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Pitt rape report not included in crime log Campus police acknowledge omission of student's claim Thursday, January 21, 1999 By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A student told police 10 days ago that she was raped in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, but the report never made it into a public log of crime that the school by law must keep.
Campus police acknowledged the omission yesterday. They blamed it on a malfunction in the computer system that prints out the daily incident log.
The 19-year-old woman identified her attacker as a male student with whom she is acquainted. He has not been charged and contends he was elsewhere at the time of the attack, Pitt Police Cmdr. Tim Delaney said.
The woman told police she was studying in a common area on the Cathedral's third floor when the man approached her at about 5:30 p.m. Jan. 11. "He forces her into a men's room, rapes her in the stall. Then he leaves and she leaves," Delaney said in detailing the woman's charges.
The woman sought treatment at Magee-Womens Hospital and reported the attack to police in Mt. Lebanon later that night.
Police in Mt. Lebanon notified Pitt at 10:20 p.m. and campus police launched an investigation. But the report was not added to the public crime log.
Delaney said the campus police computer system crashed shortly before the rape report arrived. Shortly thereafter, when the system returned to normal, dispatchers were able to add the incident to a database from which the crime log is printed. But because the incident was not placed in proper sequence, it was not printed out.
Delaney said the omission was a clerical error that does not diminish the police investigation.
Pitt spokesman Ken Service said the man accused is enrolled as a student while the investigation continues.
In November 1997, Pitt police launched a review of crime reporting procedures after a similar omission that was also said to have been caused by a clerical error. In that incident, campus police failed to include the arrest of a Pitt football player who was charged in an assault that sent two students to a hospital. The player was later acquitted in a trial.
The rape report first appeared yesterday in the student newspaper, The Pitt News. The paper began receiving reports from students on campus, some of whom asked the newspaper's editors why nothing on the incident had been reported.
"I told them I knew nothing about it," said Brett Taylor, the paper's news editor.
The Pitt News routinely publishes incidents taken from the crime log to keep students informed of potential safety threats.
Pitt and other colleges are required by law to make public a daily campus police log and identify those arrested and charged.
The law was intended to nudge image-sensitive schools into providing more detailed information about potential campus threats.
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