Texas teen Ashley Billasano details years of sex abuse, forced prostitution on Twitter, commits suicide
(CBS) NEW YORK - The mother of Texas teen Ashley Billasano is blaming police for her daughter's suicide, saying officials failed her daughter while investigating the 18-year-old's allegations of sexual abuse.
Billasano took her life last Tuesday after posting over a hundred messages on Twitter describing the ordeal of dealing both with the abuse and investigators. Her mother told CNN that Billasano lost hope and thought the abuser would never be prosecuted.
"She gave up. She felt like nothing was ever going to happen, nobody was ever going to believe her," Billasano's mother Tiffany Ruiz Leskinen told CNN.
Fox News reports that Ashley tweeted 144 messages in six hours, detailing years of alleged sexual abuse, being forced into prostitution and the lack of help.
"It was almost as if they were treating her like she was the one under investigation instead of her being the victim," Leskinen told CNN. "She felt like they were really insensitive to what had gone on."
Leskinen explains that police said they could protect her daughter, but couldn't remove her from the Austin home where the abuse was taking place. Billasano was not living with Leskinen when she died.
On CNN, Assistant Travis County District Attorney Dayna Blazey defended the police's investigation into Billasano allegations by saying the case is still pending.
"At this point, what we have to do is we have to go back and we have to look at the evidence that we have in this case, in light of knowing that Ashley is not going to be available to testify," Blazey told the news network.
Prior to her death, Texas Child and Protective Services conducted a five-month investigation and interviewed 11 people believed to have had knowledge of the abuse.
"As a result of that investigation, we were unable to confirm that abuse had occurred," spokesman Patrick Crimmins said in a statement obtained by CNN.
Child and protective services is now taking a second look into Billasano's case.
