The police released a sketch of a man suspected of raping a teenage girl in Queens and asked for the public's help in identifying him. According to police, the suspect saw a 16-year-old girl and her boyfriend who were kissing in a car at 137th Avenue and 155th Street, near Baisley Pond Park, around 12:30AM Saturday. Claiming he was a cop (he flashed a badge), the man told the boyfriend to leave and said he'd......

The man who attacked two women this weekend after picking them up under the guise of being a legit livery cab driver has been arrested. One of Torkieh Sadagheh's victims, Monica Maneiro of Morningside Heights, hailed his car after getting off work at Scores strip club on Saturday night; the 23-year-old recounts what happened next:"Out of nowhere he just stopped the cab and jumped in the back seat. He grabbed me and had his hand......

Late last year a cabbie (or rather, fake livery cab driver) had been targeting young women outside of The Box on Chrystie Street. After two reported rapes, those heading to and from the club were on guard. Finally, now a suspect has been caught and confessed...and the ladies of New York have a Scores stripper to thank for it. The Daily News reports the exotic dancer was leaving work early Sunday morning when she hailed......

Yesterday, the police arrested a Brooklyn man who posed as a livery cab driver for two rapes in the past year, including one that occurred last Wednesday. Ryan Frison, described as 41 years old and 400 pounds, faces rape, robbery and unlawful imprisonment charges. Last week, a Long Island University student called Frison's "unlicensed" livery cab business and asked for a ride from Brooklyn to Baltimore. When he arrived with a friend, he picked her......

The Daily News reports that two separate incidents of women being raped by strangers yesterday morning. One incident occurred around 7AM, when a NJ woman headed to a Spanish Harlem building where she works as a baby-sitter. The woman was "grabbed," "dragged" and raped in the elevator. Police are not sure if she was followed (she had taken the 6 train to 103rd Street). The other assault occurred on the N train which was waiting......

A Staten Island man arrived at his Clifton home to find four teen boys having sex with his 11-year-old stepdaughter and her 13-year-old friend. The stepfather called the police upon finding the naked teens. The boys, ages 16 to 18, were charged with first- and third-degree rape, first-degree criminal sexual act and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The girls had signs of vaginal tearing and the Staten Island Advance reported, "The......

On the day that MySpace agreed to work with 49 states to stop sexual predators from using the social networking site to find young victims, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown was announcing a disturbing 56-charge criminal complaint against a couple accused of rape, sexual abuse, and forcing two young teens into performing sexual acts at a Manhattan strip club. Julio Rojas, a stripper, is being held on $500,000 bail while his wife, Sophie Soto, also......

The defense lawyer for Robert Williams used a sartorial defense in court yesterday. Williams, accused of raping and torturing a Columbia graduate student last April, appeared wearing his "jeans and polo shirt inside out," prompting his lawyer to say, "This is symptomatic of mental illness...The best I can do right now, given my relationship with my client, is that I’d like the court to observe my client’s shirt and jeans are both inside out." However,......

An NYPD officer was arrested early Thursday morning by Middletown, NY police after a young girl came forward and accused him of repeatedly raping her while she was a student at the karate school where he taught. Trent Young is a married 39-year-old who has been with the NYPD for nine years. Middletown Police said that prior to becoming a police officer, Young was a schoolteacher. He is accused of sexually abusing a female student......

Last weekend, a young woman was celebrating her 19th birthday when two men crashed her party and later raped her. The police arrested one of the suspects yesterday and are still looking for the second. Saturday night, James Moye and Daquan Williamson apparently tried to join the party in a Queens Village home. One even "whipped out a black handgun" but they left the house after a fight. However, they stayed in a van outside......

There's nothing like hearing that a man suspected of rapes in Dutchess County ran from police and took a Metro-North train headed to Grand Central Terminal. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that on both November 28 and December 6, there were incidents of a home invasion and then rape in the village of Pawling, and Flaviano Quintero was being questioned about them. As Dutchess County investigators were speaking with him yesterday, Quintero then "jumped out a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Austin St. in Queens, a pedestrian struck off Balfour Pl. and Empire Blvd. in Brooklyn, and a rescue on Bank St. in Manhattan. The Domino Sugar factory on Brooklyn's waterfront has achieved landmark status. David Chase is heading to court to face a former municipal court judge who claims he came up with an idea for a show about a northern NJ mob family. David......

Sumner Redstone, who as majority shareholder still calls the shots at Viacom, has arranged a special holiday treat for his already well-exploited “permalancers”. (The term refers to the practice favored by Viacom and other companies of employing workers full time but classifying them “freelance” to keep their sneaky hands out of the insurance jar.) Though Viacom permalancers had previously been eligible for healthcare benefits after a year, new rules dictate that insurance will only be......

A wager between two career criminals ended very badly last week, with one man killing the other after he lost. Roy Hodge, who was 34 years old, bet his friend Robert Jenkins that eventually Jenkins would get mugged, because he repeatedly flashed his cash around in public. Jenkins didn't believe it and the two bet $500 on the matter, with Hodge winning if Jenkins did get mugged. They made the deal in June and a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a truck stuck underneath a train platform at 237th St. in the Bronx, an armed robbery on 4th Ave. in Brooklyn, and a burn victim at McKeever Pl. in Brooklyn. The husband who was strangled to death, allegedly by his wife in their new $1 million Long Island home, had a criminal record that included serving several years upstate for rape, robbery, and burglary. A fire at a homeless......

