Female Student Reports Sexual Assault in StuVi II

Police search for suspect, with help from tips

boston university student village 2 student residence

The BU Police Department says that students should be sure their residence is locked at all times. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

October 18, 2015
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A female student living in StuVi II reported that she was sexually assaulted by an unknown male who entered her room between 2 and 2:50 a.m. on Sunday. Tom Robbins, chief of the Boston University Police Department, says the suspect is described as a college-age white male, between 5 feet, 8 inches and 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with a medium build and brown hair, and wearing a dark-colored button-down, long-sleeved shirt and a down vest. He reportedly fled the area. Police say the victim did not know the suspect.

Robbins says the BUPD Detective Bureau has received several tips and is working full-time to identify and apprehend the suspect.

He says that while police believe there is no ongoing threat, students should be sure to secure their residence at all times and to report any suspicious activity to the BU Police. Police ask that anyone with information regarding the incident contact the BU Police at 353- 2110 or text a tip anonymously to tip411 (847411), keyword BU, then a space, and then your message.

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Female Student Reports Sexual Assault in StuVi II

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 27 comments on Female Student Reports Sexual Assault in StuVi II

  1. Hopefully shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who it is, the face probably has shown up on multiple security cameras, and the victim could positively ID the suspect. (Assuming this isn’t like the UVA case and fraudulent)

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  2. I think it’s important that we not start insinuating that the victim is making up this attack. Why would anyone report that a random student they don’t know broke into their room and assaulted them in the night if it wasn’t true? It’s that skeptical approach that fellow students, staff and police often take which keeps so many victims from reporting rape. As for the UVA case, that was a completely different situation because it was allegedly an acquaintance of the girl and the situation involved a party, not her private room, not that that would make it any less of an assault.

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    1. >Why would anyone report that a random student they don’t know broke into their room and assaulted them in the night if it wasn’t true?

      People make outlandish claims all the time. The severity of a claim doesn’t make it any more true.

      I don’t know what happened, so I am (along with everyone else uninvolved with the investigation) not qualified to make a judgment either way. At this point, we only have a claim to work on and no empirical evidence, so we have no way of externally evaluating the truthfulness of her claim. But let’s not jump to conclusions and assume she’s right just because she said something inhumanely awful happened to her.

      She may have been assaulted. Or may not have been. We don’t know, and it’s not helpful, nor legal, to take the presumptive route before gathering the facts first.

      >It’s that skeptical approach that fellow students, staff and police often take which keeps so many victims from reporting rape.

      It’s also this skeptical approach that forms the foundation of Western law.

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      1. Do u know how involved the process of reporting a rape is? It involves intense questioning, retelling of and reliving of the experience, and an invasive medical examination. Also it may lead to a person’s friends and family finding out about the attack which many victims don’t want–because of the shame of the attack and doubts like these. I agree it’s not our job to make judgements and everyone knows the authorities are going to question the poor girl intensively so let’s leave the skeptivism to them. I’m not saying no one should question her account, of course it’s the process of the law; I admire her for undertaking that process at all. I wouldn’t, knowing that western law often fails rape victims. I’m simply saying the comments on a story which she is most certainly going to read are not the place to do it.

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        1. Yes, it’s involved, like the process involved in investigating any other violent crime. Obviously you can’t have someone say “I was assaulted by that person”, or any person, and then arrest whoever because they said so. So please, avoid making rash, hurtful comments on who is guilty or innocent based upon absolutely no evidence. Thank you.

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        2. >Do u know how involved the process of reporting a rape is? It involves intense questioning, retelling of and reliving of the experience, and an invasive medical examination.

          The fact that it’s unpleasant does not make it any less necessary. The alternative is that the rapist goes free, justice not be done, and that another woman (or man) is a target of this horrible crime, and between these two options, the first–undergoing a difficult discovery phase to build a case against the rapist–is the morally and emotionally superior option in the long run.

          >Also it may lead to a person’s friends and family finding out about the attack which many victims don’t want–because of the shame of the attack and doubts like these.

