In 2020 while she was still a college student, Dyanie Bermeo of Mint Hill said she was sexually assaulted during a traffic stop in rural Virginia then arrested and shamed by the law enforcement agency she turned to for help. She was twice tried in the courts for the crime of false claiming before eventually being cleared.
When The Charlotte Observer wrote of Bermeo’s experiences in 2021, her attorney singled out the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for its handling of her client’s case.
“They arrested her, publicly humiliated her on Facebook, and then dragged her through two criminal trials. They failed to investigate her sexual assault, coerced her to recant, and then spent the next year trying to put her in jail,” Melissa Hordichuk of Charlotte told the Observer at the time.
“They get to be accountable for all of it.”
Now they could be.
In a new lawsuit filed in the federal courts of Western North Carolina, Bermeo accuses Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis and four of his detectives of multiple federal and state claims. They include fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as constitutional violations of Bermeo’s civil rights, her right to equal protection, malicious prosecution, among a dozen allegations in all.
The 36-page complaint, which also names sheriff’s investigators Scott Snapp, Jamie Blevins, Scott Adkins and Brad Roop, alleges that the officers’ missteps upended Bermeo’s life.
“This experience fundamentally changed Plaintiff’s view of...
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