her what happened, SLED records show. The woman told her coworker she was afraid of who would answer if she called herself and wanted to speak to a specific officer she trusted from a previous case, according to the colleague’s statement.

When Port Royal Cpl. Joseph Simpson met with the woman, she told him she had been sexually assaulted, began crying and said she was afraid Rioux would hurt her, Simpson wrote in his memo about the interview.

Port Royal Police Chief Alan Beach contacted SLED the same day to ask for an investigation, the state agency’s report said.

The woman’s lawsuit, filed in Beaufort County Circuit Court on Aug. 14, alleges that Port Royal was negligent in not better vetting the officer’s background, by not properly supervising the officer, and for hiring the officer when town officials should have known his “propensity for violence and propensity for truthfulness.”

Rioux isn’t named in the lawsuit, but the date, circumstances and work history described in the filing match his SLED case file and S.C. Criminal Justice Academy records.

The woman was dissuaded from pursuing the matter by a SLED agent, who referred to the case as a “he said-she said” account, the suit said. SLED spokesman Thom Berry said this month the agency wouldn’t comment on a civil case.

The woman, identified in court filings only as a Jane Doe, contends in her suit that she suffered mentally and emotionally. She is asking for damages to be decided by a jury.

The town and police department in court papers denied the allegations. They contend the town is shielded from liability under the S.C. Tort Claims Act, which says the government isn’t liable for “employee conduct outside the scope of his official duties.”

This story was originally published November 21, 2017 at 5:34 PM with the headline "A fired Port Royal cop avoided sexual assault charges. What did investigators find?."