A woman is suing Columbus police after she says her 1994 rape case was not given the investigative attention it needed, leading to it sitting idle for nearly 30 years before the suspect was able to get his charges dismissed.
The woman, who is proceeding as Jane Doe, filed the lawsuit on June 5 in U.S. District Court in Columbus.
She accuses Columbus police, unidentified officers, and Franklin County of violating her 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law by not properly investigating her case.
Additionally, the lawsuit names Anthony Shinaul, 54, the man charged in connection with the woman’s rape, as a defendant. Shinaul was identified as a suspect in the woman’s case in 2024 and arrested.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Chris Brown dismissed the criminal case in September 2025.
In dismissing Shinaul’s case, Brown said if police had done their job based on the information Jane Doe provided at the time, Shinaul could have been arrested and charged within the appropriate statute of limitations.
“A simple neighborhood canvas based on [Jane Doe’s] description … would have potentially closed the investigation in weeks, not decades,” Brown wrote.
The Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office is appealing Brown’s ruling. That appeal remains pending.
The civil lawsuit states that Jane Doe has “suffered the indignity of being recorded by her government as complicit in her own rape” and that a false statement in a police officer’s filing was “the working justification for abandoning her case.”
According to the lawsuit, Columbus police have a pattern and practice of “treating women who report sexual assault as less credible and less deserving of police protection than other crime victims.”
The Dispatch has reached out to the Columbus City Attorney’s Office, which represents Columbus police in lawsuits, for comment.
Detective’s false statement in filing led to rape case being deprioritized, lawsuit states
In 1994, Jane Doe was sexually assaulted in her home. She reported the assault to Columbus police and provided them with information about the possible suspect, including things he had told her during the assault about his wife, court records say.
Jane Doe also told Columbus police the suspect was a neighbor who had knocked on her door the night before and introduced himself as “Tony.”
The lawsuit states that a detective investigating the rape wrote in an investigative document that Jane Doe had drinks with the man the night before the assault. Jane Doe says she never told police that information and it was completely false, according to the lawsuit.
The detective’s filing “recast a stranger’s home invasion as a social encounter between acquaintances,” the lawsuit states, and “furnished a pretext to treat Plaintiff’s case as low priority.”
Police did not conduct a canvas of the neighborhood looking for witnesses or trying to confirm any of the information Jane Doe had provided, according to court records.
As part of the investigation, police did collect a sample of semen left on a pillow for DNA, but that was not tested until 2008.
In 2013, a Franklin County grand jury issued an indictment for rape, kidnapping and other charges with the named suspect as a John Doe based on the then-unidentified DNA profile. Years later, police used genetic genealogy to find a potential DNA match, which resulted in Shinaul being identified as a suspect in June 2024 and his arrest.
“A case capable of resolution within weeks instead lay dormant for approximately 30 years,” the lawsuit states. “No legitimate law enforcement purpose explains that result.”
Shinaul’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that police had not exercised due diligence in trying to find a DNA match or investigate the case. After a hearing, Brown agreed, throwing the case out.
Jane Doe’s lawsuit states that she did not know about the false statement in the investigative documents until after the case was dismissed. She also did not know that her personal information was not properly redacted.
“The city and county afford women who report sexual assault less investigative effort than they afford victims of other violent crimes presenting equivalent leads,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also seeks damages for violations of Jane Doe’s informational privacy by not redacting her personal information from public records, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit states the prosecutor’s office is not being sued over prosecutorial decision-making or charging decisions.
Reporter Bethany Bruner can be reached at bbruner@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Woman sues Columbus police over rape investigation that sat idle for decades
Reporting by Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
