Has nothing to do with Occupy, either:
"Rape charge stemming from concert encounter dropped" by Evan Allen | Globe Staff September 25, 2014
Bristol County prosecutors dropped a rape charge Thursday against a West Roxbury man arrested in July after Keith Urban concertgoers reported seeing him engaged in a sexual act with a female on the lawn of the Xfinity Center in Mansfield.
“Given the state of the evidence, the case had to be dismissed in the interest of justice,” said Gregg Miliote, spokesman for the Briston district attorney. “The family [of the woman] is on board with this decision.”
The charge was dismissed Thursday during a hearing in Attleboro District Court.
I'm about to do the same with this post.
An attorney for 18-year-old Sean Murphy said his client was relieved by the news, but was deeply shaken by the fact that he had been charged at all.
“This is still a completely devastating accusation to be made of someone who’s 18 years old and never been in trouble his whole life,” said attorney Steven Brooks. “He spent the night in [jail]. . . . That’s certainly going to change anybody’s perspective.”
Yes, it does. I speak from experience.
Murphy had been accused of attacking the woman on July 26 while bystanders took pictures and video and reported what they had seen to police.
“It happened in a crowd and people saw it and assumed that because it was a young man on top of a young woman, and they both got up and went in different directions after, that it may have been a sexual assault,” said Brooks.
Weird.
But Brooks said the encounter was consensual, though it demonstrated bad judgment.
Ah, youth.
After Murphy was arraigned, he said, witnesses contacted his office out of the blue to say the encounter was not rape.
His investigators interviewed 15 to 20 people, he said. “It became unmistakably clear that this was a consensual act,” said Brooks. “There were people videotaping.”
Brooks said that Murphy’s dream is to serve in the military. He is hoping the accusation does not affect his chances of moving on, Brooks said.
Be careful. I remember they used to have a rape problem, but have seen limited reports since.
“He’s just a nice, normal kid from Boston who has taught children to swim and has donated a lot of time to charities,” said Brooks. “He’s done a lot of good work.”
And he just happened to engage in a brief sexual encounter in public. What's the big deal?
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I'm a little tired of the voyeurism of the Boston Globe so I'm going to leave you know.
"Sexual assault reports climb at area colleges; N.E. schools’ data tied to a greater awareness" by Matt Rocheleau | Globe Correspondent October 06, 2014
Reports of sexual assaults on area college campuses rose markedly last year, an increase that safety specialists attribute primarily to heightened national awareness of the problem, which prompts more victims to come forward.
A survey of information from more than two dozen of the largest New England colleges found that reports of “forcible sex offenses” climbed by 40 percent overall between 2012 and 2013, according to a Globe review of data that colleges provided in annual federally mandated reports released last week.
Last year, there were a total of 289 reports of the offenses at the colleges. That compares with 206 in 2012. The 2013 total was more than twice as many as reported five years before.
Sexual assaults on and around college campuses, long considered a vastly underreported crime, have received increased attention in recent months from the Obama administration, the schools, and students. As a result, campuses have stepped up training, support, and outreach, and the rising number for 2013 is seen as signaling that victims are more comfortable reporting assaults.
“It means that students are coming forward and reporting crimes that are happening and ending that culture of silence,” said Alison Kiss, director of the Clery Center for Security On Campus, a nonprofit that trains colleges to comply with the federal Clery Act.
Specialists also believe the spike in reporting may indicate that colleges are becoming more thorough and transparent in collecting and disclosing sexual assault data....
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"Saugus father faces charge in son’s assault case; Man allegedly disposed of evidence" by Laura Crimaldi | Globe staff September 30, 2014
SALEM — When police were investigating the case of an intoxicated 16-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted in Saugus, they learned that a witness told authorities that Matthew Cyckowski’s 17-year-old son had recorded the attack on his cellphone and had distributed it using Snapchat.
What prosecutors allege Cyckowski did next has the 37-year-old father facing a charge that he misled police by getting rid of the phone that could link his son to the crime.
“This defendant has already destroyed evidence in a case that could not be more serious, involving incredible harm and near death of this young woman who is 16 years old,” Assistant Essex District Attorney Kate MacDougall said Tuesday at Cyckowski’s arraignment in Salem Superior Court.
????
It's on Snapchat, which means it is certain the NSA has it.
How come we never hear anything about the NSA anymore anyway? All that surveillance and yet we are in danger from terrorists, hackers, and each other. WTF?
When police asked for his son’s cellphone, Cyckowski turned over his own phone, saying it belonged to the boy, MacDougall said. She said Cyckowski had deprived prosecutors of a “critical piece of evidence” in a sexual assault case that has resulted in criminal charges against his son and two adults.
Cyckowski “essentially destroyed evidence and gave the police false and misleading evidence, causing them to spend any number of days and hours looking at a phone that was not in fact the phone in this case,” MacDougall said....
The government and ma$$ media do it all the time, so what is the big deal? Case in point: IRS "lost" evidence.
Btw, false and misleading information is not evidence, either. But since it gets us into wars its okay.
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Related:
Hernandez’s lawyer, DA spar over cellphone evidence
Hernandez lawyer never read cellphone search warrant
My interest on that case has drained it has gone on so long, and I now view it with a simple axiom: if the government is shit, you must acquit. Case closed.
Oh, and the kid?
"Saugus sexual assault suspect was freed in earlier cases; Judge declined to hold man now charged with sexual assault" by Laura Crimaldi | Globe Staff October 02, 2014
LYNN — When Rashad Deihim faced charges last October of violating a restraining order taken out by his former girlfriend, he got a stern warning from a judge in Lynn District Court before he was freed on $500 bail.
“I got to tell you: If you’re arrested again and charged with any new offenses and you violate that restraining order, you’re going to be held for 60 days without bail,” said First Justice Albert S. Conlon, according to a recording of the hearing, which took place Oct. 4, 2013.
“I’m going to be the person to hold you. You understand that,” Conlon said.
Ten months later, in August, Deihim was before the judge again, after the teen allegedly dragged his girlfriend with his car. And the judge declined to detain him, over the objections of prosecutors who wanted him held because they considered him dangerous.
Now, Deihim, a 19-year-old Saugus resident, is locked up, charged with participating last month in an alleged sexual assault of an intoxicated 16-year-old girl that was recorded and distributed on the social media application Snapchat. The girl who was attacked, authorities say, probably would have died if not for the actions of a witness who received the videos on Snapchat and notified police....
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Also see: Saugus man accused of sex attack on teen
And you think the title of my post is offensive?
