Teen arrested in Beacon Hill rape

Less than three days after a Beacon Hill woman was raped at gunpoint in her Joy Street apartment, Boston Police arrested a 16-year-old Roxbury youth in connection with the home invasion and assault, officials said yesterday.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley immediately announced that he will seek to have the teenager indicted as a youthful offender, which would mean the suspect would be prosecuted in juvenile court but could face the same punishment as an adult.

''Considering the facts and brutal nature of this case, the enhanced punishment is entirely appropriate," said a statement Conley released.

The suspect, whose name is not being released because of his age, is to be arraigned in Boston Juvenile Court today on one count each of aggravated rape, home invasion, armed assault in a dwelling, and armed robbery, plus two counts each of kidnapping and assault with a dangerous weapon.

Police say the woman was forced into her apartment late Sunday and that the woman's roommate was tied up after she returned home.

The teenager, arrested Tuesday night, was arraigned yesterday in Boston Juvenile Court on a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm and was held on $100,000 bail. Also, bail for a previous breaking-and-entering charge against the defendant was revoked.

Police attributed the quick arrest to an intense manhunt and the availability of DNA evidence.

''It was all-around good police work," said Deputy Superintendent Margot Hill. ''Supersleuthing is what I like to attribute it to. The detectives were up since Sunday. We just sent them home to bed."

At the same time, police spokeswoman Beverly Ford confirmed that on Sept. 10 an attempted rape occurred on nearby Acorn Street in Beacon Hill. That case had not been publicized. A resident who asked not to be named said that at a neighborhood meeting Tuesday night, police said the attempted rape also involved a home invasion.

Officers from the Drug Control unit, the Youth Violence Strike Force, the intelligence unit, the sexual assault unit, and two district station houses worked on the latest investigation, police said.

Police have more than forensic evidence tying the defendant to the crime, Hill said. Detectives found items stolen from the victim's apartment at the teenager's Roxbury home yesterday, she said.

''It's pretty ironclad," Hill said. ''We're very confident."

Massachusetts last year broadened its DNA database, requiring juveniles convicted of felonies as youthful offenders to submit DNA samples. The state began collecting those samples in November. It was unclear yesterday whether the arrested teenager had DNA previously on file.

Several women on Beacon Hill, one of the city's toniest neighborhoods, expressed relief yesterday at news of the arrest.

''I feel much more safe," said Tamara Harden, 31, who works in the neighborhood and lives nearby. ''I feel like they are doing something. As soon as I found out [about the attacks], I didn't want to go outside."

A 23-year-old student living on Mt. Vernon Street also expressed gratitude but wondered why rape victims living in other parts of Boston don't get the same justice.

''It makes you feel good to know that there's a police presence here and that they're actually doing something," said the woman, who asked not to be named.

''I'm not naive enough to think that this doesn't happen all over the city all the time, but it's getting a lot more attention, because it's happening on Beacon Hill," she said.

In September, police did not warn that a pair of rapists had abducted, raped, and pistol-whipped a college-age woman in Jamaica Plain. After a similar rape occurred in Mission Hill eight days later, police urged women not to walk alone. Sketches of the suspects were not released until a week after the second assault. Those rapes remain unsolved.

Hill did not comment on the status of that investigation.

Ford said that the teenager arrested in the Beacon Hill rape has been ruled out as a suspect in the Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill assaults.

Some victims' rights advocates wondered yesterday whether the police response to the Beacon Hill rape was heightened because of the neighborhood's status.

''I don't think affluence or socioeconomic standing influences how a woman reacts to a rape," said Sarah Dawgert, the public education coordinator for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, a rape victim advocacy organization. ''I think that what affluence and wealth might do is affect community response to rape, such as timely responses by police . . ."

Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York City police officer and prosecutor, agreed.

''Police departments are political organizations and are responsive to pressures," O'Donnell said. ''Depending on where a crime takes place, there can absolutely be more pressure to solve [it]."

Ford said that was not the case. ''Whether a crime is solved has nothing to do with the neighborhood that you live in, but the quality of the evidence and the witnesses," she said.

Donovan Slack of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.