PHOENIX — Officials agreed Wednesday to pay $3.5 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged metro Phoenix’s sheriff botched the investigation into the rape of a 13-year-old girl and failed to arrest the suspect who then went on to sexually attack her again.
The girl’s rape case was among more than 400 sex-crime cases that were inadequately investigated or not looked into at all by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office over a three-year period ending in 2007.
The decision to resolve the lawsuit by the girl’s guardians marks the latest in a long string of legal settlements against Arpaio’s office. The county had previously paid more than $68 million in judgments, settlements and legal fees for the sheriff’s office during Arpaio’s 22-year tenure. Some settlements resolved lawsuits filed over the treatment of inmates in Arpaio’s jails and the sheriff’s failed corruption investigations of political foes.
The settlement applies only to the lawsuit over the 13-year-old girl, who eventually got an abortion after she became pregnant from a subsequent attack.