          I didn’t realize that the right to privacy willed itself away in sexual assault/rape cases.

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      2. Would you be this skeptical about any other type of crime?

        Seems like you might be being biased (aka sexist) here. If someone got their wallet stolen outside of StuVi would you post a response so fence-walking? e.g., “BUT how can you PROVE that you aren’t just hiding your wallet?”

        It’s ridiculous, honestly.

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        1. Spot-on. Lindsay and Jake are totally in the right, here.

          False rape accusations are rare. Sexual assault is (disturbingly) common.

          There is absolutely no reason to question the validity of this woman’s claim. Believing someone when they say that something terrible happened to them isn’t jumping the gun — it’s the only reasonable, empathetic thing to do.

          Proving the truth isn’t your job, or mine, but showing support and respect for members of our community in a time of crisis totally is.

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          1. When a person says that they have been raped or sexually assaulted, their testimony is evidence that the rape or assault occurred. It is sufficient reason to believe them. Suspending belief pending further evidence is irrational, except (perhaps) in a setting where the standards of evidence are extremely high (i.e. if you are on a jury in a courtroom). But when you read a news story and post in the comments section, you are not in a courtroom, so invoking extremely high standards of evidence is both irrational and harmful, as it functions only to cast illegitimate doubt on the person’s report.

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        2. >Would you be this skeptical about any other type of crime?

          Absolutely, because skepticism should be your go-to mode of approach rather than blindly accepting allegations wholesale. Especially if the allegation in question is serious in nature.

          Look: what separates us, civilization, from the hysterical puritans of the Salem witch trials is the legal principle of presumptive guilt– that is to say, without any positive evidence to tie anyone to an crime, we can’t simply prosecute people who we don’t have even have hard evidence that they perpetrated the crime, let alone if we have no evidence the crime even happened. A rape allegation is a very hefty claim: it’s a serious crime, and the rapist should face the wrath of the criminal justice system, but how is the police going to go forth with an investigation and lodge a formal criminal complaint? Emotional appeals aside, the claim without evidence is a dead-end.

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          1. I’m with Lindsay, Derek, Aaron & Jake on this.

            Yes, sometimes people make “outlandish” claims, but hardly all the time. It’s especially unlikely when the targeted person asserts that it’s a random attack, not by someone known to the target.

            Quaerendo’s gloss on the western legal tradition might be helpful in different circumstances. But here the effect is to downplay a serious incident that rightly concerns the BU community. Quaerendo exemplifies the pyrrhonistic** (NOT skeptical) attitude that effectively deters sexual assault victims from coming forward. Nobody here assumes that serious charges could be accepted without an investigation without corroborating evidence — other than Quaerendo, apparently.

            **In practical terms, pyrrhonism is defined as “skepticism beyond the limits of reason.”

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        3. It’s your fault your wallet got stolen and no one else’s. Stop carrying it around like that and you wouldn’t have gotten robbed. In fact, you deserved it, simply by having a wallet, so we don’t care if you can prove it or not. So there was a gun to your face, if you’d really wanted to not get robbed you would have fought him off instead of just handing it over. You probably wanted to give that guy all your money and student ID anyway and either tried to back out at the last minute or regret it afterwards and your just trying to get “even” or something petty like that.

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          1. Dan offers a most telling analogy to sexual assaults. His description of a dismissive response to a stolen wallet neatly parallels the terms used to reject serious & legitimate charges of sexual assault.

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        4. Thank you Jake. Thank you Lindsay. I’m an alumna and feel sick to my stomach reading the comments from the females who are are on the attack of the student who has reported a humiliating, brutal crime. No wonder men think they can get away with it. Is this what we faminists fought so hard to accomplish women turning their judgemental backs on other women about rape ? It was hard enough to fight women in the corporate world, those petty minded females who wanted to see women on the rise fail, but rape ? I don’t give a flying fig how many women did or did not cry wolf, lie or embellish. For every woman who has done so (BS to Hell hath nor fury like a woman scorned)there are 1000’s who have never cried out about what happened to them- and Lindsay explained why. Shame on anyone who doubts any woman who’s goes out on on that limb to speak out about a brutal crime, who speaks for the many who are too terrified to speak for themselves.

