A woman who had to wait five years for charges to be filed against her alleged rapist is suing the City of Houston, accusing authorities of showing "deliberate indifference" by failing to investigate a backlog of rape kits that could have identified her attacker much earlier.

Beverly Flores last week joined a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in September by another former Houston resident, DeJenay Beckwith. The two women seek damages, saying officials violated their due process and equal protection rights.

Police records show that Flores was sleeping in her home on Sept. 20, 2011, when a man she did not know assaulted her in the bed she was sharing with her two children. The man, later identified by police as Domeka Turner, hid his face with a T-shirt, then stole Flores' cell phone to prevent her from calling for help, according to court records.

Flores, who now lives in Texas City, said Houston Police officers did not gather DNA evidence from her home, and instead indicated that they believed her boyfriend at the time was responsible for the attack.

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"They didn't ask a lot of questions. (The responding officer) acted like I was just bothering him - like I was a nuisance," she told the Chronicle. "I did everything I could. I was just so in shock that (police) were just dismissing it."

DNA for Turner, who was convicted for burglary in 2006, should have already been filed in the state's databank at the time of the 2011 attack, according to Randall Kallinen, the lead attorney for the suit. "His DNA was sitting there, ready to be matched at any time," he said.

Turner was charged for Flores' rape last December - five years after the attack and two years after police matched his DNA to the rape kit conducted on Flores. He was also indicted by the Harris County District Attorney's Office last January for another assault that occurred nine days before the attack on Flores.

The suit filed on behalf of Flores and Beckwith is one of several recent actions brought by rape victims across the country regarding untested rape kits and what plaintiffs say were failures to investigate their attacks.

"Police discouraged women from reporting rape and berated rape victims," Kallinen said. "They took the DNA evidence and clothes from the victims and did nothing with it. The victims could have had it tested themselves had they known the City of Houston was doing nothing to test the DNA evidence."

In Texas, there were at one point roughly 19,000 untested rape kits, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit group that focuses on such backlogs. Houston, meanwhile, tackled its backlog in 2013, using a $4 million federal grant to outsource testing to private forensic labs.

The city also moved forensics testing in 201 from the Houston Police Department to the Houston Forensics Science Center, which declined to comment on this story, referring to a statement released in the fall when the initial lawsuit was filed.

Peter Stout, the Forensic Center's president and CEO, said at that time that "high-quality, efficient forensic testing is an important part" of the forensic center's operation.

"Since taking over management of the Houston Police Department's forensic operations in 2014, HFSC has eliminated legacy and incoming backlogs of sexual assault evidence," he said. "A legacy backlog inherited from HPD that dated back to the 1980s has been eliminated. HFSC's goal is to have a sustainable, average 30-day turnaround time for all evidence, including that which is related to sexual assault."

The Houston Police also could not be reached for comment for this story.

Beckwith was raped in April 2011 by a man pretending to be a mechanic, according to court documents. Her attacker - named by police in 2016 as David Lee Cooper - lured her into his home after her car broke down, court records show.

Like Flores, Beckwith said police were dismissive of her attack, and told her it was unlikely her suspect would be caught, according to the lawsuit.

Five years later, she was contacted by Houston police, who told her they'd matched Cooper's DNA to her attack, according to her suit.

Cooper had already been convicted for sexual assault, including one from 2002 involving a minor. His DNA had been in the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS and managed by the FBI, since 1991.

A previous rape charge against him was dismissed in 1991, according to the lawsuit. In 1994, he was found not guilty in another rape.

On Dec. 14, 2016, Cooper pleaded guilty to a 2002 sexual assault of a child, a 2009 sexual assault and the 2011 sexual assault of Beckwith.

"To not test the rape kits of a serial rapist who also raped children is beyond unconscionable," Kallinen said in September. "It didn't take them long once they knew who he was."

Funding issues

The suit also comes as Texas lawmakers confront a dearth of funding to test DNA samples, which can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000.

In 2011, the state passed reforms that require law enforcement agencies to send all newly collected kits to a crime lab for testing within 30 days.

Funding that effort has been more difficult, however, forcing lawmakers and advocacy groups to get creative.

In May, state lawmakers approved a measure that allows for donations on Texas drivers' license application forms, which they predict will raise $1 million to address the rape kit backlog. In 2017, Texas allocated $4.2 million to the Department of Public Safety to cut down on the backlog.

But Flores and Kallinen said the failure to test rape kits is only one of many problems.

"This lawsuit is about rape kits, that's for sure," Kallinen said Friday. "But in a bigger sense, it's about the treatment of women in regards to sexual assault investigations and discrimination. That has to end."

"It's about priorities," he said.