What Rape?

St. Louis was among many U.S. cities in the 1970s whose police departments recognized a problem:

Rapes and other sexual assault cases were often being dumped on detectives in district stations, generalists who had little training and little time to handle them. Police weren't giving sex cases the same scrutiny they gave homicides or assaults.

"Police were not believing the woman, " said Penny Harrington, of Portland, Ore., who in 1985 became the first female police chief of a major U.S. city.

"If there was any way the police could consider it her fault -- if she had been out drinking or maybe it was an ex-husband who raped her -- they just wouldn't pay any attention to it, " Harrington said. "They were very cold about dealing with victims. They just didn't have the training or the sensitivity to deal with the victims of rape."

Nor did society put much stock in women who complained about rape.

A four-day Post-Dispatch series in 1979 focused on an "uncommon amount of ignorance about so common a crime, ignorance so widespread that it dies hard if at all."

Wrote the author, Charlotte Grimes: "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it is the advice still handed out by collectors of popular wit and wisdom."

Police philosophy shifted as the feminist movement took root and police ranks swelled with women.

Rape was increasingly seen as a crime of violence worthy of police intervention. Starting in 1969, the federal government dedicated millions of dollars to anti-rape programs.

St. Louis founded its Sex Crimes Section in 1974 on the fourth floor of headquarters at 1200 Clark Avenue.

"The department thought maybe we could show a little bit more sympathy for victims, " said the unit's first commander, Celeste Ruwwe, the city's first woman to achieve the rank of sergeant.

"I think we achieved that, " said Ruwwe, who retired in 1985.

The section trained detectives to be more sensitive in interviewing victims, she said. It also worked more closely with prosecutors and hospitals.

The Sex Crimes Section had 10 detectives at its beginning in 1974, and the 1979 story said it had maintained that level -- 10. Today, there are seven detectives.

Harold Nation, one of the city's first sex crime investigators, told the Post-Dispatch's Grimes 26 years ago that rape victims carried an undue burden of guilt and shame.

"You'd be surprised how apologetic many victims are, " he was quoted as saying. "They even apologize for taking up our time. They shouldn't feel they have to do that. It's not right that they're made to feel that way."

Harrington said women's complaints of assaults that were written as memos rather than official police reports in St. Louis reminded her of how police routinely dismissed sexual assaults before the creation of specialized rape squads.

"It's hard to believe this is happening in 2005, " she said. "This is what we saw back in the '60s."

The St. Louis Police Department did not make Lt. John Harper, commander of the Sex Crimes and Child Abuse sections, or Sgt. Steven Dougherty, sex crimes supervisor, available for interviews.