Man Is Charged for Sexually Assaulting Six Women at UW

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By The Seattle PI's count, there have been at least six women who reported being sexually assaulted or raped near/on the University of Washington campus since March.

While the majority of attackers are still at large, one man has been charged for six sexual assaults that took place on May 4, the PI reported.

Ernest Terrill Parnell, 41, was charged with attempted rape and other crimes for trapping a 25-year-old woman inside a lab in the UW Health Sciences Building. He punched the woman in the face, "threatened to kill her and tore at her clothes," the PI reported.

Parnell had gone on a spree before he wandered into the building, too. His reasoning, according to the PI: “I’m trying to get a nut.”

Witnesses saw the man walking around outside with "his pants unzipped and his penis exposed" and called 911 after a woman was groped, the PI reported. Parnell proceeded to grope and expose himself to four other women inside the building before trapping the woman in the lab. A professor eventually broke down the door to the lab and the woman was helped out of the room.

The bystanders then pulled a large table in front of the lab’s door, leaving Parnell inside, the detective said. Police arrived to find him trapped in an adjacent office naked, except for socks and a wristwatch, and masturbating. “What happened?” he asked police as he continued masturbating, according to charging papers.

Yes, this account is disturbing — but it isn't uncommon. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study tracking rapes and sexual assaults among female college students, 33 percent of rape and sexual assaults involved non-consensual penetration. Fifty six percent of female students experienced attempted rape and other sexual assaults including non-consensual touching like groping or kissing. And many of those cases go unreported. From BJS:

Rape and sexual assault victimizations were more likely to go unreported to police among victims who were college students (80 percent) than nonstudents (67 percent). About a quarter of student (26 percent) and nonstudent (23 percent) victims who did not report to police believed the incident was a personal matter, and 1 in 5 (20 percent each) stated a fear of reprisal. Student victims (12 percent) were more likely than nonstudent victims (5 percent) to state that the incident was not important enough to report. Support The Stranger More than ever, we depend on your support to help fund our coverage. Support local, independent media with a one-time or recurring donation. Thank you!

It important to note that, while BJS's study focused on female students, male, transgender, and non-binary students also experience rape and sexually assault.

A note to UW students: Help is out there. The UW Medical Center has on-call nurses to help people who have been sexually assaulted.

This post has been updated since publication. I originally cited a statistic from a National Sexual Violence Resource Center study that stated "one in 5 women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college." Dan Savage pointed out that the one in five statistic has been disputed.