A formerly DC-based journalist revealed Thursday that she was “violently attacked and sexually assaulted” in the nation’s capital – and that the city’s police department refused to include the incident in their crime stats.
Anna Giaritelli, a homeland security reporter with the Washington Examiner, detailed the heinous, broad-daylight assault against her, as well as the response from the Metropolitan Police Department and the court system, in a dramatic op-ed – which comes days after President Trump announced a sweeping crime crackdown in Washington, DC.
“On a Saturday morning in 2020, I walked out of my apartment on Capitol Hill to mail a package at a post office several blocks from the US Capitol. I put on my black sweatshirt and black sweatpants then headed out the door. I never made it to the post office,” Giaritelli wrote.
“Just one block from my apartment building’s entrance, I was attacked by a large man well over six feet tall. He charged at me for a reason that I still do not understand. In broad daylight and on well-traveled 2nd Street NE next to Union Station, I fought to get away as he sexually assaulted me,” she continued. “If it had not been for others in the vicinity, including a construction worker named Donny who heard my screaming and ran to my rescue, I don’t know if I would be here today.”
Giaritelli explained that the attack demonstrated to her, firsthand, how “DC police and the courts fail the public.”
Despite her attacker, described as a “homeless man,” being apprehended “months later” and sentenced to prison time, Giaritelli wrote: “If you look for evidence that the attack happened in the city’s crime statistics, you won’t find it.”
“DC police covered up the unspeakable wrong that the stranger did to me,” the reporter said.
The Metropolitan Police Department’s online “Crime Cards” statistics page – which purportedly tracks criminal offenses and pegs them to a map, showing where they occurred in the district – does not include Giaritelli’s attack and sexual assault, she claims.
“When I asked MPD in 2020 why my incident was not on its crime map, an MPD spokesman said the city only includes 1st degree felonies under its crime stats,” the reporter explained. “That would mean that for every person robbed, assaulted, or sexually abused in anything less than egregious ways, you have not been counted into the total tally.”
“The pain you suffered was not severe enough, according to MPD’s standards.”
Giaritelli said she was then told by MPD, this week, that the crime map does include “some sex abuse charges, but not all of them.”
She noted that the crime against her is still not listed in the online database.
Giaritelli praised DC law enforcement’s immediate response to the attack, noting that they collected DNA evidence which they were able to match to a vagrant about two months later, leading to his arrest.
Her attacker, however, was “immediately released from jail” by the judge handling the case, leading Giaritelli to very reasonably fear that he was back “living in a tunnel” just blocks from her apartment.
The vagrant was “arrested in five separate incidents” and allowed out of jail every single time, while he awaited trial for the sexual assault, Giaritelli said.
MPD did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Trump on Monday claimed that DC’s crime statistics – showing violent offenses down about 26% compared to last year – were “phony” and promised that Attorney General Pam Bondi will be “looking into that.”
The president further noted that a DC police commander was suspended last month for allegedly falsifying crime data to make trends appear more positive.
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