Abarbanel doesn't subscribe to the theory that there are more rapes in the summer because people leave doors and windows open. Los Angeles is temperate year round, she notes.
Moses Castillo, a Los Angeles police detective in the special rape section of the Robbery-Homicide Division, said people should always be on alert, not just this summer. Many criminals progress from thieves to rapists, Castillo said.
"Every three seconds, someone's house is being burglarized, so the chances of someone being sexually assaulted are high," Castillo said.
But rapes occur in a wide variety of places, Abarbanel said. "If I told you where every rape happened, you wouldn't go anywhere," she said. "It happens everywhere."
In fact, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Wednesday announced that DNA evidence now has linked attacks on five girls in southeast Los Angeles County to one man.
That spree began a year ago, and the last two attacks were in February, Deputy Brian Lendman said. The attacker has struck once in North Long Beach and four times in Paramount. He's described as pudgy and has been spotted in a white compact sedan and on a BMX bicycle.
And on Tuesday, sheriff's investigators arrested a Thousand Oaks tile setter they suspect is a serial rapist on suspicion of three sexual assaults in the city during the past four years.
Narcisso Solis, 40, was about to be released after spending the weekend behind bars on a drunk driving arrest when DNA tests allegedly linked him to the assaults. Authorities suspect he also is responsible for at least two other unsolved rape cases in Thousand Oaks, and they've notified other law enforcement agencies in Ventura and Los Angeles counties about his arrest and possible link to more cases.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, there were 90,186 forcible rapes reported in 2000 (the most recent year for final statistics).
"I see about 1,000 cases myself" each year, said Abarbanel, who contends that the FBI figure is substantially lower than the reality because so many victims do not tell the authorities.
The Types of Rapists
Whether rapists are strangers or acquaintances of their victims, most fall roughly into four profiles: the power-reassurance rapist, the power-assertive rapist, the anger-retaliation rapist and the anger-excitation rapist, or sadist. Two other categories account for a very small number of rapists: opportunistic rapists and gang rapists.
