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Locally there have been a series of 22 rapes. A man was picking up hookers, having sex, not paying, then dropping them off.
The police have charged him with rape. But is this rape or is it theft of services? I think it is an interesting legal and ethical question.
For the purpose of the question, discount the weapon. The weapon, although only a pocket-knife, imo, definitely makes it rape.
Any opinions?
SERIAL RAPES
State police staked out area where victims had been dropped
By TERRI SANGINITI and ADAM TAYLOR, The News Journal
Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Delaware State Police Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh speaks to the media about Tuesday's arrest of Ramazan Sahin of Bear. Sahin is a suspect in a series of rapes in the past several months.
Shortly before midnight Monday, a man in a two-door black car approached a woman along Main Street in Elkton and offered her a ride.
When the woman accepted, the man said he would take her to his home in Becks Woods in Bear.
That all seemed fine to the woman, until the man took a detour.
They ended up at a secluded spot on the banks of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, east of the Summit Bridge.
It was the area where a man had abandoned nearly 20 women after sexually assaulting them, and it was also where undercover Delaware State Police troopers had been hanging out, looking for a break.
Early Tuesday, police said, they got it.
Police arrested 22-year-old Ramazan Sahin of Bear and charged him with seven counts of first-degree rape, six counts of first-degree kidnapping, five counts of possession of a deadly weapon during a felony, and one count each of aggravated menacing, reckless endangering and unlawful sexual contact.
He is being held at the Young Correctional Institution on $555,000 cash bail.
Sahin faces a preliminary hearing on the charges Oct. 23.
State police superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference that officers conducting surveillance in the vicinity of the canal about 12:20 a.m. stopped a man in a black 2001 Honda Prelude when he pulled up in the area.
The owner of the car was identified as Sahin, who worked at a pizza shop in Smyrna. Sahin, according to police, matched the description of the man suspected in at least 17 sexual assaults since March.
The area where police said Sahin dropped off many of his victims, Lums Pond State Park, is a 10- to 15-minute drive from his home. Some of the other locations were near or along Old Summit Road, a side road that sits above the C&D Canal.
A sign for the canal warns motorists that roads leading to the waterway are closed from dusk to dawn. It is a wildlife area and no unlicensed vehicles, off-road traffic, dumping, swimming, target shooting or paintball is allowed.
State police Detective Mary Bartkowski, who was on a team of detectives investigating the rapes, said the woman who had gotten into Sahin's car late Monday apparently did not realize how lucky she was to be rescued.
"When we told her we were looking for this guy, she kind of broke down and said, 'Was I in any danger?' " she said.
Although the Elkton woman escaped assault Tuesday morning, Sahin is accused of picking up 19 women and sexually assaulting 17 of them in a spree that began March 24.
Investigators did not link the assaults until two similar attacks on women were reported Sept. 24 and Sept. 25, MacLeish said.
In the attacks, the suspect was described similarly, drove a black car, sexually assaulted them at knifepoint and abandoned the victims along the canal banks or other nearby locations.
After his arrest, Sahin was linked to a March 24 rape through his father's 2002 Ford Windstar, police said.
Police said in court records the victim was offered a ride by a stranger driving a blue or green minivan just south of the U.S. 13/U.S. 40 split. When the woman declined, the suspect got out of the vehicle, forced the woman into the van at knifepoint, drove her to the canal banks, raped her, then dropped her off at the Lums Pond campgrounds.
Most of the rape victims have been described in court records as prostitutes.
"This was never put on the back burner because of what these victims' occupations might have been," MacLeish said. "He was an extreme threat. These women were victims and victims from the very start."
MacLeish said a team of undercover detectives -- none of whom were prostitution decoys -- worked the highway corridors and set up surveillance in the areas where the victims had been abandoned.
During questioning, police said, Sahin told detectives he "did display a pocket knife to some of the victims when he had sex with them," but added, "not all."
He also said "he had intentionally planned on not paying the girls and would leave them somewhere on the canal banks after asking them to get out of the vehicle and get paper towels from the trunk," police said in court records.
After his arrest, detectives recovered DNA samples from Sahin, who police said acted alone.
Investigators passing out fliers to women over the past week to warn them learned about 10 other unreported rapes pointing to a man with the same physical and vehicle descriptions.
"He wasn't going to stop himself because he was getting away with it," MacLeish said.
News of the suspect's arrest came as a relief to other women who could have been victims.
A woman named Angel said she started hooking when she was 38 and now plies her trade on Del. 9, in the shadow of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
She's now 42, has two kids and eight grandchildren, and has battled a drug habit since her teens. She has two ex-husbands and a past that includes a six-year prison stay in Delaware.
"I've been stabbed by customers. I've slept with every male employee of the business across the street from where we're standing. I've been raped by customers who were supposed to pay me," she said. "It's not just him. You cannot just blame that poor man. God, do you hear me? Calling him a poor man?"
That's the way Angel sees life.
She thinks the hookers and the customers help one another. She dreams of moving to Nevada, where prostitution is legal.
Yet, in the next breath, she breaks into tears.
She hyperventilates and opens her mouth to expose her front teeth, badly decayed from a decade of methamphetamine injection that preceded her life as a prostitute.
"I'm so tired," she said. "You have no idea. I have to get off these streets. I need to get off them so bad."
Bartkowski, the detective, said that unfortunately for these women, it is a life they have chosen for themselves.
"This is their style of living and even though the money is not good, they're still going to do it," she said.
Contact Terri Sanginiti at 324-2771 or tsanginiti@delawareonline.com. Contact Adam Taylor at 324-2787 or ataylor@delawareonline.com.