Trisha Meili, the woman who was brutally attacked and raped while jogging in Central Park in 1989, is no fan of Oprah Winfrey's line of questioning. Five years after she gave her first interview to Winfrey's magazine O, Meili spoke to NY1. First, here is an excerpt of the 2002 interview Meili (who did not disclose her name at that time) gave to Oprah:Oprah: When I first heard about you, I thought, why were you......

It’s become quite fashionable for the “downtown” theater scene to inject their productions with live punk rock stylings. (Though the stated intentions vary, I can’t help but theorize that it’s got something to do with a terminally unhip theater geek’s longing for coolness.) The big problem with most of these wannabe rock shows is twofold: the music invariably sucks and the lyrics – ostensibly important for dramatic purposes – are unintelligible. (Essential Self Defense......

If you're a woman and are heading to exclusive Chrystie Street club The Box, be very careful! According to WNBC, the NYPD is two reported rape-and-kidnapping incidents that originated outside the venue. On September 30, a woman says she was "standing in front of the club when she was grabbed from behind, put in a white sport utility vehicle and forced to drink an unknown liquid." After the attack, she was left in Queens. The......

The police charged a Queens man with raping a woman he met on the Internet. A 21-year-old woman traveled from Indianapolis to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Tuesday, where David Graham picked her up. He then allegedly took her to his home in Queens Village, where police say he raped and sodomized her. The woman managed to escape to a neighbor's house yesterday morning. Graham was charged with rape, sexual misconduct and criminal misconduct.......

A former lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, who was accused of leading a double life of upstate family man and Manhattan pervert, pleaded guilty yesterday to statutory rape and patronizing a prostitute. James Colliton spent his weekends at his home in Poughkeepsie, NY with his wife and five children. During the week, he stayed at a residence on 56th St. and Park Ave. where he now admits that he had sex with two teenage......

In late August, a family was terrorized when three men forced their way into the Crown Heights apartment. Now, police have charged one of the suspects with multiple counts of rape and assault. The violent incident occurred on August 30, when they barged into a home on Sterling Place. They tied up six men and boys with duct tape and then raped and sexually assaulted a woman, her teenage daughter, and a family friend in......

The following post is from our advertiser CNN.com. Escaping a closed world: CNN's Randi Kaye talks with a woman who successfully left a polygamist society. Faux celebs congregate A Florida convention draws celebrity look-alikes. Central Florida News 13's Jackie Shutack reports. 9/11 ills linger for workers A New York photojournalist captures the ongoing struggles of 9/11 first responders. CNN's Jim Acosta reports. Boogie down behind bars Rehabilitation one step at a time for inmates in......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a home invasion robbery on 11th St. in Brooklyn, an unusual rescue on Selwyn Ave. in the Bronx, and a shooting on Rugby Rd. and Foster Ave. in Brooklyn. The 30-year-old homeless man charged with raping and torturing a Columbia student in her apartment in April was found mentally fit to stand trial. Negotiations between Thor Equities and several Coney Island boardwalk tenants are nearly settled, allowing many attractions......

Well, this is disturbing: The City Comptroller's office audited ten high schools in the city and found that they did not report 41% of the violent/disruptive incidents that occurred. Schools are supposed to file information about incidents, which range from vandalism to assaults, through a computer system so the state has the information, part of the No Child Left Behind law. The state then uses that information to determine which schools are dangerous, persistently dangerous,......

The Post reports that a woman running on the West Side managed to escape from a man who tried to rape her this past Saturday morning. According to the police, Jason Washington grabbed the 24-year-old woman from behind around 7AM. He then "fondled her and dragged her to an empty doorway near 12th Avenue and 58th Street." Luckily, a loud truck "startled or distracted" Washington and the woman ran away and called 911. Washington, who......

Clarence Dean, a registered sex offender in Florida and Alabama, was charged in the murder of a young woman whose body was found at a Times Square hotel. While cleaning a room on Thursday, a housekeeper at the Hotel Carter, on West 43rd Street near 8th Avenue, noticed some plastic bags under a bed and realized there was a body inside. Dean had checked out of the room on Wednesday. Dean reportedly told the police......

The police are questioning a man who had been registered a room in a West 43rd Street hotel where a woman's body was found on Thursday. Clarence Dean, a 35-year-old "fugitive" sex offender from Alabama, had checked out of the room 608 at the Hotel Carter, an inexpensive hotel near 8th Avenue popular with tourists. He was not charged with any crime, but police picked him up after seeing him at Park Avenue and East......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an armed carjacking at the intersection of 164th St. and the Union Turnpike in Queens, an unconscious firefighter at 51st St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a slashing on Myrtle and Wyckoff Aves. in Brooklyn. Mia Farrow is speaking out against the atrocities in Darfur. This is the summer of our discontent. The beach season is winding down with below-average-temperature weather and rain and clouds. An eight-month-old boy......

Start sharpening your spurs, gays and gals, because Jake Gyllenhaal is coming to Broadway! If director Mike Nichols has his way, you’ll soon have your chance to stalk the sensitive heartthrob as he flees through the stage door of Farragut North, a new play about presidential campaign hardball penned by a former Howard Dean staffer. According to today’s Post, Gyllenhaal (who made his stage debut in a Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed production of Cats in their parents’......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large fight on Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, police activity in the employee parking lot at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian was struck on East 57th St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan. Donald Trump owns almost 20% of Brooklyn's Starrett City that his dad bought for him when he graduated from business school. He now advises lower-income residents of the development that "This......