This Thursday, Daniel Holtzclaw, an ex-Oklahoma city cop, was read aloud his verdict of 263 years in prison on his 29th birthday, sobbing as he was lead away in handcuffs.

Holtzclaw was found guilty on 18 out of 36 counts of sexual battery, indecent exposure, oral sodomy, burglary, stalking,  and first/second degree rape on victims that were all black women ranging from a child age seventeen and a grandmother in her fifties. For a six month period in 2014, Holtzclaw targeted poor women with criminal histories for drug possession or prostitution in the hopes that their records would prevent any officials from believing them. One woman recalled being forced to perform sexual acts on the side of the road, another being taken to an abandoned school and raped, another raped on her grandmother’s porch, and the DNA of an unidentified 14th victim found on the crotch of his uniform. After an assault at a traffic stop, he went under internal investigation and was fired in January 2015.

Holtzclaws story is not unlike any other; in the last year, 1,000 cases of officers found guilty of sexual misconduct were found by the Associated Press and those only ended in their licenses being revoked. Some of the largest offenders, California and New york, don’t even keep track of sexual misconduct at the hands of their city’s finest.

“He didn’t choose CEOs or soccer moms; he chose women he could count on not telling what he was doing,” the prosecution made their case. The sad part about Holtzclaw case is that his reasoning was correct.  

Women of color (American Indian, Mixed Race, then African American) have the highest rate of rape in the U.S. before the age of 21. Combined with the facts that these women Holtzclaw preyed on were living in one of the poorest sections of the city, that only 39% of rapes are ever reported if the victims survive, and that he was a police officer, he believed the odds were in his favor.

His victims were chosen because he believed that everyone around him, and himself, wouldn’t care about them. His testimony relied on the all-white jury believing the white man over the voices of thirteen black women. The defense said that all of these women were criminals who could not be trusted. They said that all of these sex acts were consensual, even the rape of a minor.

Many cannot identify with these women which is why the defense thought they could win. The American people can’t imagine themselves as the most disrespected demographic in America-the black woman.

How many voices of black women need to come together in order to equal one of a man? Too many.