Rekha Basu's column: After two assaults on incapacitated women, attacker escapes even sex offender registry

On April 30 — the last day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, as she pointed out — 25-year-old Jasmine Rios faced her assailant, a judge, attorneys and others in a Polk County courtroom to give what's called a victim impact statement. She told them how, on the evening of Oct. 22, 2018, she had awoken from an alcohol-fueled stupor to find a man she’d had drinks with at a bar earlier in the day penetrating her sexually. As she'd later tell me, she had no clothes on and no recollection of letting him into her Des Moines apartment, much less into her bed.  

Addressing that man, 33-year-old Benjamin Graziano, whose mother sat behind him playing with her cellphone, Rios said, “You can not tell me it’s OK to have intercourse with someone who would never — and I mean never, never — allow you into their home in the first place. … I considered you a friend, and it was my mistake for thinking I could trust you.”

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Rios met Graziano that summer through mutual friends. He lived a block and a half  from her, near Ingersoll and 44th Street. On that October afternoon they had walked together to Wellman's Pub to avoid drinking and then driving. She was expecting other friends who never showed up. But along their walk, a second man, a friend of Graziano's stopped to offer them a ride and joined them at the bar. 

After three drinks and a shot, Rios says she was more out of it than she's ever been. Later, Graziano’s attorney would tell her she had conked out in the bar's bathroom before a waitress woke her up. Rios wishes the waitress had called police to get her home safely or arrest her for public intoxication to prevent what happened next.

Her phone was dead and she recalls repeatedly asking the men to get her home before they finally agreed. She learned the other man had driven and both carried her into her apartment.

Fearful when she woke up to find Graziano on her, Rios says she pushed him off without a word, went into the shower and threw up, then showered for a long time until the water ran icy cold. The next day, she says, he sent her a text message asking how she was feeling. "I said 'Don't talk to me... You raped me.'" A Des Moines police report also has Rios writing, " ‘Dude I woke up with you inside me … Clearly I was unresponsive,’ and Graziano replying, "I’m really disappointed in myself n I’m sorry n I know sorry doesn’t mean anything.” The report said Graziano had acknowledged to police that Rios was unconscious when they left the bar.

The next day, accompanied by her boyfriend, Rios went to the MercyOne emergency room to get a rape kit done. Des Moines police were called to the hospital and questioned her briefly. She later sent them screenshots of the text messages. She also told them she had found Graziano's cap, and one worn by the other man who carried her in, lodged between her bed and the wall, and gave both to the police. She was interviewed in mid-November by a detective.

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After that, she says, police stopped communicating with her about the case. A few months later, she said she got a call from someone (she doesn't recall from which agency) telling her that DNA from Graziano but not the other man had been confirmed in the samples taken from her. She asked for a copy of the finding but never received one.

As she said at sentencing, she felt the investigation had gone on "entirely too long."  The event was "922 days ago, or in other words, two years, six months, 39 days ago," she said.

Charges in a second case

It wasn't until February 2020 — 16 months after the encounter — that Graziano was charged with third-degree sexual abuse against Rios, a felony charge carrying up to 10 years in prison. By then there was a second reported victim, which Rios suspects was the only reason officials returned to her case. Kayla Plagman, who doesn't know Rios, told Clive police that Graziano sexually assaulted her on Oct. 3, 2019, also while she was incapacitated from alcohol. The assault happened at a friend's place in Clive, where Plagman and Graziano had both gone after celebrating Plagman's 33rd birthday with a group of her friends at Wellman's Pub on Ingersoll. 

Plagman knew Grazianofrom working together at a store. But they’d never hung out together until a week before the incident, when she’d invited co-workers to Wellman's West for drinks to celebrate her upcoming 33rd birthday. The following week, she had a similar gathering for non-work friends at Wellman's on Ingersoll Avenue, where Graziano  happened to show up, so she invited him to join them.

His behavior was bothering some people, she says: “Some of my male friends were getting upset because he was very touchy with some of the women.” A female friend told Plagman she “had to keep telling him not to touch her butt.”

