Seven NJ State Troopers Implicated in Gang Rape of College Student

TRENTON, NJ — It was college night at KatManDu, a sprawling nightclub on the Delaware River here in the shadow of the gold-domed State House, when, the authorities said, a woman from Rider University struck up a conversation with a group of New Jersey state troopers.

After the club closed a few hours later, the student, a female friend from Rider and seven of the troopers met back at the home of one of the officers in a nearby suburb to play pool, according to lawyers and others familiar with the case.

The next afternoon, one of the students showed up at a hospital in a Trenton suburb and filed a police report saying she had been sexually assaulted by several troopers, setting off a criminal investigation that has rocked the State Police and shaken students at the Rider campus in nearby Lawrenceville.

Seven troopers have been suspended with pay as the authorities investigate the accusation. The Mercer County prosecutor, Joseph L. Bocchini Jr., has said the police in Ewing Township received the complaint on Dec. 7; he declined to discuss the status of the case or a timetable for deciding whether to pursue criminal charges.

The prosecutor’s office said that the encounter began on Dec. 6 when the student, 25, was at KatManDu for its Thursday night College Daze, which features $1 beers and entitles any woman with a university identification card to be admitted without paying the $8 cover charge.

According to lawyers and people familiar with the case, a female friend of the student, also from Rider, was talking with a group of about 15 troopers who had dropped in after a holiday party. At closing time, seven officers went off to play pool and the two Rider students drove to meet them there about 3 a.m., the lawyers said.

Sometime later that Friday — prosecutors and the Ewing Township police would not disclose precisely when — the student reported that she had been the victim of a sexual assault by numerous troopers while her friend slept in a nearby room.

The timing was unfortunate: The accusation of assault came the same day that Gov. Jon S Corzine said he would seek an end to years of federal oversight, which was imposed after the force was found to have engaged in racial profiling.

Commentary - "The timing was unfortunate"!?! For who? How inconvenient for the NJ Gov that this poor girl was the victim of a gang rape. How sad that the officers involved are all getting a paid vacation this holiday season. What unfortunate timing. Someone at the Times needs a reality adjustment immediately. Any time a woman is raped, much less gang raped, much, much less gang raped by law enforcement officers who are supposed to protect us, the timing is more than unfortunate.

Accusation of Attack Stuns Police and College
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