EX-OFFICER NOT GUILTY IN '97 RAPE OF PROSTITUTE
July 9, 1999

A former Philadelphia police officer was acquitted yesterday of raping a 21-year-old prostitute at gunpoint in Center City in September 1997. The jury deliberated only an hour and 15 minutes.

Fred Geathers, 31, assigned to the Third Police District until his arrest last July, broke down and cried when the verdict was announced in Common Pleas Court.His accuser, who works as a nursing assistant and lives in the South, began to tremble and weep.

``He'll do it to someone else!'' she blurted later, outside the courtroom. The woman had passed a police polygraph, but lie-detector tests are inadmissible as evidence in criminal trials in Pennsylvania.

Geathers, who did not testify, told police in a statement introduced as evidence that he offered the woman $50 for sex at 15th and Pine Streets and parked in a lot in the 1500 block of Lombard Street. He told detectives that when the woman saw his police equipment on the back seat of his green sport-utility vehicle, she demanded more money. He said he paid her $50, but then threw her out of the car - and she was angry and vowed to ``get him.''

Geathers, who was off-duty at 12:30 a.m. that Sept. 10, denied pulling out his 9mm Glock revolver or forcing the woman to have sex - and then not paying her.

His accuser's version of what happened sharply contradicted his. The woman testified that after they parked, Geathers locked the doors, pulled out a black gun with ``a little green light on the front'' and demanded sex ``for free.''

He later allowed her to leave, but kept her G-string underwear. She said he gave her his pager number and said his name was ``Daryl.'' The woman testified Geathers promised to protect her from being arrested by police if she would work for him, and pay him 10 percent of her proceeds from prostitution. He asked her to call him.

The woman testified that after she flagged down a police car at Broad and Pine Streets, and said she had been raped, Geathers drove by. The woman identified the car to police, who stopped Geathers and took him in for questioning that night. Police found the woman's underwear in his car.

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Mallios said afterward that prosecutors stand by the woman's story. ``He did it,'' Mallios said. He said the victim was ``very upset. It took a lot of courage for her to come forward.''

Defense attorney Brian McMonagle, who wept during closing arguments, insisted the woman was a liar who should not be believed because she had lied under oath several times, including at a preliminary hearing when she said she was not a prostitute.

McMonagle sought to establish, through testimony of a police ballistics expert, that the green light on the officer's gun could be seen while holstered. Geathers had contended his gun remained holstered in the car.

``I think the jury believed something happened inside that car, but they just aren't sure what,'' McMonagle said afterward.

Geathers, an officer for four years who was engaged at the time of the incident, will fight to be reinstated, his attorney said. Geathers wed his fiancee 10 days after the incident.