Sexual Assault On The Rise

Posted: July 9, 2009 09:06 PM MDT
Updated: July 15, 2009 03:26 PM MDT 

COLORADO SPRINGS - Authorities say almost all crime in Colorado Springs is on the decline. However, sexual assault is still on the rise. Sergeant Bill Dehart with the Colorado Springs Police Department says sexual assaults are up here almost three percent so far this year. And in the last quarter of 2008 the police department saw a twenty percent increase in sexual assaults in Colorado Springs.

 Some of the reasons police could be seeing this increase is because the population is growing or there are more violent predators on the streets or police say more victims may be reporting the crime. A new law was passed last July, it allows victims to get a "Jane Doe" rape kit done at Memorial Hospital, police don't have to file a report at the time of the crime, but the evidence will still be on file, so the victim can decide later if she'd like to press charges.

Tessa reports helping 400 victims every year. The organization's spokesperson Shawna Kemppainen says, "over 60 percent of the time a rape is never even reported." Tessa also reports one in four women in colorado will be raped, and one in seventeen men. Kemppainen says, "...more than 75 percent of the time a victim knows their assailant."

Police say they're doing what they can to reduce the numbers by beefing up their manpower. Recently, the department created an adult sexual assault unit to help deal with the problem and have added another detective to that unit.

Kemppainen says one answer to the problem is to educate youth about sexual assault. She says that the majority of offenders commit their first crime before the age of 18.