Other Violent Crime Down in O.C., So Why Isn’t Rape?

Although total violent crime across Orange County continues to plummet, the number of reported sexual assaults has remained fairly steady over the last five years, perplexing police and rape counselors who are trying to reverse the trend.

Reported rapes in the county rose 1% from 1993 to 1997, the most recent year for which countywide figures are available. By contrast, total violent crime fell 17% during that time and homicides dropped 48%, according to FBI reports.

Communities across the nation report that rapes are declining at a slower pace than other violent crimes. Nationally, reported rapes fell 9% over the five-year period, compared with 15% for all violent crimes.

The trend underscores the challenge police face in preventing sexual assaults, which experts describe as a much more complex crime than robbery or homicide. Compounding the problem is the fact that many rapes--especially those involving acquaintances--go unreported.

Some specialists believe that the plateau indicates that more women are reporting the crime to authorities and not that more rapes are necessarily occurring.

Others, however, say the numbers show that rapes are immune to many of the policy initiatives and other factors--such as tougher prison sentences, community policing and a buoyant economy--widely credited with reducing violent crime.

“Rape is about sex, but it’s also about power and the longing to dominate someone else,” said Huntington Beach Police Lt. Chuck Thomas, whose city has seen rape numbers plateau since 1993 but violent crime in general fall 38%. “The motivations for committing a sex crime are drastically different from a crime like robbery or burglary, a crime that may be financially motivated.”

In offering explanations for recent declines in violent crime, police officials frequently cite new crime prevention techniques. But many of the same methods have little impact on rape because the crime is usually committed by acquaintances, experts say.

Prevention Snags

The standard rape scenario--the random attack by a stranger, an intrusion at home in the dead of night--represents a relatively small portion of such attacks, according to national surveys. That makes the crime all the more difficult to prevent because victims are more likely to let their guard down around people they know.

“By the time that police get involved, it’s more about intervention after things have happened,” said Judy Benitez, president of the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s board of directors. “They can certainly be sensitive to victims, but as far as preventing it . . . rape is not like a riot, something done in public. This is something done in private, and I don’t know how they would prevent rape.”

Improved community policing, stepped-up patrols and more specialized crime units are unlikely to have the same preventive effect on rapes as officials say they have on other crimes.

Take Anaheim, for example.

The city’s police officers credit community policing with building trust and cooperation between residents and officers, especially in high-crime neighborhoods. The result, they say, has been a rise in crime clearance rates and a 23% drop in violent crime since 1993.

But such bridge-building methods have failed to have a similar impact on reported rapes. As in many Orange County cities, the number of sexual assault cases in Anaheim declined significantly in the early ‘90s. But since 1993, the number has remained steady, leaving officials frustrated.

“The only thing we can do is public education,” said Anaheim Police Sgt. Joe Vargas. “I think, if anything, public awareness has really kept the rape incidents [by strangers] from increasing.”

Even police officials in cities where rape cases have plunged are baffled by why their cities have bucked the overall trend.

“I really can’t pin it,” said Police Sgt. Diana Walton in Long Beach, where rape cases have fallen steadily from 200 in 1993 to 111 last year. “There’s a possibility that less women are reporting . . . but I’m clutching at straws.”

Some politicians credit tougher sentencing laws for repeat offenders--such as “three strikes, you’re out”--for declines in overall crime. But Gail Abarbanel, director of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, contends that such laws do little to reduce sexual assaults because most rapists tend not to be the type of habitual criminals snared by “three strikes” laws.

“Who you are taking off the street,” she said, “is more likely to be the street criminal, not the acquaintance rapist.”

Change in Victims

The number of unreported rapes leads some academics and rape counselors to guard against drawing conclusions from statistics culled from police reports. The stigma associated with rape keeps most sexual assault victims silent, experts say. A 1992 national study--conducted by the National Victim Center and the Medical University of South Carolina--found that only 16% of rapes were reported to police. So a rise in reporting could mask a decline in actual attacks, some say.

“[Today], women are much more willing to report rape,” said Gilbert Geis, professor emeritus of UC Irvine’s department of criminology, law and society. “They are much less fearful that they are going to be trashed by the police and the courts.”

In the last two decades, social support services for rape victims have mushroomed. Victims have gained improved access to counseling. Many police agencies are trying to treat them more sensitively. And awareness campaigns have chipped away at the stigma once attached to being raped.

Consequently, academics and police officials widely believe that victims are now more likely to report rapes than they once were. But others disagree.

“There is always going to be a [large number] of women who say to themselves, ‘This was a terrible thing to me, but I’m going to keep it to myself and get on with my life,’ ” said Mary Koss, a professor of public health who tracks rape statistics at the University of Arizona.

Indeed, some, such as Abarbanel of the Rape Treatment Center, believe that the only way to reduce rapes is by gradually altering society’s attitudes toward the crime.

“There are education campaigns out there telling women not to walk alone, but that’s never going to prevent rape,” Abarbanel said. “Preventing rape means changing men, so it doesn’t surprise me that the statistics aren’t down.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rape Defies Trend

While the number of violent crimes in Orange County declined from 1993 to 1997, the most recent year for which information is available, the number of rapes remained about the same.

Percentage Change 1993-7

Rape: +1%

Homicide: -48%

Robbery: -33%

Assault: -4%

All violent crimes: -17%

*

NUMBER OF O.C. CRIMES, 1993-’97

1997:

Rape: 554

Homicide: 102

Assault: 6,841

Robbery: 3,707

Source: California Department of Justice