Reported rapes skyrocket in Prince William County
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
November 9, 2009
Reported rapes in Prince William County are on pace to double in number compared with any of the past five years, driven by increasing reports of fathers, uncles and friends raping daughters, nieces or acquaintances.
There were 45 rapes in the Virginia county during the first nine months of 2009 compared with just 17 over the same period in 2008, police records show.
The September cutoff for the official rape statistics means they do not include Halloween's double rape at gunpoint of two teenage girls behind a shopping center in Dale City.
Authorities said the majority of the rapes reported this year have little in common with the stranger rape on Halloween night. In most cases, the victims know their attacker.
"Most sexual assaults are by a family member, a neighbor, a friend," said Joni Canfield, director of Prince William County's rape crisis center, Sexual Assault Victims Advocacy. "It's easier for them to have access. They groom them over weeks and months, gaining their trust to be able to rape them."
Last month, the U.S. Marshall's Fugitive Task Force caught up with 32-year-old Arturo Velasquez in Alabama, just one day after his 13-year-old stepdaughter accused him of raping her in their Manassas home. In September, a 12-year-old girl was reportedly raped by her 37-year-old uncle in Dale City. A month earlier, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped by three friends when she got drunk at a party in her Woodbridge home.
Prince William County Assistant Police Chief Ray Colgan said he could not point to any one cause behind the jump in reported rapes this year.
"It's the most under-reported crime," Colgan said. "Reports fluctuate over time."
Although the number of reported rapes for the entire year held steady around 25 from 2004 to 2008, there are jumps in earlier years. In 2001, there were 75, and 2003 had 40, police said.
Rape counseling experts say the number of reported rapes might not reflect an actual increase in rapes, but rather an increase in the number of women stepping forward to tell police about the assaults.
A new outreach position funded with cash from the federal stimulus package at Sexual Assault Victims Advocacy may be helping victims better understand what's happened to them is a crime that needs to be reported, Canfield said.
"Victims don't always understand that what's happened to them is a crime," she said. "When someone is out there defining sex assault, then they have a better understanding and call police to report it."
