Victims Voice Concerns, Call For Change
Victims of sex crimes in Arkansas need somewhere to turn when sheriffs fail them.
by Joslyn Price Smith and five anonymous rape survivors from Sharp County, Arkansas.
We write on behalf of victims of rape and other sex crimes who have been harmed by the Sharp County Sheriff’s Department’s failure to do its job. We write as survivors (and the mother of a minor survivor) of rapes in Sharp County—some reported those rapes, others did not, some reside in Sharp County, others left because of the crimes committed against us there or how our cases were handled when reported. We are not alone in our concerns about corruption in Sharp County. We know citizens of Sharp County—survivors and non-survivors alike—who fear retaliation from law enforcement if they raise such concerns. We choose to speak out about injustice. We ask the State of Arkansas to establish mechanisms to oversee the handling of reports of sexual violence and the investigations into those reports (including the proper handling of evidence) by sheriff’s departments and prosecutors.
Repeatedly, those of us revictimized by sheriff’s departments and prosecutors have turned to the Arkansas State Police and the Attorney General’s Office. As currently structured, neither has the authority to intervene in county-level criminal cases unless and until either the local sheriff or a prosecutor with jurisdiction requests assistance, stonewalling victims who have nowhere to turn. We, therefore, also ask for the establishment of a state investigating agency with authority to assist victims when investigations into the crimes against them have been mishandled and to hold officers of a sheriff’s department accountable for violations of their duties during the course of investigations.
Sex crime victims currently have no recourse when a sheriff’s department refuses to investigate or grossly mishandles a case or a prosecutor makes a charging decision based on a botched or incomplete investigation. Until the State of Arkansas acts to ensure the integrity of local law enforcement and criminal prosecution, rape survivors are traumatized by their rapists and then retraumatized by a system complicit with criminals.
While national attention has been paid to Jeffrey Epstein, Eric Swalwell, and online “rape academies,” arrests of Arkansas law enforcement officers for sex crimes have become mundane and ignored. How many more sexual predators are protected by officers in blue? In June 2025, Sharp County’s then-Chief of Police of Hardy was arrested and charged with sexual assault, sexual indecency with a child, endangering the welfare of a minor and knowingly furnishing alcohol to a minor. Prior reports against Rose were inadequately investigated, claimed to have been “unsubstantiated and based on rumors.” For many survivors of sexual violence in Sharp County, Rose’s arrest reignited concerns we have had, some of us for decades, about the handling of sex crimes reported to and investigated by the Sharp County Sheriff’s Department.
We do not see evidence that the Sharp County Sheriff’s Department is motivated to hear the concerns of victims of sex crimes, crimes that run rampant there. Indeed, an internal investigation by the same agency mishandling crime victims’ cases is the only oversight mechanism for sheriff’s departments in Arkansas. That is not oversight; it is a recipe for negligence and abuse by the agencies responsible for carrying out justice. Daily, victims of sex crimes in Arkansas are revictimized by those we should trust to help us. The psychological toll of that cannot be understated.
We deserve to have the State of Arkansas take immediate steps to make certain that allegations by sex crime victims are fully documented, investigated, and remedied, and that any allegations by sex crime victims against local sheriffs or prosecutors for their failure to do so are investigated by an independent state agency with the authority to hold negligent or corrupt parties liable.
We call on the Arkansas State Legislature to ensure victim safety and enhance the criminal justice and judicial processes in the state by developing procedures and enacting laws to hold agencies and systems accountable for the protection of victims of sexual violence, including establishing a state law enforcement agency with the authority to intervene on behalf of crime victims when sheriffs and prosecutors fail to uphold their oaths of office.
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