Left to right: Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald, District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, Cory Elkins

The Douglas County district attorney appears to have changed her explanation about why rape survivors weren’t notified about their rapist potentially getting out of prison decades earlier than they expected.

The DA, Suzanne Valdez, is now saying that one of her former employees, attorney Eve Kemple, agreed to the motion that resulted in the substantial sentence reduction without notifying the victims or informing Valdez that she had made this “unilateral decision” — implying that Valdez would have handled the matter of “a particularly violent serial sex offender” differently and would have notified the victims.

In previous statements, however, Valdez never mentioned Kemple and said that the reason the victims were never notified was because a veteran victim-witness coordinator in Valdez’s office had recommended against it. “My office followed her recommendation to not re-traumatize the survivors by bringing them back for sentencing again,” Valdez said in May, adding that a change in law plainly “required” that the rapist’s sentence be modified by the court — a characterization that seems to conflict with her apparent disapproval of Kemple’s “conceding” unilaterally to the resentencing.

The case relates to the resentencing of serial rapist Cory Elkins, who was convicted in 2008 of four counts of rape and three counts of aggravated criminal sodomy for brutalizing two women in the 1990s. A third woman also accused Elkins of rape, but the statute of limitations had run in her case. None of the women was notified about the developments in the case, including the resentencing, which occurred after Kemple had left Valdez’s office.

photo by: Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo

Douglas County prosecutors David Melton and Eve Kemple are pictured on Sept. 4, 2008, in Douglas County District Court.

Valdez’s new explanation of the Elkins matter appeared in her response on Tuesday to a disciplinary case that has been filed against her by Special Prosecutor Kimberly Bonifas, who alleges that Valdez has engaged in multiple instances of professional misconduct, including making false statements about a judge, engaging in undignified or discourteous conduct and engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice and that adversely reflects on her fitness to practice law.

Valdez acknowledges in her response to Bonifas that the failure to notify the victims “deeply upset” them and that a disciplinary complaint was filed against Valdez and Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald, who represented her office at Elkins’ resentencing.

In that disciplinary matter, the complaint against Valdez and Greenwald was ultimately dismissed by Deputy Disciplinary Administrator Gary West, who found that the failure to notify the rape survivors was an isolated mistake and against the Victims Bill of Rights but not unethical per se. West’s letter regarding the dismissal did not mention Kemple, but it did say that Valdez’s office believed “there was no argument to be made” that Elkins had been incorrectly sentenced — despite Valdez’s implication Tuesday that Kemple had other options besides “conceding” unilaterally.

The Kansas Constitution and state statute direct that victims be given notice of sentencing hearings, but Valdez, who campaigned on a platform of victims’ rights, has defended herself, if not Kemple, by noting that the Victims Bill of Rights is “advisory” only and carries no enforcement provisions if not followed.

In her response to the special prosecutor, Valdez, who describes herself as an outspoken champion of women, describes Kemple, who now is an assistant senior attorney general for Kansas, as “eccentric and sanctimonious” and says she was “equal opportunity when it came to treating people poorly.” In addition to blaming Kemple for not notifying the rape survivors, she blames Kemple for low morale and “toxicity” in the DA’s office.

The Journal-World has reached out to Kemple, who is listed as a witness in Bonifas’ complaint, but did not immediately hear back.

When the Journal-World asked Valdez’s office for comment Wednesday regarding Kemple being singled out for the first time regarding the failure to notify rape victims, the DA’s spokeswoman, Cheryl Cadue, said only: “DA Valdez supports her staff and prefers to handle personnel issues in house. The complaint has put the DA in a difficult position.”

As the Journal-World has reported, the rape survivors said they were angry and baffled by the failure of Valdez’s office to notify them at any time during the resentencing process. One of them on Wednesday told the Journal-World that this was the first she had heard of Kemple being to blame for the lack of notification. She and the others had been given to understand that the victim-witness coordinator was to blame.

But she also said that she had reason to doubt that explanation by the DA. She said she had spoken to the victim-witness coordinator previously blamed by Valdez, and that person disputed the DA’s explanation: “My memory of the events is not the same as what the DA is reporting. My past shows that I value victim notification,” the coordinator, now retired, said.

The coordinator declined to speak to the Journal-World directly, but the Journal-World has viewed correspondence between her and the rape survivor.

In an effort to get to the bottom of how the decision to not notify was actually made, the Journal-World asked the DA’s office months ago whether the decision existed in writing. The DA’s office declined to answer that question. When the Journal-World filed an open records request in May pursuant to state law, the DA’s office acknowledged receipt of the records request but proceeded to ignore it for three months. However, the day after the Journal-World published a story about the matter, the DA’s office responded by saying the office would fulfill the records request if the Journal-World paid an $840 fee, which the DA’s office estimated would cover the time and materials needed to complete the records request. The Journal-World is modifying its records request in an effort to reduce the fees the office will charge.

A pre-hearing conference has been scheduled in the special prosecutor’s complaint against Valdez for Sept. 19, and the formal hearing dates are Oct. 12-13. The conference and hearing will be open to the public.