At Forum, Police Say Recent Attack Was Attempted Rape

Nine days after an undergraduate was assaulted near St. Paul’s Church, members of the Cambridge community gathered at the First Parish Church last night to voice concerns about safety.

During the forum, officers from the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) spoke in further detail about last week’s attack.

CPD Sergeant Pauline Carter-Wells described the assault in the parking lot of St. Paul’s Church as “sexual assault with intent to rape.”

CPD had previously publicized the Dec. 2 incident as a “sexual assault.”

In that case, an undergraduate was taking a commonly-used short-cut through the church parking lot between Arrow and Mount Auburn Streets to her Dunster House room when she was struck from behind with a blunt object and forced to the ground.

“It was a very unusual case,” Carter-Wells said. “She was actually walking through a well-lit, well-traveled area.”

One Cambridge resident voiced concern about how “brazen” the recent attacks were. In total, five women have been assaulted in the Harvard Square area this semester.

“There are unusual things about that case,” responded CPD Detective John F. Fulkerson, who is investigating the Dec. 2 incident.

But he said that he could not go into details about why the case was unusual.

CPD officers stressed that the recent assaults are unrelated.

In addition to the St. Paul’s incident, they referred to an October assault where an as-yet-unidentified man groped an undergraduate who was walking through Cambridge Common.

Officers emphasized the importance of being aware of one’s surroundings to the 15 people who attended the forum.

“These crimes are opportunistic—absolutely without question,” Carter-Wells said.

Carter-Wells said she thought the high volume of recent incidents in the area was “partially just an anomaly.”

“This is an unusual type of season,” she said.

CPD spokesperson Frank D. Pasquarello said last week that CPD has arrested a man in connection with three other October assaults where a man groped three women—none of whom were Harvard affiliates—in separate incidents as they walked alone near Huron and Concord Avenues.

At last night’s forum, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officers discussed safety measures students can take to decrease the risk of attack.

They encouraged students to walk in groups and well-lit areas and to remain aware of their surroundings.

Officers also discussed the availability of Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) classes for students and community members to learn basic self defense.

The forum was sponsored by the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response and the Women’s Commission of Cambridge.

—Staff writer Hera A. Abbasi can be reached at abbasi@fas.harvard.edu.