A recent spate of brutal attacks on city women have many looking over their shoulders. But a slew of sexual predators about to be released from state prisons into the city could give them even more to worry about.
Despite recent police statistics showing a decline in the number of rapes reported over last year, sexual-assault counselors say they are helping as many or more sex-crime victims.
And after recent high-profile attacks – a rape in Central Park Thursday, an attempted rape and vicious beating in Prospect Park Tuesday, a rape at gunpoint at the West Indian Day Parade and a series of push-in robberies where the bandits forced Manhattan women to undress – crisis counselors say fear is rising.
“Just yesterday I spoke to a group of new nursing students at orientation,” said Lillian Tsai, program director of the rape-crisis program at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. “Their first question was, what did I think about the recent assaults and how could they protect themselves.”
The assaults have taken a particular toll on those already victimized.
“It kind of brings you back, flashbacks to when it happened to you,” said a victim of a serial rapist in The Bronx. “Nothing is ever the same. You never feel safe anymore.”
Meanwhile, a small army of sex offenders slated for release from state prisons in the next two months is cause for concern.
Among 2,200 convicts to be set free before Nov. 30 are 78 rapists, sex abusers and pedophiles. Among them are:
* Brooklyn rapist Dennis Chester, 45, who is slated for release on Tuesday after serving 19 years for raping at least four women over two years dating back to 1981. He talked his way into his victims’ homes before beating, sodomizing and raping them.
* So-called “career rapist” Frederick Johnson, 48, currently eligible for release after serving more than 20 years for five rapes he committed within two months after he was freed from prison for three earlier rapes. Johnson told his victims he was in trouble with the cops and convinced them to walk with him before raping them at gunpoint.
* Phony doctor Efrain Vasquez, 39, set for release Nov. 8 after serving three years for sexually assaulting two women at a Bronx clinic. The medical technician abused a 24-year-old woman after claiming he a doctor and was performing a pelvic exam. He also repeatedly had sex with a 15-year-old female patient.
Several studies have shown sex offenders commit new crimes at a higher rate than other criminals. A 1996 study by the Massachusetts prison system found up to 100 percent of child rapists and sexual assaulters returned to prison within three years after committing new crimes.
In New York during the first four months of the year, 120 convicts who have “maxed out” their prison time were placed on parole – more than double the number released during the same period last year.
During that time, the number of maxed-out criminals thrown back in prison for violations jumped from 72 to 142.
That tragic dynamic was illustrated by Bennie Hogan, a career criminal who allegedly beat a woman in Prospect Park last week, just months after finishing a six-month prison term for sex abuse.
So many of the state’s sex offenders abscond from parole after they get out that officials set up a “most wanted” page on their Web site. It now contains profiles and photos of 27 sex fiends who are at large.
Last year, 5,562 criminals from the city went AWOL from parole, including at least 35 sex offenders deemed “armed and dangerous.”
Parole officials say the state Assembly has blocked efforts to enact a “civil commitment” law that would allow a separate trial in which prosecutors could seek to keep criminals deemed likely repeaters in secure facilities until they are no longer deemed a public threat.
Similar laws are in force in 15 other states and have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
FEAR STALKS THE STREETS
Some of the violent attacks on women in the city this year:
Jan. 10: A 43-year-old homeless man repeatedly raped a 19-year-old girl as part of a chain of sexual assaults in Prospect Park. He convinced her to go for a walk with him in the park, then raped her at 3 p.m. near a spot known as the Three Arch Bridge – and then raped her twice more, once in an alley and once on the roof of a building.
Jan. 30: An “elevator rapist” victimized three young women aged 19, 20 and 23, at gunpoint in a South Bronx apartment building elevator at 5:30 a.m. As the elevator ascended, the man stopped it between floors, told the women he had a gun and ordered them to face the wall. He raped and sodomized two of them and robbed all three of money and jewelry before fleeing. He also took a cell phone from one of the victims. A suspect was later charged in this incident and several similar rapes.
Feb. 10: A 14-year-old girl was sodomized and robbed after being forced to the roof of her Inwood apartment by a knife-wielding man around 5 p.m.
March 21: A 39-year-old housekeeper at the Helmsley Park Hotel was attacked from behind by a knife-wielding sex fiend as she was in the middle of turning down a room.
July 10: A 46-year-old woman was attacked by a brazen thug in Prospect Park – who jumped out of the bushes and wrestled her to the ground and shoved a shirt in her mouth before she escaped and ran to a nearby street at 10:30 a.m. He chased the victim and grabbed her again, until an oncoming jogger scared him away.
Aug. 31: A 17-year-old girl from Rhode Island, in town for the West Indian Day Parade, was attacked and raped by a Brooklyn man at about 3:30 a.m. after she was allegedly forced into a stolen car. He then drove her a mile away and raped her. A Queens woman came forward to say the same suspect also attacked her just an hour before the 17- year-old was raped.
Sept. 2: A 33-year-old clothing designer was viciously beaten in an attempted rape in Prospect Park. The woman suffered a concussion, a broken jaw and an injury to her eye that may require plastic surgery. The accused attacker, Bennie Hogan, had been recently released from jail after serving six months on sex abuse charges.