From the Brockton Enterprise
Boston fire official from East Bridgewater is accused of raping prostitute, impersonating police officer:
(BROCKTON —
Officer Michael Scanlon was driving by North Main and Spring streets when a man flagged him down.
His girlfriend was raped at gunpoint a few weeks back, the man told Scanlon. Now, he told the officer, the suspect was back.
As Scanlon wrote down the suspect’s license plate number, he spotted the gray vehicle driving by north on North Main Street.
By the end of the night, the driver, a Boston deputy fire chief from East Bridgewater, would be the latest person to be charged with raping a prostitute in the city this summer as a growing number of street walkers report attacks to authorities.
“It is a good sign they are coming forward and feel they can trust the police,” said Lt. John Crowley, chief of detectives.
The Boston deputy fire chief, Peter P. Pearson, 51, of 142 Village Road, East Bridgewater, is to be arraigned today on charges of aggravated rape, assault with a dangerous weapon, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping while But the number of prostitutes reporting attacks throughout the country is still low, experts in the field said. The Prostitutes Education Network reports only 4 percent of prostitutes who are raped report the attacks to police.
“Many women are absolutely terrified to go to police,” said Norma Jean Almodovar, president and founder of the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, and executive director of COYOTE — Call off Your Tired Ethics — of Southern California, a 35-year-old prostitutes’ rights organization.
The reason is simple: the victims fear they will be arrested on prostitution charges, she said. “When the victim of an attack is also considered a criminal, it makes it impossible for people to go to the police.”
The attackers, Almodovar said, know this.
“They know they can get away with it,” she said.
Not in Brockton, Crowley said.
In this week’s Brockton arrest, the woman first reported the attack in July, telling authorities a man who claimed to be a state trooper ordered her into his car in June, drove to D.W. Field Park and forced her to perform oral sex at gunpoint.
She told police the suspect said he had been watching her for three weeks and mentioned several stores she had stopped at, Crowley said.
At one point at the park, he pulled out a gun, placed it to her head and her ordered to perform a sexual act or “he would arrest her,” Crowley said.
The suspect then dropped her off and the woman ran home to report the attack to her boyfriend, Crowley said.
The woman, according to paperwork filed in Brockton district court, said she had turned to prostitution to make money and first detailed the attack when she was arrested July 1.
She said her boyfriend urged her at the time to report the incident “but she was too afraid,” according to the court papers. with a gun.)
Be careful out there boys!! ya never know when you are going to run int a pissed off SW
