Recent assaults at UVA prompt alert, questions
UVA Police Lt. Melissa Fielding and UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves discuss the alleged assaults.PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART
A hastily organized press conference to address three recent alleged attacks on UVA students may have raised more questions than it answered, as UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves and UVA Police Lt. Melissa Fielding admitted they did not know the identities of two of the three assault victims–- and couldn't be sure, therefore, if assaults had even occurred.
September 28, three days after new UVA president Teresa Sullivan's "Day of Dialogue" to address violence in the wake of the Yeardley Love murder, Groves sent a message to approximately 23,000 UVA email addresses cautioning students to be extra vigilant in the wake of the alleged ssaults.
According to Groves' message, the first incident was a sexual assault that took place at approximately 1:15am on Friday, September 17 near Chancellor Street. The female student was knocked to the ground and sexually assaulted by a white male. Two days later, according to Groves' email, at just after midnight on September 19, another female student was pushed into the pantry of an unidentified fraternity house by an unidentified white male. Hearing her screams, two friends opened the pantry door and the assailant fled. Described as a white male between 18 and 20 years old, approximately 5'11 and 180 pounds with medium length brown hair, he was wearing a t-shirt and khaki shorts, and investigators assert that the alleged assailant in these two incidents may be the same person.
In the other incident, a male student walking on Chancellor Street near the Bank of America building at 1:30am on September 18 was assaulted by an approximately 5' 10" black male, who jumped from a Ford SUV, punched the victim in the neck, and knocked him to the ground.
At Wednesday's press conference, Groves explained that while the male student had reported the incident through an online crime reporting portal, University officials were still trying to make contact with the women to determine exactly where the assaults took place and what had occurred.
Neither Groves nor Fielding knew the status of the investigations being conducted by Charlottesville City Police, who did not send a representative to the press conference. All three incidents occurred off grounds, and are therefore in the City's jurisdiction.
According to City spokesperson Ric Barrick, due to the "impairment" of the victim in the September 17 incident, "we are not certain there was an assault." The victim in the September 19 alleged pantry attack has not yet contacted police, says Barrick, who notes that police were "surprised" by the press conference and the media coverage.
"We understand that UVA takes safety on grounds very seriously," he writes in an emailed response.
Absent any information beyond his original message, Groves focused instead on the timeline between the alleged assaults and UVA's decision to alert students, a sensitive subject since UVA has been criticized over the years for being unresponsive to sexual assaults. (Hook stories include November 11, 2004's "How UVA Turns its Back on Rape," and the January 12, 2006 "I Harmed You: 21 years, 12 steps later, rape apology backfires.")
Groves says his message was sent on September 27, hours after the first student made contact for the first time with an administrator.
"We had enough information to go forward publicly," he said, explaining that administrators had spent several days trying to track down the alleged victims.
Groves and Fielding reiterated the safety message to students, cautioning them to be aware of their surroundings, to monitor their own alcohol intake, and to assist friends who are intoxicated and therefore more vulnerable. When in doubt, "Call 911," said Fielding, stressing that students don't need to believe they're dealing with a "dire emergency" to use the emergency number.
"We'd rather respond and discover it's nothing," said Fielding, "than be too late."
–-updated/rewritten 4:43pm and updated again at 5:37pm with response from Barrick
Original posting:
Within one week of new UVA president Teresa Sullivan's "Day of Dialogue" to address violence in the wake of the Yeardley Love murder, three assaults on UVA students have prompted an emergency message from Dean of Students Allen Groves.
According to Groves' message, the first incident, a sexual assault, took place at approximately 1:15am on Friday, September 17 near Chancellor Street. The female student was knocked to the ground and sexually assaulted by a white male. Two days later, at just after midnight on September 19, another female student was pushed into the pantry of an unidentified fraternity house by an unidentified white male. Hearing her screams, two friends opened the pantry door and the assailant fled. He is described as between 18 and 20 years old, approximately 5'11 and 180 pounds with medium length brown hair. He was wearing a t-shirt and khaki shorts.
In the final incident, a male student walking on Chancellor Street near the Bank of America building at 1:30am on September 18 was assaulted by an approximately 5' 10" black male, who jumped from a Ford SUV, punched the victim in the neck and knocked him to the ground. Police believe the crime was prompted by the victim's sexual orientation
In his message, Groves cautions students to be aware of their surroundings, and to monitor their own alcohol intake and assist friends who may be intoxicated and therefore more vulnerable.
A press conference on the assaults and on student safety is being scheduled for this afternoon.
Developing...
