BOROUGH PARK, Brooklyn (PIX11) — A woman who was raped during a robbery said that she is hoping the police and the public can do all that they can to catch the two men who carried out the crimes.
In an exclusive interview with PIX11 News, the woman, who does not speak English and did not want her face or voice recorded, said that despite her anonymity, her message is important to get out to the public in a quest for justice.
She used a language translation app to recount in Chinese what happened to her and her coworkers at a business near 9th Avenue and 59th Street on Saturday around 6 p.m.
She said that she is traumatized over what happened. Since the rape occurred, sleep has barely been possible.
“I had not rested for 24 hours — not at all, on any day since because I could not calm down, and now I am slowly adjusting. I think I may see a psychiatrist next,” she said.
Police released images of two men whom the woman said forced their way through an outer door of the business where she was with a couple of female coworkers. She said that she had tried to resist but could not.
“When I opened the door, the bad guy hit me in the face very hard. I was afraid of hurting the other two girls, so I opened the door for him,” she said.
The man also choked her, she said. She showed a reddish mark on her cheek, where she said the man had hit her.
During the interview, the woman broke down a few times.
Her attacker, she said, had an accomplice. The pair robbed the women of the cash they had on hand, she said, totaling about $300.
Also, at knifepoint, the accomplice told the other two women to stay silent, while his partner raped her, the woman said.
She also said that someone else had come to the door of the business while the crimes were underway, and the accomplice kept them all quiet.
Now, police are patrolling the neighborhood regularly. The woman said she is in frequent contact with sex crime investigators.
The neighborhood where the business is located is in the NYPD’s 66th Precinct. Its crime statistics show a decline in overall crime this year, but one glaring exception is rape. It is up for the year by 10%, and over the last two years, that increase is 120%.
Those numbers worry the woman who survived the rape in her workplace. She said that she is speaking out because she wants her case to be more than a statistic.
“What I want to express is that I very much hope to catch this bad guy,” she said.
