RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — A student argued before a Fourth Circuit panel Tuesday that her case against a sheriff’s department should be allowed to proceed because a lower court should not have used an interview recording to dismiss her case.
Dyanie Bermeo, a 23-year-old student from Charlotte, says that she was sexually assaulted during a traffic stop in Abington, Virginia, in September 2020. She reported the incident to local law enforcement the next day, and then said that the Washington County Sheriff’s Office coerced her into recanting her report and arrested her for falsely reporting a crime with the intent to mislead law enforcement. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office then published a Facebook post about her arrest, including her photo, name, university and the name of her neighborhood in Charlotte.
Bermeo, who was tried twice and acquitted the second time, argued in her complaint filed in 2022 that the Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis and several of the sheriff’s office employees violated her constitutional and civil rights. Andis and detective Brad Roop told Bermeo that they obtained video from a house near the stop and that there was no car behind her. They told Bermeo that she was digging herself into “a deeper hole” and they did not want to “embarrass” her, and Roop said, “We need you to tell us the truth … no stop happened here.”…