State-mandated meat market: Ohio college students suffer rape and kidnapping

The Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting that a 21-year-old female Cincinnati State student reported being raped in a college building Thursday night.

The report says officials are releasing few details about the attack, but that a Friday e-mail to faculty and staff said the student was assaulted by a young man who offered to show her around the school's new Advanced Technology and Learning Center.

According to the newspaper, the email told students the man forced the woman into a third-floor classroom and sexually assaulted her about 10 p.m.. Michele Imhoff, a spokeswoman for the 8500-student college, told the paper that afterward, the woman either phoned a friend or was discovered by the friend. The friend called a Cincinnati State security guard, who then notified Cincinnati police.

Police told the Enquirer the incident probably happened between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. The center has 32 digital security cameras, and police investigators spent Friday morning analyzing images and interviewing students who had been in the building at the time. Imhoff said it's not uncommon for classes at the center to last until almost 11 p.m., and anyone could potentially walk into the building during class time.

The newspaper reports that the incident, the first of its kind involving a Cincinnati State student on campus.

Pam Ecker, program chair of multimedia information design at the college and president of the Cincinnati State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told the Enquirer some staff members have expressed concern that the college's security staff is too small, and seems to focus on equipment rather than people.

Some students told the paper safety has never really been a concern at the college.

Janelle Jasontek, a 21-year-old accounting and business management major who parks on the street and walks up 87 steps - she's counted - to campus, told the Enquirer she'd prefer a brighter path, especially at night. She'd also like to see more patrols and an more emergency blue-light phones.

Jasontek was quoted as saying she's always tried to walk quickly and keep an eye on her surroundings and has felt pretty safe. But report of the attack shocked her.

"I'm going to be more cautious since it happened in school," she told the Enquirer. "I mean, that's even scarier."

In a separate incident, the Toledo Blade is reporting a 22 year-old college student survived a traumatic kidnapping incident in Athens.

Bowling Green State University senior Kristen Wisler had come to Athens in southeast Ohio to visit her boyfriend and a female friend, both students at Ohio University. According to the Blade, Wisler told Athens police she had just left her boyfriend in the city's uptown area and was walking along North Congress Street toward the residence of a female friend at about 11 p.m. Sunday when two men tackled her, threw her in their vehicle, and sped away.

The newspaper says her horrified female friend, who had walked to meet her at Congress and Carpenter streets - about four blocks north of the OU campus - saw the abduction and called police.

According to the paper, shortly after 4 a.m. Monday, Athens County Deputy Sheriff Jim Heater observed a car that matched the description of the one involved in the abduction parked along State Rt. 550 just northeast of Athens and pulled behind it. The deputy rescued the student and arrested two men inside the vehicle suspected of holding her hostage in a trailer in a wooded area several miles from Athens.

Ms. Wisler had a small amount of money stolen and suffered a bump on her head but was not seriously injured. Her alleged abductors, Robert Norris, 36, of Zanesville, Ohio, and Scott Stevens, 36, of Columbus, were charged with kidnapping and robbery.

A follow-up Toledo Blade story reports that Stevens was just paroled last month, after a two-year stay in the Belmont Correctional Institute for convictions of aggravated robbery and having a weapon under disability. Athens police also told the Blade there was an outstanding warrant for Mr. Norris.

Athens County Prosecutor Dave Warren told the Blade "it was fortunate when [police] pulled in. They may have been up to something even more heinous if they hadn't been stopped at that point."

"It was a very scary situation and I learned never to walk anyplace by myself again," Ms. Wisler, her voice trembling, said during a telephone interview with the Blade. "I just thought it was something moms say. I was alone for five steps and something like that happened."

Ms. Wisler told the paper the suspects did not tie her up, but took her cell phone after they discovered she had it. She said she had tried to make calls from the phone when the suspects were not paying attention, but could not get service in the area where they had taken her.

Commentary: These two stories are full of lessons for any responsible adult (or parent in the process of teaching their children) about the realities involved in self-protection (realities which anti-self-defense bigots refuse to acknowledge):

• Lesson: "No-guns" college campuses do nothing to protect our daughters from sexual predators, but they DO protect sexual predators who attack our daughters.
• Lesson: Security cameras do nothing to deter a tenacious criminal, or to stop a crime in progress.
• Lesson: Campus security guards do nothing to deter a tenacious criminal, and can't stop a crime in progress if they don't know it's happening.
• Lesson: Actively disarming college students on campus results in disarmed students off campus.
• Lesson: A cell phone is not an acceptable self-defense tool. Unlike a concealed firearm, a cell phone can't be counted on to work in a pinch.
• Lesson: Traveling in groups is not adequate self-defense measure against an armed criminal. For example, in this Cincinnati Enquirer story, two teenagers used a gun to rob three men outside an area mall.

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