42 comments
Thrown into a pantry? Really? That's assault, now?
The others, yes, those are assault, but being locked into a pantry? At a frat party? Are you kidding me?
There are two distinct kinds of assaults going on.. ones from within... drunken students who were raised improperly and criminals from the city who were also raised improperly.
The students can mostly be educated and prevented from their crimes by peer pressure and proper high profile low tolerance prosecution. The latter most probably have a rap sheet a mile long and should have been dealt with long ago. These folks need to be locked up and removed from society for as long as we can keep them away.
The costs of police overtime , prosecution, insurance payouts, mental health costs for the victims etc is probably less than incarceration.
Everyone on probation for any kind of violent crime should be forced to wear a GPS monitor. they are cheap and reliable.
AJ - sex offenders have it easier over the mountain in Waynesboro...case in point: latest conviction was plea barginned down to a "lesser charge" from raping a girl of under 13 to an unnamed charge. Sooooo...sentence - 10 years with all but one suspended....and this individual will PROBABLY (that's a quote from the article) be deported after release. Yeah, I'll hold my breath....commonwealth attorney and judges across the mountain are bleeding hearts....I could site other cases, but it'll just make ya madder!!
"Guns don't kill people. Bad people with easy access to guns kill people!"
get a life I think you're missing his point. Video games and other operant conditioning DOES desensitize users to real violence, which is a definite precursor to sociopathic tendencies.
The US Army is fully aware of this even if you are not.
Saying Video games creates killers is like saying, Pencils misspells words, Cars make drunk drivers, and guns kill people.
So called date rapes are the most numerous rapes on college campuses, and elsewhere in Western civilizations. The kinds of sexual assaults described above are very rare at UVa.
Didn't your mama tell you nothing good happens after midnight?
plus i have noticed that the number of people on the sex offender registry for the cville zip codes is very high as compared to the size of the city....for some reason lots of offenders are being attracted to the inner rt. 20/ i-64 corridor too.
saying video games creates killers is like saying eating big macs creates fat people, drinking creates alcoholics and becoming a politician makes you into a liar....
Not everyone who eats drinks or goes into politics suffers from the above mentioned afflictions but they are all some serious contributing factors.
There can be no doubt that a kid raised playing Grand Theft Auto will hve a slightly different outlook vs the kid who watched the Cosby show.
What else do you want U.Va. to do? They've already sent out warnings even though the cases weren't reported to them and occurred in the city. Why don't you complain that every jurisdiction in this country hasn't completely eradicated crime?
meanwhile, I am all for purging the sex offenders away from Cville...I wonder if local landlords do a check on criminal history... I know the mantra about sex offenders, they have served time for their crime, we shouldn't discriminate but I for one as a landlord wouldn't lend my home to a predator speacially the ones who have molested children; they can't be rehabilitated...lets start the movement in Cville...NO MORE sex offenders in Cville.
I feel terribly about the assaults, but it needs to be brought up the absolute crime of that Dean Groves wearing a Carolina Blue seater vest in that photo. Shame...
Booo, you have hit the nail on the head. one of the biggest failings of the human race is that we can see what's wrong with ourselves but as a collective organism are unable to stop the inertia moving us toward extinction.
UVA covering up rapes? Who woulda thunk?
Allow concealed carry on grounds, that might help. Students can legally carry on grounds but it is against school rules and will result in expulsion.
booo i agree...forget about the abusive households...what tranpires there...talking about normal every day families....parents are letting malls, porn, facebook, raise their children.
I told you so.
AJ, there is no doubt that our local jurisprudential system has chosen time and time again to NOT punish sex offenders to the full extent of the law. This could very well influence the rational decisions by sex offenders to relocate here, as well as be a factor as to why so many sex offenders are free in the local community.
Until we get local judges and local prosecutors that take these crimes seriously, our sex offender registry will continue to be well-populated.
Protecting yourself and those you love is YOUR responsibility. Too often the police aren't there in time, and too often civilians walk away rather than get involved. Except when I go into a bank or a government building, I am ALWAYS armed. Unfortunately for a lot of these young people, they think nothing bad can happen to them and they are open, friendly, not on their guard, and not nearly careful enough. It's a real shame some of them get such a rude awakening...or worse.
@jjmalloy "The kinds of sexual assaults described above are very rare at UVa."
Wrong. I have been reading about these kinds of assaults on women on or near the UVA campus since the 1980s, when I was a student here. There are several similar REPORTED occurences every year.
@RobertBlake92: "Except for on the actual grounds of UVA, where they apparently prefer their students to be victims..."