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    1. Me too I hope they get him with the cameras or someone saw something …I also hope this girl doesnt read these comments which for the most part are questioning her story. Innocent until proven guilty applies to her as well.

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  4. This is messed up. But yes, it should be easy to find him, considering it was in Stuvi 2, so they would have logs of who swiped in, and security cameras to ID him.

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  5. I really do hope they find him , given that there are cameras in StuVi II, and technology. I can only imagine what she is going through.Sexual Assault on college campuses is no joke and many young people tend not to report because they fear what people, especially friends and family might say or think of them, so I want to start of by giving her credit for reporting it. I am a victim of a Sexual Assault myself, before I came to BU my sophomore year and its not something any female or anyone would want to experience. Agreeing with Lindsey, it definitely involves a lot of questioning, and having to relive and retell the experience to authorities who ask, along with a having a rape tool kit performed on them. I , too do not see why see would make this up , giving the ramification that follows. Also , I hope she finds the right support system , because it can get very emotional and devastating to deal with especially by one’s self. Its been a little over two years for me , and I still relive that experience. I do wish her all the best in getting through this.

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    1. Thank you also and I’m so sorry for what you’ve had to live through. I hope you also are doing ok and you know SARP is a great counseling resource at BU and it’s free.

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  6. Thank you Jake, Derek, Holly, Aaron and Dan. It means a lot to me that other people understand this issue. Quarendo, the word “unpleasant” doesn’t cover it. Maybe humiliating, dehumanizing and risky. Yes privacy often is compromised in rape cases because there is often so much debate about it, and if the attacker is known to the victim (which is a lot more common than cases like the one we are discussing, disturbingly) then there is the fear that the attacker will retaliate (as happened to a friend of mine at BU). Also, u say it’s necessary that the victim report, but it’s not fair to place the responsibly for preventing the rapist’s crimes on the victim. It’s the rapist who is guilty. And also I’m not apportioning blame unfairly on anyone because I’m not claiming any specific person did it. I’m saying this crime happened and there is no reason to say it didn’t. Like Dan and Jake said, with other crimes the issue is always who did it, only with rape is the issue of whether a crime took place at all so debated.

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  7. As a parent I hope this perp is found. Quickly. My prayers and thoughts are with this victim. Everyone should be safe.
    Dorms are BU property- private property. As a parent I expect that all cameras are in perfect working order. Being a private university, and this is just a thought, BU can opt to place chips in ID cards- and location be identified in the case of a serious crime.
    Private industry does it.

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    1. You’re right. Next we should have every student be required to wear a shock collar to help subdue them if they try to resist arrest. While we’re at it, why not build a giant fence around the school to prevent potential criminals from escaping into the city, where they could be potentially lost by authorities. Hell, why stop there? Students don’t REALLY need to move or have any freedoms to learn. We could just strap them all to chairs, spoon feed them, and have them watch screens of lectures.

      To get serious, a chip in an ID card does nothing. It’s easy to just not take your ID with you if you want to do something illegal. Furthermore, you have to “sign in” to security, but ultimately there’s nothing stopping you from using a fake name and ID number. Say you forgot your room key, they’ll sign you out a new one. All you need is some ID you found on the ground and you can get past security.

      My point in all of this is that BU doesn’t have security, it has security theatre. The idea is to make people feel safe rather than actually make them safer. It’s the same reason you have to sign for a credit card, just for show. Treating every BU student like an animal that needs to be traced at all times is insulting and would do nothing to improve on-campus safety. Just because private industry does it doesn’t mean it works.

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      1. Nothing will stop crime. Tactics are merely a deterrent. The cameras on campus are there for the protection of BU. I did not suggest that campus members be treated like animals. Your sarcasm is appreciated, and your intelligence is noted.

        I hope that this crime was reported by the victim to Boston PD, and not just BUPD.

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