In two of the three cases, junior officers came to Holmes seeking guidance — in one case, to report sexual harassment by another supervisor. Instead, both women ended up being sexually assaulted by Holmes, the DA’s office said. In the third case, Holmes invited a female officer to join his elite task force. Three days after she joined, the same thing allegedly happened. She says Holmes forcibly kissed her, groped her and digitally penetrated her.

In all three cases, rather than aggressively pursuing Holmes, the PPD’s Internal Affairs Division investigated the female officers, the DA’s office said. “The grand jury alleges that PPD culture discourages reporting a fellow officer, especially a boss,” the DA’s office noted.

Between 2007 and August 2019, the city of Philadelphia settled at least 36 federal lawsuits with female police officers over claims of sexual misconduct or racial or gender discrimination, according to an analysis by WHYY. In that time period, the city paid out more than $2.3 million in settlements, WHYY reported.

The allegations in Holmes’s case date from 2004. In the first case, a woman went to Holmes’s office seeking help. She was considering filing a complaint against her supervisor for sexual harassment — but Holmes, who at a hulking 6-foot-6 was once signed by the Washington Redskins, issued a stern warning, the Inquirer reported. He said he was friends with the man she was accusing of sexual harassment, and if she were to file a complaint, she better “prepare for a fight.”

He then allegedly lifted her off the ground, placed her on his desk and started groping her, according to the grand jury report. When she pleaded with him to stop, he allegedly said, “no one would believe some little b—- like her anyway” and said he could “make her disappear,” according to the report.

Holmes then trapped her in his grasp and allegedly forced his finger into her vagina. She ran outside and called her mom.

When her mother picked up, “all I heard was crying and screaming and crying and screaming,” her mother told the grand jury, the Inquirer reported.