The story of a horrific gang rape in a Brooklyn playground took a bizarre and troubling turn Tuesday. Police sources told three separate newspapers that two of the teens charged in the attack said the 18-year-old victim was having sex with her father in the park. The teens recounted arriving and asking for “some of that.”
Police arrested four suspects, none of them older than 17 and one just 14, earlier this week. On Tuesday morning they arrested the fifth, 17, at his school. Police sources leaking information about an active rape investigation told the Post that two of the suspects said in separate interviews that they’d come across the intoxicated father, 39, and daughter having sex in the playground. One teen said “Can we have some of that?” to the father, according to the tabloid’s sources; that teen also claimed to have had consensual sex with the woman while the father walked away.
The New York Daily News also has a police source telling them that the father and daughter were engaged in sex, and that both appeared to be very intoxicated.
Someone—probably the same source—told the Wall Street Journal a similar story, which the paper put in more genteel terms:
Authorities are investigating claims by two of the teens, who in separate interviews told authorities that the father and the daughter were having sex when they discovered them in the playground, a law-enforcement official said.
“They indicated that father is the one who put her in this compromised position and they took advantage,” the official said, adding that the suspects claim that as they walked into the playground, “One of them says ‘we’ll take it from here.’”
The two suspects also told investigators that they believe their sex acts were consensual.
The woman told police she was raped by at least one of the teenagers, forced to perform oral sex on two, and that all five touched her breasts.
In these accounts, the woman’s father is the only person who reported seeing one of the teens armed with a gun. The Post’s version also has police telling them that the victim was “combative,” that she claimed to have bipolar disorder and PTSD “but was not prescribed any medications,” and that EMS saw “multiple healed scars” on her arms.
Several reports indicated that the father lost custody of his daughter when she was just two, and that she was adopted and raised outside New York. The two recently reconnected, according to the WSJ.
Workers at two different delis who initially said they refused to let the father use the phone when he ran in and demanded it now say they refused because he was so intoxicated they couldn’t understand what he was saying. Neighbors told the New York Times the man is an alcoholic who often left his young children unsupervised and who would knock on doors to beg for spare change and cigarettes. He also reportedly told at least one neighbor he had “no idea” why police and reporters were massing on the neighborhood, adding, “I didn’t do nothing.”
Police don’t seem to be questioning that the woman was in fact assaulted, telling the Daily News that she had “significant injuries” and that there is “very little question her injuries [are consistent] with a significant assault.”
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Osborn Playground, where the assault is said to have taken place. Photo via AP Images