Joshua Salazar

A Douglas County judge has completely sealed, rather than redact, the arrest affidavit of a man accused of raping a client at a Lawrence massage business, meaning that the public can have no information about why police believed they had probable cause to arrest the man.

Joshua Salazar, a 32-year-old massage therapist, was charged earlier this summer with raping a 19-year-old woman at Lawrence Thai Massage, 951 E. 23rd St.

An arrest affidavit would outline police officers’ reasons for depriving Salazar of his liberty and recommending that he face a criminal charge.

In Kansas, judges have the option to redact sensitive information, like a victim’s name, in such affidavits or to keep the whole document entirely hidden from the public. In Salazar’s case, Judge Stacey Donovan opted for the latter, as she has done in numerous other cases, including that of Eliseo Munoz, accused of murdering a local actor on the highway; Brandon Snow, accused of aggravated assault with a baseball bat; Mark Strand, accused of child sex crimes; Steven Braswell, accused of child sex crimes; and William Pope, convicted of aggravated assault.

In her order, Donovan notes that she reviewed the state’s and defendant’s responses to the request for disclosure, both of which were filed under seal. She gives five statutory reasons for concealing the information; releasing it, she wrote, “may”:

• jeopardize the physical, mental or emotional safety or well-being of a victim, witness, confidential source or undercover agent, or cause the destruction of evidence;

• interfere with any prospective law enforcement action, criminal investigation or prosecution;

• endanger the life or physical safety of any person;

• reveal the name, address, telephone number or any other information which specifically and individually identifies the victim of any sexual offense…; and/or

• reveal any date of birth, personal or business telephone number, driver’s license number, nondriver’s identification number, social security number, employee identification number, taxpayer identification number, vehicle identification number or financial account information.

It’s not clear in the last two reasons why such information as names and phone numbers could not simply be redacted from the affidavit.

Salazar is the second male massage therapist to be charged with a sex crime this year in Douglas County. As the Journal-World reported, Aaron Borger, who worked at Om Grown Yoga & Wellness Collective in downtown Baldwin City has been charged with multiple sex crimes. In that case, Senior Judge Nancy Parrish released a 16-page affidavit with only slight redactions.

In Kansas, arrest affidavits have been considered public records for the past 12 years, but there is a process for requesting them and judges can still keep them secret if they think secrecy is warranted under state statute. Prior to 2014, affidavits for arrests and search warrants were presumptively sealed, but that state law was changed to allow greater transparency and public access to the criminal justice system.