By Gerard Flynn
Police are not yet linking the latest in a series of sexual assaults in the East Village and Lower East Side to the previous ones, following an attempted rape in the early hours of Friday morning Sept. 21.
Police say that at approximately 4 a.m., a 20-year-old white female returning home was attacked in the vestibule of her apartment building at E. 11th St. between Avenues A and B.
After asking her for directions, the assailant approached her from behind, police say, and threw her to the ground. During the brief attack, the victim fought back with her fists and the assailant ran off when her screams brought neighbors to her aid. No weapon was used in the attack.
Police say they are looking for a Hispanic male in his 20s, 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing about 160 pounds.
“I was awoken by a woman screaming hysterically and ran out into the hall and saw that three people were already helping her,” a neighbor, who didn’t wish to be identified, said.
The assault follows a spate of attacks over the past few months in the early hours of the morning and all by a man fitting the same description. In each case, the attacker followed the women into their apartment buildings, grabbing them from behind and choking them.
On June 12, a woman was attacked on Mott St. In July three similar assaults took place within a four-block radius of Friday night’s attack.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told the Daily News in July that the attacks in June and July were “seen as part of a pattern.”
Despite official claims by police that they are not linking Friday’s assault with the others, the neighbor said that the police who quickly responded to the scene suspected otherwise.
“They said something about it being a serial problem, that this has happened in the past few weeks where a guy followed girls in a dress or a skirt,” he said. A police spokesperson declined to comment.
Carole Sher, director of the Rape Crisis Intervention Program at Beth Israel Medical Center, said that “stranger rapes,” while accounting for a small portion of sexual assaults, are often premeditated, with the predator conducting surveillance on the building or even the victim for a period of time before the attack.
Sher said that blanket advice can’t be offered for facing such an attack, that victims must trust their instincts at the time. Sher said that while screaming and fighting back may be the best course of action at the time, what’s most important is getting through it, as harrowing as it is, especially if the assailant is armed.
“When a victim comes to our E.R., whatever decision they made was right at the time,” she said. “You did whatever you needed to do to survive.”
