In Culver City on November 7th, an 18-year-old woman was raped while on a Metro bus. The woman was returning home from her special education school. She was mentally disabled with the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. She had only recently been allowed to travel to and from school on her own. She was followed onto the bus by a stranger. He followed her onto the back of the bus and immediately began raping her without any warning. It is thought that the other passengers on the bus did not have any idea what was going on as she did not fight back or scream. The victim said she was in shock and did not know what to do. She also feared for her life and safety and so did not call out for help.
The rape lasted for ten minutes, until the bus came to its last stop. Then the man simply walked off of the bus. These types of cases are extremely rare on public forms of transportation, with only three such cases occurring last year. Authorities believe this was a crime of opportunity and that the victim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They released photos of the attacker taken from surveillance footage to see if anyone could identify him. It only took a couple of hours for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department to be able to arrest the suspect. He is a 20-year-old man who was out on parole and had been investigated for sexual assault before. Click here to read more about this story.
If you have been accused of rape or another sex crime you need to have a strong legal representative on your side. Even an accusation of rape could be enough to permanently damage your reputation, so please contact our office at Martinian & Associates Inc. as soon as possible.
