REDEFINE ‘RAPE’
Vic of cop attack pushes change in N.Y. law
ALBANY — A former Bronx schoolteacher sexually assaulted at gunpoint by an off-duty NYPD cop nearly a decade ago returned to the state capital Thursday to once again push lawmakers to pass legislation expanding the definition of rape.
Lydia Cuomo joined Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Queens) in calling on the Democrat-led state Senate to vote on a bill that would strengthen the state’s criminal laws by classifying forced anal and oral penetration as rape.
“The point of the bill is to legally define rape as all forced sexual acts,” Cuomo told the Daily News.
Under current New York law, only forced vaginal penetration is considered rape, while the other attacks are classified as criminal sex acts.
The 33-year-old, now living in North Carolina, argues that while carrying the same legal penalties, not calling the acts rape reduces their perceived severity.
“The word rape is a powerful word and it’s a powerful word for a reason. These are really powerful acts and we’re not calling them what they need to be called.”
Michael Pena, the drunk cop who brutally attacked Cuomo as she waited for a ride to her first day on the job at a Bronx charter school in 2011, was convicted of several sex crimes, but the jury was hung over the issue of rape. Eventually, the cop pleaded guilty to two rape charges, sparing Cuomo a second trial, and is serving a 75-year prison sentence.
The Assembly passed Simotas’ legislation earlier this year, as it has every year since 2013, but the Senate has not yet voted on the bill.
“We will be discussing as a conference and hope to move forward before end of session,” Senate Democratic spokesman Mike Murphy said.
A Senate source said there is “optimism” the bill will move and added that there is “wide support for it.”
Prosecutors have argued against the legislation, saying they support the concept of eliminating the penetration requirement for rape, but contend the bill as written would upend the penal law by needlessly folding criminal sex act into the rape statute.
Simotas took issue with the pushback.
“There’s this hang up that people in law enforcement don’t believe, consider or treat forcible sex as rape,” Simotas said.
Cuomo’s visit to Albany comes a day after a detailed report found that the NYPD still does not count forced oral or anal sex as a rape, no matter the victim’s gender, in its published statistics.
The NYPD underreported rape online by 38% over a recent four-and-a-half-year period compared to how federal and state officials measure rape in the city, according to an analysis done by Newsy, a news site owned by E.W. Scripps Broadcasting Company.
“Until we fundamentally change how we define these acts and acknowledge how many of them occur on a regular basis we will never get to the root of the problem,” Simotas said.