Plagman says after Graziano bought her a drink and it spilled, he bought her another one, after which she hit a new level of incapacitation. "I was just gone,” she said. Later, at the friend's place in Clive, Plagman was partly passed out but recalls that the three were sitting on the couch and Graziano started rubbing her back. She says she kept telling him to stop. Eventually the host turned in, but the host's roommate later heard Plagman yelling “Stop! Get off me!” according to the Clive police report. The report also notes that at one point the roommate came out of his room to see Graziano on top of Plagman and grabbing her breast. The roommate took photos of bruises on Plagman’s breast, legs and thighs that were given to police.

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Plagman said she somehow ended up driving Graziano home that night while “in and out of consciousness,” pulling into his driveway and ordering him to  ‘Get the f--- out of my car.” She said he responded by groping her “up my shirt and down my pants.” Later, most of her body was sore: “My private parts, my legs, stomach and arms.” She said it took her about a week to remember what all had happened and file a police report.

Two months later, Graziano turned himself in to Clive police and was charged with assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. A police report said he claimed not to remember what happened because he had blacked out.

Plagman met with Assistant Polk County Attorney Meggan Guns, the same assistant who had handled Rios’ case. But until we spoke, Plagman hadn’t known Rios had reported a sexual assault involving Graziano to police more than a year earlier. She thought Rios had come forward with her own story only after hearing about Plagman’s.

If Graziano had been expeditiously charged, tried and convicted, he might have been imprisoned or at least on the sex offender registry before he could have assaulted Plagman.

Prosecutors won't talk about cases

Des Moines Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek disputes that Rios' case moved  unreasonably slowly, noting delays on both sides and Graziano's refusal to provide a DNA sample until the detective obtained a warrant for one in January 2019. Parizek said that Graziano's DNA wasn't found on Rios, and that the charge was based on the other evidence they had.

No trial was held in either case. The county attorney and a judge allowed Graziano to plead the rape charge against Rios down to a simple misdemeanor assault not even of a sexual nature. Plagman says she was ready to testify at trial in her case, but the authorities decided to bundle both cases together and let him take a plea bargain to misdemeanor assault causing injury or mental illness in both. The punishment: Two years of probation. And the irony: The plea bargain admits to no sex offense, and mandates no time on the sex offender registry, yet requires Graziano to complete sex offender treatment.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone didn't return my call, as is typical for him, and his assistant county attorneys aren't authorized to speak for the department.

This wasn’t the first time Benjamin Graziano caught a break though he has faced criminal charges frequently since 2013. He had three drunken-driving offenses in three years, the last in 2016, but never got more than a few days of jail. 

Though they've never spoken to each other, both Rios and Plagman separately have heard from plenty of others about Graziano's influential family and that nothing would come of their cases. "He (Benjamin) used to say, 'I'm a Graziano. I run this town. I can do whatever I want,'" says Plagman. Says Rios: “A lot of people in his family kept getting brought up to me because they’re the Grazianos and they’re really big on the south side.” Benjamin’s father, Craig Graziano, a lawyer for the state Office of Consumer Advocate, didn't return text or email messages from me.

Graziano's family is separate from the Graziano Brothers who make sausage and own the south-side deli of that name.

In his statement at sentencing, Graziano said he was sorry he hurt people, without naming either Plagman or her, said Rios. 

Plagman has had to go on medication for anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Even seeing someone with the same glasses as Graziano’s makes her panic. Rios felt so unsafe in her home that she moved out within three weeks of the attack. “I didn’t feel comfortable even driving my car,” she said, so she got a different one. "I still don't hang out with friends in general, just my boyfriend." She has gone out only twice in public without him, she says, noting, "I did used to party. I learned my lesson. You can't trust anybody, even law enforcement."

Both women are outraged by what they call a slap on Graziano's wrist. "He is literally a sex offender but isn't on the sex offender registry," said Plagman. "This is something both of us (she and Rios) will carry for the rest of our lives."

"None of it is adding up," says Rios, who says she knows of two other people who say a drunken Graziano tried to mess with them, too. Of Plagman's and her cases, she said, "It had to happen to two people for it to even become one thing.”

You have to wonder how many other people it has happened to, whether or not they filed reports. And how many more will be similarly victimized because the justice system won't put a stop to it.