Two cases of sexual assault in less than two weeks have rattled students and raised questions about safety downtown and the prevalence of sexual violence on and near the UW-Madison campus.
While police maintain that reports of assaults are not rare, they say a spotlight is shone especially on cases of stranger sexual assault, where the victim does not know the attacker, much like recent incidents in Madison.
Madison Police Department spokesperson Mike Hanson said stories such as the March assaults, where police report the victim did not know the attacker, often make it into the news. He said it could make incidents of stranger rape seem more prevalent than assaults at the hands of acquaintances.
""We see sexual assaults every single weekend in which it's either an acquaintance or someone that they knew or just didn't want to have sex with, and it turned into sexual assault,"" Hanson said.
The first of the March assaults occurred on Mar. 3. In that case, a 21-year-old UW-Madison student was walking on the 1000 block of Spring Street when two male suspects approached, attacked and then assaulted her.
The other incident happened last weekend, on March 12, when a 23-year-old woman was also unacquainted with her attacker prior to the assault. According to police, the woman was picked up downtown in a van driven by two male suspects. The victim was then taken to an unknown location and violently assaulted.
Hanson said the media are responsible for the public's knowledge of sexual assaults.
""The media chooses to report them,"" he said, adding that it is less often made public if an acquaintance commits the assault.
MPD Central District Capt. Mary Schauf said the stranger rapes that have occurred recently on and near campus are rare. She said women are often sexually assaulted by acquaintances.
""The cases we had last fall where the women were grabbed by somebody totally unknown ... that is pretty much outside of the norm,"" Schauf said.
According to the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, sexual assault survivors know their attackers nearly 93 percent of time.
Gina Bower, chair of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, said although stranger and acquaintance sexual assaults differ in many ways, the perpetrator's tactics are similar.
""They are assessing the victim's vulnerability, premeditating their crimes and trying to establish power and control over the victim,"" Bower said.
Still, Hanson said the main similarity among the sexual assaults occurring downtown is alcohol. However, he said this does not make the victim culpable.
""By and large, even though a common denominator for either the suspect or victim is alcohol, the complete blame goes onto the suspect who attacks their victim,"" he said. ""It's our job to find those people and hold them accountable.""
