Demon Cabbie Rape

Unless I am very wrong, there has never been a proven case of rape by a taxi driver against a passenger. Then why are all the New York papers reporting the alleged rape by a cabbie against a passenger that occurred last week? (Here it is on the Fox website an in the Times.)

It’s not that rape is a rare crime. According to the NYPD, there were 28 rapes last week and 489 on the year to date in the city. But only two are in the news. One is the alleged rape by a police officer, a case where the trial of the officer is winding down.

The other is a purported rape by a orange-turbaned taxi driver in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Here is how the story is being reported:

Cops have released a sketch of the rogue cab driver who they say tied up and raped his passenger at knifepoint at the end of a horrific ride through Williamsburg last week.

The 26-year-old victim told police that she had spent the early part of the night celebrating Cinco de Mayo at Public Assembly on N. Sixth Street. At some point after midnight, she hailed a cab — but instead of getting a ride home, she was taken to a darkened corner of Rodney Street near S. First Street, where the cabbie allegedly pulled a knife, bound her wrists together and raped her.

He then took her cellphone and $20 before letting her go at 6 am."
So she hailed a cab "after midnight" took a five-minute ride and was "let go" at 6 AM.

Here is another particularly imaginative account:

It was a long night, with lots of drinks. You stumble into a cab, as the sunlight is just beginning to show in the distance. You’re drunk, tired and just want to get a few hours of sleep before you have to wake up for work, and you expect a hangover is inevitable.

In the back seat of the taxi, you lean back and close your eyes. You’ll wake up when you get to your apartment in a few minutes. You’ll pay the cabbie and go home. You made it home.

For many New Yorkers, this scenario is not unfamiliar. It could have been you who hailed that cabbie early Friday morning in Brooklyn. It was after 5 a.m., and you had just celebrated Cinco de Mayo at the Public Assembly bar and music venue in Williamsburg.

Are we to believe that this rape occurred over 5-6 hours?

Did she fall asleep and the cabbie waited five hours for her to wake?

But the real wonder is that the press has picked up on this story en masse, all while an untold number of other rapes go unmentioned. It shows a willingness to believe that cabbies are criminals in wait, though there is no evidence to support such hysteria.

The demon cabbie is a persistent myth. It is stoked in particular by the New York Post, which headlined its story, “Woman in cabby-rape nightmare.”

But my bet is that this crime never occurred. And if it did it’s an aberration, which the press fuels as if it were a real fear. The demon cabbie lives!