criminal-law sexual-assault fbi
Does this constitute reportable suspected criminal activity to FBI or local police authorities?
<p>Suppose the following situation:</p>
<p>Let's say while <strong>Person A</strong> was in another state, <strong>Person A's</strong> acquaintance (who we'll refer to as <strong>Jane Doe</strong>) texted him in the very late nighttime (after midnight) that someone (who we'll refer to as <strong>John Doe</strong>) had broken into her house - eventually leading - as she claimed - to her calling the police, her sibling supposedly being shot by <strong>John Doe</strong> and taken to the hospital (survived), and <strong>John Doe</strong> being arrested that same night. This back-and-forth texting ordeal took place for a little over an hour and was very mentally stressful for <strong>Person A</strong> (especially being out of state at the time and feeling that he couldn't do anything). This is the order of events:</p>
<p>1.) <strong>Jane Doe</strong> texts <strong>Person A</strong> after midnight that an ex-acquaintance of her parent is inside her house yelling at someone downstairs.</p>
<p>2.) <strong>Person A</strong> immediately texts <strong>Jane Doe</strong> to call the police (she's told <strong>Person A</strong> in the past about <strong>John Doe</strong> - claiming she has a restraining order against him due to prolonged sexual abuse / rape - impregnating her in the past which she claims she has rape kit evidence to prove). Let's also mention that she told <strong>Person A</strong> weeks back that they had their house locks changed.</p>
<p>3.) <strong>Jane Doe</strong> texts <strong>Person A</strong> around 5 minutes later that <strong>John Doe</strong> is armed - saying that she heard a gunshot go off downstairs. She also mentions that she's called the police and they're on their way. <strong>Person A</strong> texts her to quietly lock herself in a bathroom until the police get there.</p>
<p>4.) <strong>Jane Doe</strong> - after some minutes - texts <strong>Person A</strong> that the police have arrived and that she sees <strong>John Doe</strong> in handcuffs.</p>
<p>5.) <strong>Jane Doe</strong> texts <strong>Person A</strong> that her sibling has suffered a gunshot wound and is with that sibling and paramedics on the way to the hospital.</p>
<p>6.) A few days later after the incident, <strong>Jane Doe</strong> is hesitant to answer <strong>Person A's</strong> questions about her safety and <strong>Person A's</strong> questions about <strong>John Doe</strong> being behind bars - asking <strong>Person A</strong> to drop it. <strong>Person A</strong> drops it out of respect for the trauma caused and privacy for the family. During a Zoom call where <strong>Person A</strong> and <strong>Jane Doe</strong> watched a movie to distract from all the trauma, <strong>Jane Doe</strong> asks <strong>Person A</strong> out of the blue to delete their text message history and show her live on Zoom that it's being done.</p>
<p>7.) A few weeks later - the suspicion <strong>Person A</strong> has gets to him - so <strong>Person A</strong> emails the police department that <strong>Jane Doe</strong> claims to have responded to the incident and with whom she claims to have called several times to confirm that they still have <strong>John Doe</strong> in custody. <strong>Person A</strong> describes the entire incident and arrest along with the names of the people involved along with the address where the incident took place in the email as part of a formal incident/arrest record request.</p>
<p>8.) The chief of this police department emails back the next day telling <strong>Person A</strong> that they never received a call on that date from that address - and they never responded to such a gunshot incident - re-assuring <strong>Person A</strong> that their department would've been the responding agency for that address, and they'd know about it if it happened how <strong>Jane Doe</strong> is claiming.</p>
<p>Little does <strong>Jane Doe</strong> know, <strong>Person A</strong> still has their entire text message history on his iCloud along with a chat.db database file on his Mac that he's extracted all the text messages from between them.</p>
<p><strong>Person A</strong> concludes two possibilities here:</p>
<p>1.) <strong>Jane Doe</strong> lied to <strong>Person A</strong> for some unfortunately psychopathic joke, even though this is not dealing with a catfish incident here.</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>2.) <strong>John Doe</strong> knows about <strong>Person A</strong> and forced <strong>Jane Doe</strong> to text <strong>Person A</strong> what he wanted him to think so <strong>Person A</strong> would back off investigating. If this is true, this smells deeply of currently recurring sexual abuse and/or sex-trafficking to <strong>Person A</strong>.</p>
<p>Worried about her safety, <strong>Person A</strong> is split as to whether he should confront her about his confirmation with the police department that there no arrest was made like she claimed, or whether he should immediately report this to the FBI or state police in the case he's dealing with some seriously organized victim manipulation and monitoring here (AKA maybe someone else sees her iMessage on their devices as well).</p>
<p>Is it safe to assume that <strong>Person A</strong> is not breaking any laws by reporting this and handing off/disclosing their text messages to the FBI or local authorities so they can investigate further? <strong>Person A</strong> assumes that the text messages between him and <strong>Jane Doe</strong> are legally public domain and not confidential. If it turns out that those authorities wasted their time, can <strong>Jane Doe</strong> be sued for false claims of crime taking place? In <strong>Person A's</strong> opinion - he's legally not at fault here - just reporting the concern of suspected criminal activity.</p>

<p>Just about anything is reportable to the FBI or any other US law-enforcement agency if the reporting person honestly thinks it is evidence of a possible crime. If the agency does not agree, they may well ignore the report. &quot;Confidential&quot; information may still be reported if a reasonable person would think it evidence of a crime. (Exceptions: Privileged attorney-client communications; privileged religious communiucati0ons, such as a sacramental confession; n some cases privileged marital communications; in some cases doctor-patient communuications. Not all such communications are privileged.)</p>
<p>However, it is not s crime to lie, in general. If Jane Doe told a lie to A for reasons of her own, I see no crime present at all. If John forced Jane to tell such a lie, such a use of force would itself be a crime, and if it was somehow intended to conceal evidence of other crimes by John, that would be s further crime. But there seems little reason to think, based solely on the facts stated in the question, that John did so force Jane. But there should be no <strong>legal</strong> problem in making such a report. Without more facts it might not be taken seriously.</p>
