Women need details on sex assaults
After two particularly gruesome cases of rape and abduction of women from Boston nightclubs earlier this year, you’d think the numbers of similar offenses would have gone down by now, with a heightened cop presence promised downtown and a new vigilance in the bars.
But the latest data from Boston Police shows that rapes and attempted rapes have jumped from 12 to 18 compared to this time last year in the downtown police precinct where the two high-profile attacks occurred.
Spare me that often-pushed notion that increased reports is a good thing because it means more victims are coming forward. High numbers are high numbers.
How is this possible? The public was up in arms when Jassy Correia was abducted from a Boston nightclub and killed in February, only a few weeks after another woman was abducted from nearby Hennessy’s Bar, and allegedly raped for days in her attacker’s apartment in Charlestown. Law enforcement officials and bar owners scrambled to find the right words to make people, especially women, feel safe in the city. News stories were filled with promises of more bouncers, better security cameras and a larger police presence around clubs at closing time.
But still the numbers went up — a lot — even when everyone was supposedly taking extra vigilant steps to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. I hate to think what the number would be if they weren’t being vigilant!
Mayor Marty Walsh met with Police Commissioner Willie Gross and local bar owners in March to “discuss ways bars and nightclubs can work with cops to keep revelers safe.” One idea they suggested was having bar owners use license readers, so all patrons would be in a database. This was supposed to deter predators who don’t like leaving their identities in the places where they’re planning to hurt women. That idea obviously failed, as have all the silly antirape “education programs.”
You can’t teach a rapist not to rape anymore than you can teach a robber not to rob.
The real problem is a lack of transparency from police and prosecutors about what’s really happening to women in Massachusetts when it comes to sexual violence. Of the rapes or attempted rapes this year in Area 1 of Boston, only two have led to arrests. Why is that?
More than 3,000 forcible rapes were reported last year in the commonwealth, but only a small percentage are being prosecuted. The “going rate” for rape in some counties in Massachusetts is a reduction to indecent assault and two years probation. This is a big part of the problem. Prosecutors aren’t telling the public how many rape cases they’re refusing to prosecute; how many are getting plea bargained to minor charges; and how many are ending with woefully inadequate punishments.
Rapists rape because they know there’s only a small chance of being arrested, and an even smaller chance of facing serious consequences, especially in light of a fairly new ruling from the SJC that allows rapists who attack incapacitated and drugged women to claim they thought the victim was sober enough to consent.
Six months ago, Walsh and Gross promised to make downtown establishments safer for women, but they failed. The only thing left for them to do is warn the public that there’s a high risk of sexual assault associated with bars and nightclubs. The signs won’t be pretty, but they’re necessary.