Whoa! Back up the stagecoach there, John Wayne. Victims of what? In case you weren't paying attention, none of these assaults took place on the UVA grounds.
Where is Sean, taking credit for being right about these folks all Spring and Summer?
Couldn't we have expected him to be on here ranting about how UVA covered things up, made local media do the same, and only spilled the beans after the blink on crime website put these assaults online a few days ago?
But even I have to ask - why on earth would they delay warning their own students that assaults have taken place, when and where?? Why was it not news in any of the papers or on TV - until now?
I can't imagine that after Morgan Harrington's abduction/murder and Yeardley Love's murder that UVA would stand up and make themselves heard. It's time to stop this cycle of violence on and around our campuses. Shame on The University for not securing and making safe it's campus and looking after their students. I would never allow a child of mine there. They continually turn their heads and refuse to believe this could be going on. Get a grip, UVA.
The answer to every freaking societal ill cannot be that we must arm ourselves to the teeth. Guns might not kill people, but irresponsible, drunken teens and twenty-somethings armed with a foolish sense of invincibility and a glock sure will.
I agree, people don't need to be armed to the teeth.
A high quality handgun and a 50 round box of ammo is enough.
From what I gather none of this is unusual for UVa. What's unusual is that they've chosen to talk about it. Previously they just covered things up, according to victims.
Also as time goes on, and successive generations of kids continue to be raised on violent video games and torture porn horror movies that typically depict women as pieces of meat that should be beat up, raped, tortured and killed, expect this sort of thing to be on the rise. Our society is churning out empty sociopaths by the thousands.
Ummm, no, the university reported the incidents after at least one student reported a crime to them.
Do you consider a sorority house "grounds?". This is where the rape took place. The attack in the pantry occured in a frat house.
The school didn't send a report to students until AFTER Blink published her article. Don't you wonder how she found out and yet the administration was in the dark??? Dig a little deeper.
You should read it her blog. Even Allen Groves has posted on her site.
@Gassy old phart: I read the article you cited. Thanks, very interesting. That pizza delivery guy, a former sheriff's deputy, displayed an extraordinary amount of self-restraint, WAY too much if you ask me. Except for on the actual grounds of UVA, where they apparently prefer their students to be victims, small 9mm's carried by a significant number of former sheep with CCP's would reeducate the wolves to think twice before mounting an attack.
I thought maybe Richard Smith (the UVa student, son of Fed Ex Chairman) had come back to town. After paying 1/2 a million for punching Kory (another student) I guess he wouldn't come back to town.
Has anyone noticed that a woman president @ UVA is pursuing this?
She would not have been admitted to UVA when she was going to college, because UVA didn't admit women then. Thank heavens someone else did.
And people ask what difference gender makes so long as someone's qualified? This would be the difference.
Goodness gracious, people. Isn't it time we stopped beating up the UVA administration? How many warnings need to be issued before young people understand that walking alone, anywhere, near the Corner, 14th, 15th, 13th Street, Downtown Mall, Barracks Road Shopping Center, Fashion Square Mall, etc., etc., is simply not safe. Not blaming the victims here in any way, but if you're smart enough to get into UVA, you need to be smart enough to use some commonsense. DO NOT WALK ALONE. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM. My sons learned this in Cub Scouts when they were five years old.
Pizza Hut driver: Judge, Jury, Executioner...
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/28/1723694/2-men-shot-dead-in-r...
An "Eye for a pie".
"Crime still occurs in Charlottesville?
I WOULD NEVER LET MY KID ANYWHERE NEAR UVA!!!"
You people are insane.
UVA is an AWESOME place for girls to go to school.
If you want to really know how this all came to the public eye, go to Blink on Crime's website. The university only notified the students AFTER she published an article about the rapes.
I wish the local media would investigate this deeper.
I looked at the timeline provided by Freak on Crime amidst her usual rumormongering. It looks to me as though the Charlottesville Police Department was investigating the case and in contact with the university, but the CPD kept saying that they didn't know if an assault had occurred. It's the CPD that looks incompetent in this case if a rape actually occurred, not the university.
SJones sure wrote like Kevin Gregory McNeill. I don't know what that means, though.
Where's S.Jones? Has anyone heard from him lately? There's a terrible rumor on Topix about him, would any of you all know if it's true?
shocked? great expectations ...
why it only seems like a less than a year ago, another girl was taken from UVA grounds, brutally raped and murdered and left in a field a few miles from campus with no suspects, poi, arrests, convictions, etc. oh wait ... at least UVA gets the most endowments and has a great football team.