Round Rock Rape Victim Re-Traumatized By Cop's Social Media Page

Editor's note: This article contains language and images that may be triggering to some.

ROUND ROCK, TX — When Round Rock resident Michelle Litz-Clawson was a junior in high school, she went to a party and, admittedly — and today with great regret — consumed alcoholic drinks. She ultimately found herself bloodied on the side of a road without undergarments and dry vomit caked in her hair.

She had been raped by two male classmates, losing her virginity in the process. She wouldn't tell her parents until she was in her 20s, feeling ashamed of herself while feeling vaguely responsible for her own fate. Rooted in that sense of guilt, she never filed formal charges against her two attackers.

“They threw me on the side of the road like trash,” she recalled in a telephone interview with Patch. “They hung my bloody underwear in the rear view mirror. I woke up with vomit in my hair. I was pretty drunk, but don’t remember drinking that much,” she said, wondering all these years later if she was slipped a date rape drug in one of her drinks.

Now 48 and a sexual assault survivor, she was horrified to see a member of the police force, Commander Stephen Deaton, had taken considerable time and effort in posing child’s dolls in a way to depict scenes of sexual assault to chilling effect, even by the dark standards of gallows humor.

One photo depicts an elf doll holding the hair of a Barbie on all fours upon the floor as she is made to look like she’s vomiting. Deaton’s joke: The elf, helpfully holding Barbie’s hair he noted, silently wonders if the date rape drug he slipped his victim will still be effective. Another image shows a scantily clad Barbie doll surrounded by dancing elves in a post-attack celebration of a suggested forced sexual conquest.

The images contained in the now-deleted page — not to mention the chilling reality that they came from the mind of one tasked to serve and protect — had the effect of re-traumatizing the woman, identified as “Sarah” in a previous story by the Southern Law Poverty Center that first brought Deaton’s page to light.

“It was very personal for me,” she told Patch. “It takes you back."

Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody has not only declined to discipline his commander for having created the page, he hit the “like” button on one of the illustrations. The picture of an elf doll holding a bloody chainsaw after cutting off a black football players’s legs — reduced to bloody stumps cleanly cut above the knee in the illustration — with an American flag in plain view of the violent scene prompted Chody to hit the “like “ button in registering his approval. Here's that Deaton-created image scene the sheriff liked:

Notwithstanding the bloody imagery of the post, Chody later explained to Patch he hit "like" solely based on his adherence to the idea of standing during the playing of the national anthem, rather than as a tacit endorsement of violence.

In explaining why Deaton wasn't disciplined for any of this, Chody explained his commander’s comments are protected forms of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, trumping any efforts on his part to mete out discipline. Yet it remains unclear how he’s able to reconcile that justification while not applying that same logic to his recent firing of two canine unit officers caught sending messages on their personal phones critical of the sheriff’s office chain of command — summarily firing the two even as they exercised their own freedom of expression in airing their concerns in private.

When first coming across Deaton’s page in April, Litz-Clawson felt compelled to reach out to the sheriff and other elected officials, offering her perspective as a rape survivor to convey the danger posed by Deaton’s brand of humor in yielding to a sense of re-victimization among other victims.

“His public Facebook which has conveniently been removed today, depicted gang rape, making of bombs, drug usage, kidnapping, murder and rampant demeaning of women in every post,” she wrote in part to Chody via Facebook. “His effort to recreate these horrible incidents that many people have been through are not a laughing matter. The fact that he [Deaton] had to have taken painstaking measures to create these shows that he is not a person who should in any way shape or form be a leader in any police department — let a lone a police officer. The fact that you were his Facebook friend as well as the County DA, and saw these posts each time they appeared makes me question your decision-making process as well.”

Related stories:

WilCo Sheriff Chody Finds Himself Under Unwelcome Spotlight

WilCo Sheriff Addresses Furor Over Subordinate's Facebook Page

WilCo Sheriff Disavows Commander's Controversial Facebook Page

The missive was sent as a private message to Chody, Litz-Clawson told Patch. “I am hopeful that this matter will be addressed in a manner that restores the honor that each police police officer and department deserves,” she wrote in closing.

For her trouble in writing to Chody, she received from the sheriff a wordless reply: A thumbs-down emoji. "I went through a lot of emotions," she recalled. "When I attempted to discuss it with Chody privately, the most he could muster was to send me an emoji of thumbs down. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, but just wanted to let him know that was disgusting and could trigger re-victimization."

She told Patch she never heard anything further from the Williamson County sheriff. After conveying her concerns to the Williamson County Commissioners Court, only two members of that body — most notably Terry Cook who offered the most substantive reply — took the time to respond to her. County Judge Bill Gravell — who, like Chody, hit the like button on Deaton's dark musings — was not among those on the commissioners' dais responding to Litz-Clawson.

And yet, for all her own efforts at discretion in telegraphing her concern, Litz-Clawson has received the opposite treatment. Shortly after writing to Chody, she was "outed," identified by name, with the name of her husband — a veteran police officer for the Austin Police Department — thrown in for good measure.

"The retweets of accounts that reduce to name calling & calls of civil action is hardly what we call

Back the Blue,' " one detractor wrote after finding out the identity of Litz-Clawson after the Southern Poverty Law Center safeguarded her privacy through the use of a pseudonym. While Patch's policy is to not name victims of sexual assault, Litz-Clawson gave explicit permission to use her full name for this story. "Your hate for one man at the cost of others," the critic cryptically added.

"Well, well well," taunted another detractor of Litz-Clawson's efforts to shed perspective on the Deaton posts. "Look what we have here....No longer can you hide behind a 'back the blue' name."

And lately, when she's in her car, Litz-Clawson has seen a noticeable uptick in the number of times she's closely followed by a police car before it peels off, she told Patch. That never used to happen before, she noted, until after she took Deaton to task.

For all the backlash to her bravery, Litz-Clawson said she'll continue to shed light on the matter of re-victimization triggered by imagery and jokes like those the commander used to make light of sexual assault. She told Patch she's been approached by other survivors expressing gratitude for her efforts, which has only strengthened her resolve.

"Now we know that in this community, this behavior is accepted," she said of Deaton's now-infamous Facebook page. "It's frustrating on many levels, but I'm not going to back down."

Patch reached out to Chody's public information officer — to whom the sheriff previously referred all further questions — to rebut Litz-Clawson's assertions. The request for comment was not immediately returned.