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Lauren Little has come forward with accusations of rape at the hands of Matthew Piter, a Cleveland police officer already accused of raping another woman.

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It took four years, but Little is ready to share her experience. In a story posted by WKYC, Little said she met Piter, then a police cadet, on the Bumble dating app in 2017. The two went out for pizza and she invited Piter to her home the following night. Little said he appeared to be highly intoxicated and refused to leave.

“I got up to go to my room. I was actually going to lock myself in my room, but he followed behind me, and ripped my shirt from around my throat, and strangled me to the point that my shirt ripped. I had burn marks on my throat. He ripped my underwear off from me,” she said.

“He had a mole on his face, and that was the only thing I could stare at, other than his lazy eye, while I was being raped,” she said, adding that, while she did not know his last name, his features were impossible to forget.

Little never went to police about the incident. She did her best to push forward: Marrying and moving to another state. But after seeing a headline about Piter being charged with raping a woman in 2019, she felt that had she spoken up sooner, he may not have had access to another victim.

“There’s no more guilt that someone can feel, than knowing that.” She said. “You’d hope that someone was drunk and would never do it again, but the amount of guilt that you feel knowing that someone was assaulted after you.”

Little searched the internet, finding a 2017 Cleveland Police Academy graduation ceremony on YouTube – it was there that she says she was able to confirm Piter was her attacker.

 

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