The police have charged him with rape. But is this rape or is it theft of services? I think it is an interesting legal and ethical question.
For the purpose of the question, discount the weapon. The weapon, although only a pocket-knife, imo, definitely makes it rape.
Any opinions?
SERIAL RAPES
State police staked out area where victims had been dropped
By TERRI SANGINITI and ADAM TAYLOR, The News Journal
Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Delaware State Police Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh speaks to the media about Tuesday's arrest of Ramazan Sahin of Bear. Sahin is a suspect in a series of rapes in the past several months.
Shortly before midnight Monday, a man in a two-door black car approached a woman along Main Street in Elkton and offered her a ride.
When the woman accepted, the man said he would take her to his home in Becks Woods in Bear.
That all seemed fine to the woman, until the man took a detour.
They ended up at a secluded spot on the banks of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, east of the Summit Bridge.
It was the area where a man had abandoned nearly 20 women after sexually assaulting them, and it was also where undercover Delaware State Police troopers had been hanging out, looking for a break.
Early Tuesday, police said, they got it.
Police arrested 22-year-old Ramazan Sahin of Bear and charged him with seven counts of first-degree rape, six counts of first-degree kidnapping, five counts of possession of a deadly weapon during a felony, and one count each of aggravated menacing, reckless endangering and unlawful sexual contact.
He is being held at the Young Correctional Institution on $555,000 cash bail.
Sahin faces a preliminary hearing on the charges Oct. 23.
State police superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference that officers conducting surveillance in the vicinity of the canal about 12:20 a.m. stopped a man in a black 2001 Honda Prelude when he pulled up in the area.
The owner of the car was identified as Sahin, who worked at a pizza shop in Smyrna. Sahin, according to police, matched the description of the man suspected in at least 17 sexual assaults since March.
The area where police said Sahin dropped off many of his victims, Lums Pond State Park, is a 10- to 15-minute drive from his home. Some of the other locations were near or along Old Summit Road, a side road that sits above the C&D Canal.
A sign for the canal warns motorists that roads leading to the waterway are closed from dusk to dawn. It is a wildlife area and no unlicensed vehicles, off-road traffic, dumping, swimming, target shooting or paintball is allowed.
State police Detective Mary Bartkowski, who was on a team of detectives investigating the rapes, said the woman who had gotten into Sahin's car late Monday apparently did not realize how lucky she was to be rescued.
"When we told her we were looking for this guy, she kind of broke down and said, 'Was I in any danger?' " she said.
Although the Elkton woman escaped assault Tuesday morning, Sahin is accused of picking up 19 women and sexually assaulting 17 of them in a spree that began March 24.
Investigators did not link the assaults until two similar attacks on women were reported Sept. 24 and Sept. 25, MacLeish said.
In the attacks, the suspect was described similarly, drove a black car, sexually assaulted them at knifepoint and abandoned the victims along the canal banks or other nearby locations.
After his arrest, Sahin was linked to a March 24 rape through his father's 2002 Ford Windstar, police said.
Police said in court records the victim was offered a ride by a stranger driving a blue or green minivan just south of the U.S. 13/U.S. 40 split. When the woman declined, the suspect got out of the vehicle, forced the woman into the van at knifepoint, drove her to the canal banks, raped her, then dropped her off at the Lums Pond campgrounds.
Most of the rape victims have been described in court records as prostitutes.
"This was never put on the back burner because of what these victims' occupations might have been," MacLeish said. "He was an extreme threat. These women were victims and victims from the very start."
MacLeish said a team of undercover detectives -- none of whom were prostitution decoys -- worked the highway corridors and set up surveillance in the areas where the victims had been abandoned.
During questioning, police said, Sahin told detectives he "did display a pocket knife to some of the victims when he had sex with them," but added, "not all."
He also said "he had intentionally planned on not paying the girls and would leave them somewhere on the canal banks after asking them to get out of the vehicle and get paper towels from the trunk," police said in court records.
After his arrest, detectives recovered DNA samples from Sahin, who police said acted alone.
Investigators passing out fliers to women over the past week to warn them learned about 10 other unreported rapes pointing to a man with the same physical and vehicle descriptions.
"He wasn't going to stop himself because he was getting away with it," MacLeish said.
News of the suspect's arrest came as a relief to other women who could have been victims.
A woman named Angel said she started hooking when she was 38 and now plies her trade on Del. 9, in the shadow of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
She's now 42, has two kids and eight grandchildren, and has battled a drug habit since her teens. She has two ex-husbands and a past that includes a six-year prison stay in Delaware.
"I've been stabbed by customers. I've slept with every male employee of the business across the street from where we're standing. I've been raped by customers who were supposed to pay me," she said. "It's not just him. You cannot just blame that poor man. God, do you hear me? Calling him a poor man?"
That's the way Angel sees life.
She thinks the hookers and the customers help one another. She dreams of moving to Nevada, where prostitution is legal.
Yet, in the next breath, she breaks into tears.
She hyperventilates and opens her mouth to expose her front teeth, badly decayed from a decade of methamphetamine injection that preceded her life as a prostitute.
"I'm so tired," she said. "You have no idea. I have to get off these streets. I need to get off them so bad."
Bartkowski, the detective, said that unfortunately for these women, it is a life they have chosen for themselves.
"This is their style of living and even though the money is not good, they're still going to do it," she said.
Contact Terri Sanginiti at 324-2771 or tsanginiti@delawareonline.com. Contact Adam Taylor at 324-2787 or ataylor@delawareonline.com.
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