NEW ORLEANS — The family of a teenage New Orleans girl has filed a federal lawsuit against a former New Orleans police officer accused of sexually abusing the girl, who he was assigned to drive to a hospital after a previous sexual assault.
Rodney Vicknair was arrested in September on charges of sexual battery, indecent behavior with a juvenile and malfeasance in office. The victim was 14 years old at the time of the alleged crimes and had already survived child sex abuse, according to her family’s lawyers.
“He preyed on a single mother and her young daughter, a rape survivor, by positioning himself as a role model and protective male figure in their lives,” attorney Hope Phelps told VICE News in a statement. “He then used that position to create distrust between them, isolating his target from her mother. He escalated from sexualizing the young girl to sexual assault and rape.”
“On the first night that Officer Vicknair met G.H., he began grooming her,” according to the lawsuit. “While in the waiting area of the emergency room of Children’s Hospital, Officer Vicknair showed G.H. pictures on his phone of a girl he claimed was his 16-year-old daughter.
“The photographs showed the girl posing in bikinis, lingerie, and holding cloth up over herself. Officer Vicknair explained that his daughter is a model and these were her modeling photos.”
Later that night, after the girl was home, he called and spoke to her, asking personal questions and giving her his personal information, the document states.
Over the next four months, the girl’s mother alleges, Vicknair visited their home, in uniform, under the pretense of mentoring the child. Instead, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her, groping and fondling her.
Twice — including one incident while the investigation into the alleged sexual abuse was underway — Vicknair is accused of sexually assaulting the girl with his hand as they sat in his patrol vehicle.