NEW ORLEANS — Three northshore coroners filed for a restraining order Thursday against their newest colleague, St. Tammany Parish Coroner Christopher Tape, hoping to force Tape to reinstate a sexual assault response plan the whole region uses to gather evidence of sex crimes.
Tape decided to eliminate the Sexual Assault Nurse Examination program from his office’s duties, even before the controversial new coroner took office at midnight Monday. But Tape didn’t announce his plan to stop running the SANE program for the five-parish region until March 20, four days before eliminating two full-time and five part-time nurses specially trained and equipped to treat rape victims and gather evidence.
Tangipahoa Parish Coroner Rick Foster, Livingston Parish Coroner Ron Coe and St. Helena Parish Coroner Jimmie Varnado joined the nonprofit Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response (STAR) Center to seek an injunction and temporary restraining order to block Tape from punting responsibility for the SANE program to hospitals.
"There's no way that the hospitals would even remotely be prepared to take on this responsibility," said Morgan Lamandre, CEO of STAR. "But also, just the disregard for the well-being of sexual assault survivors is astounding."
Foster, the Tangipahoa Parish coroner, spent 26 years as an emergency room doctor. He said he’s joining the lawsuit against Tape to make sure rape kit evidence is collected by properly trained SANE nurses.
"A SANE nurse has got equipment ... to gather evidence and present that," Foster said. "When that happens, you got a whole lot better chance of getting these people put in jail for what they did, vs. an ER doctor who may miss something, by just having to be rushed in doing what he's doing. So, we need to have something that is going to stop this, get an injunction to stop this, so we can continue until at least we can get something else put in place. But at present, the people in this parish, and not only this parish but several parishes, are going to be improperly taken care of."
They argue that Tape doesn’t have the power to immediately stop running the SANE program and designate St. Tammany Parish Health System to take over because the Louisiana Department of Health already approved the annual sexual assault response plan for 2024, which placed the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office in charge of the SANE program for St. Tammany, Washington, Livingston, Tangipahoa and St. Helena parishes for the full calendar year.
The sudden announcement by Tape last week came six weeks after an exclusive WWL Louisiana investigation exposed a 2002 indictment in New Mexico charging Tape with child sexual assault on a 7-year-old girl. Tape admitted to police and to WWL that he lowered the girl’s pants and underwear, whipped her and then rubbed her bare bottom, but said it was to discipline his girlfriend’s daughter, not molestation.
After extensive plea negotiations failed, Tape was indicted 14 months after his initial arrest. He then argued that prosecutors had violated his right to a speedy trial and the court threw out the indictment on those grounds. The state of New Mexico argued Tape used delay tactics to run out the clock, but the courts disagreed.
Tape has criticized area lawmakers calling for his ouster, saying they don't believe in "innocent until proven guilty." The Louisiana Illuminator reported Thursday that two northshore state senators, Patrick McMath and Beth Mizell, were drafting bills taking aim at Tape and his authority. Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich, the Jefferson Parish coroner and president of the state Coroner's Association, said they don't support new laws that might "open Pandora's box" and make other coroners "collateral damage."
"We have to be careful about the law," he said. "We all want him out, but we have to follow the law to get him out."
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