Officer Geoffrey Graves Arrested for Forcible Rape

A San Jose police officer has turned himself in after being charged with forcible rape. Geoffrey Graves, 38, has been a cop for six years. The victim is a woman he was sent to protect during a domestic dispute.

Neither the police nor the district attorney's office is saying where the rape occurred, except that it was a hotel where the victim once worked as a maid. Graves was one of the two officers who responded to a disturbance at the home of the woman and her husband. To resolve the problem, the woman said she would take a room at the hotel for the night. The two officers took her there. However, a police document says while one officer left, Graves stayed behind.

"The officer gained information and location of her hotel room and then went up there approximately 15 minutes later and knocked on the door," Santa Clara County deputy district attorney Carlos Vega said. "Unbeknownst to her, he opened the door. She was asleep, and that's when he let himself in and forcibly pushed her on the bed."

The victim didn't report the incident for three weeks, and when she did, she went to the California Highway Patrol, not San Jose police.

Kathleen Krenek is executive director of Next Door Solutions, an agency that counsels victims of rape and domestic violence. She believes the victim may have feared retaliation.

"She has reason to be afraid driving down the street," Krenek said. "Is someone going to do something? Is an officer going to do something? Is he going to find her because he's got a lot on the line. I'm absolutely amazed at the courage that it must have taken to come forward at this time."

Graves faces one count of forcible rape. He turned himself in Monday but was freed from jail on $100,000 bail.

San Jose police put him on paid administrative leave. The department now faces the challenge of restoring public trust.

"This is difficult for everybody because it reflects on our job and what we do every day, so I know that the officers are troubled by it, but we are resilient, and we have been through other hard times, and we've pulled together to rebuild the trust of the community, and that's what we're going to work on doing," San Jose police spokesperson Sgt. Heather Randol said.