Rape

A UCLA freshman water polo player has been suspended from the university after he was arrested on suspicion of raping a female student. Hakop Jack Kaplanyan, a red shirt freshman, was arrested Wednesday. By Monday, he was out of jail on $200,000 bail. He is due in court to face charges April 25. University officials did not release many details about the alleged incident. In a statement they said Kaplanyan, 18, an undeclared freshman from Glendale, "has been suspended from the university, subject to an appeal.

The night began like many at Boorda Hall, a five-story barracks at Naval Station Great Lakes, the Navy's premier training base on the shore of Lake Michigan in Illinois. Somebody announced a party, and the hard drinking and beer pong began. A 21-year-old Marine lance corporal, so drunk on rum and Mountain Dew she was slurring her words, went to look for Kyle Antonacci, a Navy seaman she'd been dating off and on. Antonacci soon texted his friend Mike Pineda to help him deal with her. Both men had sex with her that night.

The Britten year in Los Angeles has begun with a bang. This weekend, you can hear Britten in Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Jacaranda in Santa Monica -- and most of all, in the Colburn School's Zipper Hall where the ever-on-the-move sparkplug James Conlon is presiding over an extraordinary marathon of songs and opera that rarely get a live hearing in this country. For starters Thursday night, in a setting that imaginatively re-invents the format of an art song recital, there was a long “prelude” of often stark songs by Benjamin Britten and others by his teachers Frank Bridge and John Ireland and his foremost predecessor in English opera, Henry Purcell.

SAN DIEGO -- The search for the man suspected of kidnapping and repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old Northridge girl has extended south of the border after the fugitive was spotted crossing into Mexico, authorities said. Video footage showed Tobias Dustin Summers, 32, crossed into Tecate, Mexico, a few days ago, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck announced Friday. It was unknown if he returned, the chief said. Details of the video, including how it was obtained and the date it was taken, were not revealed.

For the last week Rick Ross has been engulfed in a firestorm over recent lyrics that seemingly promote date rape. Although the track, "U.O.E.N.O. " (a collaboration with Future and Atlanta emcee Rocko; warning: link contains profanity) has been out for more than a month - it's lifted from Rocko's latest mixtape - the largely forgettable song has started to gain traction from the masses due to Ross' controversial guest verse. "Put Molly all in her champagne/ She ain't even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that/ She ain't even know it," he raps on the track.

Almost a year ago, a former standout football player at Long Beach Polytechnic High School trembled in Los Angeles County Superior Court as a judge dismissed his rape conviction. Outside the courtroom that day, Brian Banks offered cautious hope that one day, he could restart his athletic career. Wednesday, Banks signed a contract with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, a major step in his quest for redemption. "I can't believe this is happening," Banks told reporters shortly after signing.

A 32-year-old Fontana man who was released from state prison to the supervision of San Bernardino County authorities under a controversial state law has been arrested on suspicion of rape, authorities said Wednesday afternoon. Juan Francisco Aguilera allegedly was with the victim at a motel late Monday night before raping her and threatening to kill her if she she alerted authorities, the Fontana Police Department said. The motel is at 17468 Valley Boulevard. Aguilera, whom authorities described as a gang affiliate, has previous convictions for robbery, grand theft auto, drug possession, receiving stolen property and intimidating or dissuading a victim or witness, according to police.

Female tourists are avoiding India and canceling trips there after violent rapes made headlines around the world, according to a business association based in New Delhi. The number of tourists coming to India has fallen 25% since December, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India found in its recent survey of 1,200 tour operators around the country -- a trend that frustrates government plans to ramp up the number of tourists by 12% every year. Women are even more likely to steer clear of India: The flow of female travelers has plunged 35% as women from Britain, Canada and the United States scrap tours they had already booked, local businesses told the group.

A 19-year-old man convicted of raping and assaulting a woman during a burglary at her Stevenson Ranch home was sentenced Monday to 43 years to life in state prison. Jerry Moon was sentenced in San Fernando by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd Nash as part of a plea deal agreed upon in December, said Deputy Dist. Atty Julie Kramer. The woman was assaulted after Moon, who lived in Stevenson Ranch, broke into her home on Jan. 8, 2012. Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives arrested Moon about a month afterward and he has remained in custody.

REWARI, India - Vijendera Kumar has been sentenced to work and live in a cow shed for six months, feeding and bathing the animals and shoveling their dung 10 hours a day, seven days a week, after eloping at 17 with his girlfriend. That is in addition to a year the laborer spent in jail. "They didn't even investigate my case," Kumar said, surrounded by 300 lumbering beasts. "Punishing young people for having consensual sex is unfair and backwards. " Among the most controversial provisions of anti-rape legislation passed Thursday in India's Parliament - in hurried response to public anger over the fatal mid-December gang rape of a 23-year old physiotherapy student - was a provision setting the age of sexual consent at 18. But even before the law passed, Indian law was flexible enough, as Kumar learned, to make consensual sex among teenagers risky, a paradox in a society where rape has often gone unpunished and marriages are still arranged among the young.