A 2021 drug sting is now under investigation after a newly released report stated a police informant was raped during the operation. On Tuesday (Sept. 13), The Associated Press shared that a woman was raped in a home in Rapides Parish as she worked for the Rapides Parish Sherrif’s Office.

The horrific incident happened on Jan. 13, 2021. Authorities have declined to give the victim’s name but say she entered a drug house on Texas Avenue to buy meth as part of a RADE operation. The informant was unarmed but wore a microphone and hidden camera. She entered the home and the drug dealer forced her to perform oral sex on him twice. At one point, he stopped to conduct a separate drug deal.

Although narcotics deputies waited for the woman just down the street, her cries for help went unanswered. Reports say this is because although officials knew the assignment was dangerous, they never intended for a sex crime to happen, so the recordings weren’t in real-time. The deputies were unaware that anything happened until after the rapes took place.

Rapides Parish Sheriff Mark Wood spoke with News Channel 5 about the botched drug sting. “It was recording inside the residence. The guys outside monitoring the deal could not hear anything going on. They couldn’t hear it live. When she exited the residence and comes out to my guys and tells them what happened, they verified that with the tapes, and that’s when we called the CID division, and they were called in. A search warrant and arrest warrant were issued at that point,” Wood said.

Antonio Jones, 48, was arrested in connection to the crime. An anonymous official who later saw footage of the rape called it “one of the worst depictions of sexual abuse I have ever seen.” Jones faces three counts, including one count each of second-degree rape, false imprisonment and distribution of meth after authorities recovered five grams of the substance following the operation. His trial is set for Oct. 17.