Gwynne Engelking is jumpy.
She’s easily startled, and she doesn’t walk alone at night anymore.
The University sophomore has good reason to be wary — in March she was one of six women attacked by a man believed to be responsible for assaulting as many as eight women since February 2001.
Engelking is one of the lucky ones. She got away before the man could do any serious harm to her, unlike one victim who had a knife held to
her throat.
“It wasn’t very late at night,” Engelking remembered. She was between the Knight Library and Pioneer Cemetery, walking alone from Beall Concert Hall on March 16, when she felt someone’s presence behind her.
“I felt his gait getting a little faster. I sped up,” she said. But she wasn’t
fast enough.
“He grabbed me from behind and twirled me toward him and started screaming obscenities.”
Engelking was wearing boots, so she took the only option she had available and stomped down on his foot — hard.
“I tried to break his foot. … He let go and I took off running,” she said.
To this day, the student doesn’t remember every detail of how she got away. She thinks she might have broken her attacker’s foot, but only recalls running to her residence hall room and frantically dialing an emergency number. Engelking never considered running toward one of the Department of Public Safety blue emergency phones on campus, because that would have boxed her between the library
and cemetery.
“I figured I could run faster than DPS could get there,” she said.
She said wants her story told because students need to realize certain areas on campus should be avoided
at night.
“I just want this to be heard,” Engelking said.
After last year’s cemetery attacks, another recent string of assaults against women has begun. The campus has seen masturbation, attempted rapes and even an attempted robbery with a firearm in the last few months. Police and campus security officials are still urging students to exercise caution in an area that may not be
as safe as one’s own backyard, but the numbers supplied by law
enforcement don’t reveal an unprecedented trend.
“This is by no means a crime spree. I would say (reports of attacks are) probably going to be a little higher than previous years,” DPS Associate Director Tom Hicks said.
Preventing Attacks
Eugene Police Department Sgt. Scott McKee, who has worked on the campus attacker case for more than a year, said students should be particularly wary of the area around
the cemetery.
“You’re more safe traveling around at night if you’re with somebody,” McKee said. “It’s been a shortcut since they laid the first body there. But it’s not a safe place at night.”
The statistics back up McKee’s claims. Of the 10 assaults or attempted assaults committed against students since last year, six have occurred in or near the cemetery. But safety advocates disagree with McKee on what students should do to stop more attacks from occurring.
“There’s ways to reduce your risk,” said Michelle Manoguerra, community education coordinator for Sexual Assault Support Services. But Manoguerra said it can be dangerous to focus purely on what students can do to stop attacks.
“The most important thing to understand is if an assault happens to a person, it’s not their fault,” she said.
Jocelyn Hollander, an assistant sociology professor who has spent five years at the University studying cases of violence against women, agreed.
“Women are seen as victims,” and the actions they take to defend themselves are often ignored, Hollander said.
She advocated for students to take self defense classes, which can help women feel confident enough to travel through the shady spots on campus.
“I’d walk (in the cemetery) at night,” she said.
Hollander and Manoguerra both emphasized that students should use common sense and learn how to be cautious in all circumstances, not just around unfamiliar people. More than 85 percent of attacks or sexual assaults against women are committed by an acquaintance, friend or relative, not a stranger. And often a victim doesn’t report an attack because of the shame and guilt associated with the crime.
“Even at SASS, we don’t hear about every assault that occurs,” Manoguerra said. She cited a 1999 Department of Justice study that showed only 28 percent of known assaults against women were
actually reported to police or
other authorities.
Tracking Attacks
Since the beginning of the 2000-01 academic year, EPD has tracked 104 incidents that directly affect student safety.
The 104 incidents have occurred in an area bordered by Centennial Boulevard on the north, East 20th Avenue on the south, Walnut Street on the east and Patterson Street on the west, which encompasses the campus and goes
several blocks beyond the Willamette River.
They include 49 burglary incidents, nine cases of criminal trespass, 13 cases of physical harassment, 15 cases of public indecency, nine first-degree rapes, seven instances of sexual abuse and two “suspicious circumstances,” which Sgt. McKee defines as incidents where someone is observed acting suspiciously but hasn’t committed a crime yet.
DPS was only able to supply statistics since the beginning of this school year. DPS has reported 12 incidents of indecent exposure (all but one of which involved masturbation), four cases of sexual assault and one attempted armed robbery.
Despite the crimes that have occurred on campus, police officers such as McKee said they’re confident they’ll eventually track down both the campus attacker and man or men responsible for the masturbation cases.
“We have technology on our side,” McKee said. “I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to make a link.”
E-mail reporter Brook Reinhard
at [email protected].