By admin 
TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – A Tucson woman who was raped at the age of 15 waited nearly three decades for justice.
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DNA testing of backlogged sexual assault kits, including hers, identified her attacker and linked him to other victims.
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J.L., who agreed to share her story but asked not to appear on camera, said she was raped in 1992 by a neighbor she knew from across the street.
Court records identify her attacker as Charlie Conley Jr.
‘He drug me in and pinned me down’
J.L. said Conley offered her a ride downtown. Instead, she said, he drove her to another location.
“He stopped at another park on 22nd and 4th Avenue,” J.L. said. “And there was some abandoned shacks behind the park, and he drug me in and pinned me down and raped me.”
Hours later, J.L. underwent a sexual assault exam. She said the experience was “traumatic.”
“You’re a 15-year-old child, and you are stripped down to nothing, and you’re on a bed with nothing, not a blanket, not a sheet, not a nothing,” J.L. said. “And then you have police come in while you’re being swabbed and having all these examinations done to you with a microphone jammed in your face saying, ‘ Tell me what happened.”
She said she believed the evidence collected that day would lead to police action.
“This person’s living on the street, and I was abducted and raped, and I didn’t want that to happen to anybody else,” J.L. said.
Years passed with no answers
Years passed, then decades. J.L. said she eventually stopped expecting a response.
“After a while, I had to stop thinking about it. Because it was getting me nowhere,” J.L. said. “I did my best just to let it go. Knowing nothing was ever gonna happen.”
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In 2016, a federal grant funded testing of thousands of backlogged rape kits in Tucson — including J.L.’s. Court records show the DNA results pointed to Conley.
In 2018, Tucson Police Detective Dallas Wilson notified J.L. in person.
“I think it was more disbelief,” J.L. said. “I couldn’t believe something was happening.”
Wilson said delivering that news years after an assault carries its own weight.
“It’s an emotional scenario going and notifying these survivors years later that we do care, we are willing to reopen the investigation, and we acknowledge that we didn’t do a very good job the first time,” Wilson said.
Other victims came forward
Investigators said the DNA results also linked Conley to another sexual assault case. Other women came forward. J.L. said learning that others had been harmed was what led her to reopen her case.
“I knew now others had been hurt,” J.L. said. “And I couldn’t not do something about it, knowing that.”
Prosecutors charged Conley with sexually assaulting four women, including J.L. After two mistrials, a jury found him guilty in 2021 — nearly 30 years after J.L.’s assault.
J.L. said she hopes other survivors do not lose hope.
“There are people that genuinely do care and that are trying to help,” J.L. said. “And those people are the Dallas Wilsons of the world. Because none of this would have happened without his help, without his drive, without his caring. None of it would have happened.”
J.L. now lives in Tucson with her husband. She built a career in the healthcare industry following her assault.
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