Between 2008 and 2011, a series of rapes in the suburbs around Seattle and Denver were perpetrated by Marc Patrick O'Leary, [1] a United States Army veteran who had been stationed near Tacoma. [2] The first victim, an 18-year-old woman known as Marie, reported to Sergeant Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn that she had been raped at her home in Lynnwood, Washington. [3] According to a later report, the bullying and hounding of her by the detectives led Marie to recant her statement, resulting in her being charged with making a false report of rape. [1] [3] [4]
O'Leary went on to rape five more women in a similar manner, one in Washington and four in Colorado. [1] O'Leary was arrested in Lakewood, Colorado, in February 2011, following 40 days of investigation by a team of detectives from several departments. [5] The investigators used similarities in the attacker's methods, along with photos found on O'Leary's computer, to link O'Leary to the five rapes in both states. [1] He pleaded guilty to several counts of rape and was sentenced to the maximum 327+1⁄2 years in prison in Colorado [1] [3] and a total of 68+1⁄2 years in Washington. [1] [6] As of 2019 [update] he was imprisoned in Colorado's Sterling Correctional Facility. [7] [8] [9]
Between 2008 and 2012, Lynnwood police labeled 21 percent of rape cases as "unfounded", five times the national average for similarly sized municipalities. [1] An outside review of Marie's case by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office found that she had been "coerced into admitting that she lied" and that the police had ignored strong evidence of the crime to focus on "minor inconsistencies" in her account. [1] Lynnwood police have since adopted new training methods for sexual assault investigations, [10] and must have "definitive proof" of lying before questioning a rape report. [3] Despite the review, no Lynnwood police officers were professionally disciplined; in 2014, the city of Lynwood settled with Marie for $150,000 (equivalent to $193,000in 2023) for the mishandling of her case and the false-claim charge by their police department. [1] [4]
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their "examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures" in the rape investigations. [11] [12] Their work, titled "An Unbelievable Story of Rape", was used as the basis for an episode of This American Life , narrated in part by Armstrong, and the Netflix series Unbelievable . [11] [13] [14] [15]
Lynnwood is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located 16 miles (26 km) north of Seattle and 13 miles (21 km) south of Everett, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 405. It is the fourth-largest city in Snohomish County, with a population of 38,568 in the 2020 U.S. census.
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
Linda Fairstein is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, burglar, peeping tom, former police officer and mechanic who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. He is responsible for three known separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
T. Christian Miller is an investigative reporter, editor, author, and war correspondent for ProPublica. He has focused on how multinational corporations operate in foreign countries, documenting human rights and environmental abuses. Miller has covered four wars—Kosovo, Colombia, Israel and the West Bank, and Iraq. He also covered the 2000 presidential campaign. He is also known for his work in the field of computer-assisted reporting and was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2012 to study innovation in journalism. In 2016, Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism with Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project. In 2019, he served as a producer of the Netflix limited series Unbelievable, which was based on the prize-winning article. In 2020, Miller shared the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with other reporters from ProPublica and The Seattle Times. With Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi, Miller co-won the 2020 award for his reporting on United States Seventh Fleet accidents.
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes casually inaccurately used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.
ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. ProPublica's investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won several Pulitzer Prizes.
A serial rapist is someone who commits multiple rapes, whether with multiple victims or a single victim repeatedly over a period of time. Some serial rapists target children. The terms sexual predator, repeat rape and multiple offending can also be used to describe the activities of those who commit a number of consecutive rapes, but remain unprosecuted when self-reported in research. Others will commit their assaults in prisons.
The wrongful conviction of Steve Titus was a miscarriage of justice in which Steve Gary Titus (1949–1985), an American businessman, was convicted wrongly of rape. Titus was dismissed from his job after the conviction and, though the charges were soon dismissed, he became long term unemployed. The crime was later determined to have been committed by serial rapist Edward Lee King. Journalist Paul Henderson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his work on the case. Jack Olsen's book Predator examined the investigation of the crime and the life of the real criminal.
Ken Armstrong is a senior investigative reporter at ProPublica.
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.
Peter Samuel Cook was a British serial rapist who attacked women in Cambridge, England and so became known in the press as the Cambridge Rapist. He attacked women after breaking into their bedsits and flats. He was active between October 1974 and April 1975, and was also called the 'hooded rapist' because of a distinctive leather mask he wore whilst carrying out his crimes. The mask was reported to be "stitched from an old leather shopping bag. The zipper-mouthed mask had the word 'rapist' painted in white across the forehead".
After a sexual assault or rape, victims are often subjected to scrutiny and, in some cases, mistreatment. Victims undergo medical examinations and are interviewed by police. If there is a criminal trial, victims suffer a loss of privacy, and their credibility may be challenged. Victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, social stigmatization, sexual slurs and cyberbullying. These factors, contributing to a rape culture, are among some of the reasons that may contribute up to 80% of all rapes going unreported in the U.S, according to a 2016 study done by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Carolyn Craven was an American journalist. She was known for her reporting for KQED-TV in San Francisco, and for speaking publicly about being the victim of a serial rapist.
Unbelievable is an American crime drama miniseries starring Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, and Kaitlyn Dever. It follows a woman who was charged with a crime for reporting that she was raped, and two female detectives who investigate a spate of similar attacks. The show was co-created by Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman, and Michael Chabon. All three co-creators and Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, and Katie Couric were executive producers. It was released on September 13, 2019, on Netflix.
#HimToo is a social movement supporting male victims of sexual assault and false rape allegations. The reaction to the #MeToo movement started in October 2018 after a tweet from a mother about her son being afraid to date because of a climate of false rape allegations. It rose to greater prominence during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. The #HimToo movement was a response to the sexual assault allegations from the #MeToo movement.
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting.
Reynhard Tambos Maruli Tua Sinaga is an Indonesian serial rapist who was convicted of 159 sex offences, including 136 rapes of young men, committed in Manchester, England, between 2015 and 2017, where he was living as a student. Sinaga was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting 48 men during this period, 44 of whom he raped, some repeatedly, although police believe he was offending for years beforehand. Sinaga was prosecuted in four trials between 2018 and 2020 and was given concurrent life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years; raised to 40 years in December 2020 by the Court of Appeal. The Crown Prosecution Service described Sinaga as being the most prolific rapist in British legal history.
Keith Simms was an Australian serial rapist. Known as the Bondi Beast, Simms raped 31 women between 1985 and 2001. Simms was identified as the culprit only several months after his death, based on matching DNA to 12 cases, while 19 other cases were linked via the method and description of the crime.
O'Leary was assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., from November 2006 to September 2009, according to military records.
