Dispatch: Reported rapes soar in Columbus

Columbus has the highest rate of reported rapes among the largest U.S. cities, federal crime statistics show.

Data for the first half of 2002 -- the most recent available for cities nationwide -- as well as for all of 2001, show a rate here twice that of Los Angeles and four times as high as New York City.

And Columbus is no standout among Ohio cities. Rates of reporting are higher in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Dayton!

Christine Long, who was raped 15 years ago in her Grandview Heights apartment and now lives on the Northwest Side, blames the state's sentencing laws.

The man who raped her in August 1988 had been released from prison eight months earlier after he had served seven years of a 15- to 75-year sentence for raping two other women.

Eventually Long bought a gun. "It was the first time I felt I could go to sleep.''

In the mid-1990s, Long championed a successful move to ban weightlifting equipment in prisons and jails. She supports a measure currently in the Ohio legislature that would allow some Ohioans to carry concealed weapons.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for information on how concealed carry reform can reduce this victimization of women in Ohio.

Raw data from the Justice Department’s annual National Crime Victim Survey show that when a woman resists a “stranger rape” with a gun, the probability of completion was 0.1% and of victim injury 0.1%, compared to 31% and 40% respectively, for all stranger rapes. Woman who resisted with a gun were 2.5 times more likely to escape without injury than those who did not resist, and 4 times more likely to escape uninjured than those who resisted with any means other than a gun.” (Southwick, Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000)

For all rapes, woman who resisted with a gun were 2.5 times more likely to escape without injury than those who did not resist, and 4 times more likely to escape uninjured than those who resisted with any means other than a gun.” (Southwick, Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000)

“Unfortunately 88 percent of the violent crimes reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey in 1992 were committed away from the victim’s home.” Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns.

A Dept. of Justice survey found that 40% of felons chose not to commit at least some crimes for fear their victims were armed, and 34% admitted having been scared off or shot at by armed victims. (James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous, Aldine de Gruyter, 1986)

"Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but the effect is especially pronounced for women. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men." More Guns, Less Crime. John R. Lott, Jr.

Click here to read the entire story in the Columbus Dispatch (subscription site - paid access only).